Beneath The Surface

So much for trying to motivate myself this morning to workout;...

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:08:00 -0400

So much for trying to motivate myself this morning to workout; set the alarm for PM instead of AM.

mollybierman: via dommm: Buzz, your girlfriend, WOOF! (via...

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:03:56 -0500

via dommm:

Buzz, your girlfriend, WOOF! (via bs0l)

The closer Christmas gets, the more I watch this.

this scene (actually, this whole movie) NEVER gets old.

Health care rules limit amount of premium used towards overhead

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 09:40:33 -0500

Health care rules limit amount of premium used towards overhead:

In other news… the Obama administration is now mandating specific amounts that health care insurers can charge consumers to cover overhead and profit. The govt’s reach into private industries is expanding even further and this is a dangerous precedent.

Great analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation on where your...

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:35:14 -0500

Great analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation on where your federal tax dollars go.

If I forgot to mention, this is what 239 House seats looks...

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:30:37 -0500

If I forgot to mention, this is what 239 House seats looks like.

Follow the link to presumptive-Speaker John Boehner’s simple message on what we should except from Congressional leaders. [WSJ]

WSJ: The Tax Me More State

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:00:58 -0400

WSJ: The Tax Me More State :

It’s less than one-week til Election Day, so I felt it would be important to start posting pertinent thoughts / articles. Below are some quick facts about Proposition 25 in California, which would reduce approval of budgets and taxes to a mere simple majority. If you live in California & want to preserve any of the money you earn, it would be advised to vote against Proposition 25.

The Tax Foundation announced this week that California has the second worst business tax climate of the 50 states, with only New York more hostile to employers.
Proposition 24 would raise $1.3 billion of new taxes on businesses
Proposition 25 would allow the state legislature to pass budgets and tax increases with a simple majority vote, instead of the current mandated two-thirds supermajority.
Although annual budget squabbles may be messy, but they draw much-needed public attention to what the spending interests would prefer to keep secret in Sacramento.
Proposition 24 is opposed by just about every iconic employer left in the state—from Disney to Hewlett-Packard to Intel—because it would take away any remaining tax incentives for investing in the state. Now although the WSJ - and myself included, would prefer no tax loopholes contingent on lower and flatter rates, I think we’ll have to wait for pigs to fly in CA until that happens
Guess who’s the main sponsor of Prop 24 and 25?? California teachers union.

Inflation and Devaluing the Dollar Does NOT Lead to American Prosperity

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 11:59:12 -0400

A couple days ago, my idol - Larry Kudlow - highlighted the effects of inflation and how it is destroying the dollar.

A stable reliable dollar is a cornerstone of prosperity in out nation. As a matter of fact, continued inflation of the world’s reserve currency is an inflationary tax hike and will affect food, retail gasoline, imports and will ultimately impoverish our nation.

The dollar has fallen 2% against the Euro this month.
The dollar index has fallen 4.8% since Sep. 21 Fed meeting
The following commodities/indexes are up: Industrial prices, imports agriculture, CRB foodstuff, raw material, and oil
The Fed has made it very clear that they want higher inflation and is determined to print more money
Weak dollar is not good for manufacturing because domestic companies are paying higher prices for imports
As the world’s reserve currency, we have an even higher obligation to maintain the value of the US dollar
A weak dollar will lead to high inflation, high interest rates, and a tax hike on all US consumer

Learning the Lessons of the Great Depression Could Have Mitigated the Impact of the so called Great Recession

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:02:40 -0400

During the average recovery since World War II, gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed the pre-recession high five quarters after the recession began. It has never taken longer than seven quarters. Yet today, after 11 quarters, GDP is still below what it was in the fourth quarter of 2007. The economy is growing at only about a third of the rate of previous postwar recoveries from major recessions.
In addition to our stagnant growth (which lags behind the EU, UK, G-7, and OECD) the United States has also led in biggest drop in unemployment figures since 2007.
In 1938 (decade after the crash), US industrial production had declined by 20% in comparison to its 1929 peak, whereas there was growth in UK and Italy by 10% and12%, respectively.
During this period individual taxes rose from 24% to 79% and corp taxes rose to 15% from 11%, however tax revenue declined during this period. (1 billion to 527 million)
“The relations between the leaders of business and the Administration were uneasy, and this uneasiness accentuated the unwillingness of private enterprise to embark on further projects of capital expenditure which might have helped to sustain the economy.” - League of Nations’ assessment of FDR’s policies towards business.
“Now, gentleman, we have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work … I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt, to boot.” - Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary

“If You Like Your Insurance You Can Keep It. Period!" Oh really??

