Tidbits
Political Quotations
To Accompany the May 29, 2019 edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/Tidbits052919.htm
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University
My Latest Web Document
Over 400 Examples of Critical Thinking and Illustrations of How to Mislead With
Statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
Animated Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth
Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010) ---
A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years
(1790 – 2010)
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/
In September 2017 the USA National Debt exceeded $22 trillion for the first time
---
http://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/national-debt-surpasses-20-trillion-for-the-first-time-in-us-history
Human Population Over Time on Earth ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE
While a
move is underway to destroy the American Dream of rags to riches (by taxing away
the riches) the Chinese dream is on the rise.
The Chinese Dream
How a Chinese billionaire went from making $16 a month in a factory to being one
of the world's richest self-made women with an $8.3 billion real-estate empire
---
https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-richest-self-made-woman-wu-yajun-net-worth-2019-2
Top 50 Billionaires in China ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_by_net_worth
Jensen
Comment
The question for students to debate is why a supposed
communist country allows so many billionaires to rise up from poverty.
That's supposed to happen in the USA where a child growing up in deep
poverty (think Oprah Winfrey or Howard Shultz) became a multi-billionaires.
But is it also supposed to happen under communism? If
so, why?
One reason is that many billionaires can afford to pour lots of money into high risk ventures. When's the last time you heard about a high risk (think Silicon Valley) venture in Europe?
Wikiquote from Wikipedia --- https://www.wikiquote.org/
History will prove former President Donald
Trump was correct about Mexico one day funding an impenetrable wall --- to keep
out over 2 billion starving green immigrants seeking to enter Mexico from the
north.
Bob Jensen
The Young
Left’s Anti-Capitalist Manifesto: Its goal is to remake our economic system —
and the Democratic Party ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-young-lefts-anti-capitalist-manifesto/
I have a complaint about America today, and it
is simple: we don’t love business enough ---
Tyler Cowen
https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2019/Klingbigbusiness.html
"In
Praise of Cheap Labor," by Paul Krugman,
Slate, March 21, 1997 ---
https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor.html
Corruption in general has a deleterious effect
on the readiness of economic agents to invest. In the long run, it leads to a
paralysis of economic life. But very often it is not that economic agents
themselves have had the bad experience of being cheated and ruined, they just
know that in this country, or in this part of the economy, or this building
scene, there is a high likelihood that you will get cheated and that free riders
can get away with it. Here again, reputation is absolutely essential, which is
why transparency is so important. Trust can only be engendered by transparency.
It's no coincidence that the name of the most influential non-governmental
organization dealing with corruption is Transparency International.
A Conversation with Karl Sigmund: When Rule of Law is
Not Working
https://www.edge.org/conversation/karl_sigmund-when-the-rule-of-law-is-not-working
Mortgage Backed Securities are like boxes
of chocolates. Criminals on Wall Street and one particular U.S. Congressional
Committee stole a few chocolates from the boxes and replaced them with turds.
Their criminal buddies at Standard & Poors rated these boxes AAA Investment Grade
chocolates. These boxes were then sold all over the world to investors.
Eventually somebody bites into a turd and discovers the crime. Suddenly nobody
trusts American chocolates anymore worldwide. Hank Paulson now wants the
American taxpayers to buy up and hold all these boxes of turd-infested
chocolates for $700 billion dollars until the market for turds returns to
normal. Meanwhile, Hank's buddies, the Wall Street criminals who stole all the
good chocolates are not being investigated, arrested, or indicted. Momma always
said: '"Sniff the chocolates first Forrest." Things generally don't pass the
smell test if they came from Wall Street or from Washington DC.
Forrest Gump as quoted at
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.sport.tennis/2008-10/msg02206.html
It is not that machines are going to replace
chemists. It’s that the chemists who use machines will replace those that don’t
---
Derek Lowe
Gallup: Americans Say No. 1 Problem is
'Government,' No. 2 is 'Immigration' ---
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/survey-americas-no-1-problem-government-no-2-problem-immigration
"If you open the borders, my God, there's a
lot of poverty in this world, and you're going to have people from all over the
world. And I don't think that's something that we can do at this point."
