There were 123,000 U.S. households with cash incomes over $200,000 and paid ZERO income taxes!
There were 6,000 U.S. households with cash incomes over $1,000,000 and paid ZERO income taxes!
Something to think about.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Aw Jeeezzzzzz........................................
Given the last rant in this space, this column in the New York Times just makes you want to cry! What kind of a country has this become? How fast are we becoming a Three Tier Economy?
Where Pay for Chiefs Outstrips U.S. Taxes
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
At least 25 top United States companies paid more to their chief executives in 2010 than they did to the federal government in taxes, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The companies — which include household names like eBay, Boeing, General Electric and Verizon — averaged $1.9 billion each in profits, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group. But a variety of shelters, loopholes and tax reduction strategies allowed the companies to average more than $400 million each in tax benefits — which can be taken as a refund or used as write-off against earnings in future years.
The chief executives of those companies were paid an average of more than $16 million a year, the study found, a figure substantially higher than the $10.8 million average for all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
The financial data in the report was taken from the companies’ regulatory filings, which can differ from what is actually filed on a corporate tax return. Even in a year when a company claims an overall tax benefit, it may pay some cash taxes while accumulating credits that can be redeemed in future years. For instance, General Electric reported a federal tax benefit of more than $3 billion in 2010, but company officials said they still expected to pay a small amount of cash taxes.
The authors of the study, which examined the regulatory filings of the 100 companies with the best-paid chief executives, said that their findings suggested that current United States policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.
“We have no evidence that C.E.O.’s are fashioning, with their executive leadership, more effective and efficient enterprises,” the study concluded. “On the other hand, ample evidence suggests that C.E.O.’s and their corporations are expending considerably more energy on avoiding taxes than perhaps ever before — at a time when the federal government desperately needs more revenue to maintain basic services for the American people.”
The study comes at a time when business leaders have been lobbying for a cut in corporate taxes and Congress and the Obama administration are considering an overhaul of the tax code to reduce the federal budget deficit.
Many business leaders say that the top corporate statutory rate of 35 percent, which is higher than any country except Japan, is hobbling the economy and making it difficult for domestic companies to compete with overseas rivals. A coalition led by high-technology companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers have been pushing for a “repatriation holiday,” which would let them bring as much as $1 trillion in foreign profits back to the United States at substantially reduced rates.
But the Obama administration has said it will consider lowering the corporate rate only if Congress agrees to eliminate enough loopholes and tax subsidies to pay for any drop in revenue. Many policy experts estimate that the United States could lower its corporate rate to the high 20s if it eliminated the maze of tax breaks that favor specific industries and investors.
The report found, however, that many of the nation’s largest and highly profitable companies paid far less than the statutory rate.
Verizon, which earned $11.9 billion in pretax United States profits, received a federal tax refund of $705 million. The company’s chief executive, Ivan Seidenberg, meanwhile, received $18.1 million in compensation. The online retailer eBay reported pretax profits of $848 million and received a $113 million federal refund. John Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, collected a compensation package worth $12.4 million, the study said.
Verizon officials disputed the report. Robert Varretoni, a company spokesman , said that the $18 million in compensation for Mr. Seidenberg was a target, which will only be paid in full if the company stock rises when his bonus is fully vested in three years. Mr. Varretoni also said it was misleading of the report to cite Verizon’s tax benefit without noting that the company also incurred billions of dollars in deferred taxes which “will be paid over time.”
“The fact is, Verizon fully complies with all tax laws and pays its fair share of taxes,” Mr. Varretoni said.
Chaz Bickers, a Boeing spokesman, said that the company’s taxes have declined in recent years because it has made huge investments in United States manufacturing.
Mr. Bickers said that the company also paid hundreds of millions in cash taxes and incurred an additional $1 billion in deferred taxes that it will pay at some date in the future.
“We pay our taxes and we have added 5,000 more U.S. manufacturing jobs that were incentivized by tax benefits,” he said.While the accounting strategies used to lower taxes varied from company to company, the report found that 18 of the 25 corporations had offshore subsidiaries, which can be used to shelter income.
To discourage companies from gaming the tax system, the report called for tighter rules on offshore tax havens and new restrictions on write-offs for executive compensation.
“Instead of sharing responsibility for addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges,” said Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the institute who co-wrote the study, “corporations are rewarding C.E.O.’s for aggressive tax avoidance.”
The companies — which include household names like eBay, Boeing, General Electric and Verizon — averaged $1.9 billion each in profits, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group. But a variety of shelters, loopholes and tax reduction strategies allowed the companies to average more than $400 million each in tax benefits — which can be taken as a refund or used as write-off against earnings in future years.
The chief executives of those companies were paid an average of more than $16 million a year, the study found, a figure substantially higher than the $10.8 million average for all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
The financial data in the report was taken from the companies’ regulatory filings, which can differ from what is actually filed on a corporate tax return. Even in a year when a company claims an overall tax benefit, it may pay some cash taxes while accumulating credits that can be redeemed in future years. For instance, General Electric reported a federal tax benefit of more than $3 billion in 2010, but company officials said they still expected to pay a small amount of cash taxes.
The authors of the study, which examined the regulatory filings of the 100 companies with the best-paid chief executives, said that their findings suggested that current United States policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.
“We have no evidence that C.E.O.’s are fashioning, with their executive leadership, more effective and efficient enterprises,” the study concluded. “On the other hand, ample evidence suggests that C.E.O.’s and their corporations are expending considerably more energy on avoiding taxes than perhaps ever before — at a time when the federal government desperately needs more revenue to maintain basic services for the American people.”
The study comes at a time when business leaders have been lobbying for a cut in corporate taxes and Congress and the Obama administration are considering an overhaul of the tax code to reduce the federal budget deficit.
Many business leaders say that the top corporate statutory rate of 35 percent, which is higher than any country except Japan, is hobbling the economy and making it difficult for domestic companies to compete with overseas rivals. A coalition led by high-technology companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers have been pushing for a “repatriation holiday,” which would let them bring as much as $1 trillion in foreign profits back to the United States at substantially reduced rates.
But the Obama administration has said it will consider lowering the corporate rate only if Congress agrees to eliminate enough loopholes and tax subsidies to pay for any drop in revenue. Many policy experts estimate that the United States could lower its corporate rate to the high 20s if it eliminated the maze of tax breaks that favor specific industries and investors.
The report found, however, that many of the nation’s largest and highly profitable companies paid far less than the statutory rate.
Verizon, which earned $11.9 billion in pretax United States profits, received a federal tax refund of $705 million. The company’s chief executive, Ivan Seidenberg, meanwhile, received $18.1 million in compensation. The online retailer eBay reported pretax profits of $848 million and received a $113 million federal refund. John Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, collected a compensation package worth $12.4 million, the study said.
Verizon officials disputed the report. Robert Varretoni, a company spokesman , said that the $18 million in compensation for Mr. Seidenberg was a target, which will only be paid in full if the company stock rises when his bonus is fully vested in three years. Mr. Varretoni also said it was misleading of the report to cite Verizon’s tax benefit without noting that the company also incurred billions of dollars in deferred taxes which “will be paid over time.”
“The fact is, Verizon fully complies with all tax laws and pays its fair share of taxes,” Mr. Varretoni said.
Chaz Bickers, a Boeing spokesman, said that the company’s taxes have declined in recent years because it has made huge investments in United States manufacturing.
Mr. Bickers said that the company also paid hundreds of millions in cash taxes and incurred an additional $1 billion in deferred taxes that it will pay at some date in the future.
“We pay our taxes and we have added 5,000 more U.S. manufacturing jobs that were incentivized by tax benefits,” he said.While the accounting strategies used to lower taxes varied from company to company, the report found that 18 of the 25 corporations had offshore subsidiaries, which can be used to shelter income.
To discourage companies from gaming the tax system, the report called for tighter rules on offshore tax havens and new restrictions on write-offs for executive compensation.
“Instead of sharing responsibility for addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges,” said Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the institute who co-wrote the study, “corporations are rewarding C.E.O.’s for aggressive tax avoidance.”
Why I Am Ashamed Of Ever Having Been A Republican
This editorial in the New York Times is simply beyond comprehension! All you can do is shake your head and say, "What were they thinking?" By the way, look back a couple of rants ago and see what Warren Buffet actually paid in income taxes.
These Republican leaders, who think nothing of widening tax loopholes for corporations and multimillion-dollar estates, are offended by the idea that people making less than $40,000 might benefit from the progressive tax code. They are infuriated by the earned income tax credit (the pride of Ronald Reagan), which has become the biggest and most effective antipoverty program by giving working families thousands of dollars a year in tax refunds. They scoff at continuing President Obama’s payroll tax cut, which is tilted toward low- and middle-income workers and expires in December.
Until fairly recently, Republicans, at least, have been fairly consistent in their position that tax cuts should benefit everyone. Though the Bush tax cuts were primarily for the rich, they did lower rates for almost all taxpayers, providing a veneer of egalitarianism. Then the recession pushed down incomes severely, many below the minimum income tax level, and the stimulus act lowered that level further with new tax cuts. The number of families not paying income tax has risen from about 30 percent before the recession to about half, and, suddenly, Republicans have a new tool to stoke class resentment.
Representative Michele Bachmann noted recently that 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income tax; all of them, she said, should pay something because they benefit from parks, roads and national security. (Interesting that she acknowledged government has a purpose.) Gov. Rick Perry, in the announcement of his candidacy, said he was dismayed at the “injustice” that nearly half of Americans do not pay income tax. Jon Huntsman Jr., up to now the most reasonable in the Republican presidential field, said not enough Americans pay tax.
Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and several senators have made similar arguments, variations of the idea expressed earlier by Senator Dan Coats of Indiana that “everyone needs to have some skin in the game.”
This is factually wrong, economically wrong and morally wrong. First, the facts: a vast majority of Americans have skin in the tax game. Even if they earn too little to qualify for the income tax, they pay payroll taxes (which Republicans want to raise), gasoline excise taxes and state and local taxes. Only 14 percent of households pay neither income nor payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. The poorest fifth paid an average of 16.3 percent of income in taxes in 2010.
Economically, reducing the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit — which would be required if everyone paid income taxes — makes no sense at a time of high unemployment. The credits, which only go to working people, have always been a strong incentive to work, as even some conservative economists say, and have increased the labor force while reducing the welfare rolls.
The moral argument would have been obvious before this polarized year. Nearly 90 percent of the families that paid no income tax make less than $40,000, most much less. The real problem is that so many Americans are struggling on such a small income, not whether they pay taxes. The two tax credits lifted 7.2 million people out of poverty in 2009, including four million children. At a time when high-income households are paying their lowest share of federal taxes in decades, when corporations frequently avoid paying any tax, it is clear who should bear a larger burden and who should not.
