Table of Contents
Funding Losers
Communications Juggernauts in Crossover Voting Frauds
Funding Opponent Scandals
Trump part of conspiracy to ensure
Clinton presidency ---
Jeb Bush ---
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/8/jeb-bush-suggests-donald-trump-part-of-conspiracy-/
Jensen Question
Is such a conspiracy necessary given the slate of losers running as GOP
candidates for President in 2016?
Young Male Immigrants High in Testosterone are Becoming the Lepers of the
21st Century
Europe’s Closing Borders ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-closing-borders-1452212006?mod=djemMER
Enjoy traveling easily throughout Europe while you
can, because who knows how long it will be before you need to show your
passport at every border. Sweden this week extended the temporary border
checks it has imposed along its boundary with Denmark, and Denmark is
imposing spot passport checks at some crossings from Germany.
Such steps are part of an attempt to manage the
fallout from Angela Merkel’s open invitation to Middle Eastern refugees in
September. Some one million migrants took up the Chancellor’s offer last
year, and Germany’s belated efforts to strike an EU-wide deal to share
responsibility for processing asylum claims and resettling refugees have
gone nowhere. Nor does Turkey appear to be abiding by a November deal under
which it was supposed to stanch the refugee flows in exchange for billions
of euros.
Instead, those refugees are making their own plans
once they reach Europe. Sweden, with its generous welfare state, now has the
highest concentration of asylum-seekers relative to its population.
Stockholm has been trying to close off every route by which migrants find
their way northward.
Denmark joins Finland and Norway in clamping down
on its own border to avoid getting stuck with the thousands of
asylum-seekers Sweden won’t accept. In the meantime, border controls are
still in place between Germany and Austria, and the Austrians have put up a
fence along their border with Slovenia.
There’s a political warning here. Voters who
otherwise appreciate Europe’s borderless travel within the so-called
Schengen Zone will demand controls when their governments cannot manage mass
migration or guarantee law and order. Brussels has still done little to
impose tightened passport checks for EU nationals returning from places like
Syria, and Europe’s external-borders agency Frontex remains chronically
underfunded.
Mrs. Merkel may have finally realized the political
danger her ill-judged asylum policy has put her in, particularly as
allegations of sexual assaults perpetrated by immigrants in Cologne raise
questions about whether authorities can maintain basic law and order amid
the mass influx. “[T]he Schengen system can only work if there is joint
responsibility for taking in refugees and joint responsibility for
protecting the external borders,” she said Thursday.
The real issue for Mrs. Merkel and other EU leaders
isn’t where the refugees go once they are in Europe. It’s whether Europe can
manage its wider borders while doing more to bring order to the political
chaos from Libya to Afghanistan that is driving these refugees toward
Europe’s beckoning shore. A borderless Europe is still a dream worth
having—so long as Europe’s leaders are willing to do the hard work to keep
it from descending into a nightmare.
Continued in article
Food Politics ---
http://www.foodpolitics.com/
How States Fare in Their Financial Support of Public Higher
Ed
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/07/how-states-fare-their-support-public-higher-ed?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197565045
Jensen Comment
The graph of "grades" given to the 50 states (by a "left leaning liberal
advocacy group") in terms of support of public higher education really surprised
me in some instances. For example, I always assumed that the heartland (think
Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota) of the USA would get good grades since
traditionally those states do relatively quite well on K-12 financial support
and performance measures of higher education. Except for North Dakota the higher
education public support of education is low in the heartland states according
to these liberally-biased biased graders. Similarly, I thought liberal blue
states like Vermont, Maine, Oregon, Hawaii, and Massachusetts would get high
marks. Instead they have low marks. And the conservative red states of Wyoming,
Oklahoma, and Texas have much higher grades than I would have predicted. Go
figure!
IRS Scandal Day 979
The case against the IRS for targeting
conservatives isn’t over after all. On Tuesday a federal judge in Ohio
certified a class-action lawsuit against the IRS by conservative groups
whose applications for tax-exempt status were slow-rolled between 2010 and
2013
Continued in article
"Supreme Court Rejects Student Loan
Bankruptcy Case," Inside Higher Ed, January 12, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/12/supreme-court-rejects-student-loan-bankruptcy-case?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=cf4c931911-DNU20160112&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-cf4c931911-197565045
The U.S. Supreme Court on
Monday declined to hear a case on whether people declaring bankruptcy should
have an easier time erasing student loan debt in the process,
The Wall Street Journal
reported. The case was brought by a Wisconsin man with
more than $260,000 in student loan debt from business and law school. He
twice failed the bar exam. The man argues that lower courts should have
allowed him to discharge his debt through bankruptcy. Generally, federal
courts have made it difficult to do so, although a few courts have been more
lenient.
