“If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invite those inside to stay? They don’t have to get there. They are there.”
…when they seem bothered by this. A vast fortune being used to perpetuate privilege, completely immune to taxation. Indeed, subsidized by federal taxpayers through income tax deductions. Think of it – just as every profitable sale of a Volkswagen Jetta helped to subsidize the money-losing sale of a Bugatti Veyron to Simon Cowell, so too does every working American subsidize Richie McSnob III’s Totally Awesome Four Year Drinking and Fornication Binge at Haavaad.
If you can figure out why they rate this Rick Perry statement false, you’re a better reader than me. As best I can tell, Perry said to Romney, about Social Security, “You said if people did it in the private sector it would be called criminal. That’s in your book.” They rate this statement as “Mostly False” because Mitt Romney only said that the funding mechanism of Social Security – i.e. tax people today, write some I.O.U.s, and then pay them later with money taxed from other people – would be called criminal. Ah. But Social Security doesn’t exist apart from its funding mechanism. So… I guess Perry’s statement is false because Romney doesn’t believe the ideal of Social Security is criminal? Really?
I also saw this paragraph, summarizing a previous Politifact:
We’ve run several looks at Perry’s Social Security descriptions in his 2010 book, Fed Up!, rating False his claim that the government program is a Ponzi scheme. Unlike such a criminal enterprise, Social Security is obligated to pay benefits and participants are aware of how the system operates; it’s public. Unlike a Ponzi scheme, too, Social Security is accountable to Congress and the American people.
I refuse to read the linked piece because that summary tells me that it’s a pile of dunderheaded moronacy unfit for human consumption. “Social Security is obligated to pay benefits” is nonsense. “Social Security” is a government program that can be cut off at a moment’s notice, and the Supreme Court has ruled that no one has a right to any future payment. That’s like saying that “welfare is obligated to pay benefits.” It is, until it isn’t. Much like a … wait for it … Ponzi scheme!
And “participants are aware of how the system operates”? Every year I get a letter in the mail from Social Security telling me how much I’ve paid in over the years and how much my benefits would be if were able to retire tomorrow. And it’s only been very recently that people have stopped talking about the I.O.U.’s in the “trust fund” like they’re real money. And why is a penniless account called a “trust fund” if not to make people think there’s money in there waiting for them? Whether “participants” (this is like calling prisoners “residents”) are aware of what’s going on or not, the people who run Social Security sure have put a lot of effort into making it sound legitimate. Much like a … wait for it … Ponzi scheme!
And “Unlike a Ponzi scheme, too, Social Security is accountable to Congress and the American people”? Accountable to Congress? That’s like saying Ponzi’s scheme was accountable to Ponzi – he created the damned thing! And what does it mean to say that it’s “accountable to … the American people”? Really, I don’t know what that means. Can we throw Social Security in prison when it doesn’t pay out? I think the only way that it’s “accountable” is that we can vote to shut it down and cut our losses. Sounds to me like Social Security is “accountlbe” in much the same way as a … wait for it … Ponzi scheme!
Social Security : Ponzi Scheme :: State Lottery : Mob-run Numbers Racket. To paraphrase Nixon, when the government does it, that means it is not illegal.
Mitt Romney thinks he has a winning issue against Rick Perry. Good luck with that.
I find the current Social Security “debate” to be ghastly. Everybody is pledging to “save” it, even those like Perry who seem to want enormous changes in the system. There are cries that it is unfair to the young and that it is inefficient in its rate of return. Yet everyone seems to believe that we can simply “strengthen” the system so that future generations will enjoy its benefits.
Well phooey on that. Social Security was created in the 1930s, when most people had very little or no investment, when making intelligent investment decisions was beyond the capability of the vast majority of individuals, when very few people lived many years after becoming old enough to receive benefits, and when the ratio of workers to retirees was high.
I find the notion that this system could still exist on the 100th anniversary of its creation (and lots of long term projections analyze its financial outlook on its 150th anniversary) to be horrifying. Is it really the case, given the enormous gains in wealth, knowledge, and technology that have occurred since the 1930s, given that everybody and his brother now has a personal retirement account (and those without one are that way because they actively choose to be that way), given that the knowledge required to make sound investment is widely disseminated and freely available, that financial advisors are a dime a dozen even in small poor towns, and that life spans are much longer and appear set to get much longer in the near future - is it really the case that a system created in the 1930s even vaguely approximates a good system in the modern world?
We’ve structured our federal government around supporting a system that, at best, provides the elderly with the bare minimum income required to keep eating. That may have been fine in the 1930s, maybe even into the 1990s, but can it really be the case that a rational person can want this system to still be in place in the 2030s? The 2090s? Can you picture Capt. Kirk looking forward to his Social Security check in the 23rd Century? To me, that’s a mortifying vision of the future.
