November 6th, 2009 This is truly funny. You can tell that Sec Treasury Geithner has been banned from using the phrase “raise taxes”. Not so funny: $1.3 TRILLION of new debt since inauguration day. At that pace Obama will raise the national debt from $10.6T to $17.1T in one term.
October 19th, 2009 One of the better explainations of the Fair Tax vs Flat Tax vs IRS…
October 16th, 2009 The stimulus spending cost to create 1 job is $71k. Sadly the stimulus has created 30,383 jobs so far!
Meanwhile we are losing around 300,000+ each month.
The White House unveiled Thursday the first hard data on how many jobs the $787 billion recovery act has created.
So far, 30,383 jobs have been created by companies that have gotten $2.2 billion worth of stimulus contracts directly from the federal government. That equates to $71,500 per job based on just the funds that have been distributed.
September 29th, 2009 An Inconvenient Tax sheds light on one of America’s messiest problems - a fundamentally broken tax code that affects every part of people’s lives. With the U.S. Congress making over 16,000 changes to the tax code in the last two decades alone, many Americans want something better, but few know where to start. This feature-length documentary film reveals the many ways Congress uses the tax code to achieve political goals that have nothing to do with raising revenue. It also tackles the controversial issue of tax reform through a non-partisan presentation of U.S. tax history and current proposals to fix the code. In a time when America faces fiscal crisis, An Inconvenient Tax brings a crucial exploration of the tax code to the big screen.
June 26th, 2009 Medicare is currently costing the US almost $500,000,000,000 per year (and growing) which equates to 5.77% of EVERYONE’S paycheck. Unfortunately we are currently only taxing 2.9% of everyone’s check so we have a $180B shortfall. Which is currently being picked up by the general budget and some past overages. Once the overages run dry, it will become difficult for the general fund to cover the entire difference. But I digress.
Medicare currently covers around 40M people or 13% of Americans. Now I think most people will agree that the medical coverage of medicare is mediocre at best but it allows for a reasonable comparison of the costs of baseline (borderline) coverage. So we do the math and:
EveryoneCare would cost Everyone’s Paycheck 44%!!! - and I mean EVERYONE just like Medicare taxes the Fry Cook along with the Wall Street Banker. So can we really afford universal health care?
Of course, these numbers assume that the burden is shared equally like Medicare. If you imposed a “progressive” structure that omitted or reduced the burden on anyone it would result in an even higher numbers for those still footing the bill. And remember that this is ONLY the cost of Medicare expanded to everyone. This would be in addition to your current taxes and what not that come out of your check. It also doesn’t include any increases related to providing care that is better than the admittedly mediocre Medicare. It also omits any additional expenses in expanding the current systems bureaucracy tenfold. Read the rest of this entry »
April 23rd, 2009 Wesbury and Stein at Forbes remind us that even “if the government increased the top tax rate [(for the highest income-earners)] from the current rate of 35% to 100% (yes, that’s right 100%), it would only collect an extra $400 billion this year. In other words, confiscating all the income that is currently taxed at 35% would not raise enough revenue to cover any of the annual deficits projected in the next 10 years. There is no way that tax hikes on the rich alone can pay for proposed spending in the current budget.”
Kind of puts the “only raise taxes on the rich” in perspective. And shows how utterly out of hand it has become.
Juxtapose that to this:
Obama’s spending vs. Obama’s spending cuts in pictures
I almost spit my coffee out when I saw that.
Posted in Commentary, Finance, Liberty, Politics, Taxation |
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March 18th, 2009 After inserting the provision into the bailout to allow AIG type bonuses into the bailout law - Chris Dodd now wants to tax them at 90% because Congress wasn’t aware about such bonuses!!!
Is anyone even paying attention any more???
Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday night floated the idea of taxing American International Group bonus recipients so the government could recoup the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit. Within hours, the idea spread to both houses of Congress, with lawmakers proposing an AIG bonus tax.
While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.
March 9th, 2009 As the Dow continues to drop day after day, I thought it might be telling to look at the market’s reaction to several historical events… (Note elections end after the market closes)
G. W. Bush Elected Nov 7, 2000
11/07/00 - 10,952
11/08/00 - 10,907
9-11-01
January 30th, 2009 Rush Limbaugh proposed a great comprise in leading the country out of this recession: Keynesian AND Supply Side economics - divvied up by voter split (54/46 for Obama in this case) This is quite brilliant politically. Rush is calling for President Obama to put his money where his mouth is - both figuratively with all his talk of bi-partisanship and literally with his economic idealogy.
And this second part is the kicker. If Obama and the Left are sooo convinced that their grow government tatics are the only way out of this recession - why not once and for all prove it. Side by side with the republican’s tax cut methods - real life economic turn around data could be gathered. Both sides CLAIM their method works, but never in history have both be tried in such a side by side manner.
How many jobs does a $100B tax cut create vs how many jobs does a $100B infrastructure program create? Done simultaneously, you remove most of the external factors (since they would the same for both) that make such historical comparisons so difficult. So again, if you are sure your stuff works - why not prove it? Put up or shut up.
There’s a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they’re left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention….
Posted in Commentary, Finance, Media, Politics, Taxation |
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