Question
I have a granddaughter working as a pharmacist in Boston. Loan repayment is
taking an enormous bite out of her every paycheck. She's miscalculated by
thinking that by now there would be a way for her to not have to repay her
student loans for years to come. She would declare bankruptcy in a Boston minute
if she had that choice.
What's wrong with the idea of letting students with more debts than assets
declare bankruptcy like nearly all other citizens are entitled to do when their
debts overwhelm their assets.
Answer
First and foremost student load bankruptcy leads to game playing where students
borrow more than is really necessary in anticipation that they will never have
to replay their loans. This, in turn, can lead to complete
ruination of the student loan programs.
Parents will view student
bankruptcy as an opportunity to not have to sacrifice their own wealth for
educating their children.
Maybe Bernie Sanders will be
elected and taxpayers will be forced to provide a free education to any USA
citizen who requests a free education. But funding for this will have to be
legislated like all other government funding programs.
Free college education for
anybody who wants it should not bypass the legislative process with bankruptcy
game playing.
Sure there can be game playing
with bankruptcy for non-student loans. But this has not ruined the financing of
consumers and businesses. Bankruptcy can ruin student loan programs unless the
government picks up the losses in a way that is legislated by due process.
How States Fare in Their Financial Support of Public Higher
Ed
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/07/how-states-fare-their-support-public-higher-ed?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197565045
"Clinton, Sanders Debate College Plans," Inside Higher Ed,
December 54, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/12/21/clinton-sanders-debate-college-plans?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=162e714d50-DNU20151221&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-162e714d50-197565045
OECD Study Published in 2014: List of
countries by 25- to 34-year-olds having a tertiary education degree ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_25-_to_34-year-olds_having_a_tertiary_education_degree
Jensen Comment
Note that nations having free college and other tertiary education and training
programs such as Germany and Finland control costs by having severe rationing of
admissions into Tier 3 from Tier 2 (what in the USA is called high school).
Nations having the highest proportion graduates from Tier 3 do not offer free
education and training programs, contrary to what Bernie Sanders would like us
to think while he campaigns of for free college education in the USA for anybody
who wants to go to college.
I mistakenly thought all Scandinavian countries
had free tertiary education, but subsequently it was pointed out to me that
Sweden does not have free tertiary education like its Nordic counterparts.
The point is that nations having no price
barriers to tertiary education at the Tier 3 level control taxpayer cost via
severe rationing via admission barriers.
20 award-winning editorial cartoons from 2015 everyone should
see ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/pulitzer-editorial-cartoons-everyone-should-see-2015-12
Jensen Comment
They had me in mind with the data mining cartoon.
"Our 47 Weirdest Charts From 2015," by Andrei Scheinkman,
Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, December 31, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-47-weirdest-charts-from-2015/
"New Treasury Data Shows How Progressive America's Tax Code Really Is,"
by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, January 5, 2016 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/01/new-treasury-data-shows-how-progressive-americas-tax-code-really-is.html
Recent data produced by Treasury’s Office of Tax
Analysis shows that not only is the income tax very progressive, but so too
is the overall tax system when we include payroll taxes, corporate income
taxes, and various excise taxes.
Treasury’s data for 2015 [found here] allows us to
look at two simple ways of measuring the progressivity of the tax code: the
share of the total tax burden borne by families at each level of income;
and, the average tax rates paid by families at each level of income.
The Treasury data is comprehensive, in that it
includes all roughly 167 million families (rather than just the 145 million
income tax filers) and it uses a broader “cash” measure of income that
includes government transfers in addition to wages, salaries, and investment
income. Treasury divides the population into deciles, or ten equal groups of
16.7 million families.
Continued in article
"Electric car subsidies are hated by economists, loved by
activists. Why?" by David Roberts, Vox, December 31, 2015 ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/31/10695486/electric-cars-economists
Jensen Comment
The main argument in the above article is that the benefits of electric car
subsidies are overblown and in reality are well below the societal cost of such
subsidies. In most instances they are welfare to the wealthy who are not really
deserving of such welfare.
To these complaints we might add that there are subsidies other
than electric car purchase price rebates that have become an irritant to other
other car owners. For example, in nearly all states electric car owners pay
nothing toward road building and road maintenance. It makes them free loaders on
the drivers who must pay for the roads. The subsidies encourage commuters
to avoid public transportation like rail and bus service into cities, thereby
clogging overcrowded highways and parking garages.
Since the range is so limited families have added one or more
electric cars to the fleet rather than just replace gas guzzlers with electric
cars.
The need for lithium and other rare-earth metals makes the USA
more strategically vulnerable to "extortion" by nations who have the raw
material and low labor costs needed for mining, especially China.