The New Resentment of the Poor
Published: August 30, 2011
In a decade of frenzied tax-cutting for the rich, the Republican Party just happened to lower tax rates for the poor, as well. Now several of the party’s most prominent presidential candidates and lawmakers want to correct that oversight and raise taxes on the poor and the working class, while protecting the rich, of course.
Until fairly recently, Republicans, at least, have been fairly consistent in their position that tax cuts should benefit everyone. Though the Bush tax cuts were primarily for the rich, they did lower rates for almost all taxpayers, providing a veneer of egalitarianism. Then the recession pushed down incomes severely, many below the minimum income tax level, and the stimulus act lowered that level further with new tax cuts. The number of families not paying income tax has risen from about 30 percent before the recession to about half, and, suddenly, Republicans have a new tool to stoke class resentment.
Representative Michele Bachmann noted recently that 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income tax; all of them, she said, should pay something because they benefit from parks, roads and national security. (Interesting that she acknowledged government has a purpose.) Gov. Rick Perry, in the announcement of his candidacy, said he was dismayed at the “injustice” that nearly half of Americans do not pay income tax. Jon Huntsman Jr., up to now the most reasonable in the Republican presidential field, said not enough Americans pay tax.
Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and several senators have made similar arguments, variations of the idea expressed earlier by Senator Dan Coats of Indiana that “everyone needs to have some skin in the game.”
This is factually wrong, economically wrong and morally wrong. First, the facts: a vast majority of Americans have skin in the tax game. Even if they earn too little to qualify for the income tax, they pay payroll taxes (which Republicans want to raise), gasoline excise taxes and state and local taxes. Only 14 percent of households pay neither income nor payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. The poorest fifth paid an average of 16.3 percent of income in taxes in 2010.
Economically, reducing the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit — which would be required if everyone paid income taxes — makes no sense at a time of high unemployment. The credits, which only go to working people, have always been a strong incentive to work, as even some conservative economists say, and have increased the labor force while reducing the welfare rolls.
The moral argument would have been obvious before this polarized year. Nearly 90 percent of the families that paid no income tax make less than $40,000, most much less. The real problem is that so many Americans are struggling on such a small income, not whether they pay taxes. The two tax credits lifted 7.2 million people out of poverty in 2009, including four million children. At a time when high-income households are paying their lowest share of federal taxes in decades, when corporations frequently avoid paying any tax, it is clear who should bear a larger burden and who should not.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Why Can't The Dumb Asses In Washington Understand Reality?
Obama has appointed another dumbass economist to explain why the economy is so totally screwed. Well, here is the real answer and it didn't come from the Chairman of GE, the Cowardly Lion's chief adviser on creating jobs, and it sure didn't come from a dumbass economist from Princeton.
Back to previous page
He tucked a brush into his back left pocket and a rag into his right. He walked outside to the utility truck he had bought with the last money in his family’s emergency fund and called the only employee he had left.
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” he said.
He turned the truck radio to a Spanish pop station and checked his cellphone for messages. No new e-mails. No missed calls. “Half of my life is waiting,” he said. He decided to kill time the way he often did, by opening the camera on his phone and looking through dozens of before-and-after photos of jobs he had completed over the past four years.
Morales had started taking the pictures as a marketing tool for potential clients back when his ambitions were big, but now he relied on the images to reassure himself. Here was a clogged gutter turned clean, an aging bathroom remodeled, a three-story house painted in deep greens and gold. Each set of photos showed the value of his work. He arrived at a mess and then fixed it.
But lately his job has been defined by what he can’t fix, the mess he thinks is well beyond fixing.
Morales filed paperwork to open his painting business in December 2007, the month the recession officially began, and his life has since become a reflection of the country’s economic fate. He lost his house in Woodbridge to foreclosure, lost four of his five painters and lost $35,000 of his elder son’s college savings. He stayed busy in 2008 and 2009 by painting and then repainting his own house, convinced that recovery was just around the corner. He reinvested everything he earned back into his business last year, believing the economy finally had stabilized.
Then, last month, when stock prices tanked and sales of new homes fell for the third straight month, Morales sat down with his wife and two sons to discuss their finances. “I’m sorry,” he told them, “but this is the way it is going to be — job to job, week to week. It’s not getting better.”
He is one of millions for whom the recession has become permanent, no longer a crisis to endure so much as a reality to accept.
The average length of time a person is unemployed rose to 40.4 weeks last month, the longest period ever, and an estimated 1.1 million Americans have given up on looking for work entirely.
A record number of people exist on the fringes of the workforce: part-timers looking for more hours and the self-employed eager for more work. Like Morales, they hang their fate on a turbulent economy, sitting in the car, waiting for a call.
His cellphone rang in the middle of the morning. A number he didn’t recognize. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?” It was the owner of a townhouse in Centreville who had stumbled onto the listing for Morales’s business, DeMaya Cleaning Service, on the Internet. The owner had been waiting to sell the townhouse for three years because of the housing market, but he had decided that was long enough.
“Prices might never go back up,” he said. “I’m waiting for a day that’s never going to come. I want to get the house in shape to go on the market.”
“We paint, we clean, we wash — my guys do everything,” Morales told him, although he had only one guy.
The owner explained that he wanted the exterior of the townhouse power-washed and that later he might hire Morales to paint. “We’ll see how the wash goes first,” the owner said. Morales considered the offer, running through the math in his head. His own power washer was broken. It was a 90-minute drive in traffic to Centreville. He would need to pay another laborer to come with him, because an old hip injury made it dangerous for him to work alone on the roof. The job would net him about $75. If he impressed the owner, he had a chance to paint the townhouse and sustain his business for another week.
On this day, this was what the economy had to offer.
“Okay,” Morales said. “Yes. Thank you. We’ll do it.”
* * *
Morales never wanted to become a painter.
He emigrated from El Salvador at age 12 in the late 1980s and spent the next two decades finding ways to steadily improve his life. He enrolled at a high school in Northern Virginia and learned to speak fluent English. He met a girl from El Salvador named Iliana and moved out of his mother’s house to live with her. They slept for a month in a friend’s Toyota Corolla. Iliana gave birth to their first son at 17. Morales found a job cleaning trash at a car dealership for $7.25 an hour and spent his paychecks on baby formula.
Soon he was a mechanic’s assistant at the dealership, then a technician in the body shop, then an expert in auto detailing. He taught himself how to install surround-sound systems and hang big-screen TVs to make extra money on the weekends, and Sears eventually hired him as a technician. He became a contractor for Cox Cable in 2001. The paycheck for his first week was almost $2,000.
He and Iliana married, had another son, bought a personal watercraft and spent their weekends in Ocean City. He worked from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m., and soon they had saved $35,000. They bought a house in Woodbridge in 2005 with an adjustable-rate mortgage that started at $2,300 a month. The next year, just as Cox started to cut back on hours for contractors, their mortgage soared to $3,200.
Morales had friends from an adult soccer team who worked as painters. As his hours at Cox continued to decline, they suggested he start a business. He had a legal-resident green card and spoke English. He had never painted before. “I thought I would be the business manager,” he said, “working my own hours, supervising.”
Four years later, on a humid Tuesday in August, Morales pulled his truck up to a townhouse in Centreville and wrestled a 230-pound power washer out from the back of his truck. He had hired Cesar Pineda, 23, to help him for the day at $10 an hour. They had rented the power washer for $60, and already it was leaking gas all over them.
“This thing is junk,” Morales said. “I hope it gives us two good hours.”
He grabbed his cellphone to take a picture of the townhouse’s dusty exterior and then climbed a ladder onto the roof. The sun reflected off the black shingles and burned through his boots. He sprayed the house for 45 minutes, soaking his clothes with sweat and water and mud. The motor abruptly fell silent. He shouted down to Pineda.
“What happened?” he said.
“It’s still leaking,” Pineda said. “We’re out of gas.”
Morales climbed back down the ladder, went back to his truck and drove 20 minutes to a gas station. He paid $14 for a gas can and $7 for gas before returning to the house. He power-washed for two more hours, cleaned the back porch, scrubbed the front door and polished the door handles.
After nearly five hours in Centreville, he took out his cellphone and snapped a second picture. He wanted to show the owner his work the next morning, when they were scheduled to discuss painting the house.
“It looks good,” Pineda said.
“I hope so,” Morales said. “We need this guy to hire us.”
* * *
Morales had not seen much of his family in the past week, so he decided to go visit his wife and two sons. He worked — or obsessed about not working — for 18 hours each day. When he was on a job, he sometimes painted past midnight to compensate for his lack of manpower. When he had nothing, he drove from Richmond to Baltimore to drop off business cards, sometimes pulling over to nap in his truck.
The rest of his family worked constantly, too — “a family of workaholics without much to show for it,” Iliana said. Her uncle had opened a restaurant in Oakton, and now every relative had decided to pitch in. Morales entered through the front door, still wet from the power-washing, and saw the fresh flowers on the table and the new big-screen TVs hanging on the wall. The place was mostly empty. Three smiling employees greeted him. “You guys are trying so hard,” Morales told them. Here was another small business, hoping to survive.
He sat down at a table in the corner with his 8-year-old son, Alejandro. His 16-year-old, Christian, a busboy, came over to fill his water glass. His wife, a waitress, brought over menus. “I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said, before walking over to take orders at an adjacent table. This was the family they had become.
The wife: She left to do paperwork for a doctor’s office each morning at 9, worked eight hours and then drove straight to the restaurant to manage the night shift. She waited tables, washed dishes and drove back home at 3 a.m., speeding down the empty freeway with Spanish music blasting and the windows down, hoping the air would keep her awake.
The older son: He was working two jobs. His parents told him that any money he earned was his to spend, but instead he paid for their light bill, bought his brother a video game and surprised his dad on his birthday with $200 work boots. He told his mother he was going to save up and buy her another house so they could move out of their two-bedroom rental.
The younger son: He was dragged from job to job during the summer. He washed paintbrushes for his dad, steadied the ladder and helped fetch tools. When clients came to look over their work, his father asked him to walk around the block or sit alone in the building lobby so they wouldn’t think he had been wasting time babysitting.
The father: “I’ll take Alejandro with me,” he said now, at the restaurant.
The place was getting busy. His wife waved goodbye. “We’ll be home late,” she said.
“Us, too,” he said, and he walked with Alejandro back to the truck.
* * *
Morales woke up early the next morning to beat traffic on his way to Centreville. He wore what he called his “clean jeans,” tucking a calculator in one pocket and a notebook in the other.
He pulled up to the house, and the owner walked outside to greet him. He wore a button-up shirt with a cellphone clipped to his belt. “Your guys did a good job on the power wash,” he said.