Bernie Sanders
https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-says-he-does-not-support-open-borders-2019-4
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on ad infinitum ---
Augustus De Morgan
Prior to 1980 what was unique about the year of his birth in 1871?
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/De_Morgan.html
12 inspiring quotes from Martin Luther King
Jr.---
https://www.businessinsider.com/inspiring-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-2017-1
21 oustanding Warren Buffet quotations ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-21-best-quotes-2019-2
The Atlantic: The Swiftly Closing
Borders of Europe ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/12/europe-france-italy-immigration-border/578179/
Italian Minister tells NGO Italy doesn’t want migrants: “Our ports are closed!”
---
https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/12/italian-minister-tells-ngo-italy-doesnt-want-migrants-our-ports-are-closed/#.XB6WCZMs_Xo.twitter
The
enemy is fear
We think it's hate
But, it's fear
Gandhi
13 of the (alleged) most famous last words in
history ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/famous-last-words-in-history-2017-10
21 of Michelle Obama's most inspiring quotes
on work, success, and relationships ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/michelle-obama-most-inspiring-quotes-advice-becoming-2019-1
19 unforgettable quotes from legendary Marine
Gen. Jim 'Mad Dog' Mattis, who quit as Trump's defense secretary ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/general-mattiss-best-quotes-2016-11
Here are the Ten Best Pieces of Advice from
2018 Commencement Speakers ---
Click Here
Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because it's been fertilized
with more bullshit.
Anonomous
The Lucretius Problem is a mental defect where
we assume the worst case event that has happened is the worst case event that
can happen ---
https://www.fs.blog/2015/04/lucretius-problem/
The worst form of inequality is to try to make
unequal things equal.
Aristotle
The Economic Ignorance of Bernie Sanders ---
http://reason.com/archives/2018/08/09/the-economic-ignorance-of-bernie-sanders
Bernie Sanders’ New Campaign Advisor David Sirota Once Touted
Hugo Chavez’s ‘Economic Miracle’ in Venezuela ---
http://reason.com/blog/2019/03/19/bernie-sanders-david-sirota-venezuela
How many times have we heard ‘free
tuition,’ ‘free health care,’ and free you-name-it? If a particular good or
service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the
sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a ‘free’ library; is it really free?
The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have
purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the
library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free
are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something
free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or tooth fairy.
Walter Williams
Every great cause begins as a movement,
becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Eric Hoffer.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal
sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of
miseries.
Winston Churchill
Shoot
for the space in between, because that's where the real mystery lies.
Vera Rubin
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/28/remebering-vera-rubin/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=f053a9c4e2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-f053a9c4e2-234390133
Only those who will risk going
too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot
There is a crack in
everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
In honor of his centennial, the Top 10 Feynman
quotations ---
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/top-10-richard-feynman-quotations
Thomas Sowell (controversial
conservative black economist) ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell
The 30 Best Thomas Sowell Quotes ---
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/the-30-best-thomas-sowell-quotes/
Be brave enough to start a
conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley
Even conversations
that are not politically correct.
That government is best which governs the least,
because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
Why, we grow rusty and you
catch us at the very point of decadence --- by this time tomorrow we may have
forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought isn't it? We'd be back to
where we started --- improvising.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are Dead (Act I)
It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth,
Historic Home Run Hitter
What's sad is to witness what Syria has become because nobody gave up earlier.
And "because they're
nonstate actors, it's hard for us to get the satisfaction of [Gen.] MacArthur
and the [Japanese] Emperor [Hirohito] meeting and the war officially being
over," Obama observed, referencing the end of World War II.
President Barack Obama when
asked if the USA of the future will be perpetually engaged in war.
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-on-americans-being-resigned-to-live-in-a-perpetual-war-2016-7
We must be willing to get rid of the
life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
If everyone is thinking alike, then
somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton
And many writers have imagined for themselves
republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in
reality; for there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live
that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin
rather than his preservation: for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all
times will come to ruin among so many who are not good.
Niccolo Machiavelli
If you don't know where you're going, you might
not get there.
Yogi
Berra
Happiness is like a butterfly: the
more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to
other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Henry David
Thoreau
Today, humanity fabricates 1,000 times more
transistors annually than the entire world grows grains of wheat and rice
combined ---
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2018/12/11/energy_and_the_information_infrastructure_part_3_the_digital_engines_of_innovation_jevons_delicious_paradox_110368.html
I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig.