There are, of course, long term hopes. We hope that increased
used of electric cars will improve technology, performance, and efficiency much
like increased use of propeller aircraft contributed to the development of
amazing and increasingly efficient jet aircraft. But at the same time such
improvements led to the demise of alternative transportation such as passenger
rail service that we now wish we still had in the USA.
How to Mislead With Statistics
"The 50 Colleges Where Students Work the Hardest," by Emmie Martin,
Business Insider, December 29, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-with-the-hardest-working-students-2015-12
Jensen Comment
This article really does not provide evidence that students work harder at these
50 colleges and universities relative to other universities.
The list includes 50 top universities with a bend toward private
universities such as Ivy League-type universities and expensive liberal arts
colleges like Swarthmore. If Ms. Martin had said that the students are suspected
of working hard because they were admitted to these colleges that mostly are
very hard to get into I might be inclined to agree that they had a great work
ethic before being admitted. But this does not mean that they work harder if
getting A grades is relatively easy after being admitted. In fact I would
hypothesize that students going to other top universities who were not able to
get into the 50 colleges above worked harder to prove themselves in college.
However, it's not clear that these students work as hard as the
students in these colleges work as hard today as the students in these same
universities worked 60 years ago when there was much, much greater competition
for grades. Grade inflation in most of these universities (I think virtually
all) is the most pronounced among all universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
If the median grade in most courses is A- these days students do not have to
work as hard for top grades as years ago when these courses in these same
universities had median grades of C.
To my knowledge Princeton University is the only university in
the above list that made a concerted effort to limit the number of A grades
given in most courses. However, after Harvard tried to lure applicants to
Princeton away, with promises of easier A grades at Harvard, Princeton dropped
its effort to limit the percentage of A grades in courses.
We may think students work harder in prestigious universities
but in a five-year study of publishing over 800,000 course grades at Cornell
University it was discovered that students flocked to instructors who gave the
highest percentage of A grades rather than those who made students work harder
for A grades.
The bottom line is that Emmie Martin in no way convinced
me that students of those 50 grade-inflated universities work the hardest. I
think they may work the least when grades are easier to get such as at Harvard.
Harvard University expelled over 60 students who cheated (plagiarized) each
others' work on an assignment in a political science course where the instructor
promised everybody an A grade if they simply did the assignments and took the
examinations. When assured of an A grade they reasoned that doing the work would
not be worth the effort since doing the work well would not improve their grades
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#NewKindOfCheating
My Hypothesis:
Students do not work the hardest in grade-inflated universities. There are some
exceptions of course. Even pre-med students at the Ivy League students work
their butts off in science courses even when they are assured of getting A
grades, because they know they will one day have to take a very competitive MCAT
admissions test for medical school. The same applies to engineering, accounting,
and other students in majors that have licensing examinations after graduation.
"How North Korea Became the World’s Worst Economy," by
Nicholas Eberstadt, The Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-north-korea-became-the-worlds-worst-economy-1451430114?mod=djemMER
. . .
North Korea appears to have the very worst business
climate of any fully functioning nation state. On the 2010 Index of Economic
Freedom compiled by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, the
DPRK earned one point out of 100, the lowest score of all 179 countries
ranked. Zimbabwe, the state with the second-worst ranking that year, came in
20 points higher.
The DPRK has no rule of law; no established
property rights; no possibility for private foreign trade; no reliable
currency; virtually no official social and economic information; and no
internal constraints whatever upon its monumentally ambitious government.
It is difficult to overstate how much this matters.
At any point in the postwar era, 80% or more of the differences between
countries in per capita GDP can be predicted by human resources plus
business climate (i.e., institutions and policies). Statistical analysis of
North Korean trade underscores the point. In 2010 the DPRK’s global trade
was only 1/20th of what we would expect for a country with its estimated
human resources profile. However, when business climate is considered, North
Korea no longer looks like an outlier at all.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
It's scary that North Korea will eventually be sustaining itself with exports of
WMDs or extortion threats of exporting WMDs to terrorist nations. Much depends
on the willingness of China to limit these exports since China seems to be the
only nation with leverage on North Korea.
"More Flawed Partisan Analysis by Paul Krugman," by
Daniel J. Mitchell, Townhall, December 30, 2015 ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2015/12/30/more-flawed-partisan-analysis-from-paul-krugman-n2098054?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
When I get my
daily email from the editorial page of the New
York Times, I scroll through to see whether there’s anything on
economic issues I should read.
As a general rule, I skip over Paul Krugman’s
writings because he’s both predictable and partisan. But every so often, his
column will grab my attention, usually because the headline will include an
assertion that doesn’t make sense.
