How The Government Can Help Job Creation

Reduce the high minimum wage that knocks out the first several rungs from the bottom of the employment ladder

Reduce the high payroll tax that robs employees and employers of resources;

Reform the laws that threaten firms with lawsuits should the employee be fired;

Reform the laws that create a myriad of conditions for hiring beyond the market-based condition that matters: can he or she get the job done?;

Eliminate the unemployment subsidy in the form of phony insurance that pays people not to work

Reduce the high cost of business start-ups in the form of taxes and mandates;

Eliminate the mandated benefits that employers are forced to cough up for every new employee under certain conditions;

Eliminate the withholding tax that prevents employers and employees from making their own deals

Change the age restrictions that treat everyone under the age of 16 as useless

Reduce the social security and income taxes that together devour nearly half of contract income

Eliminate the labor union laws that permit union officials to loot a firm and keep out workers who would love a chance to offer their wares for less.

Would Freezing Your Budget For Gum at Last Year's Abnormally High Rate....be Fiscal Responsibility?

From Alison Fraser at The Heritage Foundation

The President has the right idea with his proposal to freeze spending.  Unfortunately, after driving spending to a record $3.7 trillion—nearly 26% of GDP—last year with the accompanying $1.4 trillion deficit, the proposal is at best a bit….underwhelming.
According to the administration, only $447 billion in spending would be subject to the freeze with a total of $15 billion to be saved.   So this freeze would reduce the deficit by 1.1 percent or less than half a percent off of last year’s spending.  Details have yet to be announced, but those that have trickled out do make one wonder what spending forecasts the White House budgeters are reading.
The good:
Spending is out of control.  Under Obama, federal spending increased in every category—in many cases massive increases driving spending to its highest point since WWII. Spending needs to be frozen and reduced.  Reallyreduced.  If the President is serious about restoring confidence in his ability to control the excesses of Washington, he must go much further.
The bad:
First – this freeze would only apply to a sliver of total federal spending.  The administration has conjured up a new definition of spending called “non-security”, which would only affect about one-eighth of the budget.
Second – as reported – the cap would not be imposed across the board. Some areas would see increases like “investments related to jobs creation” while others like The Department of Justice—a core constitutional function of government—could see a cut. Budgets are about setting priorities and the President should be making such trade-offs across the entire federal budget.  He and every president before him have done just that. But calling it a freeze?  Puleeze.
Third – the major drivers of spending are completely off the table. Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is about to explode as baby boomers swarm into retirement. It is impossible to be serious about bringing the budget under control or restoring confidence in his ability to control the excesses of Washington without taking action to limit spending on these programs.
Fourth - what additional spending would be outside the “freeze” and considered “security”? Emergency spending?  Members of Congress are highly skilled at turning an emergency spending bill into a Christmas tree full of unrelated and outrageous spending.  A new stimulus bill all dressed up as a jobs bill? Capping repayments (e.g. free) of college loans?  New subsidies for child care?
Fifth – what level of spending would this ”freeze” apply to? If it applies to last year’s supercharged spending on stimulus steroids baseline, it’s no freeze at all, but a locking in of spending that was supposed to be temporary.  Alternatively, it would be very easy to undo any of the savings. For instance, one small jobs stimulus bill could wipe out all savings.
The simple fact is this: no matter how they spin it, the President must hold spending level with last year—minus all the temporary stimulus, TARP and other bailout spending—otherwise this freeze is a fakeroo.

A Teleprompter is Worth a Thousand Words.....

While speaking to a crowd (?) of 6th graders … cue the teleprompter.

How To Maximize Your ObamaCare

Obama and the Missing Nobel Prize Money

Obama and the Missing Nobel Prize Money

Obama proposes a Tax on Bank Robbery - IE Robbery by the Banks

Posted by Robert Wenzel


The most important thing you need to know about taxes is that there are government revenue payers and government revenue takers. All the rest is a shell game.

For example, an employee in the White House may earn $100,000 but be "taxed" $30,000. Thus, net he is a taker of money from the tax pool. A private physician who earns $100,000 but is taxed $30,000 is a net payer into the tax pool.

When it comes to taxes, this is the most important factor to look at.

In order to know which side of the tax pool a person is on, you need to know what they pay in and what they take out, everything else is fluff. Friends of government always end up as tax takers, the rest of us are tax payers.

So where does Obama's new bank tax plan put Goldman Sachs in the tax payer/tax taker plan? Right where they have always been net takers from the tax pool.

