The myth of background checks for guns

 General, Government, Political, Social  No Responses »
Apr 292013
 

Legislators and journalists continue to say that universal background checks for gun purchases need to be done. They want checks on Internet sales…but… they are already done on Internet sales. If you buy a firearm over the Internet, it must be shipped to a Federal Firearms License holder. The licensee does the background check on the purchaser.

The only exceptions are if the firearm is an antique, manufactured earlier than 1899, or if it is a black powder firearm. The only guns you can legally purchase without a background check are unregulated rifles and shotguns from a private seller. Most of the sellers at the gun shows I’ve attended are licensed dealers. Unregulated firearms are not handguns or the so-called “assault weapons.”

So, why do we need new universal background check legislation when legal purchasers already go through a background check?

It’s scary that those writing laws and articles can’t get their facts straight.

The fall of the republic?

 Economic, Education, General, Government, Political, Social  No Responses »
Apr 262013
 

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.”

The Obituary follows:  Born 1776, Died 2014

It doesn’t hurt to read this several times.

Jedi Mind Meld – Ohhhh Obama

 General, Government, Political, Social  No Responses »
Mar 052013
 

When Dan Quail had (according to the “press”) a stumble on a word while running for Vice President they crucified him. Fast forward to 2013 and President Obama, when speaking about the sequester, referred to the Jedi Mind Meld. The press laughed and moved on.

One radio commentator asked if Star Wars and Star Trek were playing in Kenya when Obama was growing up…

The fact that this president doesn’t know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek is indicative of how far he is out of touch with the real world. I won’t belabor the point that mixing the two is not only dumb and inappropriate. The press wants Obama to be perceived as the messiah so they ignore anything that would show otherwise and attack any and all that attack him.

Are the Jews & WWII and Wealthy in the US Today similar?

 Government, Political, Social  No Responses »
Nov 102012
 

I’m going to start a discussion that has a chance of ruffling a lot of feathers. I don’t have an answer but I need to ask this question to explore whether or not there is a current situation  in the US that is analogous to what happened in Germany that lead to the atrocities of WWII.

Leading up to WWII Adolf Hitler focused the attention of the population on a scape goat for their economic and other ills. He knew that getting people to blame someone else for their problems and showing how that other party was the cause of all their ills was an effective way to divert attention from their real plights. Hitler blamed the Jews for the problems experienced by the populace and went on to campaign which resulted in terrible acts.

Since 2008 there has been a concerted effort by the administration to divert the attention of the American public away from the economic and other ills by blaming others. Chief among those has been G.W. Bush and the Republicans but most of the attention has been focused on the wealthy. The administration blames the wealthy for not paying more. The wealthy corporations are claimed to be draining profits for shareholders and causing the loss of jobs. Banks, financial consultants…anyone who makes more than $250,000 per year has been painted as the problem.

The question posed is simple: Has the administration made the wealthy in the US their Jews? Has this administration been successful in shifting the dialogue so the general populace has taken up the mantra of “down with the wealthy and successful”.

I don’t know the answer by the similarities are great only lacking the physical…although one could suggest that the actions of the “Wall Street” protestor groups were indeed an attempt to cause physical damage and harm to the successful and wealthy. If this is the case then the American public is, like populations of the past, a herd of sheep who is being led and used to fulfill an agenda.

You be the judge. Consider the facts and make your own judgements.

Controlling obesity

 Economic, General, Health, Political, Social  No Responses »
Sep 142012
 

The decision by NYC Mayor Blumberg to ban the sale of sugar sodas over 16oz in certain businesses leads one to wonder about other ways they could reduce obesity. Following is a plan that could generate revenue for NYC while reducing caloric intake and thus obesity.

How many calories do other foods contain that may rival soda?

Candy Bars – A regular size candy bar contains 200-240 calories and the King Size bars are around 500 calories

Ice Cream – Scoops vary so lets use a “cup” as a measure. Depending on the ice cream the range is ~240-380 calories

Alcohol – There is a huge variation but let’s choose some popular New York drinks: A .Ccosmopolitan has about ~212 calories in a 4oz drink. A Martini (3.5oz) has ~145.

Step 1) Require every resident of NYC (we’ll leave tourists out of it) to purchase a NYCS Card. That stands for New York City Sugar Card. This card would sell for $5 and would require the person’s name, address, phone, social security number and email. The card/person would be registered with the NYC Sugar Authority so caloric consumption from sugar purchases could be tracked. (This would also generate revenue for the city as well as jobs since new people would need to be hired to manage it)

Step 2) After purchasing the NYCSC each time a person makes a purchase of a food or drink that is defined as containing sugar it would notify the NYC-SA and keep track of daily caloric intake.