The bad news is that this is usually a waste of
time since most of his columns are ideological rants. But the good news is
that I periodically catch Krugman making grotesque errors when he engages in
actual analysis. Here are a few examples:
- Earlier this year, Krugman asserted that
America was outperforming Europe because our fiscal policy was more
Keynesian, yet
the data showed that the United States had
bigger spending reductions and less red ink.
- Last year, he asserted that a supposed
“California comeback” in jobs
somehow proved my analysis of a tax hike was wrong,
yet only four states at the time had a higher
unemployment rate than California.
- And here’s my favorite: In 2012, Krugman
engaged in the
policy version of time travel by blaming
Estonia’s 2008 recession on spending cuts that took place in 2009.
And if you enjoyed those examples, you can find
more of the same by clicking
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.
But perhaps he’s (sort of) learning from his
mistakes. Today, we’re going to look at Paul Krugman’s latest numbers and
I’ll be the first to say that they appear to be accurate.
Continued in article
Tax-Deductible Corporate Settlements Have Cost the U.S.
Billions in Tax Revenue ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/dealbook/tax-deductions-blunt-impact-of-large-corporate-settlements-report-says.html?_r=0
Clinton and Sanders and MSNBC Will Likely Ignore This Revised
Academic Study of Inequality
'What top researchers discovered when they re-ran the numbers on income
inequality," by Jim Tankersley, The Washington Post, January 6, 2016
---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/06/what-top-researchers-discovered-when-they-re-ran-the-numbers-of-income-inequality/
The world's most famous inequality researchers
unveiled a new way of adding up the growing gap between the super-rich and
everyone else on Tuesday.
The findings by economists Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel
Zucman and Thomas Piketty, which are preliminary, were hotly anticipated
ever since the American Economic Association conference posted a
one-paragraph summary of their results ahead of the event in San Francisco.
"In contrast to survey and individual tax data, we find substantial increase
in average real pre-tax incomes for the bottom 90% since the 1970s," one
line in the preview said, potentially suggesting that concerns about a
stagnant middle had been overblown.
That summary was greeted with cheers by some
conservatives that proof that Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton, have
been wrong to focus on income inequality and middle-class wage stagnation so
much.
On Tuesday, the economists said they analyzed
inequality trends using a new combination of tax, survey and national
accounts data, which the economists say more accurately captures income
levels across the population over time. By their analysis, the bottom 90
percent appears to have done better since the late 1970s than previously
estimated — but not much better. You can see the trend in the following
slide from their presentation.
Continued in article
From a Global Perspective
Here Are the Best- and Worst-Performing Assets of 2015 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-31/here-are-the-best-and-worst-performing-assets-of-2015
Jensen Comment
Just goes to show that the best and worst performers are the riskiest
Really rich people are suddenly paying quite a bit more in
taxes ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/30/really-rich-people-are-suddenly-paying-quite-a-bit-more-in-taxes/
"Bespoke Tranche Opportunity: It’s déjà vu all over again;
Investment Firms Create the Next Risky Financial Product à la Collateral Debt
Obligations," by Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, December 28, 2015 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2015/12/bespoke-tranche-opportunity-its-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu-all-over-again.html
We’ve been there before. The movie “The Big Short”
explains how and why the financial services industry helped to bring down
our economy during 2007-2008. Banks took home mortgage loans that were made
based on shaky credit and pooled them into a basket of mortgage-backed
securities (MBS) that were backed by the homes. These were sold to
unsuspecting investors including other financial institutions (think Lehman
Brothers) that wanted to receive a steady stream of cash flows from mortgage
payments. Little did they know the underlying assets were all-too-often
worthless because they were based on subprime loans. So the investors hedged
their bets by finding a sucker to buy off the MBS through a collateralized
debt obligation (CDO). Now, as the movie portrays, these investors grew
nervous as some prognosticators preached doom and gloom causing the
investors to approach other financial institutions (think AIG) to hedge
their risk by betting against the very instruments they bought by acquiring
credit default swaps (CDS). Confused! Go see the movie it cleverly explains
the process.
That was in the early 2000s as the stock market was
booming and financial institutions became greedy wanting higher and higher
returns on their investments even if it meant purchasing risky investments.
Of course, some weren’t aware of the risk and some figured another financial
institution would bail them out, as did JPMorgan Chase that bought out the
failing Bear Stearns. Lehman wasn’t as lucky as the government drew a line
in the sand as more and more financial institutions teetered on the edge of
disaster.
Well, as the great Yogi Berra said: “It’s déjà vu
all over again.” Along comes the “bespoke tranche opportunity”, which allows
investors to place wagers on the outcome of various loans, bonds, and
securities in which they are not directly invested. “The “bespoke” version
flips that CDO business dynamic around. An investor tells a bank what
specific mixture of derivatives bets it wants to make, and the bank builds a
customized product with just one tranche that meets the investor’s needs.
