The Economic Populist
Speak Your Mind 2 Cents at a Time
Most Popular
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 190920 reads
2009: Recession vs. Recovery (Update 2)
- 67415 reads
May Leading Economic Indicators (1)
- 50875 reads
Abiding Ado About Oil
- 78724 reads
User login
Recent comments
Poll
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 190920 reads
2009: Recession vs. Recovery (Update 2)
- 67415 reads
May Leading Economic Indicators (1)
- 50875 reads
Abiding Ado About Oil
- 78724 reads
The Golden Rule
- 1826571 reads
Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
- 1216986 reads
New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
- 953145 reads
How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
- 363146 reads
VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 346694 reads
U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
- 321920 reads
The war on the middle class
- 317295 reads
House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
- 315798 reads
Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
- 280220 reads
.
The President has had big meetings for three weeks in a row re comprehensive immigration reform (which is not comprehensive at all but that's a comment for another time).
If we legalized everybody, the tax receipts and purchasing power of all the formerly illegal would solve our economic problems. We'd also have millions of wonderful new voters. We know this is true because the pro immigration people tell us this all the time. They've said it enough to make it true by now, just as they hoped it would.
We must be wrong to think President Obama should be concentrating on employment getting American citizens into good paying, full time jobs with benefits because obviously he's not thinking about that at all and if it were important, he'd talk about it all the time, not never.
Plus of course besides talking, he'd be taking action and would be asking Congress every day to do something to get the unemployed back to work and to give them more unemployment until they get a job. He'd also be trying to get more funding for social services that are heavily used by the unemployed and underemployed.
Right?
Michael Collins asks, "isn't there a fairly decent means of tracking international transactions?" Maybe. But the means of evading or avoiding the tracking of transactions is probably always one jump ahead.
I don't recall the details, but I do know that some economists in Europe have long said that we'll never get anywhere with economic recovery globally until there are controls on international capital flows. But removal of barriers to capital flow - isn't that the primary "accomplishment" of the 'free' trade agenda?
Where did the money go that was made off in the Enron scams by limited partnerships? Referring here to the profits shown on Enron books that went to the presumably insider partners operating out of Grand Cayman post office boxes - "heads the Grand Cayman partner wins, tails Enron loses".
Presidents of Mexico retire reportedly with assets of $Billions. And so forth. How much does President Mugabe of Zimbabwe have stashed somewhere? The U.S. 'black budget'. Corruption globally is endemic.
I think that the only capital flow controls now in place are essentially discretionary, (if effective at all), because the people that have the power to set any auditing system in place, and maintain it, are not going to want to be subject to it n the same way that others are. But, as long as the system is essentially discretionary, it will always be a scam.
The current wars of choice ('War on Terror') are hardly free of corruption. Indeed, prosecution of these wars may be corrupt at its heart. Al Qaeda has long been associated with illegal heroine trade - and who else? Any branches of the governments of many other countries, including the U.S.A.?
Why has Congress in the last few sessions failed to enact Rep. Abernathy's War Profiteering Prevention Act? We have not had war profiteering law since the old Act (dating back to World War II) expired.
OpenCongress.org
Long term, the only solutions probably involve much more transparency than many people in high places will countenance. Therefore, those solutions would require major reforms of the international and of our national banking system.
Bank of Boston has moved to Switzerland - and a deal was cut whereby some (not all) of the alleged money-laundering records have been made available to the IRS.
For what it's worth (2¢), I believe that the effort to control $$$ flows offshore has been marginally better managed by the current administration than formerly.
"These aren't rhetorical questions." But what do I know? I'm just a bag man.
Yes, the Wizard does often come out with the plain truth, but the public either doesn't hear about what he has said - or they don't care. Certainly, none of Buffet's comments on the inequity of the current tax system for lower income earners - or on other economic issues - has ever had any noticeable impact on legislation or on the "conventional wisdom" of corporate media spin.
Just checked out the article from back in January.
I like to call attention to the fact that all wages are subject to the Medicare Tax that mostly funds insurance for people who are not working or even looking for work, but is paid out of wages of working people. (Criticized by late Sen. Monynihan.)
In my working days, I was opposed to the Medicare Tax. I am still opposed to it. Lousy policy, unjustifiable.
Also, I like to call attention to factories that could have located in the U.S. have gone to Canada because of the medical insurance issue.
The only justification that I have heard for the inanities of the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 is that it's a start on reform. I think that the President has on occasion spoken words to that effect. But, as the Act is implemented, it often looks like reform or progress by way of 'One step forward, two steps back'! It started with the insurance lobby, and it ends as legislation of, by and for the for-profit insurance industry.
Whatever happened to the proposal by Senator Leahy (Chair of Judiciary Committee) to repeal the anti-trust exemption that was enacted by Congress in 1945? Back in '45, the law was never intended as a long-term solution, but only as a stop-gap measure in response to a major SCOTUS case that had taken many years to 'ripen' and work through the circuits.
In February, 2010, the House - with the support of the White House - voted OVERWHELMINGLY to repeal the exemption.