Step 3) Sugar Tax – A small tax on the sale of sugar containing items (the government can define) would be collected to help pay for education and awareness programs as well as monitoring people and helping them meet their goals for weight reduction.

Use/Value:

1) As a person buys items and if they reach the daily allowed caloric intake (for their weight/size) their purchase could initially generate a warning call/email reminding them to be responsible.If the person exceeded their daily caloric intake more than 5 times within a 2 week period their purchase could be denied. That way the government’s protection role is enhanced and the person not accepting responsibility can be managed.

2) Since so many other foods and drinks contain as much sugar (or more) than soda this would actually extend the ability of the NYC-SA to help people improve their health and lead better lives

This is a simple program that will pay for itself, makes sure that people are assisted in maintaining their health and that the program is paid for by user fees so the public doesn’t need to fund it.

When do facts matter in a Presidential election?

 Economic, General, Government, Media, Political, Social  No Responses »
Sep 092012
 

As I watch the news reports, as I read the statements by the Democrat and Republican parties, while I hear the comments from the candidates I get disconnects. The facts don’t match the rhetoric which can only mean that the candidates and parties don’t believe the public is either intelligent enough to understand or doesn’t pay attention. Reading the “fact check” articles the gap between statements and facts is so wide that one wonders what universe people are living in.

Seems to me that we should all evaluate the facts and then make decisions (vote). If you believe one side more than the other give them your support.

American Character is at Stake – Repost of a Wall Street Journal Article

 Economic, General, Government, Health, Media, Political, Social  No Responses »
Sep 012012
 

By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT

The American republic has endured for well over two centuries, but over the past 50 years, the apparatus of American governance has undergone a radical transformation. In some basic respects—its scale, its preoccupations, even many of its purposes—the U.S. government today would be scarcely recognizable to Franklin D. Roosevelt, much less to Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson.

Since 1960, entitlement programs have come to dominate the federal budget. Worse, says Nicholas Eberstadt in a conversation with WSJ’s Gary Rosen, they have undermined our national character.

What is monumentally new about the American state today is the vast empire of entitlement payments that it protects, manages and finances. Within living memory, the federal government has become an entitlements machine. As a day-to-day operation, it devotes more attention and resources to the public transfer of money, goods and services to individual citizens than to any other objective, spending more than for all other ends combined.

The growth of entitlement payments over the past half-century has been breathtaking. In 1960, U.S. government transfers to individuals totaled about $24 billion in current dollars, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By 2010 that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727% over the past half-century, rising at an average rate of about 4% a year.

In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.

Bloomberg NewsOur national character ‘may be sacrificed long before the credibility of the U.S. economy,’ says Nicholas Eberstadt

A half-century of unfettered expansion of entitlement outlays has completely inverted the priorities, structure and functions of federal administration as these were understood by all previous generations. Until 1960 the accepted task of the federal government, in keeping with its constitutional charge, was governing. The overwhelming share of federal expenditures was allocated to some limited public services and infrastructure investments and to defending the republic against enemies foreign and domestic.

In 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays—about the same fraction as in 1940, when the Great Depression was still shaping American life. But over subsequent decades, entitlements as a percentage of total federal spending soared. By 2010 they accounted for just about two-thirds of all federal spending, with all other responsibilities of the federal government making up barely one-third. In a very real sense, entitlements have turned American governance upside-down.

Government data on public transfers can be used to divide entitlement spending into six baskets: income maintenance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance and all the others. Broadly speaking, the first two baskets concern entitlements based on poverty or income status; the second two, entitlements attendant on aging or old-age status; and the next, entitlements based on employment status. These entitlements account for about 90% of total government transfers to individuals, and the first four categories comprise about five-sixths of all such spending. These four bear closest consideration.

Poverty- or income-related entitlements—transfers of money, goods or services, including health-care services—accounted for over $650 billion in government outlays in 2010. Between 1960 and 2010, inflation-adjusted transfers for these objectives increased by over 30-fold, or by over 7% a year. Significantly, however, income and benefit transfers associated with traditional safety-net programs comprised only about a third of entitlements granted on income status, with two-thirds of those allocations absorbed by the health-care guarantees offered through the Medicaid program.