There are good reasons to keep the payments in place for current and near-future beneficiaries. But for the love of God, taking my money now and promising me that I’ll have a bare trickle of income in forty years is offensive, and it shows a complete ignorance of the modern world. If Mitt Romney wants to make his campaign about the brain-dead policy of preserving Social Security to infinity and beyond, I hope he loses. This is not a forward-looking conservatism.
I’ll give you an example of how this is working. Here in Texas, we almost had to cut the budget back in 2009. It was going to be a pretty dramatic budget cut. But then a ton of stimulus money rained on us, so we were able to avoid laying off government employees (mostly teachers). Well 2011 has rolled around and money failed to fall from the heavens on us, so we either had to raise taxes or cut the budget. So obviously we cut the budget. The actual amount of budget cutting ($4 billion – that’s not a per capita budget cut, but an actual decrease in the amount of money we’re spending) matches up almost perfectly with the amount of stimulus money we got two years ago.
So now tens of thousands of government employees (mostly teachers) are getting laid off. Considering that the main purpose of the stimulus was to give state and local governments money to avoid laying off government workers, I have to presume a similar phenomenon is taking place in jurisdictions across the country this year.
In the end, the number of jobs “saved” by the stimulus will continue to shrink. The relevant statistic will not be how many “jobs” were saved, but rather how many “job-years” were saved. Because the effects of a temporary stimulus are, shockingly enough, temporary.
P.S. +5 internets to the first Democrat who suggests that the tailing off of the stimulus’s impact means we need a “permanent stimulus.” A super bonus of 10 additional internets will be awarded if that same Democrat suggests the 14th Amendment allows the president to borrow money for a stimulus without Congressional approval (”Without a permanent stimulus, our unemployment rate will, eventually, rise to 100%, which will bring into question the validity of our debt in violation of the 14th Amendment. The president has to see that the laws are faithfully enforced, so it’s a no-brainer that he has the power to borrow this money.”)
Because this is surely the product of illegal drug usage on a massive scale. The alternative explanation is that numerous federal legislators have gone insane:
Senate Democrats want the deal to include more money for highway construction, a payroll tax cut and clean-energy subsidies to bring down the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.
Can it really be that we’re going to kill off the ethanol subsidy? In one fell swoop, could Congress both make my food cheaper and make my car’s engine last longer? Short of cutting me a check, it’s hard to think of a single act that Congress could take that would have better effects on me personally.
P.S. I’m sorry for the ghastly picture of DiFi the Post has at the link. Block that out of your mind. Think, instead, of the gorgeous new M5, and all the pleasant sounds it will make while burning corn-free gasoline.
Let’s ignore the fact that EPI is a liberal think tank (we all know how eager Liberals are to accept Hoover or Mercatus studies). Let’s see who can spot the real problem with Ezra’s analysis of this graph:
Apparently “Economic Recovery Measures” that don’t work, shouldn’t really be a factor when considering how to deal with our massive deficits. Nevermind that “Porkulus” amounts to nothing more than a giveaway to favorite Democrat constituencies.
This story seems to make a good point. Governments seem distressed that new electric cars won’t be paying the gas taxes that fund most of our road building and maintenence. So they’re trying to come up with ways to tax people who drive electric vehicles.
Yet we pour thousands of dollars in direct tax incentives into each electric car purchase, and probably even more money into subsidizing the research and production of these cars. Perhaps that’s good policy, perhaps its not (I think it probably is, but is probably overdone). But whatever mileage tax we would be assessing on these cars would bring in a pittance compared to the amount of money we’re paying people to buy them. If budget shortfalls are actually the issue, we should start by not paying out as much money, rather than coming up with an expensive means of monitoring the movements of citizens’ cars.
The paranoid among us might look at this situation and think that the government has, for a decade now, been engaged in a long-term policy to move us to a system where they get to track our every move in the name of taxation. I, on the other hand, look at this situation and see nothing but good faith bureaucratic idiocy.
Conservatives, it seems, also control money. And can write scathing, well-reasoned letters that get lots of attention.
Were I a business that had King & Spalding as a law firm – well, first I wouldn’t, because big firms like that always overcharge. But if I did I’d dump them because no one wants to be represented by pusillanimous lawyers. When you give into one group, you raise the specter that you’ll give in to them all. Prof. Jacobson sums up why no law firm should ever cave to this sort of crap:
There’s a beauty and level of comfort in the ethical rules and principles which govern attorneys; the rules provide a compass which insulates attorneys from pressures to do the wrong thing, whether those pressures are brought by clients or outsiders. I teach my students that the rules of ethics are not an enemy, they are an attorney’s best friend.
When attorneys put business convenience ahead of the attorney’s duty of loyalty to a client, there is no good outcome.