“Oh, yes, thank you,” Morales said. “They did.”
He took out his phone to show his before-and-after pictures, and the owner glanced at them quickly. “Guess it was dirty, huh?” he said. He gestured for Morales to follow him into the house. “I’ve got a few more people coming over to talk about the painting this afternoon,” he said, “but you can look around and give an estimate, too.”
Morales spent the next 30 minutes touring the house, running his hand against the walls and drawing a schematic diagram in his notebook. Everything he saw was a potential job: a bathtub in need of caulking, a worn countertop, a filthy stove. He narrated his findings as the owner followed behind.
“We can take care of this,” he said.
“We will paint your deck for free, as our gift.”
The owner thanked Morales for his time and walked him to the front door. Morales told him he would make his calculations and then e-mail the estimate. “I will send you references,” he said. “Do you want two, three, four?”
The owner shrugged. “Sure,” he said.
Morales walked outside, sat in the truck and added up the numbers. It was a big house, three floors and 12 rooms to prime and paint. The owner also wanted the carpets cleaned, the roof repaired, the deck stained, the refrigerator scrubbed. The price of paint had gone up 30 percent in the past year, and Morales also needed to pay for his painter, insurance and licensing fees.
If he bid too high, he would lose the job to another painter. If he bid too low, he would make next to nothing.
“The total is $3785.15,” he wrote in his e-mail. He had learned that clients appreciated exactness. “We can start as soon as you are ready. Please let me know your decision. We thank you.”
He sat in his truck and waited. He checked his e-mail. Nothing. “This job is not much, but now I need it,” he said. It would keep him on the fringes of the economy as a self-employed painter for another week. It would pay the rent on his family’s downsized apartment.
It would allow him to maintain the lifestyle he had come to accept.
He checked again. One new message.
“Okay,” it read. “We have a deal.”
Back to previous pageVirginia house painter fights to keep business as recession becomes a way of life
By Eli Saslow,
German Morales dressed for work in tattered painter’s jeans and a stained white T-shirt, even though he didn’t know when or whether he would paint again.He tucked a brush into his back left pocket and a rag into his right. He walked outside to the utility truck he had bought with the last money in his family’s emergency fund and called the only employee he had left.
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” he said.
He turned the truck radio to a Spanish pop station and checked his cellphone for messages. No new e-mails. No missed calls. “Half of my life is waiting,” he said. He decided to kill time the way he often did, by opening the camera on his phone and looking through dozens of before-and-after photos of jobs he had completed over the past four years.
Morales had started taking the pictures as a marketing tool for potential clients back when his ambitions were big, but now he relied on the images to reassure himself. Here was a clogged gutter turned clean, an aging bathroom remodeled, a three-story house painted in deep greens and gold. Each set of photos showed the value of his work. He arrived at a mess and then fixed it.
But lately his job has been defined by what he can’t fix, the mess he thinks is well beyond fixing.
Morales filed paperwork to open his painting business in December 2007, the month the recession officially began, and his life has since become a reflection of the country’s economic fate. He lost his house in Woodbridge to foreclosure, lost four of his five painters and lost $35,000 of his elder son’s college savings. He stayed busy in 2008 and 2009 by painting and then repainting his own house, convinced that recovery was just around the corner. He reinvested everything he earned back into his business last year, believing the economy finally had stabilized.
Then, last month, when stock prices tanked and sales of new homes fell for the third straight month, Morales sat down with his wife and two sons to discuss their finances. “I’m sorry,” he told them, “but this is the way it is going to be — job to job, week to week. It’s not getting better.”
He is one of millions for whom the recession has become permanent, no longer a crisis to endure so much as a reality to accept.
The average length of time a person is unemployed rose to 40.4 weeks last month, the longest period ever, and an estimated 1.1 million Americans have given up on looking for work entirely.
A record number of people exist on the fringes of the workforce: part-timers looking for more hours and the self-employed eager for more work. Like Morales, they hang their fate on a turbulent economy, sitting in the car, waiting for a call.
His cellphone rang in the middle of the morning. A number he didn’t recognize. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?” It was the owner of a townhouse in Centreville who had stumbled onto the listing for Morales’s business, DeMaya Cleaning Service, on the Internet. The owner had been waiting to sell the townhouse for three years because of the housing market, but he had decided that was long enough.
“Prices might never go back up,” he said. “I’m waiting for a day that’s never going to come. I want to get the house in shape to go on the market.”
“We paint, we clean, we wash — my guys do everything,” Morales told him, although he had only one guy.
The owner explained that he wanted the exterior of the townhouse power-washed and that later he might hire Morales to paint. “We’ll see how the wash goes first,” the owner said. Morales considered the offer, running through the math in his head. His own power washer was broken. It was a 90-minute drive in traffic to Centreville. He would need to pay another laborer to come with him, because an old hip injury made it dangerous for him to work alone on the roof. The job would net him about $75. If he impressed the owner, he had a chance to paint the townhouse and sustain his business for another week.
On this day, this was what the economy had to offer.
“Okay,” Morales said. “Yes. Thank you. We’ll do it.”
* * *
Morales never wanted to become a painter.
He emigrated from El Salvador at age 12 in the late 1980s and spent the next two decades finding ways to steadily improve his life. He enrolled at a high school in Northern Virginia and learned to speak fluent English. He met a girl from El Salvador named Iliana and moved out of his mother’s house to live with her. They slept for a month in a friend’s Toyota Corolla. Iliana gave birth to their first son at 17. Morales found a job cleaning trash at a car dealership for $7.25 an hour and spent his paychecks on baby formula.
Soon he was a mechanic’s assistant at the dealership, then a technician in the body shop, then an expert in auto detailing. He taught himself how to install surround-sound systems and hang big-screen TVs to make extra money on the weekends, and Sears eventually hired him as a technician. He became a contractor for Cox Cable in 2001. The paycheck for his first week was almost $2,000.
He and Iliana married, had another son, bought a personal watercraft and spent their weekends in Ocean City. He worked from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m., and soon they had saved $35,000. They bought a house in Woodbridge in 2005 with an adjustable-rate mortgage that started at $2,300 a month. The next year, just as Cox started to cut back on hours for contractors, their mortgage soared to $3,200.
Morales had friends from an adult soccer team who worked as painters. As his hours at Cox continued to decline, they suggested he start a business. He had a legal-resident green card and spoke English. He had never painted before. “I thought I would be the business manager,” he said, “working my own hours, supervising.”
Four years later, on a humid Tuesday in August, Morales pulled his truck up to a townhouse in Centreville and wrestled a 230-pound power washer out from the back of his truck. He had hired Cesar Pineda, 23, to help him for the day at $10 an hour. They had rented the power washer for $60, and already it was leaking gas all over them.
“This thing is junk,” Morales said. “I hope it gives us two good hours.”
He grabbed his cellphone to take a picture of the townhouse’s dusty exterior and then climbed a ladder onto the roof. The sun reflected off the black shingles and burned through his boots. He sprayed the house for 45 minutes, soaking his clothes with sweat and water and mud. The motor abruptly fell silent. He shouted down to Pineda.
“What happened?” he said.
“It’s still leaking,” Pineda said. “We’re out of gas.”
Morales climbed back down the ladder, went back to his truck and drove 20 minutes to a gas station. He paid $14 for a gas can and $7 for gas before returning to the house. He power-washed for two more hours, cleaned the back porch, scrubbed the front door and polished the door handles.
After nearly five hours in Centreville, he took out his cellphone and snapped a second picture. He wanted to show the owner his work the next morning, when they were scheduled to discuss painting the house.
“It looks good,” Pineda said.
“I hope so,” Morales said. “We need this guy to hire us.”
* * *
Morales had not seen much of his family in the past week, so he decided to go visit his wife and two sons. He worked — or obsessed about not working — for 18 hours each day. When he was on a job, he sometimes painted past midnight to compensate for his lack of manpower. When he had nothing, he drove from Richmond to Baltimore to drop off business cards, sometimes pulling over to nap in his truck.
The rest of his family worked constantly, too — “a family of workaholics without much to show for it,” Iliana said. Her uncle had opened a restaurant in Oakton, and now every relative had decided to pitch in. Morales entered through the front door, still wet from the power-washing, and saw the fresh flowers on the table and the new big-screen TVs hanging on the wall. The place was mostly empty. Three smiling employees greeted him. “You guys are trying so hard,” Morales told them. Here was another small business, hoping to survive.
He sat down at a table in the corner with his 8-year-old son, Alejandro. His 16-year-old, Christian, a busboy, came over to fill his water glass. His wife, a waitress, brought over menus. “I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said, before walking over to take orders at an adjacent table. This was the family they had become.
The wife: She left to do paperwork for a doctor’s office each morning at 9, worked eight hours and then drove straight to the restaurant to manage the night shift. She waited tables, washed dishes and drove back home at 3 a.m., speeding down the empty freeway with Spanish music blasting and the windows down, hoping the air would keep her awake.
The older son: He was working two jobs. His parents told him that any money he earned was his to spend, but instead he paid for their light bill, bought his brother a video game and surprised his dad on his birthday with $200 work boots. He told his mother he was going to save up and buy her another house so they could move out of their two-bedroom rental.
The younger son: He was dragged from job to job during the summer. He washed paintbrushes for his dad, steadied the ladder and helped fetch tools. When clients came to look over their work, his father asked him to walk around the block or sit alone in the building lobby so they wouldn’t think he had been wasting time babysitting.
The father: “I’ll take Alejandro with me,” he said now, at the restaurant.
The place was getting busy. His wife waved goodbye. “We’ll be home late,” she said.
“Us, too,” he said, and he walked with Alejandro back to the truck.
* * *
Morales woke up early the next morning to beat traffic on his way to Centreville. He wore what he called his “clean jeans,” tucking a calculator in one pocket and a notebook in the other.
He pulled up to the house, and the owner walked outside to greet him. He wore a button-up shirt with a cellphone clipped to his belt. “Your guys did a good job on the power wash,” he said.
“Oh, yes, thank you,” Morales said. “They did.”
He took out his phone to show his before-and-after pictures, and the owner glanced at them quickly. “Guess it was dirty, huh?” he said. He gestured for Morales to follow him into the house. “I’ve got a few more people coming over to talk about the painting this afternoon,” he said, “but you can look around and give an estimate, too.”
Morales spent the next 30 minutes touring the house, running his hand against the walls and drawing a schematic diagram in his notebook. Everything he saw was a potential job: a bathtub in need of caulking, a worn countertop, a filthy stove. He narrated his findings as the owner followed behind.
“We can take care of this,” he said.
“We will paint your deck for free, as our gift.”
The owner thanked Morales for his time and walked him to the front door. Morales told him he would make his calculations and then e-mail the estimate. “I will send you references,” he said. “Do you want two, three, four?”
