JustThinking.us

Click on the above quote for the entire piece.

From Business Insider

Click on the photo of former Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin for the entire list.

THE REVOLVING DOOR:

29 People Who Went From Wall Street To Washington To Wall Street
 

Sort of makes you wonder, don't it.

Distractions abound in this country.

Cynical Roany thinks that this is by design.

The example of this that best speaks to me has to do with taxes.

Your "Silly Little Democrats ............." are always whining about tax cuts for the "The Rich".

Your "Formerly (although still mostly) Feckless Republicans ............." counter that "The Rich" pay almost 90% percent of all the income taxes paid in this country.

The American people pick a side and go to arguing and finger pointing.

Anger and upset are the only outcome.

Media is complicit.

Everybody benefits except the citizenry.

Democrats have their union and legal haters pumping up the masses.

Republicans have their wealthy and middle class constituents feeling themselves to be under siege.

The media get their ratings and sell their advertising because promoting drama is good for business.

As for me?

I got questions.

First of all, who the hell is "Rich"?

As opposed to, who the hell is Rich?

I would truly love to hear the debate where "Rich" finally gets defined.

Is "Rich" a function of income?

Are you "Rich" if you made $250,000 last year?

What if you've never made anywhere near that number ever before?

What if you're unlikely to ever make that much again?

That doesn't happen you say?

I know a raft of guys in the real estate business who had a big year that they have never duplicated.

How about if you're only making $60,000 a year, but it's from a $1,800,000 in CDs or treasuries, and you happen to be living in a nice little, paid for condo in Destin.

"Rich"?

What if you're 62 years old and have a defined benefit retirement plan from a pair of government entities paying $86,000 a year with escalators for inflation until the day you die, plus Social Security, plus all the health care you can eat for $142 a month, and you happen to be living in the nice little paid for condo in Destin right next door to the one mentioned above?

The reason I ask is that my HP 12C (financial calculator) is telling me that the above deal has a "Present Value" of $1,292,228 if capped at 3% (That there is real estate guy talk. Capped is short for cap rate which is an assumed rate of return for some specified investment, which in this case it is arbitrarily set by me at 3% because there is almost negligible risk in a defined benefit government retirement plan.  The less risk, the lower the cap rate.) and amortized over 20 years.

That $1,292,228 is before you even begin to figure for the Social Security benefit, and the true cash value of the health care.

"Rich"?

 First of all, apologies to whomever put together the below chart.

I grabbed it off from somewhere thinking that there was some identification on the chart to acknowledge and link to.

There is not.

Now I can't remember where I found it.

If somebody has seen it before, let me know.

I will cheerfully give credit and link to the source.

The following chart provides an outstanding example of how our government keeps us apart and at each other's throats.

Anybody paying the slightest bit of attention has heard that the rich pay the lion's share of the INCOME TAXES in this country.

It is true.

The top 1% of taxpayers pay about 35% of our nations INCOME TAX.

The top 25% pays about 83%.

The top 50% pays about 96%.

It is also true, the rich earn the lion's share of our national income, but on a percentage basis they pay more in taxes than they earn in income.

But INCOME TAXES on individuals only makes up 43.5% of the total tax receipts of the federal government.

42.3% is paid in in the form of "PAYROLL TAXES" aka "WITHHOLDING TAXES" aka FICA, aka Social Security and Medicare taxes which are deducted directly from wage earners paychecks and are sent to the government.

The balance mostly comes from by corporate taxes which we all pay when using the goods or services provided by corporations, and some other relatively minor sources.

The withholding rate for "The Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund (OASI), again what most of us call Social Security or FICA is 12.4% of one's taxable income.

The rate for Medicare is 2.9% of one's taxable income.

For a total of 15.3% tax on wage earners above the INCOME TAX.

In the case of Social Security, the tax is largely paid by middle and lower income taxpayers because the income against which it is applied is capped at $106,800.

Here's where the truth gets bent.

 I'm trying to put the best construction on this.

You are told that the funds go to the "Social Security Trust Fund" or the "Medicare Trust Fund".

And that's true as far as it goes, but what really happens is that the Federal Government issues debt (bonds) which is exchanged for your (cash) payroll taxes.

And subsequently sends your payroll taxes (cash) to the general fund.

Every dime of income the Government collects regardless of source, ends up in the general fund where it is spent as though it were exactly the same thing as "INCOME TAXES".

Name an activity that the Federal Government participates in, and that is where your FICA is being spent.

Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, now Libya, maybe Iran.

Defending Europe (NATO) from Russia, or Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan and South Korea from North Korea and China, the Saudis from Iran.

Not to mention from their own people. 