President Obama's plan calls for taxing big banks $90 billion over 10 years. That's $9 billion per year. Let's say that 25% that will be charged to Goldman (It really won't be anywhere near that high). Under this model, Goldman will pay into the tax pool $2.25 billion.

What did Goldman take from the tax pool this year? It is a little difficult to tell since the Federal Reserve and the Treasury will not provide all the numbers, but we do know that from the edge of collapse, Goldman is now able to pay out somewhere over $20 billion in bonuses and will report on top of that $10 billion in net income (including net of other taxes). Most of this in one way or another can likely be traced back to the government bailout of Goldman through AIG, through purchases by the government of securities with questionable value , and with very favorable pricing given to Goldman by the Fed in its day to day trading. Thus, the net take by Goldman from the tax payer pool has to be considered plus $30 billion.

Bottom line: Goldman pays an additional tax of $2.25 billion and takes out of the pool $30 billion. If I had no morals, I could do that trade every year.

President Obama's claim that "We are going to get our money back" is absurd. In the years to come, Goldman and other members of the Wall Street crony elite will find other ways to get their hands on money in the tax payer pool. Net, net any tax of Goldman, and the like, is for show. The people who are really net tax payers are you and me.

This does not mean that taxes should be higher on Goldman and other banks. It means government shouldn't have the kind of power that allows them to cut deals that give government money to these crooks in the first place. "Taxing" these jokers after they have already robbed the public is like taxing a bank robber after he has robbed a bank and leaving it at that.

The Beatles had it Right: Here Comes the Sun - and Climate Change

Climategate: How to Hide the Sun

A Rainy Night, A Warm Bed and a Jane Austen Novel. I'll Take It

The Divine Jane: Reflections on Austen from The Morgan Library & Museum on Vimeo.

HealthCare Spending Goes Up More SLowly When Users Pay Their Own Bills

A simple chart will help you understand why healthcare spending has gone out of control.

Economists have shown that if a good’s price is zero or decreasing, then the demand for this good will likely increase. In 2008, consumers were only directly responsible for 11.9 percent of total national healthcare expenditures, down from 43 percent in 1965, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This means that someone other than consumers pays roughly 88 percent of all healthcare costs, giving consumers little incentive to mind costs and much incentive to over-consume.

The graph below shows out-of-pocket payments by consumers and spending by Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers on healthcare from 1965 to 2008. Since the passage of Medicare in 1965, consumers’ out-of pocket spending on healthcare has decreased steadily as a percentage of overall U.S. healthcare spending. While real and nominal out-of-pocket healthcare payments increased over the period, growth in these costs was dwarfed by a much more rapid growth in overall spending. On average, consumers’ out-of pocket healthcare costs increased 6.7 percent each year, while national healthcare expenditures increased by an average 9.8 percent each year.

By contrast, increases in expenditures by private insurers, Medicaid, and Medicare accounted for the majority of this excess cost growth—since 1965, private insurers’ spending has increased by an average 10.8 percent annually, Medicaid spending has increased by an average 15.4 percent, and Medicare spending has increased by an average of 15.6 percent each year. Also, as you can see, the rate of growth in both Medicare and Medicaid spending far outpaces the rate of growth in out-of-pocket and private insurance costs.

And it’s about to get much worse. On Christmas Eve, the Senate passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which further expands Medicaid and Medicare’s roles in the U.S. healthcare system.

Much of the rationale behind the current reform of the healthcare system is about controlling inflation in healthcare costs. However, based on the trend presented above, a better alternative to the semi-nationalization that the president has in mind would be to increase individual responsibility for medical decisions and costs. When people aren’t exposed to the true cost of their care—even if they pay for it in foregone wages and higher taxes—they consume more.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at The Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Obama Abandons "Saved or Created" Jobs Claims | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Obama Abandons "Saved or Created" Jobs Claims | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Stimulus Oh Stimulus, Where Art Thou?

Ten months into President Obama's first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found.
...

For its analysis, the AP reviewed Transportation Department data on more than $21 billion in stimulus projects in every state and Washington, D.C., and the Labor Department's monthly unemployment data.

Working with economists and statisticians, the AP performed statistical tests to gauge the effect of transportation spending on employment activity.

There was no difference in unemployment trends between the group of counties that received the most stimulus money and the group that received none, the analysis found.

Hey Dude, I'm Obama and I'm Cool, Right?

History Is Knocking for Obama