The owner shrugged. “Sure,” he said.
Morales walked outside, sat in the truck and added up the numbers. It was a big house, three floors and 12 rooms to prime and paint. The owner also wanted the carpets cleaned, the roof repaired, the deck stained, the refrigerator scrubbed. The price of paint had gone up 30 percent in the past year, and Morales also needed to pay for his painter, insurance and licensing fees.
If he bid too high, he would lose the job to another painter. If he bid too low, he would make next to nothing.
“The total is $3785.15,” he wrote in his e-mail. He had learned that clients appreciated exactness. “We can start as soon as you are ready. Please let me know your decision. We thank you.”
He sat in his truck and waited. He checked his e-mail. Nothing. “This job is not much, but now I need it,” he said. It would keep him on the fringes of the economy as a self-employed painter for another week. It would pay the rent on his family’s downsized apartment.
It would allow him to maintain the lifestyle he had come to accept.
He checked again. One new message.
“Okay,” it read. “We have a deal.”
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Do You Suppose This Explains Why So Much Crap Comes Out Of Washington
Somebody once said, "Washington is sixty square miles surrounded by reality". Today's Washington Post has an insightful article entitled, "Why Washington Really Likes Itself". You can read the rest of the article online, but here are the key paragraphs.
"Maybe that’s because Washington is richer, on the whole, than any American state: it has a per-capita income of $71,011, compared with the national average of $40,584, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And the geysering income streams that support Washingtonians are reliable in good times and bad.
There are a lot of occupations here that tend to be pretty high-paid that are kind of recession proof,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research organization in Washington, and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr"
So if you are getting paid almost double what everyone else is getting paid, and are highly unlikely to lose your job, why should you care about the rest of the country? It is something to think about..
"Maybe that’s because Washington is richer, on the whole, than any American state: it has a per-capita income of $71,011, compared with the national average of $40,584, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And the geysering income streams that support Washingtonians are reliable in good times and bad.
There are a lot of occupations here that tend to be pretty high-paid that are kind of recession proof,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research organization in Washington, and a former economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr"
So if you are getting paid almost double what everyone else is getting paid, and are highly unlikely to lose your job, why should you care about the rest of the country? It is something to think about..
The Week Explains The Reality of Corporate Taxes
The controversy over taxing corporations
No one is happy with how the U.S. taxes corporations. But do major companies pay too much, or too little?
posted on August 26, 2011, at 2:35 PM
Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric: GE pays little to no federal taxes because it has one of the best and biggest teams of lawyers in the world. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
In theory, their top tax rate is 35 percent — one of the highest in the world. In reality, most U.S. companies pay far less by exploiting tax breaks and loopholes. Of the 500 major companies in the S&P 500 stock index, 115 paid a tax rate of less than 20 percent over the past five years. Nearly 40 paid less than 10 percent. Boeing, for example, paid 4.5 percent in taxes on its profits over the past five years, Southwest Airlines paid 6.3 percent, and Yahoo paid 7 percent, according to research firm Capital IQ. General Electric, one of America's largest corporations, reportedly will pay little or no federal tax on its $14.2 billion in global profits for 2010.
Has it always been this way?
No. As a result of the loopholes and deductions added to the byzantine tax code in recent decades, corporations pay a far smaller share of total U.S. taxes than they once did. In the 1950s, Washington collected 30 percent of all its federal revenue from business taxes. Last year, it was just 9 percent. Individual taxpayers contribute far more revenue: $899 billion last year, compared with corporations' $191 billion. "It's unpatriotic, it's unfair, and we can't afford it," said Samuel Kang of the Greenlining Institute, which recently released a report on corporate tax avoidance. "Congress is looking to cut the deficit by slashing Medicare, Social Security, food safety, education, and health without collecting another dime from these wealthy companies."
How do businesses avoid paying the full tax?
Through a mix of deductions, accounting gimmicks, and tax shelters created by lobbyists and lawyers. One increasingly popular strategy is to shift jobs, operations, and profits to overseas subsidiaries in low-tax countries. It is estimated that U.S. companies have parked more than $1.5 trillion offshore in this way. Companies say they would be willing to bring these profits home and invest them in creating jobs if Washington would agree to a "repatriation holiday," a temporary period when the tax paid on the incoming money would drop from 35 percent to about 5 percent. But skeptics point out that during the last repatriation holiday, in 2004, 92 percent of the more than $300 billion that U.S. companies brought home went to stock buybacks and shareholder dividend payments, not to creating more jobs.
Are taxes lower abroad?
Yes. The U.S. federal corporate tax rate is the second highest in the world, behind only Japan. At least on paper, the U.S. rate is several times higher than in countries such as Ireland (12.5 percent), Germany (15.8 percent), and Canada (16.5 percent), not to mention zero-tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But in practice, loopholes allow most U.S. corporations to pay about the average of other industrialized countries—about 25 percent. "The effective tax rates that corporations pay actually go down a lot with deductions and put us closer to the middle of the pack," said Roberton Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And when measured as a percentage of GDP, corporate taxes are lower in the U.S. (2.1 percent) than in most of the 33 other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, such as Japan (2.4 percent), Canada (2.5 percent), and Korea (3.7 percent).
Why the call for reform?
Both liberals and conservatives believe the corporate tax code can be drastically revised and improved. "Whether the test is fairness or efficiency, the U.S. system gets really low marks," said MIT accounting professor Michelle Hanlon. American business leaders say the 35 percent tax rate hurts their competitiveness, forcing them to engage in nonproductive strategies to pay a lower rate, and rewarding them for moving business and hiring abroad. On the Left, critics argue that the federal government needs more revenue to reduce deficits, and that closing corporate tax loopholes is necessary. Those loopholes, critics say, will cost the government $102 billion in lost revenue this year alone.
What changes are possible?
President Obama's deficit-reduction commission recommended last year that the corporate tax rate be cut to as low as 23 percent, in conjunction with closing most loopholes. Business leaders generally support that idea. General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, for example, said in a speech last week that his company would accept the elimination of loopholes "in a heartbeat" if the tax code were simplified and rates were reduced. "I'd take Germany's or Japan's or the U.K.'s corporate tax policy today, sight unseen,'' Immelt said. But because the politics surrounding the issue of tax reform remain highly polarized, it may take several years—and the end of the 2012 presidential election — before the code is actually revamped. "The ball has gotten rolling," says Caroline Harris, chief tax counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "[But] if tax reform were easy, we would have already done it."
'The world's best tax law firm'
How does General Electric get away with paying little to no federal taxes? By employing a tax department of some 975 lawyers and accountants, often called the world's best tax law firm. Headed by John Samuels, a bow-tie-wearing former Treasury Department official, the tax department has more than tripled in size over the past two decades, all in the interest of reducing the company's tax bill. The department is widely admired for its artful accounting, crafted by the dozens of former IRS officials and former employees of congressional tax-writing committees that GE has hired. The company's defenders say it doesn't evade taxes; it simply finds legal tax breaks. Any complaints, they say, should be directed at the U.S. code, not the company. What's more, the company says, its tiny 2010 tax bill was a result of writing off $32 billion in losses incurred by its financial services division during the Wall Street meltdown. But GE also files tax returns in 250 global jurisdictions, many of them low-tax countries where profits are parked to avoid the U.S. taxman.
Friday, August 26, 2011
The Triple Tier Economy One More Time
In case we haven't supplied you with enough statistics to demonstrate what is happening to the U.S. as money migrates rapidly to the top 5%, the guy who writes Economic Collapse adds these. Pay particular attention to #23 and #24. There is abundant evidence that these people will never recover their income tracks. Also, note his request at the end of his piece.
Do you ever get the feeling that the middle class in America is shrinking? Well, you are not imagining things. A confluence of very troubling long-term economic trends has created an environment in which the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded. Today, most American families would be absolutely thrilled if they could live as well as past generations did. The dream of receiving a solid education, getting a good job, owning a beautiful home and enjoying the good things that America has to offer is increasingly becoming out of reach for a growing number of Americans. The reality is that even though our population has grown, there are less jobs than there used to be. A much higher percentage of the jobs that remain are low income jobs. Millions of middle class American families are desperately trying to hang on as inflation far outpaces the growth of their paychecks. Millions of others have fallen completely out of the middle class and are now totally dependent on the government for survival. We once had the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now way too much unemployment, way too much inflation, way too much greed and way too much debt are all starting to catch up with us. America is changing, and not for the better.
When most of us were growing up, we understood that there was an unspoken promise that if we got good grades, stayed out of trouble, worked really hard and did everything we were told to do, the system would reward us.
Well, today there are millions of Americans that have done all of those things but don't have anything to show for it.
As large numbers of hard working people continue to fall out of the middle class, there is a growing sense that "the system" has betrayed us all.
Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy is dying. The endless prosperity that we all enjoyed in the past is gone and it is never going to come back.
The following are 34 pieces of evidence that prove that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking....
#1 In 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs. Today, only 42 percent of all jobs are middle income jobs.
#2 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#3 Only 63.5 percent of all men in the United States had a job last month. According to Bloomberg, that figure is "just slightly above the December 2009 nadir of 63.3%. These are the lowest numbers since 1948."
#4 In 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. Last month, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.
#5 According to one recent survey, 64 percent of Americans would be forced to borrow money if they had an unexpected expense of $1000.
#6 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now control 40 percent of all the wealth in this country.
#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now control just 2.5% of all the wealth in this country.
#8 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.
#9 According to the Washington Post, the average yearly income of the bottom 90 percent of all U.S. income earners is just $31,244.
#10 The average yearly income of the top 0.1% of all U.S. income earners is 5.6 million dollars.
#11 Between 1969 and 2009, the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#12 Only the top 5 percent of all U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#13 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.
#14 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#15 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
#16 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#17 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#18 The competition for even the most basic jobs has become absolutely brutal. Approximately 7 percent of all those that apply to get into Harvard are accepted. At a recent "National Hiring Day" held by McDonald's only about 6.2 percent of the one million Americans that applied for a job were hired.
#19 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job.
#20 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.
#21 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#22 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#23 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors and more than 317,000 waiters and waitresses that have college degrees.
#24 17 million college graduates are doing jobs that do not even require a college degree.
#25 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#26 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#27 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 45 million Americans on food stamps, which is a new all-time record.
#28 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.
#29 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#30 In 1980, just 11.7% of all personal income came from government transfer payments. Today, 18.4% of all personal income comes from government transfer payments.
#31 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#32 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#33 In the United States, over 20 percent of all children are now living in poverty. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.
#34 According to the Federal Reserve, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
As the middle class continues to shrivel up and die, the number of desperate people is going to continue to grow.