For their part, entitlements for older Americans—Medicare, Social Security and other pension payments—worked out to even more by 2010, about $1.2 trillion. In real terms, these transfers multiplied by a factor of about 12 over that period—or an average growth of more than 5% a year. But in purely arithmetic terms, the most astonishing growth of entitlements has been for health-care guarantees based on claims of age (Medicare) or income (Medicaid). Until the mid-1960s, no such entitlements existed; by 2010, these two programs were absorbing more than $900 billion annually.

In current political discourse, it is common to think of the Democrats as the party of entitlements, but long-term trends seem to tell a somewhat different tale. From a purely statistical standpoint, the growth of entitlement spending over the past half-century has been distinctly greater under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. Between 1960 and 2010, the growth of entitlement spending was exponential, but in any given year, it was on the whole roughly 8% higher if the president happened to be a Republican rather than a Democrat.

This is in keeping with the basic facts of the time: Notwithstanding the criticisms of “big government” that emanated from their Oval Offices from time to time, the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George W. Bush presided over especially lavish expansions of the American entitlement state. Irrespective of the reputations and the rhetoric of the Democratic and Republican parties today, the empirical correspondence between Republican presidencies and turbocharged entitlement expenditures should underscore the unsettling truth that both political parties have, on the whole, been working together in an often unspoken consensus to fuel the explosion of entitlement spending.

From the founding of our nation until quite recently, the U.S. and its citizens were regarded, at home and abroad, as exceptional in a number of deep and important respects. One of these was their fierce and principled independence, which informed not only the design of the political experiment that is the U.S. Constitution but also their approach to everyday affairs.

The proud self-reliance that struck Alexis de Tocqueville in his visit to the U.S. in the early 1830s extended to personal finances. The American “individualism” about which he wrote did not exclude social cooperation—the young nation was a hotbed of civic associations and voluntary organizations. But in an environment bursting with opportunity, American men and women viewed themselves as accountable for their own situation through their own achievements—a novel outlook at that time, markedly different from the prevailing attitudes of the Old World (or at least the Continent).

The corollaries of this American ethos were, on the one hand, an affinity for personal enterprise and industry and, on the other, a horror of dependency and contempt for anything that smacked of a mendicant mentality. Although many Americans in earlier times were poor, even people in fairly desperate circumstances were known to refuse help or handouts as an affront to their dignity and independence. People who subsisted on public resources were known as “paupers,” and provision for them was a local undertaking. Neither beneficiaries nor recipients held the condition of pauperism in high regard.

Overcoming America’s historic cultural resistance to government entitlements has been a long and formidable endeavor. But as we know today, this resistance did not ultimately prove an insurmountable obstacle to establishing mass public entitlements and normalizing the entitlement lifestyle. The U.S. is now on the verge of a symbolic threshold: the point at which more than half of all American households receive and accept transfer benefits from the government. From cradle to grave, a treasure chest of government-supplied benefits is there for the taking for every American citizen—and exercising one’s legal rights to these many blandishments is now part of the American way of life.

As Americans opt to reward themselves ever more lavishly with entitlement benefits, the question of how to pay for these government transfers inescapably comes to the fore. Citizens have become ever more broad-minded about the propriety of tapping new sources of finance for supporting their appetite for more entitlements. The taker mentality has thus ineluctably gravitated toward taking from a pool of citizens who can offer no resistance to such schemes: the unborn descendants of today’s entitlement-seeking population.

Among policy makers in Washington today, it is very close to received wisdom that America’s national hunger for entitlement benefits has placed the country on a financially untenable trajectory, with the federal budget generating ultimately unbearable expenditures and levels of public debt. The bipartisan 2010 Bowles/Simpson Commission put this view plainly: “Our nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path.”

The prospect of careening along an unsustainable economic road is deeply disturbing. But another possibility is even more frightening—namely, that the present course may in fact be sustainable for far longer than most people today might imagine.

The U.S. is a very wealthy society. If it so chooses, it has vast resources to squander. And internationally, the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency; there remains great scope for financial abuse of that privilege.

Such devices might well postpone the day of fiscal judgment: not so the day of reckoning for American character, which may be sacrificed long before the credibility of the U.S. economy. Some would argue that it is an asset already wasting away before our very eyes.

—Mr. Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. Excerpted from “A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic,” forthcoming from the Templeton Press. To read the complete essay, go to www.templetonpress.org. A version of this article appeared September 1, 2012, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: American Character Is at Stake.

Who speaks the truth?

 General, Government, Political, Social  No Responses »
Sep 012012
 

Have you noticed (perhaps it’s because of the political season) that both parties claim various facts, other sites do “fact checks” (but seem to have their own agenda regarding their interpretation of the facts) and that “news organizations” seem to lean left or right and skew what they “report” to fit their own agenda?