Welfare benefits, unemployment compensation, food stamps.

Government salaries, pensions, benefits and perks.

National parks, roads, bridges, education, research.

Office supplies.

Now, some of that stuff you can legitimately call an investment in America.

But is it appropriate to be investing people's health and retirement monies on all of the above?

Here's the government's argument,

"Some people are not able, or prepared to invest their retirement money themselves.  What if they make bad investment decisions and lose their money?

Were some people in control of their retirement funds they would indeed make some bad investments and suffer losses.

But just for fun, imagine a prospectus selling an investment in the defense of Europe.

Here's the offering.

You provide military equipment and personel to Europe free of charge, and in so doing allow the average European citizen a month of vacation every year, mostly free health care, and retirement at around age 58.

You don't get a plug nickel back, get to work until your 61.5 at least, but ................. you get to say that you're making the world safe for Democracy.

You can be a drooling moron and you're still passing on that opportunity.

So, here's the consequences:

Upper income people feel abused because they're thinking they're doing all the heavy lifting.

The middle class feels abused because they thought they were saving for their retirement, but are starting to realize that Social Security is likely to go broke, their money having been squandered. 

In truth, it ain't gonna go broke.

The government will print the dollars to pay you back.

The bad news is that each dollar is likely to be worth a helluva lot less than the one you payed in.

Retirement money is just being spent and not invested, which results in the poor feeling abused because there are no jobs, and subsequently no future.

While all they hear is "The Rich" bitching about their taxes.

Imagine the uproar if President Bush had unilaterally launched air attacks against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

But since it's Mr. Obama's finger on the trigger, Democratic leaders in Congress have kept quiet - demonstrating that their opposition to presidential power during the Bush years was political, not principled.

John Yoo, the Wall Street Journal, 3/25/2100

Interesting guy, John Woo.

Here he is enjoying the company of Jon Stewart.

Business Insider is on a roll this week with a second excellent slide show.

As always, click the photo to link to the entire piece.

Again, way double highly recommended.

I'll let the Department of Labor explain the Davis-Bacon Act  A.K.A. the "prevailing wage " law back there at the gear.

I'll admit it, I had to look it up.

Thanks to Mike M. for this one.

From Project Vote Smart, here's just the best interactive you're ever going to see.

You're asked your opinion on twelve issues, and then you are asked to evaluate how important each issue is to your ultimate voting decision.

Vote Easy then gets busy and provides you with an interactive chart of the candidates in you state and a percentage evaluation of the extent to which they share your opinions on the issues.

Thanks to Kerry and to Chartporn both of whom called this site to my attention at about the same instant.

Big fun.

Recommended.

Click the JPEG below for the link.

Here's an interesting piece from PajamaMedia

A little long maybe, but worthy.

As usual, click anywhere below to link up.

The Professional Left vs. the Amateur Right

Carolyn, Paul A. and Don C. (my new best email buddy, having replaced Teddy who went to Florida for Easter and hasn't been heard from since) have been sending me some real good political cartoons.

As the Little Wiffer, my secretary, and anyone else charged with the responsibility of taking care of me can attest, sometimes it's hard to get me to pay attention.

Up until this morning, it never dawned on me to check the artist.

It's all the same guy.

A.F. Branco.

Click on the cartoon below to link to his fine site.

He's looking for donations and selling coffee mugs, tee shirts and some other stuff.

I'm guessing the New York Times isn't returning his calls.

And for damn sure the Freep ain't.

 Teddyyyyyyyyyy, where are youuuuuuuuu??????

Chad Selweski, the local columnist for The Macomb Daily, published an opinion piece in Sunday's edition of that newspaper the beginning of which follows below.

The point of the article being that issues having to do with the deficit are extraordinarily difficult, and the real problem with Tea Party types being that they want to enjoy the services provided by government, they just don't want to pay for them.

Click anywhere below to read the entire article.

I wonder how our local Tea Party activists spent their Saturday afternoon.

How many took advantage of yesterday’s national forum, a teleconference held in 19 cities (including Detroit) and for thousands of individuals online, to seek solutions to the nation’s bulging budget deficit?

Organized by a nonpartisan group, AmericaSpeaks, the unprecedented event provided a sobering view of our country’s $13 trillion debt and the limited options facing Congress if it tries to tackle the problem.

The op-ed ends as follows:

Much of this entire fiscal responsibility issue centers on arithmetic, not politics.

The following is my reply.

To begin with .....

I'm not a member of any Tea Party affiliate.

I do like them and will support them.

I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Libertarian (..... probably).

Having said that ...

Here are some ideas which if applied would probably enable principal payments on the deficit in year 1.