In the past, I have written extensively about how many Americans are already becoming so desperate that they will do just about anything for money.
Well, here are a couple more examples....
One unemployed man down in the Phoenix area that had reportedly robbed 12 banks told police the following about why he did it....
Most of these people are not going to commit crimes because they enjoy them. Rather, they will be doing what they feel they need to do in order to survive.
Not all of the shady activity will be so violent. Desperation comes out in different ways. For example, there are now actually websites where women advertise their "services" to potential "sugar daddies" that will help them with college expenses or support them financially.
Hopefully those reading this article will never resort to those kinds of things.
Yes, things are going to be tough, but there are always good alternatives if you are willing to look hard enough for them.
If you really need a job right now, pay close attention to the next couple of points. Good jobs are very hard to come by in most areas at the moment, so you may have to be willing to make some sacrifices if you are desperate.
According to Bloomberg, there is a substantial shortage of truck drivers across the nation right now.
Driving a truck is really hard work, and it would take you away from home for extended periods of time, but the pay is pretty good.
If you are desperate for a job, this is something that you may want to look into. There really is a shortage of truck drivers, and a paycheck is a paycheck.
Also, there are reportedly lots of jobs up in North Dakota right now. Thanks to the oil boom up there, money is flowing and job opportunities are plentiful.
Just check out the following excerpt from a recent CNBC article about the employment boom going on in North Dakota right now....
But there really are lots of jobs available up in North Dakota. If you are desperate, you may want to really consider looking into it.
Now for the bad news. Unfortunately, it is looking increasingly likely that we could have another major financial crisis some time fairly soon.
As I wrote about yesterday, Europe is a financial nightmare right now. I honestly do not see any way that they are going to be able to fix things.
Fear is seemingly everywhere in Europe right now. A recent article in The Telegraph entitled "Market crash 'could hit within weeks', warn bankers" postulated that we could be on the verge of a horrifying repeat of the financial crisis of 2008....
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon and things do not look promising. The coming economic storms are going to be very hard on the middle class in America.
The number of good jobs is going to continue to decline and our paychecks are going to get stretched tighter and tighter.
The "system" is not going to save you.
The "system" is failing.
You better get ready.
34 Pieces Of Evidence That Prove That The Middle Class In America Is Rapidly Shrinking
Do you ever get the feeling that the middle class in America is shrinking? Well, you are not imagining things. A confluence of very troubling long-term economic trends has created an environment in which the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded. Today, most American families would be absolutely thrilled if they could live as well as past generations did. The dream of receiving a solid education, getting a good job, owning a beautiful home and enjoying the good things that America has to offer is increasingly becoming out of reach for a growing number of Americans. The reality is that even though our population has grown, there are less jobs than there used to be. A much higher percentage of the jobs that remain are low income jobs. Millions of middle class American families are desperately trying to hang on as inflation far outpaces the growth of their paychecks. Millions of others have fallen completely out of the middle class and are now totally dependent on the government for survival. We once had the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now way too much unemployment, way too much inflation, way too much greed and way too much debt are all starting to catch up with us. America is changing, and not for the better.When most of us were growing up, we understood that there was an unspoken promise that if we got good grades, stayed out of trouble, worked really hard and did everything we were told to do, the system would reward us.
Well, today there are millions of Americans that have done all of those things but don't have anything to show for it.
As large numbers of hard working people continue to fall out of the middle class, there is a growing sense that "the system" has betrayed us all.
Sadly, the truth is that the U.S. economy is dying. The endless prosperity that we all enjoyed in the past is gone and it is never going to come back.
The following are 34 pieces of evidence that prove that the middle class in America is rapidly shrinking....
#1 In 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs. Today, only 42 percent of all jobs are middle income jobs.
#2 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#3 Only 63.5 percent of all men in the United States had a job last month. According to Bloomberg, that figure is "just slightly above the December 2009 nadir of 63.3%. These are the lowest numbers since 1948."
#4 In 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. Last month, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.
#5 According to one recent survey, 64 percent of Americans would be forced to borrow money if they had an unexpected expense of $1000.
#6 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now control 40 percent of all the wealth in this country.
#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now control just 2.5% of all the wealth in this country.
#8 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.
#9 According to the Washington Post, the average yearly income of the bottom 90 percent of all U.S. income earners is just $31,244.
#10 The average yearly income of the top 0.1% of all U.S. income earners is 5.6 million dollars.
#11 Between 1969 and 2009, the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.
#12 Only the top 5 percent of all U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#13 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.
#14 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#15 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
#16 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people to the population since then.
#17 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
#18 The competition for even the most basic jobs has become absolutely brutal. Approximately 7 percent of all those that apply to get into Harvard are accepted. At a recent "National Hiring Day" held by McDonald's only about 6.2 percent of the one million Americans that applied for a job were hired.
#19 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40 weeks to find a new job.
#20 According to a report released in February from the National Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for 40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of the job growth. Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23 percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.
#21 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#22 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#23 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors and more than 317,000 waiters and waitresses that have college degrees.
#24 17 million college graduates are doing jobs that do not even require a college degree.
#25 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#26 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#27 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 45 million Americans on food stamps, which is a new all-time record.
#28 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.
#29 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#30 In 1980, just 11.7% of all personal income came from government transfer payments. Today, 18.4% of all personal income comes from government transfer payments.
#31 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.
#32 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
#33 In the United States, over 20 percent of all children are now living in poverty. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.
#34 According to the Federal Reserve, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
As the middle class continues to shrivel up and die, the number of desperate people is going to continue to grow.
In the past, I have written extensively about how many Americans are already becoming so desperate that they will do just about anything for money.
Well, here are a couple more examples....
One unemployed man down in the Phoenix area that had reportedly robbed 12 banks told police the following about why he did it....
"I rob to survive."As millions more Americans fall into poverty, we are going to see a lot more crime.
Most of these people are not going to commit crimes because they enjoy them. Rather, they will be doing what they feel they need to do in order to survive.
Not all of the shady activity will be so violent. Desperation comes out in different ways. For example, there are now actually websites where women advertise their "services" to potential "sugar daddies" that will help them with college expenses or support them financially.
Hopefully those reading this article will never resort to those kinds of things.
Yes, things are going to be tough, but there are always good alternatives if you are willing to look hard enough for them.
If you really need a job right now, pay close attention to the next couple of points. Good jobs are very hard to come by in most areas at the moment, so you may have to be willing to make some sacrifices if you are desperate.
According to Bloomberg, there is a substantial shortage of truck drivers across the nation right now.
Driving a truck is really hard work, and it would take you away from home for extended periods of time, but the pay is pretty good.
If you are desperate for a job, this is something that you may want to look into. There really is a shortage of truck drivers, and a paycheck is a paycheck.
Also, there are reportedly lots of jobs up in North Dakota right now. Thanks to the oil boom up there, money is flowing and job opportunities are plentiful.
Just check out the following excerpt from a recent CNBC article about the employment boom going on in North Dakota right now....
Unemployment is a national problem in the U.S., but you wouldn't know that if you travel through North Dakota.Yes, it is really, really cold up in North Dakota. There is very little housing available in the boom areas and for most of you it would require some significant sacrifices to take a job up there.
The state's unemployment rate hovers around 3 percent, and "Help Wanted" signs litter the landscape of cities such as Williston in the same way "For Sale" signs populate the streets of Las Vegas.
"It's a zoo," said Terry Ayers, who drove into town from Spokane, Wash., slept in his truck, and found a job within hours of arrival, tripling his salary. "It's crazy what's going on out here."
But there really are lots of jobs available up in North Dakota. If you are desperate, you may want to really consider looking into it.
Now for the bad news. Unfortunately, it is looking increasingly likely that we could have another major financial crisis some time fairly soon.
As I wrote about yesterday, Europe is a financial nightmare right now. I honestly do not see any way that they are going to be able to fix things.
Fear is seemingly everywhere in Europe right now. A recent article in The Telegraph entitled "Market crash 'could hit within weeks', warn bankers" postulated that we could be on the verge of a horrifying repeat of the financial crisis of 2008....
"The problem is a shortage of liquidity – that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008," said one senior London-based bank executive.
"I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before," said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.So you might want to try to get whatever kind of a job that you can right now before the next wave of the financial crisis hits.
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon and things do not look promising. The coming economic storms are going to be very hard on the middle class in America.
The number of good jobs is going to continue to decline and our paychecks are going to get stretched tighter and tighter.
The "system" is not going to save you.
The "system" is failing.
You better get ready.
O.K., Let's Do The Numbers Again!
1) We spent twice the amount per capita of any other developed country for healthcare.
2) We generally get poorer results for the money we spend on healthcare.
3) Healthcare expenditures are on schedule to bankrupt the country sometime in the early twenty-twenties.
4) The number one healthcare expense is heroic end of life procedures.
5) The number two healthcare expense is chronic diseases.
6) The primary chronic disease is obesity and the diabetes, heart disease, etc. associated with it.
7) One third of the U.S. population is obese. Understand that is a condition beyond over weight, which is what another one third of the U.S. population seems to be.
Now comes this forecast from the Lancet. Be afraid, very afraid.
Based on trends, half of the adults in the United States will be obese by 2030 unless the government makes changing the food environment a policy priority, according to a report released Thursday on the international obesity crisis in the British medical journal the Lancet.
Those changes include making healthful foods cheaper and less-healthful foods more expensive largely through tax strategies, the report said. Changes in the way foods are marketed would also be called for, among many other measures.
A team of international public health experts argued that the global obesity crisis will continue to grow worse and add substantial burdens to health-care systems and economies unless governments, international agencies and other major institutions take action to monitor, prevent and control the problem.
Changes over the past century in the way food is made and marketed have contributed to the creation of an “obesogenic” environment in which personal willpower and efforts to maintain a healthful weight are largely impossible, the report noted.
It also laid out a new way of calculating how many calories to cut to lose weight, giving what it said is a more accurate means of estimating projected weight loss over time.
The common weight-loss wisdom is that reducing calorie intake by about 500 calories a day “will result in slow and steady weight loss of about 0.5 kg (about a pound) per week.” That rule doesn’t take into account the way the body adapts to the change. In particular, as anyone who has actually lost weight can attest, the less you weigh, the fewer calories you can consume if you wish to lose more weight or maintain the loss.
The report said that weight loss should be viewed over a longer period of time and proposed a new “approximate rule of thumb” for an average overweight adult. It said that “every change of energy intake of [about 24 calories] per day will lead to an eventual bodyweight change of about 1 kg (just over two pounds) . . . with half of the weight change being achieved in about 1 year and 95 percent of the weight change in about 3 years.”