Bespoke CDOs are a relatively new instrument in the
financial world. They allow investors to target very specific risk/return
profiles for their investment strategies or hedging requirements. In
reality, the arranger demands a good deal of input into the selection of the
reference portfolio. Most investment managers control their risks by buying
and selling protection on a single-name CDS or by linking losses to a
corporate credit index like the CDX or iTraxx; therefore, they usually avoid
taking positions in CDSs that cannot readily be traded.
A logical question is why would investment managers
tread lightly in an area similar to one that has burned them before? The
answer is that interest rates have been kept low by the Federal Reserve so
investment banks are becoming impatient with not being able to make what
they deem to be enough profit off corporate and Treasury bonds, and
therefore have started playing in the “financially structured product” game.
Continued in article
20 biggest tax-dollar boondoggles in the US ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/20-biggest-tax-dollar-boondoggles-in-the-us/ss-BBnh9hH?ocid=spartanntp
Jensen Comment
You can take housing projects out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto
(read that crime) out of the housing projects.
Dysfunctional Subsidies
"The Corn-Fed Albatross Called Ethanol," by Merrill Mathews, The Wall
Street Journal, January 6, 2016 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-corn-fed-albatross-called-ethanol-1452039974?mod=djemMER
The renewable fuel has cost drivers an extra $83
billion to fill their tanks since 2007, and it does little or no good for
the climate.
In the past two presidential-primary seasons,
candidates crisscrossing Iowa before the caucuses would pay obeisance to
corn ethanol and its compulsory use in gasoline. Yet in the current
campaign, Sen. Ted Cruz reliably sits atop the Iowa polls even though he
scoffs at the Renewable Fuel Standard passed by Congress in 2005 and
expanded in 2007.
Maybe even Iowans are having second thoughts about
a law that has been a boon to corn growers but hardly anyone else. Before
long, it may be politically safe to take a wise step and eliminate the
Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). This would immediately and dramatically
increase the demand for oil, help stabilize energy markets, boost the
economy—and likely reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
The RFS requires gasoline to contain a specified
level of ethanol—renewable biofuels mostly from corn, but increasingly from
other plant and animal substances. The law also requires the Environmental
Protection Agency to periodically increase the amount of ethanol that must
be used. But raising the amount of ethanol in gasoline past 10% could harm
millions of car engines.
The EPA recently decided to increase the total
amount of ethanol used from 11.62 billion gallons in 2014 to 18.11 billion
gallons for 2016—a decision that made few people happy.
Ethanol producers are angry that the EPA succumbed
to economic reality by not raising the requirement as high as they expected.
But many environmentalists aren’t happy either, having come to realize that
ethanol is an environmental problem, not a solution.
When the RFS was enacted, lawmakers believed that
adding ethanol to the national gasoline supply would reduce reliance on oil
imports. Today, ethanol’s downsides have become clear.
First, it increases the cost of driving. Current
ethanol blends provide fewer miles per gallon, so drivers pay more to travel
the same distance. According to the Institute for Energy Research, American
drivers have paid an additional $83 billion since 2007 because of the RFS.
Second, ethanol adds more carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere than it eliminates by replacing fossil fuels. The Environmental
Working Group says that “corn ethanol is an environmental disaster.” The
group explains: “The mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline has driven
farmers to plow up land to plant corn—40 percent of the corn now grown in
the U.S. is used to make ethanol. When farmers plow up grasslands and
wetlands to grow corn, they release the carbon stored in the soil,
contributing to climate-warming carbon emissions.” And then there is the
carbon emitted in harvesting, transporting and processing the corn into
ethanol.
The Congressional Budget Office notes that
“available evidence suggests that replacing gasoline with corn ethanol has
only limited potential for reducing emissions (and some studies indicate
that it could increase emissions).”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Years later environmentalist Al Gore admitted that his activism for ethanol was
driven by the need for the farm vote in the Midwest rather than his climate
change agenda. It takes more energy to produce corn ethanol than the energy
provided by corn ethanol. It's a bit like the benefit/cost ratio of sustaining a
900-lb obese man.
"Three Gems In That Horrible Spending Bill Passed By Republican Congress,"
by Steve Forbes, Forbes, January 4, 2016 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2016/01/04/three-gems-in-that-horrible-spending-bill-passed-by-republican-congress/
HOUSE SPEAKER Paul Ryan and other Republican
congressional leaders are being pilloried by GOP activists for pushing
through a $1.15 trillion spending bill laden with pork and a bewildering
array of tax credits (including one for plug-in motorcycles). This junks up
an already mind-numbingly complex tax code even more. “This is what we get
from a Republican-controlled Congress?” they angrily ask.