How about commercials for products? They seem to tell half-truths, imply certain benefits (or claim them outright with no proof) and attempt to entice you to buy or subscribe for the benefits. Where in our society did lying, cheating and stealing come to be ok? When did it become ok for people (whether politicians or sellers of good and services) to forgo honesty? Have people become so jaded that they don’t care? Have they so tuned themselves out that they don’t hear or don’t care?

As a society and people we MUST reclaim honesty, trust and the value of a promise. If we don’t we can be assured of one thing…we’ll follow the ancient civilizations down the path of obscurity and death.

VP vs. VP

 General, Government, Political  No Responses »
Aug 152012
 

Rather than the presidential election being about the presidential candidates perhaps we should look at the VP choices? I suggest this because the person who would take over is important. Understanding who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, their experiences, their leadership capabilities…these and more are important.

First Joe Biden…what do we know of him? He’s been in Congress a lonnnggggg time and has all sorts of connections. He’s considered a loose cannon and a loud mouth. No one seems to think of him as overly smart and there is little in the way of evidence that in all his years he has ever contributed much in the way of unique legislation or leadership.

Second Paul Ryan…he’s not been in office nearly as long as Biden. Ryan has carved out a niche on budgets and spending. He’s adamant about cutting government spending and deficit spending. He appears to be conservative, a man of few words and focused on action. He’s considered smart and action oriented.

Between the two who would you choose to be President in the event the President was no longer able to serve?

So, perhaps the rhetoric about who would spend or cut should boil down to people. If you can’t decide on the person on the presidential ticket perhaps look at #2?

Income Taxes – Repost

 Economic, Government, Political, Social  No Responses »
Aug 062012
 

President Barack Obama says someone has to pay more taxes if the U.S. is to tame its budget deficit and provide the government he thinks the nation needs. He proposes that the best-off Americans pay more. It’s only fair, he says.

“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back,” he said in a speech in Roanoke, Va., that set off dueling campaign ads. “Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.”

His Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, counters that the deficit can be reduced without raising taxes if Washington is tough on spending. He thinks raising taxes on the best-off would be unwise and unfair. “President Obama attacks success, and therefore under President Obama we have less success,” he said.

The contrasting comments underscore philosophical differences over the roles of the individual and society. But the most tangible disagreement is on taxing the rich.

“Who’s right: Obama or Romney? Both. Or neither,” says Joseph Thorndike, a tax historian. “When it comes to taxing the rich, there is no single, objectively correct answer. You can talk all you want about asking rich people to pay ‘their fair’ share,’ but don’t kid yourself. You’re just trying to turn private opinions into public policy.”

“I’m struck” he adds, “how the facts can be used selectively by either side.”

Academic tomes have been written about revamping the tax code so it finances the government while doing less damage to economic growth. But, countless congressional hearings later, the U.S. is no closer to a consensus on “fair share” than when the income tax was born 100 years ago.

The top marginal income-tax rate, the most visible metric, has gone from 7% in 1913 to 92% in the 1950s to 28% with the Tax Reform Act of 1986 to 39.6% in the Clinton years to today’s 35%. Mr. Obama wants to raise that; Mr. Romney wants to cut it while eliminating loopholes and deductions to make up the lost revenue.

Over the past three decades, Americans—including most of the rich—have paid less of their incomes to Washington. Top earners have received more of the income and paid more of the taxes; a growing number at the bottom have paid less or, in some cases, nothing.

Whether that is fair is a question of politics and values. Facts can inform the debate. Here are a few salient ones:

The top 5%, top 1% and top 0.1% of Americans have been getting a bigger slice of all the income and paying a growing share of federal taxes.

To measure the tax burden over time, Congressional Budget Office economists look beyond income-tax returns. They add federal income, payroll, excise and corporate taxes and calculate them as a percentage of income, broadly defined to include wages plus the value of government- and employer-provided benefits.

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From Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, the tax code has been tweaked and the economy has had its ups and downs, and the share of federal taxes paid by the top 5% and the top 1% has risen faster than their share of income:

In the 1980s, the top 5% averaged 22.6% of income and paid 28.5% of taxes.

In the 1990s, the top 5% averaged 25.3% of income and paid 34.3% of taxes

In the 2000s, the top 5% averaged 28.4% of the income and paid 40.3% of the taxes.

That doesn’t mean that the best-off are living on less. The top 1% averaged income of $1,530,773 this year (up $174,083 from 2004, when the data series begins) and paid federal taxes of all sorts of $422,915 (up $20,704 from 2004), according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a number-crunching joint venture of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute.