Though the report acknowledged that it’s ultimately up to individuals to decide what to eat and how to live their lives, it maintained that governments have largely abdicated the responsibility for addressing obesity to individuals, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations. Yet the obesity epidemic will not be reversed without government leadership, regulation, and investment in programs, monitoring, and research, it said.
The report, issued in a four-part series published in the Lancet, was released in advance of the first high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly focused on noncommunicable disease prevention and control, which will take place in New York next month.
2) We generally get poorer results for the money we spend on healthcare.
3) Healthcare expenditures are on schedule to bankrupt the country sometime in the early twenty-twenties.
4) The number one healthcare expense is heroic end of life procedures.
5) The number two healthcare expense is chronic diseases.
6) The primary chronic disease is obesity and the diabetes, heart disease, etc. associated with it.
7) One third of the U.S. population is obese. Understand that is a condition beyond over weight, which is what another one third of the U.S. population seems to be.
Now comes this forecast from the Lancet. Be afraid, very afraid.
Half of U.S. adults will be obese by 2030, report says
Those changes include making healthful foods cheaper and less-healthful foods more expensive largely through tax strategies, the report said. Changes in the way foods are marketed would also be called for, among many other measures.
Changes over the past century in the way food is made and marketed have contributed to the creation of an “obesogenic” environment in which personal willpower and efforts to maintain a healthful weight are largely impossible, the report noted.
It also laid out a new way of calculating how many calories to cut to lose weight, giving what it said is a more accurate means of estimating projected weight loss over time.
The common weight-loss wisdom is that reducing calorie intake by about 500 calories a day “will result in slow and steady weight loss of about 0.5 kg (about a pound) per week.” That rule doesn’t take into account the way the body adapts to the change. In particular, as anyone who has actually lost weight can attest, the less you weigh, the fewer calories you can consume if you wish to lose more weight or maintain the loss.
The report said that weight loss should be viewed over a longer period of time and proposed a new “approximate rule of thumb” for an average overweight adult. It said that “every change of energy intake of [about 24 calories] per day will lead to an eventual bodyweight change of about 1 kg (just over two pounds) . . . with half of the weight change being achieved in about 1 year and 95 percent of the weight change in about 3 years.”
Though the report acknowledged that it’s ultimately up to individuals to decide what to eat and how to live their lives, it maintained that governments have largely abdicated the responsibility for addressing obesity to individuals, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations. Yet the obesity epidemic will not be reversed without government leadership, regulation, and investment in programs, monitoring, and research, it said.
The report, issued in a four-part series published in the Lancet, was released in advance of the first high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly focused on noncommunicable disease prevention and control, which will take place in New York next month.
Just When You Think Things Could Not Be More Bizarre................
From today's Washington Post...................
Both Obama and former president Bill Clinton have touted the retrofitting concept as a way to create up to 1 million jobs, according to the Jobs Council. Obama talked about those plans Wednesday on a conference call with General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt and American Express Chief Executive Ken Chenault, who co-chair the jobs council, said deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“They discussed a number of the proposals that the Jobs Council has been developing,” Earnest told reporters during his daily briefing in Martha’s Vineyard, where Obama is vacationing with his family. “And the president solicited their input on the policy -- again, on the policy process that’s underway related to the major economic address that the President will deliver after Labor Day.”
The project would put people to work and improve the environment, Immelt and Chenault wrote in a June op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
“More than two million construction workers don’t have work,” they wrote. “Every city in America has commercial buildings that can be made more energy efficient. Both the private and public sectors can step up to create good jobs and save energy.”
Earnest said the president also discussed ideas aimed at increasing the number of engineers who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities.
It is not clear how much either of these two proposals would cost or how they would be paid for. But with a new Congressional Budget Office report released this week showing unemployment remaining above 8 percent through 2014, there will be pressure on Obama to be bold in his jobs plan. Getting Congress to agree with his ideas is another matter.
“What’s going to be included in this plan are some reasonable ideas that could have a tangible impact on improving our economy and creating jobs,” Earnest said, “but there are also going to be the kinds of things that Republicans should be able to support. These are bipartisan ideas that the president is going to offer up.”
This is the same Jeff Immelt who creates millions of jobs for GE workers OVERSEAS!
Geezzzzz.......what happened to the Interstate Highways, 10,000 bridges, thousands of miles of oil and water pipelines, hundreds of miles of dikes, etc. etc. etc.
By the way, have you ever heard of anyone dying from an unretrofitted building? People have died from all of the other things listed above.
Stay tuned. It will probably get worse.
Both Obama and former president Bill Clinton have touted the retrofitting concept as a way to create up to 1 million jobs, according to the Jobs Council. Obama talked about those plans Wednesday on a conference call with General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt and American Express Chief Executive Ken Chenault, who co-chair the jobs council, said deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“They discussed a number of the proposals that the Jobs Council has been developing,” Earnest told reporters during his daily briefing in Martha’s Vineyard, where Obama is vacationing with his family. “And the president solicited their input on the policy -- again, on the policy process that’s underway related to the major economic address that the President will deliver after Labor Day.”
The project would put people to work and improve the environment, Immelt and Chenault wrote in a June op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
“More than two million construction workers don’t have work,” they wrote. “Every city in America has commercial buildings that can be made more energy efficient. Both the private and public sectors can step up to create good jobs and save energy.”
Earnest said the president also discussed ideas aimed at increasing the number of engineers who graduate from U.S. colleges and universities.
It is not clear how much either of these two proposals would cost or how they would be paid for. But with a new Congressional Budget Office report released this week showing unemployment remaining above 8 percent through 2014, there will be pressure on Obama to be bold in his jobs plan. Getting Congress to agree with his ideas is another matter.
“What’s going to be included in this plan are some reasonable ideas that could have a tangible impact on improving our economy and creating jobs,” Earnest said, “but there are also going to be the kinds of things that Republicans should be able to support. These are bipartisan ideas that the president is going to offer up.”
This is the same Jeff Immelt who creates millions of jobs for GE workers OVERSEAS!
Geezzzzz.......what happened to the Interstate Highways, 10,000 bridges, thousands of miles of oil and water pipelines, hundreds of miles of dikes, etc. etc. etc.
By the way, have you ever heard of anyone dying from an unretrofitted building? People have died from all of the other things listed above.
Stay tuned. It will probably get worse.
Yep! The Richy Riches Are Having A Good Time. Are You?
Money & Company
Tracking the market and economic trends
that shape your finances.
Shaky economy? Tell that to the high rollers at Tiffany & Co.
Call it the diamond defense: Helped by strong overseas sales and wealthy shoppers in its second quarter, venerable jeweler Tiffany & Co. rang up a 33% increase in net earnings.In a “substantially higher-than-expected” boost, earnings worldwide leaped to $90 million, while sales were up 30% to $872.7 million, the company said.
Maybe it was their breakfast special that put a shine on the company’s earnings. But more likely, it was the customer base in Asia, where buyers pushed sales up 55% to $173.2 million. Even in earthquake-devastated Japan, sales were up 21%.
European jewelry lovers also helped, propelling sales in the region 32%. Sales in the Americas were also up, with a 25% gain to $438.2 million, as buyers stuffed their economic uncertainty into little turquoise boxes.
At Tiffany & Co., buyers were willing to “absorb precious metal and gemstone cost increases,” said Chief Executive Officer Michael J. Kowalski.
High-income customers have turned increasingly to retail therapy, helping the luxury market rebound, though some analysts now worry that the fluctuating market may stem the growth.
Seeing the results, investors had some extra bling in their step, lifting the company’s stock more than 7% to nearly $68 in morning trading.
This Is REALLY Serious!!
We have been pointing out, Loudly I Hope, that we are rapidly creating a Two Tier Economy, where the Richy Riches are getting steadily richer and the rest of us get poorer. That is a VERY bad trend.
Secondly, we are now creating a Three Tier Economy with a growing class of permanently unemployed people who will never work again, and a growing class of young people who will never get a job making up the Third Tier.
Today's Los Angeles has a long piece about the effects of the continuing recession. Here is a crucial section.
"Economists worry about the possibility that the growing disparity between the rich and everybody else will widen, that the nation's entrepreneurial energy will be sapped and that a generation of young workers whose earning power and confidence have already suffered will decline even more.
These are things slowly undercutting the underlying resilience of the economy," Harris said.
The likelihood of another recession has risen sharply since spring amid signs of deteriorating employment, manufacturing and business and consumer confidence — accompanied by wild swings on Wall Street."
We can begin with tossing out the entire 7,500 pages of the IRS code book. And understand that will effect you personally, but overall it will increase the income of the Federal government enormously.
Secondly, we are now creating a Three Tier Economy with a growing class of permanently unemployed people who will never work again, and a growing class of young people who will never get a job making up the Third Tier.
Today's Los Angeles has a long piece about the effects of the continuing recession. Here is a crucial section.
"Economists worry about the possibility that the growing disparity between the rich and everybody else will widen, that the nation's entrepreneurial energy will be sapped and that a generation of young workers whose earning power and confidence have already suffered will decline even more.
These are things slowly undercutting the underlying resilience of the economy," Harris said.
The likelihood of another recession has risen sharply since spring amid signs of deteriorating employment, manufacturing and business and consumer confidence — accompanied by wild swings on Wall Street."
We can begin with tossing out the entire 7,500 pages of the IRS code book. And understand that will effect you personally, but overall it will increase the income of the Federal government enormously.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
More Government Waste
Apparently Joe didn't actually see Performance.gov before he wrote this piece in the Washington Post. Take a look for yourself. All I can find is boilerplate.
Performance.gov is a Web site OMB plans to launch at midday Thursday. It allows users to track the progress, or lack of it, federal agencies are making in a number of areas. Actually much more than a toy for geeks, it can be an important means of holding the administration accountable on its plans to make the government more user-friendly.
During a period when many folks seem to want government to do almost nothing, those in government are forced to take extra steps to demonstrate not only that what government does is important but also that government does its duties as efficiently as it can.
President Obama put it this way in April, when he spoke about the national debt: “If we believe the government can make a difference in people’s lives, we have the obligation to prove that it works, by making government smarter and leaner and more effective.”
That’s music to the ears of Jeff Zients. He is a bureaucracy junkie who is really fired up about performance.gov, as should someone who carries the weighty title of chief performance officer for the U.S. government.
“Performance.gov tracks our progress on the administration’s efforts to create a government that is more effective, efficient, innovative and responsive,” said Zients, who also is the OMB deputy director for management. “Importantly, the site is also a valuable tool for sharing best practices across the government — supporting learning and coordination across agencies.”
The site has several areas of focus — including acquisition, financial management, technology, performance improvement, customer service and human resources.
The section of the site devoted to human resources says that hiring the most talented, diverse workforce is necessary to achieve the best for the nation. Then it adds: “We have not always lived up to that goal. Sometimes we miss out on potential employees because of a slow application and hiring process. Other times we lose talented employees by not engaging them or recognizing their excellence.”