Well, I am SOOO happy that we threw those b*st*rds out and retained the hopelessly divided and ineffectual Senate!
There's an example of what an intelligent and well-informed voting public can do!
Great catch. Thanks.
Thank you for noting that. In my comment, above, I referred to the 2010 legislation as 'Affordable Health Insurance Act" but it is actually titled "Affordable Health Care Act".
Didn't George Orwell call it "NewSpeak"?
Don't forget - your self-employment tax includes the "medicare tax" which is paid by working people to fund medical care mostly for people who are not working. It would have been easy, considering the Medicare tax that has been levied for some time now, to expand the Medicare system rather than enact the so-called Affordable Health Insurance Act to make it illegal for self-employed people NOT to pay private insurance companies.
But that's not the worst of it:
A few years back, less than 10 years ago, Oregon reneged on promises made to a quadriplegic who had been assured that he could receive state aid for home care if he would give the state title to his home (while he retained lifetime rights). The man had signed over this home on the conditions, but Oregon reneged (without returning title to his home).
The policy whereby this happened followed an election in which the public rejected an income tax increase on high income brackets.
The policy was insane since it drove the man into a facility which cost more than the home care. BUT the facility care was picked up by federal funds, whereas the home care was all or mostly on the State of Oregon.
I personally know home care nurses (working part-time in various private residences) who, after that policy was implemented, were left with the choice of abandoning bed-ridden patients or continuing to drive to their homes and provide care WITHOUT PAY. Many home care nurses did provide care for some time WITHOUT PAY. And many of those home care nurses are self-employed, working for service organizations or companies on 1099s.
I am not sure, because the law is so complex and disputed as to constitutionality, etc., but it may be that the recent legislation did something to improve the kind of situations here described. I don't know, but I do know that the cases I am describing were about severely physically disabled people, with intact mental functioning. (Not addressing issues about brain-dead.)
Maybe there's a pun intended around 'media income', I'm not sure, but I think it's a typo. I think Michael Collins intended:
"when a decent health insurance plan comes close to the individual MEDIAN income"
But I don't mean to nitpick. Just was referred to this article from a link in a recent comment, I think at the Bankruptcy Hell article.
About median INDIVIDUAL income, I would note that the WAGES (including self-employment) part of that is subject to the Medicare tax - regardless of whether the worker who reports the wages (and pays the tax) has any publicly funded (or otherwise) medical insurance, or not. Any real medical insurance reform that fails to adequately address this glaring inequity is no real reform at all.
To my memory, the only well-known member of Congress to address this inequitable taxation policy was the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was replaced by Hillary Clinton. Did Hillary campaign for president on this issue? Not to my recollection.
Other than, prolonged financial challenges and, too often, no insurance. Here's how it works
Health Care Reform - Abandoning the Self Employed
Or something very close. I suspect that he stopped using the phrase when he bought into post collapse Wall Street.
It will be interesting to watch Obama's poll numbers over the next 60-90 days. There may be a dead creep at hand (or at sea) but there are no signs of new jobs, increased income, or economic recovery.
On the money used by bin Laden and other terrorist group: isn't there a fairly decent means of tracking international transactions? How could the money necessary to run this operation go unnoticed? These aren't rhetorical questions. It would be useful to know the answers.
From a distance, like from India maybe, the justices could be more objective, if not impartial! And tremendous savings for the taxpayers!
Not Goldman Sachs! JP Morgan Chase runs the country!
Deutsche Bank has the $$$ do re mi
No point in suing yourself, although it has been tried.
The hoopla over Bin Laden's death in 2011 is a hoax, just like the Lunar Landing in 1969!
Is there any evidence whatsoever supporting the hoax?
Is there really any good reason to believe other than that the government (any government) is always lying about everything? Are we to take the CIA at their word?
On the other hand, maybe Osama is still alive, living in Yemen ....
The truth is out there!
Fun with smileys ....
I agree, pretty selective civil action to be sure. I guess it's because Goldman Sachs runs the country (and many others too).
I sure hope we don't see anymore like him in my lifetime.
One thing that did set him apart from others, especially early on, was his access to his family's wealth. When or if that stopped is a matter of debate.
But if it is a comfort, most fanatics are not as fanatical as he was; most fanatics are not as smart (not that he was a genius, but he was smarter and more educated than most religious fanatics); and almost none can start out their "career" with access to millions.
[Well, unless their activities from the get-go almost are sponsored by a government or movement with lots and lots of cash.]
Why is Deutsche Bank being sued, it was Goldman that sold the MBSs with a AAA rating attached to them in the first place, these guys just make me sick.
Only a pig ignorant American would not know about Botswana... It has a small population and diamond mines. Even Botswana is better run than the U.S. as you can see by the exchange rate. Adding 2 TRILLION dollars to the money supply--more than in the last 2 centuries COMBINED--is a really dumb idea. Thank Bernankenstein!
There are so many incredible takes on the economy, who said economics is not funny? But glad to know people like, want to see these series. I don't want to fill the site with them, at the same time, their take on economic events often puts it all in such perspective no regular article or analysis really can. Besides, it's so dark, one has to lighten up once in a while.
Pages