Average tax rates have come down for everyone. On average, the tax bite on the rich is bigger—except for those whose income mainly comes from capital gains and dividends.

Across the earnings spectrum, Americans’ share of income that went to taxes fell in the 1980s, rose in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. This year, taxes and other receipts will cover only two-thirds of federal spending; the government will borrow the rest.

For those in the top 1%, whose incomes are more volatile than others, the average tax bite in 2007 was 28.9%, below the 1995 Clinton-era peak (35.3%) but higher than the 1986 Reagan-era trough (24.6%.)

Most Americans, though, have seen the share of their income that goes to taxes fall steadily. For earners in the middle, the tax bite eased from 18.9% in 1979 to 16.6% in 1999 to 14% in 2007 even before the recession and recession-fighting tax cuts.

Taxing Terms

  • Average tax rate: Percentage of the income of an individual or group that is paid in taxes
  • Capital gains: Profits from the sale of stock or other assets
  • Marginal tax rate: Tax on each additional dollar of income
  • Payroll tax: The 15.3% tax on wages, split between employer and employee, that helps finance Social Security and Medicare

The rich do, on average, pay more of their income in taxes than the middle class. So do the super-rich—on average.

The annual Internal Revenue Service scorecard of the top 400 taxpayers—who reported average incomes of $200 million—showed they paid 19.9% of their adjusted gross income in federal income taxes in 2009, well above the rate paid by the middle class. Those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, for instance, paid about 12%. (The IRS tally for the top 400 counts only income reported on tax returns, and only income taxes. Neither the IRS nor CBO calculates figures for the 1% using the broader definitions of income and taxes.)

The fortunate 400, though, paid a lower rate than the not-quite-so-rich, those with incomes over $1.5 million. The main reason: More than 60% of the top 400′s income was from dividends or capital gains in 2009, and those are taxed at a top rate of 15%, lower than many pay on wages.

The share of taxes paid by the bottom 40% of the population has been shrinking along with their share of income.

In 2007, the bottom 40% received 14.9% of the income (including the value of government benefits) and paid 5.9% of all federal taxes. In 1979, they had a bigger share (17.4%) of the income and paid more (9.5%) of the taxes.

A Hot-Button Issue

Firms Pass Up Tax Breaks
For years, politicians have used targeted tax breaks to try to influence corporate behavior, offering lower tax bills as an incentive to hire more workers, boost energy efficiency and buy more equipment, among other things.

Obama Intensifies Tax Fight
 Obama proposed a one-year extension of Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year but would let them rise for wealthier Americans, a move that both shifts the election debate to tax rates

Payroll Tax Cut on Track to Quietly Expire
Amid a high-decibel fight over the nation’s budget, there is one emerging area of agreement: Both parties appear willing to quietly let a major tax cut expire — a payroll tax break enjoyed by about 122 million people.

A growing number of Americans don’t pay any income tax. They don’t make enough or live on Social Security or are getting tax breaks targeted at low-wage workers.

In 2011, according to the Tax Policy Center, about 46% of households didn’t pay any U.S. income taxes, a proportion swollen because so many have seen paychecks shrink or evaporate. But even in the better years of the mid-2000s, roughly 40% of households didn’t pay any federal income tax.

Many did get hit by the payroll tax, which helps finance Social Security and Medicare. But about one-fifth of households didn’t pay either federal income or payroll taxes; many did pay state and local taxes.

The tax system narrows the gap between economic winners and losers, but not enough to stop the gap from widening.

Because the tax code takes more from the top than from the bottom (“progressive,” in tax jargon), it significantly reduces inequality.

Comparing income before and after taxes, CBO says the tax system cut the share of income going to the top 20% by about seven percentage points in 2007, most of that coming from the top 1%. Everyone else’s share of income increased. But the market and social forces widening the inequality gap have been so strong, though, that after-tax inequality by CBO’s measure still is higher than at any time in the past 30 years.

Over the past 30 years, the weight of federal taxes has shifted from the income tax to the payroll tax, which is less progressive. As a result, CBO says, “the extent to which taxes lessened the dispersion of household income” has been reduced. Academic analyses that zero in on the growing share of income going to the top 0.1% reinforce that.

So where does that leave the question of “fairness?” “It’s not resolvable scientifically,” says Mr. Thorndike, the historian. “It’s only resolvable by a show of hands.”

Online

Economic insight and analysis from The Wall Street Journal at blogs.WSJ.com/economics

Write to David Wessel at capital@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared August 6, 2012, on page A4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Numbers Inside a Hot-Button Issue.

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