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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
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The QE2 Binge - Inflation on the Horizon
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Studies show, Congress Favors the Rich
- 83634 reads
State budget crisis about to become a "catastrophe"
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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 190294 reads
The QE2 Binge - Inflation on the Horizon
- 82348 reads
Studies show, Congress Favors the Rich
- 83634 reads
State budget crisis about to become a "catastrophe"
- 169448 reads
The Golden Rule
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
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New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
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VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
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U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
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The war on the middle class
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House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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Interesting -- So currently there are 6.3 million people not counted as "unemployed" who want a job and another 8.5 million currently counted as officially "unemployed" who also want a job -- which totals almost 15 million -- about the same number we had at the peak of unemployment in 2009.
So all the net new jobs that were created since then may have only kept up with population growth, and none of the 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession were never really "recovered" (as the media likes to put it).
To save Social Security, they want to raise the retirement age so that fewer people live long enough to get Social Security.
Source:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/uoia-rra040215.php
They start off by saying "The age to receive full Social Security benefits should be closer to 70."
Then they say: "Only 74.4 percent of 25 year olds who had less than a high school education survived to age 65, while 92.1 percent of their peers with a college degree or its equivalent years of education would do so ... However, the retirement age for Social Security is the same for everyone."
And they conclude: "People in population groups with lower life expectancies [i.e. lower incomes e.g. those with less than a high school education] would continue to pay into Social Security the same as anyone else, while becoming even less likely than they already are to live to see retirement -- and those who do reach retirement [i.e. higher incomes e.g. those with a college education] would draw benefits for even fewer years."
If only people with higher incomes live long enough to get Social Security, then because of their higher incomes, they will draw much larger Social Security checks --- so they will need more people at the bottom of the income scale to keep working longer.
So as the title of the article states, how does "raising the retirement age widen benefit disparities for the disadvantaged"?
Actually, just Google "Forbes rich live longer".
They always prefer to cut benefits (and/or raise the age) rather than eliminate the cap for Social Security taxes or tax capital gains for Social Security taxes.
I make somewhere about $51.00 an hour. I live alone. I think I am middle class and if I am not it sure feels like it. I have no worries. I don't worry about paying routine bills associated with living. I can go out to dinner without worrying about how much each little thing costs. People always talk about middle class and assume everyone has kids, a wife, two cars and the dog. I have none of that stuff. Man living on over $100K a year by one's self is awesome. Am I rich hell no not even close. What 100K a year allows one to be is care free. I am doing well now. I have plenty socked away for retirement. I am autistic so I have no social or family obligations just my needs to meet.
I am enjoying life. I live in a little place in Maryland so while it is expensive it is small so not killer expensive. Of course anyplace in Maryland is expensive. Taxes in Maryland are killer horrible and you don't get much return for your tax dollars. Yet all things considered I am enjoying life in all ways and God willing I will in future. It is sad that single people making 100K aren't considered solidaly middle class because for those fortunate enough to live alone making $51.00 an hour life sure feels upper middle class to me.
given that real PCE is about 68% of GDP, we could estimate that real PCE would add 1.06 percentage points to 1st quarter GDP...
however, unless i've made some serious error, the collapse of trade will be the real 1st quarter story...with 2 months in the books, i have 1st quarter exports falling at a 17.1% annual rate, or at a rate that would subtract 2.24 percentage points from 1st quarter GDP, while our overall 1st quarter imports fell at a 19.2% annual rate, or at a rate that would add 2.99 percentage points to 1st quarter GDP..
thanks for the details.
yeah, i should have phrased that correctly...there is a lot in reporting on NIPA that is difficult to express accurately in a smooth sentence...
to discover the PCE aberration, i just used the interactive version of that graph to see a longer view...although it wouldn't make a clear image with all that data, that the 4th quarter PCE bar was the highest in a decade was obivious...
Without the details wouldn't have known that. I do have an issue, you are using % instead of percentage points on GDP. Big difference.
Without a gift tax in effect, the wealthy could easily sidestep the estate tax by giving away the bulk of their fortunes before they die. (Read: A History of Federal Estate, Gift, and Generation-Skipping Taxes)
http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metacrs5392/m1/1/high_res_d/95...
With a gift tax in effect, the wealthy can still give away whatever they want, whenever they want. But if they try to pass a huge chunk of change to junior before they die, they have to pay Uncle Sam a tax on that chunk.
This gift tax has always come with exemptions. Gifts to charities have never been subject to gift tax. And deep pockets have also enjoyed both a “lifetime” and an annual exemption on the gifts they make to individuals. Since 2002, the “lifetime” exemption has stood at $1 million.
Even better, the tax cut lets stand a complicated estate planning technique known as the “Walton grantor retained annuity trust” — named after the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune — that allows America’s wealthy to undervalue the actual worth of the assets they give away.
With a higher new lifetime gift tax exemption and a wide-open Walton loophole, estate tax expert Stephan Leimberg explained to Forbes, the rich will be able to shift “an unbelievable amount of wealth” beyond the reach of the IRS.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2010/12/12/under-obama-tax-deal-...
IRS (2015) What's New - Estate and Gift Tax
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Whats-New...
Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich:
The ranks of the non-working rich have been swelling. America’s legendary “self-made” men and women are fast being replaced by wealthy heirs. Americans who became enormously wealthy over the last three decades are now busily transferring that wealth to their children and grand children. The nation is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history.
A study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a total of $59 trillion passed down to heirs between 2007 and 2061.
http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cwp/pdf/Wealth%20Pres...
Last year only 1.4 out of every 1,000 estates owed any estate tax, and the effective rate they paid was only 17 percent.
The [GOP dominated] Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a non-binding resolution to repeal the estate tax altogether. Earlier in the week, the House Ways and Means Committee [led by Paul Ryan] also voted for a repeal.
http://robertreich.org/post/115067624170
February PCE is out today. real growth shrunk 0.1% as durables were down 1.1%, non-durables were flat, and services saw a 0.1% increase..
One problem with the Koch brothers boycott was that generic store brands may also be made by the Koch brothers. For example, Safeway's store-labeled paper towels may be made in the same Koch factory that makes Brawny.
Now there's an app that lets you boycott the Koch brothers (and other companies) by scanning your shopping cart.
But with so many mergers and acquisitions, the manufacturer can also change. So there's really no easy way out of this, not as there are with brand name products. (But if someone is buying someone else, it's probably Koch who's doing the buying).
Here's an app for download to use with Android and iPhone. With it, you can subscribe to a group called "Avoid Koch Industries" Scan the barcode when shopping with your phone and it'll tell you if it is something you want to avoid.
One commenter noted: "Probably 2/3rds of the paper products you see on the shelf are made by Kimberly Clark or Procter Gamble. Buy those. Just flip it over and look for the "Georgia Pacific" name — don't bother trying to memorize this list. I've been doing this for years.
Another commenter noted: "We can stop consumer goods, but the goods placed as components are impossible for a consumer boycott. For example, for an end-point consumer, avoiding Lycra and Comfortfel is all but impossible. Coolmax and Cordura are going to be components of things we buy, and frequently things without obvious competitors. The Kochs bought well established industries,
industries with regional identities and industries with long histories of industrial innovation. I have avoided and can continue to avoid Chevron -- opting for Marathon where possible, and I've dropped all GP products since the Koch purchase (in favor of Kimberly Clark). It's just very hard when it comes to components.
One commenter noted "That's part of the Kochs' strategy — diversify and infiltrate every corner of the economy. It's nearly impossible to avoid buying these products and as the Kochs grow, this will get worse.
Another commenter said they switched to Cottonelle from Northern. And if not, "console yourself by remembering that you're crapping all over it — the best thing to do with any Koch brothers product."
The "per capita" income in the U.S. is about $53,042 (less than Singapore's ). "Per capita" means the "average" (not the "median"), so it is very misleading as it can be very skewed by higher-income earners at the very top. (Just as when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the "average" wage".) Sentier Research showed the annual "median household income" to be $54,010 (about the same as the "per capita" income) — but this also includes dual/multiple income earners per household. If you divide the "median household income" by 2, it is $27,005 — slightly less than the last reported "median wage" of $28,031 (where have earn less, and half earn more).
St. Louis Fed on Job Polarization: "Postrecession policies to stimulate labor market activity may have little effect since the jobless recovery is due to the downturn-induced disappearance of middle-skilled jobs."
https://www.stlouisfed.org/Publications/Regional-Economist/January-2013/...
New York Fed on Job Polarization: "The economic forces driving job polarization have existed for decades and are likely to continue."
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci18-7.pdf
Kansas City Fed on Job Polarization: "Job polarization has occurred consistently over the past three decades, suggesting that it is an ongoing, structural phenomenon."
https://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/econrev/pdf/13q1tuzemen-willis.pdf
"Both claim drastic reductions in federal spending ... But both also claim more than a trillion dollars in further cuts to mandatory spending, which would almost surely have to come out of Medicare or Social Security."
Paul Krugman calls the Republicans "Trillion Dollar Fraudsters".
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/opinion/paul-krugman-trillion-dollar-f...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/15/1092027/-Thanks-a-Union-36-Ways...
shows the great middle class squeeze clearly.
They are bankrolling a nationwide campaign to gut workers' comp: "America's biggest employers want to pick and choose the benefits they give their injured workers."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/arawc-walmart-campaign-again...
the index for services less energy services was up by just 0.1%, with the 0.3% increase in rent of shelter counting for more than half that index, so the deflator for other February services should be negative...
From their newsletter today regarding the Senate's just passed budget proposal:
Democratic Senators offered an amendment to expand Social Security. The amendment lost on almost a completely straight party-line vote: every Democrat but Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Tom Carper (DE) voted for it (with Dianne Feinstein (D) and Barbara Mikulski (D) not voting.) Every Republican voted against it.
The Senate budget proposal slashes $431 billion from Medicare over a decade, but does not provide many specifics on how those savings would be achieved. Instead, the plan tasks individual Senate committees with jurisdiction over Medicare to find such savings. (The House budget would pare $148 billion from Medicare and convert it into a voucher-like program for future beneficiaries, a step the Senate shunned.)
An amendment from Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also failed on the Senate floor. It would have made it easier to reject bills that “would cut benefits, raise the retirement age, or privatize Social Security”.
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