And if I were a business that got threatened by a gay rights group to change my business partners, I’d look very closely at what happens to King & Spalding. I imagine the commonwealth of Virginia will not be the last client to dump them out of fear of being dumped first. If King & Spalding loses a lot of business over this, it will make pressure from gay rights groups a lot easier to resist in the future. This may be a Pyrrhic victory they’ll come to regret.
I think this anecdote is essential to understanding how bad California has become:
The day’s agenda included a lunch session with Andrew Puzder, CEO of the company that owns the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. restaurant chains.
Puzder, whose company is based near Santa Barbara, created a stir in California earlier this year when he announced a major expansion in Texas, strongly criticized California’s business climate and suggested that he might move his headquarters to Texas.
Puzder said Thursday that California’s permitting process makes it hard for his company to build new restaurants there and that it is difficult to employ restaurant managers without running afoul of the state’s restrictive labor laws.
When he returned to California from Texas, Puzder said he received a phone call at home from Gov. Jerry Brown, who wanted to talk with him about improving the business climate in the state.
He said representatives of his chain have met with state officials recently and came up with a way to reduce the permitting process from eight months to six.
In Texas, Puzder said, the same process takes six weeks, and there are no arbitrary work rules that affect restaurant managers.
“You can’t build stores in California, you can’t manage them in California, and, even if you can build them, you have to pay a big tax,” he said. “In Texas, you can build them and run them, and you don’t have to pay (income) tax.”
So the best that state officials in California could come up with was reducing the permitting time from 5.7 times as long as it takes in Texas to 4.3 times as long as it takes in Texas? Even their attempts to free up their sclerotic bureaucracy are sclerotic.
Connecticut and New Jersey residents with a Hamptons summer cottage or a Manhattan pied-a-terre are about to get a nasty surprise: New York state wants more taxes from them.
A New York court ruled last month that all income earned by a New Canaan, Conn., couple is subject to New York state taxes because they own a summer home on Long Island they used only a few times a year. They have been hit with an additional tax bill of $1.06 million.
Tax experts and real estate brokers say this ruling could boost the tax bill for thousands of business executives who own New York City apartments they use only occasionally. It could also hurt sales in the Hamptons and New York’s other vacation-home communities.
“People will think twice about spending any summer time in New York,” says Robert Willens, a New York-based tax consultant. “The amount of tax they could be subjected to is likely to outweigh the benefit.”
[snip]
Tax attorneys said they were unlikely to get the ruling overturned.
Granted, this was a judge making the ruling rather than the legislature. But if owning a second home in New York—even one used only a few days a year—is going to get you treated like a full time resident of that high tax state, then there’s going to be a sell off of second homes, pied a terres, et al. To avoid a yearly tax bill of a million dollars, one can afford a lot of stays in nice hotels.
So the housing market in New York is probably going to go down. On the plus side, hotels there will probably be seeing a lot more business. Perhaps housing will soon be cheap enough there that normal people can afford to live there.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, arguing that the proximate cause of the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is a spike in food prices:
The immediate cause of this food spike was the worst drought in Russia and the Black Sea region for 130 years, lasting long enough to damage winter planting as well as the summer harvest. Russia imposed an export ban on grains. This was compounded by late rains in Canada, Nina disruptions in Argentina, and a series of acreage downgrades in the US. The world’s stocks-to-use ratio for corn is nearing a 30-year low of 12.8pc, according to Rabobank.
The deeper causes are well-known: an annual rise in global population by 73m; the “exhaustion” of the Green Revolution as the gains in crop yields fade, to cite the World Bank; diet shifts in Asia as the rising middle class switch to animal-protein diets, requiring 3-5 kilos of grain feed for every kilo of meat produced; the biofuel mandates that have diverted a third of the US corn crop into ethanol for cars.
Ethanol, you say? I’m as opposed to ethanol as the next guy, mostly because it’s an inferior fuel that reduces the lifespan of my car’s magnificent engine. It is also weird, I grant, that we’re turning food into fuel. This seems like an odd thing to do.
But let’s look at this expansion of ethanol production in the US. We produce 40% of the world’s corn, and if we’re pumping 1/3 of our corn into our cars that’s 13% of the world’s corn making me go vroom. Reading Evans-Pritchard’s story, this amount of corn (cultural food preferences being equal) would be more than enough to satisfy all the people left hungry (or priced out of food) by the Russian drought.
Why, then, are we engaged in such an evil policy? Why do global food prices rise while the wealthiest country on earth goes on joy rides using food for fuel?
Oh, yeah, it’s because OPEC, led by Arab countries, has been effing with the price of oil for the last decade. You want $100 oil? And you don’t like food riots overthrowing your neighbors? Tough-frickin-toenails. We’ll let you starve before we go broke to your monopolistic behavior. We’ll take food that your people could be eating, and we’ll put it in our vee-eights. And if your people don’t like it, well, I’m sure they know where to find rope and a lamppost.