Alas, with Barack Obama still in the White House, a
divided GOP in the House (which gave Democrats bargaining leverage, since
their votes were needed for passage) and the specter of a government
shutdown if no bill was passed (a fight the GOP wouldn’t win in the court of
public opinion, given the fact that Congress is far more unpopular than the
President), an ugly piece of legislation was unavoidable.
However, there are three gems in this legislative
garbage dump.
One has been widely covered: Removing the
four-decades-old ban on oil exports, a relic from an era when it was thought
we were running out of the stuff because the price was going up so much. The
rapid rise in petroleum prices wasn’t a result of the Arab oil
embargo–imposed because we supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War–or of
a looming oil shortage. It was a result of the weak dollar. We saw the same
phenomenon in the early 2000s, when a weak greenback sent the price of oil
from around $25 a barrel to over $100. Repealing this prohibition will help
our beleaguered producers land new markets.
The second gem concerns the horrors of ObamaCare.
The ban on subsidies for insurance companies that lose money on policies
sold on the ObamaCare exchanges has been extended. The start date for the
Cadillac tax on “overly rich” health insurance plans has been postponed
until 2020, and the medical device tax has been suspended for two years.
These are a nice start to dismantling this monstrosity and replacing it with
a system under which patients are truly in charge, not third-party
payers–government, employers and insurers.
The final gem is one that would appeal to
theologians who debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Making certain tax credits permanent, such as those for research and
development, will enable more sweeping tax cuts and tax code simplification
in 2017. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “Under Congress’s bizarre budget
rules, reducing the tax base now will make it easier for Congress to cut tax
rates more deeply … in 2017 …. About $560 billion in ‘extenders’ that expire
on paper will be baked into the budget baseline and so won’t require
offsetting ‘pay-fors’ to finance lower tax rates. Mr. Ryan is thinking
ahead.”
Continued in article
Political Correctness: Some Things Just Are Not Mentioned
on MSNBC of The New York Times
Black Serial Killer: Why the Media Indifference?
http://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2016/01/07/black-serial-killer-why-the-media-indifference-n2100729?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Nevada’s reversal of net metering fees for solar owners
marks a dramatic turn in the fight over solar policies.
"Battles Over Net Metering Cloud the Future of Rooftop Solar," by Richard
Martin, MIT's Technology Review, January 5, 2016 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545146/battles-over-net-metering-cloud-the-future-of-rooftop-solar/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160105
"Can Civility in Society Be Regained? Causes of the the
Decline of Civility in America," by Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, January 12,
2016 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2016/01/can-civility-in-society-be-regained.html
Jensen Comment
Having 21st Century politicians as role models and political correctness
squabbles are not good for recovery of civility.
How to mislead with statistics
An MBA is Eventually Worth $22,000 More (6-8 years out) if You're White
or Asian: Is this really the case? ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-07/business-school-is-worth-22-000-more-if-you-re-white-or-asian?cmpid=BBWGP011316_BIZ
For most people, going to business school leads to
bigger and bigger paychecks. But you are likely to get the most out of the
degree if you are a white or Asian man, Bloomberg data show.
Black, Hispanic, and American Indian MBAs who got
their degree six to eight years ago earned exactly as much as their white
and Asian peers right after leaving school, according to a Bloomberg survey
of 12,700 alumni at more than 100 business schools. In the survey, conducted
as part of our annual ranking of full-time MBA programs, both groups said
they made a median $105,000 when they graduated.
But by 2015, MBAs who were underrepresented
minorities—meaning black, Hispanic, or American Indian—earned $150,000,
while white and Asian MBAs made $172,000. Whites and Asians accounted for
about 89 percent of alumni in the survey. Underrepresented groups made up 11
percent.
Female MBAs made less money than the men they
graduated business school with, but women of color were at a particularly
stark disadvantage. Six to eight years after leaving business school, black,
Hispanic, and American India women earned a median $132,250. White and Asian
men earned $181,000—a pay gap of nearly $49,000. Men from underrepresented
minorities earned $163,500—less than white and Asian men but more than white
women, who took home $150,000.
Jensen Comment
A good exercise for your students would be to find underlying factors where the
difference in average incomes are possibly explained by things other than race
and ethnicity per se. For example, .both means and medians are affected by
outliers when the outliers for income are zero or nearly zero.
For example, it is well known that women tend to drop out of the
job market more than men when they have babies. The lower averages for women can
possibly be explained for the mommy zero-imcome phenomenon rather than race per
se. This is complicated when the proportions of gender differences differ by
race such as when more female African Americans have MBA degrees compare to
their male counterparts.