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 22:05:08 -0400

McDonald’s Corp. just reported that it may be forced to cancel its current coverage for 29,500 employees as a result of ObamaCare.
Why? Because the new mandates will make its plans “economically prohibitive” and cause “a huge disruption” unless it gets a waiver.
Given it high turnover (75%) and young workforce (nearly half are <25), McDonald’s uses a low-cost, low-benefit insurance known as “mini-med”.
Mini med covers most medical services but generally have an annual deductible or benefit cap between $1,000 and $10,000. Unlike more comprehensive plans, there’s no catastrophic coverage.
However, Dems hate mini-med; they classify it as “underinsurance”
So what we will continually see is the choice is between relatively affordable coverage that isn’t as generous as Democrats think it should be and dumping coverage entirely

Potential Tax Hikes in 2011 are Affecting Business Decisions

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:34:18 -0400

Worries over whether Congress will extend some of the expiring Bush-era tax breaks are emerging as important factor in many investors’ and businesses’ decisions.
President Barack Obama has been proposing to allow taxes on dividends and capital gains to rise to 20% from the current 15% for households with incomes of more than $250,000. But many Dems are favoring to let it rise to as high as 39.6%
Stock prices of utilities recently have appeared to be factoring in the possibility of significantly higher dividend taxes next year.
Some companies are pumping up dividend payments this year to beat the possible 2011 tax increase, and their shares have rallied.
Small-business owners say unease about tax policy, along with the economy, has led them to hold off on hiring and investment.
A July analysis by Barclays Capital suggested that increasing taxes on investment income, as many Democrats advocate, could trim about 9% off the S&P 500 index.
While dividends are getting most of the attention, wealthy investors also are facing big incentives to realize capital gains by selling assets.

Obstacle to Deficit Cutting: A Nation of Entitlements

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 22:06:00 -0400

The fraction of American households not paying federal income taxes has also grown—to an estimated 45% in 2010, from 39% five years ago
However, 13% of all U.S. households pay neither federal income nor payroll taxes
Payments to individuals—a budget category that includes all federal benefit programs plus retirement benefits for federal workers—will cost $2.4 trillion this year, up 79%, adjusted for inflation, from a decade earlier when the economy was stronger. That represents 64.3% of all federal outlays, the highest percentage in the 70 years the government has been measuring it. The figure was 46.7% in 1990 and 26.2% in 1960.

Repealing the 1099 Provision in ObamaCare

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:12:22 -0400

Repealing the 1099 Provision in ObamaCare:

Full article from WSJ

”..The Senate will vote this morning on whether to repeal part of ObamaCare that it passed only months ago. The White House is opposed, but this fight is likely to be the first of many as Americans discover—as Nancy Pelosi once famously predicted—what’s in the bill.”

Senate will vote on amendments to rescind an ObamaCare mandate that companies track and submit to the IRS all business-to-business transactions over $600 annually.
Although Dems claim this will raise $17 billion in revenue, Treasury Dept’s National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson says the costs will be “disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvements in tax compliance.”
Under new rules, businesses will have to report the value of goods and merchandise they purchase, in addition to services acquired.
WH doesnt want to set a precedent of repealing parts of ObamaCare… therefore they are endorsing an alternative proposal from Bill Nelson (FL-D)
Nelson Amendment would increase the 1099 threshold to $5,000 and exempt businesses with fewer than 25 workers.
Businesses would still have to track all purchases, not knowing in advance which contractors will exceed $5,000 at the end of the year. It also creates a marginal barrier to job creation—for a smaller firm, hiring a 26th employee would be extremely costly. Also it adds a tax on domestic oil production.

Dems claim they were blindsided and didn’t understand the implications of the 1099 provision, but that’s what happens when you don’t read the bill.

It is pretty evident that over the past year, I have neglected this blog and have failed to post any...

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 09:46:58 -0400

It is pretty evident that over the past year, I have neglected this blog and have failed to post any entries for a while. When I first decided to start this blog, I liked the idea that I could simply share things that I found interesting in a quick and simple manner. However, I ultimately wanted a majority of the posts to highlight the values of free-market capitalism, limited government, property rights, and above all American Exceptionalism. So I believe that this weekend, as we reflect on the tragic massacre of 3000 Americans and the countless first responders who lost their lives as well, is an appropriate time to start blogging again.

Get ready folks.

mollybierman: Here’s Andy Rooney talking about Lady Gaga. ...

Tue, 11 May 2010 18:38:51 -0400

mollybierman:

Here’s Andy Rooney talking about Lady Gaga. Good lord I love old people.

But seriously he does make a mildly interesting point about the curiousness of taste changing over time. Unfortunately for him, things like the internet and the fragmentation of media make it even harder to know what’s popular.

That said, my 58-year old dad listens to The Black Eyed Peas & Wilco (often on one of his two smart phones no less) so it can’t be that hard right?

(via studentloansforbeermoney)

Lady GaGa / Andy Rooney AUTO REBLOG

HAHAH… If Fuqua is going to give me the option, I will...