Not necessarily in this order...

1.  Remove all American troops and military bases from foreign soil, excepting those troops stationed within embassies.

Leave NATO, abandon Okinawa, and allow Europe, Japan, The House of Saud etc. to defend themselves.

American military personnel are presently posted on some 760 military sites within 63 countries.

I haven't checked it today, but most years our military budget has exceeded that of the rest of the world combined.

Europe is cutting military spending in response to their deficits because we defend them.

Japan's defense budget is nonexistent.

Europe, Japan and the rest of the world needs to defend itself.

Their defense ain't our job.

We need to maintain fearsome defensive military power.

We do not need offensive military weaponry such as carrier groups (they are nothing more than big assed targets anyway), long range bombers, etc.

Scrap em out.

We do not need to be maintaining military bases on foreign soil, anywhere.

And we damn sure don't need to be defending foreign despots while allowing them to abuse their own people.

Ya listening Faisel?

As an aside.

While you're at it, reduce our payment to the United Nations to a pro-rata share.

Those guys are hopelessly corrupt and largely a waste of skin.

2.  Raise the retirement age to 67 and 71.

From 1950 to 2005, life expectancy for an American male has increased from 65.47 to 75.2 years while the median retirement age has decreased from 66.9 years to 61.7 years.

At it's inception there were 41.9 workers per Social Security beneficiary, we are now pushing toward 3 workers per beneficiary.

As you would expect, we now have over 50 million beneficiaries, 10 million of which are collecting Social Security benefits for disabilities.

While we're on the subject, reviewing every last disability claimant seems prudent.

3.  Rather than paying 100% of medical costs for medicare and medicaid recipients and attempting to fix costs by legislation, provide for the federal government to reimburse 67% of all health care costs for those eligible for medicare and medicaid benefits.

Prudence will reign by virtue of people now being responsible for a third of their own medical expenses.

They can insure or not, negotiate or not, get care or not, but the fact that a third of the cost is skin (so to speak) will save a ton of money and probably improve care.

If you're flat broke, charities can and will pick up the slack.

Hell, you might be able to provide 30% to maybe 50% coverage for everybody else under that kind of an arrangement and still come out ahead.

And while we're on the subject.

4. Loser pays.

As a sop to my many and dear attorney friends, limiting liability is nonsense, but nuisances gotta pay.

5. Deduct the first $20,000 of income for every individual and corporate taxpayer, and apply a flat 20% tax on every dime of income thereafter, from every source, cash as well as the cash value of benefits. 

End all payroll taxes, they're going into the general fund anyway.

Remove all deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions (Americans give because Americans give, the deduction is gravy ... lose it), IRA's, dependants, state and local taxes, depreciation, depletion ..... and every other damn thing. 

Bigger incomes pay higher taxes.

Identical incomes pay identical taxes.

Account across the board, Cash in, Cash out.

While you're at it require public companies to account to shareholders exactly as they account to the IRS.

Businesses acquiring buildings and capital equipment can write purchases off in the year acquired (the economy will boom), that's cash out.  If buildings and equipment are sold or scrapped later on, that's cash in.  

Removing mortgage interest as a deductible item will cause huge problems in such a debt infested environment, and as such would probably have to be phased, do it as ruthlessly as possible.

In the interest of financing growth, you probably want interest to be a deductible item for business adventures, but not against personal income, you want to prohibit the LLC from buying the homestead, or at least deducting the mortgage interest.

Dividends should be a deduction at the corporate level (cash out) and income to the recipient (cash in) at the ordinary rate. 

Income from federal debt should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

Capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as all other income.

6.  Close the Commerce Department, the Department of Education, and HUD, as well as the Department of Homeland Security (it's a joke).

Somebody has been stealing from HUD my entire adult life.

End it.

7.  Sell Fanny, Freddie, Ginnie Mae and whatever acronym handles student loans.

Never guarantee or imply a guarantee of anything or anybody, to anybody, ever again.

8.  Legalize it!  Then tax it.

9.  Tax foreign oil at the border ... big time.

Develop gasified coal (it worked for Hitler, it'll work for us), along with nuclear, wind, solar, etc.

10.  Invest a little money and finish the fence.

Invest a little more to find and deport every last illegal residing in this country.

While you're at it fine employers of illegals, while significantly reducing unemployment benefits.

Think it through.

Jobs will come open, wages will probably increase with subsequent increases in tax revenues and reductions in federal expenses.

That Compton might have to drive out to the fields and pick a little lettuce is a also good thing.

You may choose to disagree with individual items, but that there be one helluva start.

Do the arithmetic!!!

People should listen to their Uncle Roany ... I got answers.