There are so few American Indian MBA alumni I tend to distrust
any outcomes for this subset of the sampling population.
There can also be geographic confounding variables. For example,
the Asian population in the USA is more in big cities and in western cities.
Hispanics are more concentrated in the south. To what extent do geographic
differences in salaries earnings complicate the racist conclusions of this
study?
Canadians Are Going Loonie on Social Media About Skyrocketing
Grocery Bills ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-13/canadians-are-going-loonie-on-social-media-about-skyrocketing-grocery-bills?cmpid=BBD011316_BIZ
Finding and Using Health Statistics ---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/usestats/index.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics and databases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
Tens of Thousands of Physicians in the U.K. Went on Strike Over Pay and
Working Conditions ---
http://qz.com/592154/tens-of-thousands-of-doctors-are-going-on-strike-in-england-today/
No Free Lunch
"ObamaCare’s $1,200 Pay Cut: The cost of insuring everybody's
26-year-olds is more than you thought," The Wall Street Journal,
January 26, 2016 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamacares-1-200-pay-cut-1452643649?mod=djemMER
. . .
Among the law’s few popular features, even among
Republicans, is the mandate to cover adult children through age 26 on the
insurance plans of their parents. This benediction is sold as a gratuity,
but somebody must ultimately pay, and new research suggests the hidden
costs—in the form of lower take-home pay—are far higher than advertised.
In a working paper, Gopi Shah Goda and Jay
Bhattacharya of Stanford and Monica Farid of Harvard exploit the fact that
some 37 states had extended dependent-coverage mandates of varying rigor and
comprehensiveness before the Affordable Care Act. They explore these
differences to estimate the results of the uniform national mandate that was
imposed in 2010.
“We find evidence that employees who were most
affected by the mandate, namely employees at large firms, saw wage
reductions of approximately $1,200 per year,” the researchers observe. As a
wave of young adults hit the employer-based insurance rolls, the cost of
coverage inevitably climbed and businesses were obliged to dial back cash
wages as a share of overall compensation to accommodate the influx. Large
businesses were a particular casualty because before ObamaCare they were
largely exempt from state-level mandates.
The study also found that the costs of the
adult-kid mandate weren’t “only borne by parents of eligible children or
parents more generally.” They’re spread over all workers including other
young people, the childless and late middle-aged.
No study is definitive, though the authors are
careful about their methods and assumptions. The eternal lessons are that no
alleged government benefit is free and people should be allowed to make the
trade-offs for themselves. Another is that the next President has plenty of
running room to improve the American economy, if he cares to make better
decisions.
Choosing to Go Without Medical Insurance Under 2016 Obamacare
"Many See I.R.S. Fines as More Affordable Than Insurance," by Abby
Goodnough, The New York Times, January 3, 2015 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/us/many-see-irs-fines-as-more-affordable-than-insurance.html
Clint Murphy let the deadline for getting health insurance by the new year
pass without a second thought.
Mr. Murphy, an engineer in Sulphur Springs, Tex.,
estimates that under the
Affordable Care Act,
he will face a fine of $1,800 for going uninsured in 2016. But in his view,
paying that penalty is worth it if he can avoid buying an insurance policy
that costs $2,900 or more. All he has to do is stay healthy.
“I
don’t see the logic behind that, and I’m just not going to do it,” said Mr.
Murphy, 45, who became uninsured in April after leaving a job with health
benefits to pursue contract work. “The fine is still going to be cheaper.”
Two
years after the Affordable Care Act began requiring most Americans to have
health insurance, 10.5 million who are eligible to buy coverage through the
law’s new insurance exchanges were still uninsured this fall, according to
the Obama administration.
That number appears to be shrinking: Administration
officials said last month that about 2.5 million new customers had bought
insurance through
HealthCare.gov,
the federal exchange serving 38 states, since open enrollment began on Nov.
1. The number of new enrollees is 29 percent higher than last year at this
time, suggesting that the threat of a larger penalty may be motivating more
people to get covered.
Continued in
article
Jensen Comment
Emergency room is free to low income people, and insurance companies now cannot
refuse applicants for pre-existing conditions. This means that if expensive
medical problems when not covered by insurance arise people can quickly sign up
for health insurance to pay future billings after the pre-existing condition is
discovered.
Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on January 5, 2016
“Cadillac” tax delay gives CFOs breathing room
December’s omnibus budget package contained a measure
to delay a provision of the Affordable Care Act by two years is giving
finance chiefs some extra time to prepare, CFO Journal’s Maxwell Murphy
reports. The tax on high-cost employee health plans puts employers on the
hook for a 40% levy on any excess cost of health plans above certain
thresholds.