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:33:45 -0400

HAHAH… If Fuqua is going to give me the option, I will obviously request “Special Security” for my family during Commencement Weekend.

The Rich Can't Pay for ObamaCare

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:04:36 -0400

The Rich Can't Pay for ObamaCare :

It’s unfortunate that Obama doesn’t understand basic economics. If he did, he would know that his tax and spend policies are not sustainable at all. Following is a great op-ed by Alan Reynolds of the CATO Institute.

President Barack Obama’s new health-care legislation aims to raise $210 billion over 10 years to pay for the extensive new entitlements. How? By slapping a 3.8% “Medicare tax” on interest and rental income, dividends and capital gains of couples earning more than $250,000, or singles with more than $200,000.

The president also hopes to raise $364 billion over 10 years from the same taxpayers by raising the top two tax rates to 36%-39.6% from 33%-35%, plus another $105 billion by raising the tax on dividends and capital gains to 20% from 15%, and another $500 billion by capping and phasing out exemptions and deductions.

Add it up and the government is counting on squeezing an extra $1.2 trillion over 10 years from a tiny sliver of taxpayers who already pay more than half of all individual taxes.

The maximum tax rate fell to 28% in 1988-90 from 50% in 1986, yet individual income tax receipts rose to 8.3% of GDP in 1989 from 7.9% in 1986. The top tax rate rose to 31% in 1991 and revenue fell to 7.6% of GDP in 1992. The top tax rate was increased to 39.6% in 1993, along with numerous major revenue enhancers such as raising the taxable portion of Social Security to 85% of benefits from 50% for seniors who saved or kept working. Yet individual tax revenues were only 7.8% of GDP in 1993, 8.1% in 1994, and did not get back to the 1989 level until 1995.

Punitive tax rates on high-income individuals do not increase revenue. Successful people are not docile sheep just waiting to be shorn.

From past experience, these are just a few of the ways that taxpayers will react to the Obama administration’s tax plans:

• Professionals and companies who currently file under the individual income tax as partnerships, LLCs or Subchapter S corporations would form C-corporations to shelter income, because the corporate tax rate would then be lower with fewer arbitrary limits on deductions for costs of earning income.

• Investors who jumped into dividend-paying stocks after 2003 when the tax rate fell to 15% would dump many of those shares in favor of tax-free municipal bonds if the dividend tax went up to 23.8% as planned.

• Faced with a 23.8% capital gains tax, high-income investors would avoid realizing gains in taxable accounts unless they had offsetting losses.

• Faced with a rapid phase-out of deductions and exemptions for reported income above $250,000, any two-earner family in a high-tax state could keep their income below that pain threshold by increasing 401(k) contributions, switching investments into tax-free bond funds, and avoiding the realization of capital gains.

• Faced with numerous tax penalties on added income in general, many two-earner couples would become one-earner couples, early retirement would become far more popular, executives would substitute perks for taxable paychecks, physicians would play more golf, etc.

In short, the evidence is clear that when marginal tax rates go up, the amount of reported incomes goes down. Economists call that “the elasticity of taxable income” (ETI), and measure it by examining income tax returns before and after marginal tax rates claimed a bigger slice of income reported to the IRS.

The evidence is surveyed in a May 2009 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan, and Seth Giertz of the University of Nebraska. They review a number of studies and find that “for an elasticity estimate of 0.5 … the fraction of tax revenue lost from behavioral responses would be 43.1%.” That elasticity estimate of 0.5 would whittle the Obama team’s hoped-for $1.2 trillion down to $671 billion. As the authors note, however, “there is much evidence to suggest that the ETI is higher for high-income individuals.” The authors’ illustrative use of a 0.5 figure is a perfectly reasonable approximation for most purposes, but not for tax hikes aimed at the very rich.

For incomes above $100,000, a 2008 study by MIT economist Jon Gruber and Mr. Saez found an ETI of 0.57. But for incomes above $350,000 (the top 1%), they estimated the ETI at 0.62. And for incomes above $500,000, Treasury Department economist Bradley Heim recently estimated the ETI at 1.2—which means higher tax rates on the super-rich yield less revenue than lower tax rates.

If an accurate ETI estimate for the highest incomes is closer to 1.0 than 0.5, as such studies suggest, the administration’s intended tax hikes on high-income families will raise virtually no revenue at all. Yet the higher tax rates will harm economic growth through reduced labor effort, thwarted entrepreneurship, and diminished investments in physical and human capital. And that, in turn, means a smaller tax base and less revenue in the future.

The ETI studies exclude capital gains, but other research shows that when the capital gains tax goes up investors avoid that tax by selling assets less frequently, and therefore not realizing as many gains in taxable accounts. In these studies elasticity of about 1.0 suggests the higher tax is unlikely to raise revenue and elasticity above 1.0 means higher tax rates will lose revenue.