The administration has a number of initiatives to improve its personnel problems, including points outlined in Obama’s May 2010 presidential memorandum on hiring. Among other things, it was designed to speed and improve an application process that had become notorious for discouraging applicants.
“We see performance.gov as one of the tools we’re using to help us make progress on the presidential directive,” said Shelley Metzenbaum, OMB’s associate director for performance management. The data, Metzenbaum said, can be “a learning tool that drives continual improvement across the government.”
Performance.gov presents new data on the satisfaction of applicants with the hiring process and the satisfaction of managers with the applicants referred to fill openings. On a 10-point scale, the responses from applicants ranged from 7.1 at Energy to 8.6 at the Social Security Administration. In school terms, those ratings would range from a C- to a B+ on a generous grading scale. No agency received an A from applicants, but none failed, either.
There was a similar spread on the satisfaction of managers with applicants. Social Security again topped the list, with an 8.6 score. The Department of Housing and Urban Development came in last, with 6.8.
The data indicate that improving the hiring process “is not just about speed,” Metzenbaum said. “It’s also about hiring quality and making sure that agencies keep their eye on the hiring quality, along with the hiring speed.”
It’s also a learning tool. Social Security must be doing something right, although it, too, must improve before it gets excellent ratings from applicants and managers. Zients pointed to that on another chart showing the average number of days it takes agencies to hire — SSA is one of the fastest.
“What that says to us is, what is SSA doing that we can transfer across the rest of government,” Zients said. Why aren’t other agencies “making similar progress, and how do we make sure they do by adopting the best practices from those who are doing well?”
“This keeps people accountable,” he added, “and helps drive performance and transfer best practice from agency to agency.”
Office of Management and Budget puts accountability online
By Joe Davidson,
If you’re a bureaucracy junkie, the Office of Management and Budget has a cool toy for you.Performance.gov is a Web site OMB plans to launch at midday Thursday. It allows users to track the progress, or lack of it, federal agencies are making in a number of areas. Actually much more than a toy for geeks, it can be an important means of holding the administration accountable on its plans to make the government more user-friendly.
During a period when many folks seem to want government to do almost nothing, those in government are forced to take extra steps to demonstrate not only that what government does is important but also that government does its duties as efficiently as it can.
President Obama put it this way in April, when he spoke about the national debt: “If we believe the government can make a difference in people’s lives, we have the obligation to prove that it works, by making government smarter and leaner and more effective.”
That’s music to the ears of Jeff Zients. He is a bureaucracy junkie who is really fired up about performance.gov, as should someone who carries the weighty title of chief performance officer for the U.S. government.
“Performance.gov tracks our progress on the administration’s efforts to create a government that is more effective, efficient, innovative and responsive,” said Zients, who also is the OMB deputy director for management. “Importantly, the site is also a valuable tool for sharing best practices across the government — supporting learning and coordination across agencies.”
The site has several areas of focus — including acquisition, financial management, technology, performance improvement, customer service and human resources.
The section of the site devoted to human resources says that hiring the most talented, diverse workforce is necessary to achieve the best for the nation. Then it adds: “We have not always lived up to that goal. Sometimes we miss out on potential employees because of a slow application and hiring process. Other times we lose talented employees by not engaging them or recognizing their excellence.”
The administration has a number of initiatives to improve its personnel problems, including points outlined in Obama’s May 2010 presidential memorandum on hiring. Among other things, it was designed to speed and improve an application process that had become notorious for discouraging applicants.
“We see performance.gov as one of the tools we’re using to help us make progress on the presidential directive,” said Shelley Metzenbaum, OMB’s associate director for performance management. The data, Metzenbaum said, can be “a learning tool that drives continual improvement across the government.”
Performance.gov presents new data on the satisfaction of applicants with the hiring process and the satisfaction of managers with the applicants referred to fill openings. On a 10-point scale, the responses from applicants ranged from 7.1 at Energy to 8.6 at the Social Security Administration. In school terms, those ratings would range from a C- to a B+ on a generous grading scale. No agency received an A from applicants, but none failed, either.
There was a similar spread on the satisfaction of managers with applicants. Social Security again topped the list, with an 8.6 score. The Department of Housing and Urban Development came in last, with 6.8.
The data indicate that improving the hiring process “is not just about speed,” Metzenbaum said. “It’s also about hiring quality and making sure that agencies keep their eye on the hiring quality, along with the hiring speed.”
It’s also a learning tool. Social Security must be doing something right, although it, too, must improve before it gets excellent ratings from applicants and managers. Zients pointed to that on another chart showing the average number of days it takes agencies to hire — SSA is one of the fastest.
“What that says to us is, what is SSA doing that we can transfer across the rest of government,” Zients said. Why aren’t other agencies “making similar progress, and how do we make sure they do by adopting the best practices from those who are doing well?”
“This keeps people accountable,” he added, “and helps drive performance and transfer best practice from agency to agency.”
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Mea Culpa!
I suppose my contempt for Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann shows through. Here is why. This is from today's Los Angeles Times. The second piece is from this week's Economist. Read them and decide for yourself
"Ever since the dawn of the so-called Progressive movement over a century ago, liberals have used every tool at their disposal — including notably the Supreme Court — to wage a gradual war on the Constitution and the American way of life," Perry wrote last year in "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington."
"Social Security is something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years," he said. "And there stands a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal … all at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government."
Perry's 191-page book drew little notice when it was published in November. But now that he is running for the Republican nomination for president, his views on Social Security and other federal programs will be carefully scrutinized.
The book's aim, he wrote, was to provoke a "new conversation about the proper role of government in our lives. Now, cynics will say that I decided to write this book because I seek higher office. They are wrong."
University of Texas law professor Daniel B. Rodriguez said Perry's "libertarian, small-government views" were popular in Texas and elsewhere, but he questioned the comments on Social Security. "He is quite right to say the New Deal era reflected an enormous change in the relationship between the national government and citizens. But to suggest Social Security is unconstitutional is a fringe view," Rodriguez said.
Campaign aides said Perry would not seek to slash or repeal Social Security if he won the White House.
"When it comes to Social Security today," Perry believes there should be "a robust debate about entitlements, a debate about extending the retirement age for younger people and for other changes that will make Social Security and Medicare more stable and financially sound going forward," said campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan. "We need to protect benefits for those who are at or near retirement, so they don't have anything to worry about."
Perry is a champion of states' rights and devotes part of his book to arguing that freedom for Americans depends on diverse states that are free to go their own way. "I would no more consider living in Massachusetts than I suspect a great number of folks from Massachusetts would like to live in Texas," he wrote.
In his view, the nation went off track early in the 20th century when Progressives argued the federal government needed to tax the wealthy and break up corporate monopolies. He says the American people made a mistake or "were snookered" when "during a fit of populist rage" they amended the Constitution to authorize the income tax and to call for the direct election of U.S. senators. Before, senators were picked by state legislatures.
Michael Greve, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Perry's views would have more appeal to "tea party" conservatives than to business conservatives.
"State taxes and state regulation have exploded in the last three decades. I see the surface appeal of saying less power to Washington means smaller government, but it's not necessarily true. The Chamber of Commerce would rather have to deal with one federal regulation than regulations from 50 states," he said.
Perry described the 1913 passage of the 16th and 17th Amendments as a "great milestone on the road to serfdom." The federal income tax gave Washington "a giant faucet of money" to exercise control over the states and the people, he said.
He also heaps scorn on the New Deal era of the 1930s. Then, "an arrogant President [Franklin] Roosevelt, an emboldened Congress" and a compliant Supreme Court agreed the federal government could enforce minimum wages, regulate manufacturers, protect unions, police Wall Street and guarantee pensions for older Americans. The result, he wrote, has been "a complete and total failure."
Perry, who referred to the justices as "nine oligarchs in robes," said he was not convinced that Social Security and Medicare were constitutional.
"I don't think our Founding Fathers, when they were putting the term 'general welfare' in there, were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of healthcare," he said in a book interview with Newsweek last fall. "Whether it's Social Security, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Medicare … they're bankrupt. They're a Ponzi scheme. I challenge anybody to stand up and defend the Social Security program that we have today."
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota have not published similar accounts of their constitutional views, but both agree with Perry that the 10th Amendment, which states that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people, puts an important limit on federal power.
"I believe in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution," Romney said during a recent GOP presidential candidates' debate in Iowa. He called President Obama's national healthcare overhaul "bad constitutional law. … The right answer for every state is to determine what's right for those states."
Bachmann disagreed in part, saying she believed an individual mandate to purchase health insurance would be unconstitutional, whether imposed by Washington or the states. "This is clearly an unconstitutional action, whether it's done at the federal level or whether it's the state level," she said.
And.....................
PRESUMABLY because both are attractive women, and she the lesser-known, the media used to disparage Michele Bachmann, who won the Ames straw poll on August 13th, as “Palin-lite”. That was always upside down. Whereas Sarah Palin was once flummoxed when invited to name the newspapers—any newspaper—she read, Mrs Bachmann, the third-term congresswoman from Minnesota, told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that her favourite beachside reading included the work of Ludwig von Mises, a towering economist of the Austrian school. This column is even more impressed by her mastery of the 3.8m or so words of the ludicrous federal tax code. A lawyer who spent five years working for the Internal Revenue Service is not to be trifled with. When she says that the tax code is “a weapon of mass destruction”, she knows whereof she speaks.
If Mrs Bachmann’s cleverness was ever in question, the doubt should have been dispelled by her performance since confirming in June that she was running for the Republican presidential nomination. Before that she had attracted rather little national attention beyond the rapt circles of the tea-party movement. Her signature legislation, a light-bulb freedom of choice act, designed to protect the God-given right of every American to waste as much electricity as he pleases, had attracted more mirth than votes. In January she irritated the Republican leadership by insisting on delivering her own rebuttal, as creator and leader of the tea-party caucus in the House of Representatives, to Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union speech. It was an amateurish affair, in which she appeared to stare throughout at the wrong camera.
But how the lady has turned. Since joining the race for president she has exhibited a flair for organisation and a political cunning above the ordinary. If her victory in Ames was no great surprise—an evangelical Christian with hard-boiled pro-life, anti-gay-marriage credentials was always likely to prosper in the God-fearing cornfields of Iowa—her disciplined comportment as a campaigner has been. When, before Ames, Chris Wallace of Fox News asked her outright whether she was a “flake”, she refused to be baited, maintained an icy insouciance and, later, received a grovelling apology. A Newsweek cover picturing her with crazed eyes as “The Queen of Rage” probably did more damage to Tina Brown, the would-be saviour of that troubled publication, than to the would-be saviour of America, who affected to pay it no attention. Under attack in the debate at Ames, she coolly disposed of one of her main challengers, Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota.