Choosing to Go Without Medical Insurance Under 2016 Obamacare
"Many See I.R.S. Fines as More Affordable Than Insurance," by Abby
Goodnough, The New York Times, January 3, 2015 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/us/many-see-irs-fines-as-more-affordable-than-insurance.html
Clint Murphy let the deadline for getting health insurance by the new year
pass without a second thought.
Mr. Murphy, an engineer in Sulphur Springs, Tex.,
estimates that under the
Affordable Care Act,
he will face a fine of $1,800 for going uninsured in 2016. But in his view,
paying that penalty is worth it if he can avoid buying an insurance policy
that costs $2,900 or more. All he has to do is stay healthy.
“I
don’t see the logic behind that, and I’m just not going to do it,” said Mr.
Murphy, 45, who became uninsured in April after leaving a job with health
benefits to pursue contract work. “The fine is still going to be cheaper.”
Two
years after the Affordable Care Act began requiring most Americans to have
health insurance, 10.5 million who are eligible to buy coverage through the
law’s new insurance exchanges were still uninsured this fall, according to
the Obama administration.
That number appears to be shrinking: Administration
officials said last month that about 2.5 million new customers had bought
insurance through
HealthCare.gov,
the federal exchange serving 38 states, since open enrollment began on Nov.
1. The number of new enrollees is 29 percent higher than last year at this
time, suggesting that the threat of a larger penalty may be motivating more
people to get covered.
Continued in
article
Jensen Comment
Emergency room is free to low income people, and insurance companies now cannot
refuse applicants for pre-existing conditions. This means that if expensive
medical problems when not covered by insurance arise people can quickly sign up
for health insurance to pay future billings after the pre-existing condition is
discovered.
Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Reflections on Medicare at 50: Breaking the Chains of Path Dependency for
a New Era
SSRN, July 1, 2018
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2705030
Author
Richard L. Kaplan, University of Illinois College of Law
Abstract:
On the occasion of Medicare’s 50th anniversary,
this Article examines the evolution of this essential program from its
enactment in 1965 through implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Persons
who are, or soon will be, newly enrolled in Medicare may be especially
interested in the first part of this Article, which addresses the coverages,
exclusions, and costs of Medicare’s constituent parts and concludes (on pp.
20-21) with seven critical questions that every new beneficiary must
consider before enrolling. The Article then proffers policy recommendations
to better align Medicare with current models of health insurance and provide
more appropriate coverage of long-term care expenses.
Why Medical Malpractice Insurance is Expensive in the USA and is Possibly
Going to Explode
"A judge ruled the parents of a disabled child can file a 'wrongful birth'
lawsuit," by Megan Hamilton, Business Insider, January 9, 2016 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/parents-win-wrongful-birth-lawsuit-2016-1
An Appeals court in Oregon has ruled
that the parents of a boy with
muscular dystrophy can move forward
with an $11 million "wrongful birth"
lawsuit.
The
"wrongful birth"
suit claims
the parents would not have conceived
their son if doctors had warned them
about the genetic risks,
OregonLive
reports.
The
parents, Kerry and Scott Tomlinson,
allege that their pediatrician and
staff at Legacy Emanuel Medical
Center were negligent, having failed
to recognize and tell them about the
early signs that their oldest son
suffered from Duchenne muscular
dystrophy.
The Mayo Clinic
says muscular
dystrophy is a group of diseases
that cause loss of muscle mass and
progressive weakness. In this
disorder, abnormal genes interfere
with proteins that are necessary for
the formation of healthy muscles.
A quick look at Duchenne
muscular dystrophy
Around half of all people with
muscular dystrophy have this form.
Girls can be carriers and may be
mildly affected, but the disease
usually affects boys, the
Mayo Clinic
reports.
. . .
Last week, the appeals court agreed
with this, saying the Tomlinsons
could pursue the suit, but dismissed
the $12 million that had been
sought, on the grounds that
"according to defendants, Teddy
alleged that he has been damaged by
the fact of his existence.
Significantly, defendants asserted
that 'life' has not been recognized
in Oregon as a compensable harm."
The law does allow plaintiffs to sue
doctors for damages suffered — and
that's even if the plaintiffs
weren't directly patients of the
doctors, and the appeals court ruled
that as parents, the Tomlinsons
claim was legitimate, OregonLive
reports.
Manny is now 12, and Teddy is seven.
Jensen Comment
My question is whether "damages" can include punative damages --- those damages
that make lawyers hang around hospitals and medical clinics.
Of course this lawsuit has a simple solution for the future --- warn every
parent of all the possible genetic risks of becoming a parent in the first
place.
Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/