So have a video instead.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Tax Bite
I'm not one to complain about my taxes, but I'm probably in fairly similar circumstances as James Stewart. Significant proportion of self-employment income, household income at a level where deductions start being disallowed, etc. The issue is less that my taxes are too high than that that I pay a high percentage relative to people who make a lot more money than me. I'm not going to weep for people in my nondire circumstances over a too high tax bill, but there is an income range where taxes do actually bite, where marginal tax rates are genuinely high.
Doing It Wrong Everywhere
England has recently followed our great lead and decided that the price of a university education should be sufficiently high to ensure everyone graduates with a massive amount of debt. It was moving in that direction when I taught there. I tried to warn people that aside from the 'making people pay' part, it would transform academia by turning students into customers. Hello student evaluations and competitive pressures!
The basic thinking seems to have been that it was wonderful for university to be free back when most people who attended were quite wealthy, but once the masses started getting ideas about going it was time to force them to pay. And there again is your generational divide.
The basic thinking seems to have been that it was wonderful for university to be free back when most people who attended were quite wealthy, but once the masses started getting ideas about going it was time to force them to pay. And there again is your generational divide.
The Great Thing About Free Money From The Government
Is you can use that money to lobby for...more free money! Even from other governments!
The Royal Bank of Scotland has spent more than $4m (£2.5m) of British taxpayers' money on lobbyists in Washington since it was bailed out by the government, documents disclose.
Nobody Has Any Money
It's sort of amusing reading various articles about, for example, generational divides in the housing market, otherwise known as "young people don't think they'll ever be able to buy a house." There's too much of a desire to attribute to preferences instead of income, prices, and access to credit. I'm not saying preferences for such things can't change, but right now what's happening, both in the US and much of Europe, is that younger people are getting screwed. The game has changed for them. They're facing crap job prospects, crap income, no possibility for defined benefits pensions, and perpetual threats to completely gut retirement systems.
I'm not saying young people are the only ones being screwed by our incompetent and evil Galtian Overlords, but if you're looking for generational divides, that's your divide.
I'm not saying young people are the only ones being screwed by our incompetent and evil Galtian Overlords, but if you're looking for generational divides, that's your divide.
Who's The Boss
I'm not surprised that the conservative powers that be might be rethinking the awesomeness of Citizen's United. Basically, in the previous campaign finance framework, rich people had influence but none of them individually had too much influence. Suddenly, the money really is king, and those who managed to obtain influence and power in other ways aren't as important anymore.
Not Good Enough
As the downers at the EPI remind us (email), today's growth numbers aren't good enough, and with various bits of fiscal contraction looming next year...
“Gross domestic product grew in the 4th quarter of 2011 at the fastest rate since the first half of 2010 – but any celebration should be muted. The 2.8% growth rate for the quarter was well below expectations and the year-round growth rate for 2011 was only 1.7%, a rate that would not generate reliable declines in unemployment should it continue.
“It seems clear that the sharp withdrawal of fiscal support currently embedded in law for 2012 would result in growth wholly insufficient to reliably lower the unemployment rate. At the very least, a year-long extension of extended unemployment insurance benefits and the payroll tax cut should be passed to keep 2012 from being a year of no improvement in joblessness.”
Free Money
It isn't pointed out often enough that we've been giving massive amounts of free money to banksters, and that it would be more effective to give free money to this rest of us.
Helicopter money is precisely what the government has for three years been dropping into bank vaults, to the tune of some £850bn in cash, loans and guarantees. Ministers pleaded with bankers to lend it on to firms in the high street, but the banks preferred to keep it for themselves, to cover their gambling debts and bonuses. Dropping the stuff from helicopters is more effective since it does what it says on the tin: it instantly unleashes demand. It is an emergency blood transfusion straight into the veins of the economy, through high-street tills, job recruitment, restocking, warehouses and order books. It does not pass through the constricted arteries of bank managers.
Fortunately There's A Policy For That
So we should have this all fixed up pretty quickly.
Spain’s unemployment rate rose to 22.9 percent, the highest in 15 years, increasing pressure on Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to change labor rules and deliver on his election pledge to create jobs in a shrinking economy.
The unemployment rate rose in the fourth quarter from 21.5 percent in the previous three months, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said today. That’s more than twice the euro- region average and exceeds the median estimate of 22.2 percent in a Bloomberg survey of seven analysts.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Applebee's America
I haven't walked by in awhile, and this is of course just anecdote, but an Applebee's opened in the urban hellhole a few years ago nearby where I used to live. It wasn't an African-American neighborhood, but every time I glanced through the window most of the customers were actually black.
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