Raising the top tax on dividends to 23.8% would prove as self-defeating as raising the capital gains tax. Figures from a well-know 2003 study by the Paris School of Economics’ Thomas Piketty and Mr. Saez show that the amount of real, inflation-adjusted dividends reported by the top 1% of taxpayers dropped to about $3 billion a year (in 2007 dollars) after the 1993 tax hike. It hovered in that range until 2002, then soared by 169% to nearly $8 billion by 2007 after the dividend tax fell to 15%. Since very few dividends were subject to the highest tax rates before 2003 (many income stocks were held by tax-exempt entities), the 15% dividend tax probably raised revenue.

In short, the belief that higher tax rates on the rich could eventually raise significant sums over the next decade is a dangerous delusion… The cost of new health-insurance subsidies and Medicaid enrollees are projected to grow by at least 7% a year, which means the cost doubles every decade—to $432 billion a year by 2029, $864 billion by 2039, and more than $1.72 trillion by 2049. If anyone thinks taxing the rich will cover any significant portion of such expenses, think again.

The federal government has embarked on an unprecedented spending spree, granting new entitlements in the guise of refundable tax credits while drawing false comfort from phantom revenue projections that will never materialize.

Kudlow: How to Really Solve Housing

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:51:12 -0400

Kudlow: How to Really Solve Housing:

With everybody focused on Obamacare… the administration has tried to sneak in yet another bailout for housing. Yet again, Team Obama is rewarding reckless behavior, punishing the 90 percent of responsible homeowners who are making good on their mortgages, and setting up a greater moral hazard that will surely lead to an expansion of bailout nation.

I’m talking about an add-on to HAMP, the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program, which has been a dismal failure…

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reports that nearly 60 percent of modified mortgages re-default within a year. And now comes a new, brilliant idea that if you live in your main residence, have a mortgage balance of less than $729,750, owe monthly mortgage payments that are not affordable (meaning greater than 31 percent of income), and you demonstrate a financial hardship, the government will subsidize you by offering TARP money to banks and other lenders to reduce your outstanding mortgage balance.

Former Bush economist Keith Hennessey highlights the outrage that Team Obama would actually subsidize people making up to $186,000 a year who have a mortgage balance of over $700,000. This isn’t even a middle-class entitlement. It’s an upper-middle-class entitlement. Actually, at $186,000, it’s virtually a top-earner entitlement, according to Team Obama’s definition of rich people eligible for tax hikes.

Why should the 90 percent of folks who make good financial decisions on their homes have to pay for the 10 percent who did not?

Or put it another way, just because a home loan is “underwater” — meaning its value is lower than today’s current market price — why should a responsible person whine about it and walk away? Why not service this loan for the longer term and wait for prices to improve? That’s called personal responsibility.

Bloomberg financial columnist Caroline Baum argues that lower home prices are the key to solving the housing problem. Popular blogger Barry Ritholtz says we need more foreclosures, not fewer, to solve housing. Both are correct.

Even in the foreclosure process, young families can come in and snap up cheap homes. This is a great boon to the new generation.

And take a look at places like California, Florida, and Las Vegas, where foreclosure activity has been high and prices have fallen the most. What you see is a sharp pickup in home sales, which is steadily clearing away the price-depressing inventory overhang of unsold homes. In other words, market forces work.

Bouncing from pillar to post, the White House has unsuccessfully tried mortgage modifications, foreclosure abatements, and tax credits. None of it has worked. But the price tag so far for these failed government interventions in the housing market is $75 billion and rising.

Applying TARP money to the housing problem — originally meant for banks — is an even greater outrage. TARP should be closed down, now that banks have repaid it, and turned back to taxpayers in the form of government debt reduction.

But the Obama White House rejects market forces. It rejects free-market price adjustments. As a result, it is creating a crazy subversion of normal incentives.

Obamacare — with its unwillingness to put to work true free-market and consumer-choice competition to hold down health costs — will turn out to be a failure. And so will Team Obama’s clumsy and clunky attempts to substitute government subsidies for free-market home pricing. The failed government subsidy for housing is a leading indicator. Imagine, putting more and more middle- and upper-end income earners on the government dole.

As America’s nanny state grows larger, its economy will grow weaker

swampgirlrunamok: fuckyeahdukebasketball: Photo by Jonathan...

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:59:24 -0400

swampgirlrunamok:

fuckyeahdukebasketball:

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

FINAL FOUR

… And to think that I bet against Duke in the last game.

Not happy at all with my latest Shooters bar tab record… This is...

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:35:46 -0400

Not happy at all with my latest Shooters bar tab record… This is what I get for raging continuously for 18 hrs.

This is always a pleasant message to receive from (apparently)...

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:40:49 -0400

This is always a pleasant message to receive from (apparently) myself.