Still, there is a reason why that “flake” question was posed. Mrs Bachmann has a record of making factual mistakes, repeating untruths and adopting preposterous stances. Though some of the mistakes have been mere slips, they were slips of a sort that a candidate who claims a close familiarity with America’s founding ought never to have made. At one point she said that the “shot heard round the world” had been fired in Lexington, New Hampshire (it was Lexington, Massachusetts); at another that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more” (wrong by almost a century). She claimed in 2008 that Mr Obama held “anti-American” views, and last year that his visit to India would cost taxpayers $200m a day, a fantastic number apparently plucked, unchecked, from Indian newspapers. She continues to maintain, preposterously, that Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit because Congress raised the debt ceiling. The opposite is true: the agency wanted more deficit reduction but expressed alarm at the spectacle of politicians like Mrs Bachmann turning the debt ceiling into a political bargaining chip.
Judgmental, moi?
Now that she is running for president, Mrs Bachmann is choosing her words more cautiously, especially on social issues. But she has had to resort to credulity-stretching gymnastics to explain past utterances. Did she become a tax lawyer against her own will because, as she once argued, it was a wife’s duty (see the fifth chapter of Ephesians) to be “submissive” to her husband, who thought it was a good idea? No, she says now, in an assertion that would dumbfound a lexicographer: to “submit” means to “respect”. Why in 2004 did she equate homosexuality to “personal enslavement”? “I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone’s judge.” Such evasions are less than convincing. As a Minnesota state senator a decade ago, Mrs Bachmann made her opposition to gay marriage into a crusade that helped to build her political career. The clinic she set up with her husband Marcus (which she cites as evidence of her understanding of job creation) offered to make gays straight via the agency of prayer. Judgmental, moi?
Her liberal critics make rich fun of all this. But exaggeration, inexactitude and mendacity are the currency of politics. The voter who grumbles about these things is like the farmer who grumbles about the weather. If Mrs Bachmann is guilty of such sins, she is hardly alone. Indeed, her most potent weapon might, paradoxically, be the fundamental honesty that undergirds her positions. That is to say, people can tell that, unlike most candidates, what you see is what you would get: a strongly religious person; a moraliser; a diminutive figure who really does appear to have, as she boasts, a “titanium spine”; a conviction politician in an age when many convictions are feigned. A Midwestern Margaret Thatcher with added divinity, she stands primed to reverse the monstrous growth of the entitlement state, convinced that whatever short-term suffering this causes will nonetheless restore the moral fibre of America. Many Americans would no doubt vote for her if she made it through the primaries. But far more are likely to be frightened, which is why she probably won’t.
Reporting from Washington—
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, faulting much of what the federal government did in the 20th century, has called Social Security a "failure" and "an illegal Ponzi scheme" and also cast doubt on the constitutionality of federal laws on food safety, minimum wages, bans on child labor, environmental protection and Medicare."Ever since the dawn of the so-called Progressive movement over a century ago, liberals have used every tool at their disposal — including notably the Supreme Court — to wage a gradual war on the Constitution and the American way of life," Perry wrote last year in "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington."
"Social Security is something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years," he said. "And there stands a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal … all at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government."
Perry's 191-page book drew little notice when it was published in November. But now that he is running for the Republican nomination for president, his views on Social Security and other federal programs will be carefully scrutinized.
The book's aim, he wrote, was to provoke a "new conversation about the proper role of government in our lives. Now, cynics will say that I decided to write this book because I seek higher office. They are wrong."
University of Texas law professor Daniel B. Rodriguez said Perry's "libertarian, small-government views" were popular in Texas and elsewhere, but he questioned the comments on Social Security. "He is quite right to say the New Deal era reflected an enormous change in the relationship between the national government and citizens. But to suggest Social Security is unconstitutional is a fringe view," Rodriguez said.
Campaign aides said Perry would not seek to slash or repeal Social Security if he won the White House.
"When it comes to Social Security today," Perry believes there should be "a robust debate about entitlements, a debate about extending the retirement age for younger people and for other changes that will make Social Security and Medicare more stable and financially sound going forward," said campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan. "We need to protect benefits for those who are at or near retirement, so they don't have anything to worry about."
Perry is a champion of states' rights and devotes part of his book to arguing that freedom for Americans depends on diverse states that are free to go their own way. "I would no more consider living in Massachusetts than I suspect a great number of folks from Massachusetts would like to live in Texas," he wrote.
In his view, the nation went off track early in the 20th century when Progressives argued the federal government needed to tax the wealthy and break up corporate monopolies. He says the American people made a mistake or "were snookered" when "during a fit of populist rage" they amended the Constitution to authorize the income tax and to call for the direct election of U.S. senators. Before, senators were picked by state legislatures.
Michael Greve, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Perry's views would have more appeal to "tea party" conservatives than to business conservatives.
"State taxes and state regulation have exploded in the last three decades. I see the surface appeal of saying less power to Washington means smaller government, but it's not necessarily true. The Chamber of Commerce would rather have to deal with one federal regulation than regulations from 50 states," he said.
Perry described the 1913 passage of the 16th and 17th Amendments as a "great milestone on the road to serfdom." The federal income tax gave Washington "a giant faucet of money" to exercise control over the states and the people, he said.
He also heaps scorn on the New Deal era of the 1930s. Then, "an arrogant President [Franklin] Roosevelt, an emboldened Congress" and a compliant Supreme Court agreed the federal government could enforce minimum wages, regulate manufacturers, protect unions, police Wall Street and guarantee pensions for older Americans. The result, he wrote, has been "a complete and total failure."
Perry, who referred to the justices as "nine oligarchs in robes," said he was not convinced that Social Security and Medicare were constitutional.
"I don't think our Founding Fathers, when they were putting the term 'general welfare' in there, were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of healthcare," he said in a book interview with Newsweek last fall. "Whether it's Social Security, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Medicare … they're bankrupt. They're a Ponzi scheme. I challenge anybody to stand up and defend the Social Security program that we have today."
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota have not published similar accounts of their constitutional views, but both agree with Perry that the 10th Amendment, which states that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people, puts an important limit on federal power.
"I believe in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution," Romney said during a recent GOP presidential candidates' debate in Iowa. He called President Obama's national healthcare overhaul "bad constitutional law. … The right answer for every state is to determine what's right for those states."
Bachmann disagreed in part, saying she believed an individual mandate to purchase health insurance would be unconstitutional, whether imposed by Washington or the states. "This is clearly an unconstitutional action, whether it's done at the federal level or whether it's the state level," she said.
And.....................
Lexington
Being Michele Bachmann
The terrifying truthfulness of the victor of the Ames straw poll
Aug 20th 2011 | from the print edition
If Mrs Bachmann’s cleverness was ever in question, the doubt should have been dispelled by her performance since confirming in June that she was running for the Republican presidential nomination. Before that she had attracted rather little national attention beyond the rapt circles of the tea-party movement. Her signature legislation, a light-bulb freedom of choice act, designed to protect the God-given right of every American to waste as much electricity as he pleases, had attracted more mirth than votes. In January she irritated the Republican leadership by insisting on delivering her own rebuttal, as creator and leader of the tea-party caucus in the House of Representatives, to Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union speech. It was an amateurish affair, in which she appeared to stare throughout at the wrong camera.
But how the lady has turned. Since joining the race for president she has exhibited a flair for organisation and a political cunning above the ordinary. If her victory in Ames was no great surprise—an evangelical Christian with hard-boiled pro-life, anti-gay-marriage credentials was always likely to prosper in the God-fearing cornfields of Iowa—her disciplined comportment as a campaigner has been. When, before Ames, Chris Wallace of Fox News asked her outright whether she was a “flake”, she refused to be baited, maintained an icy insouciance and, later, received a grovelling apology. A Newsweek cover picturing her with crazed eyes as “The Queen of Rage” probably did more damage to Tina Brown, the would-be saviour of that troubled publication, than to the would-be saviour of America, who affected to pay it no attention. Under attack in the debate at Ames, she coolly disposed of one of her main challengers, Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota.
Still, there is a reason why that “flake” question was posed. Mrs Bachmann has a record of making factual mistakes, repeating untruths and adopting preposterous stances. Though some of the mistakes have been mere slips, they were slips of a sort that a candidate who claims a close familiarity with America’s founding ought never to have made. At one point she said that the “shot heard round the world” had been fired in Lexington, New Hampshire (it was Lexington, Massachusetts); at another that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more” (wrong by almost a century). She claimed in 2008 that Mr Obama held “anti-American” views, and last year that his visit to India would cost taxpayers $200m a day, a fantastic number apparently plucked, unchecked, from Indian newspapers. She continues to maintain, preposterously, that Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit because Congress raised the debt ceiling. The opposite is true: the agency wanted more deficit reduction but expressed alarm at the spectacle of politicians like Mrs Bachmann turning the debt ceiling into a political bargaining chip.
Judgmental, moi?
Now that she is running for president, Mrs Bachmann is choosing her words more cautiously, especially on social issues. But she has had to resort to credulity-stretching gymnastics to explain past utterances. Did she become a tax lawyer against her own will because, as she once argued, it was a wife’s duty (see the fifth chapter of Ephesians) to be “submissive” to her husband, who thought it was a good idea? No, she says now, in an assertion that would dumbfound a lexicographer: to “submit” means to “respect”. Why in 2004 did she equate homosexuality to “personal enslavement”? “I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone’s judge.” Such evasions are less than convincing. As a Minnesota state senator a decade ago, Mrs Bachmann made her opposition to gay marriage into a crusade that helped to build her political career. The clinic she set up with her husband Marcus (which she cites as evidence of her understanding of job creation) offered to make gays straight via the agency of prayer. Judgmental, moi?
Her liberal critics make rich fun of all this. But exaggeration, inexactitude and mendacity are the currency of politics. The voter who grumbles about these things is like the farmer who grumbles about the weather. If Mrs Bachmann is guilty of such sins, she is hardly alone. Indeed, her most potent weapon might, paradoxically, be the fundamental honesty that undergirds her positions. That is to say, people can tell that, unlike most candidates, what you see is what you would get: a strongly religious person; a moraliser; a diminutive figure who really does appear to have, as she boasts, a “titanium spine”; a conviction politician in an age when many convictions are feigned. A Midwestern Margaret Thatcher with added divinity, she stands primed to reverse the monstrous growth of the entitlement state, convinced that whatever short-term suffering this causes will nonetheless restore the moral fibre of America. Many Americans would no doubt vote for her if she made it through the primaries. But far more are likely to be frightened, which is why she probably won’t.
from the print edition | United States
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