... You get dirty and besides the pig likes it ---
George Bernard Shaw
You can get a lot farther with a smile and a
gun than you can with just a smile.
Al Capone
21 quotes from self-made billionaires that
will change your outlook on money ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/self-made-billionaire-quotes-that-will-change-your-outlook-on-money-2016-12
The Best Advice from 2018's Celebrity
Commencement Speakers ---
https://moneyish.com/heart/the-best-advice-from-2018s-celebrity-commencement-speakers/
If the end brings me out all right, what is
said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten
angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
Lincoln on How to Handle Criticism ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/03/27/abraham-lincoln-criticism/?mc_cid=855d203b71&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
The Economist: A new kind of left-wing
doctrine is emerging. It is not the answer to capitalism’s problems ---
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/14/millennial-socialism?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/2019/02/14n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/na/202273/n
The Bernie Sanders Paradox: When Socialism Grows
Old ---
https://libcom.org/library/bernie-sanders-paradox-when-socialism-grows-old
Fed up cystic fibrosis patients are threatening
to move out of Britain since the health service won't cover a $272,000 drug ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-26/they-can-t-get-their-meds-so-they-re-moving-to-scotland?cmpid=BBD022619_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=190226&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily
Socialism: A Track Record Of Failure ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2019/04/15/socialism-a-track-record-of-failure-n2544787?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the botched Green
New Deal rollout was her biggest mistake yet in Congress ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-rollout-biggest-mistake-2019-4
While the use of federal grants in Warren’s bill
may help reduce exclusionary zoning, it’s other provisions would reduce the
supply of rental housing ---
http://marketurbanism.com/2019/04/14/homeownership-and-the-warren-housing-bill/
French Incomes Place Below Some of America's
Poorest States — And the Protesters Know It
https://mises.org/wire/french-incomes-place-below-some-americas-poorest-states-—-and-protesters-know-it?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=1e2420abee-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-1e2420abee-228708937
Google dramatically severed ties with Huawei — here's what
that means for you ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-severed-ties-with-huawei-what-that-means-for-you-2019-5
Video: Economic Mobility in the USA
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/05/two-videos.html
The Atlantic on SNL Comedy: When obsessive
Trump bashing is no longer funny ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/05/everything-saturday-night-live-needs-fix-after-season-44/589789/
David Giles: Update
on the "Series of Unsurprising Results in Economics" ---
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/2019/05/update-on-series-of-unsurprising.html
Jensen Question
Could this also be a reason why the practicing profession of accounting
virtually ignores academic accountancy's journal articles?
In accountancy life is perhaps more complicated since academic "accountics"
researchers seldom focus on issues of great interest to the practicing
profession (with some exceptions such as in tax and AIS).---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
If accountics
research was more of interest to practitioners there would also be more interest
on replications.
The US government’s ongoing battle with Chinese
telecom giant Huawei, explained ---
https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/12/11/18134440/huawei-executive-order-entity-list-china-trump
NYT's Tom Friedman: Trump Is Right About Trade
Relationship with China ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3752040/posts
Bernie Sanders Has a Strange Affinity for
Strongman Daniel Ortega. He's Not the Only Democrat Who Does ---
https://reason.com/2019/05/20/bernie-sanders-has-a-strange-affinity-for-strongman-daniel-ortega-hes-not-the-only-democrat-who-does/
San Francisco is the nation’s leader in property
crime. Burglary, larceny, shoplifting, and vandalism are included under this
ugly umbrella. The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over
30,000 reports were filed ---
https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-crime
Which states have the highest and lowest
property taxes?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/20/property-taxes-state-which-has-highest-and-lowest/3697929002/
Jensen Comment
New Jersey is highest for property taxes and taxes everything else imaginable. New Hampshire is second, but New Hampshire has no sales or state income tax. All states have property taxes. Most other states have either sales or income taxes or both.
Newsweek: Thousands of North Korean Women
Sold as Sex Slaves in China, Report Says ---
https://www.newsweek.com/thousands-north-korean-women-sold-sexual-slavery-china-report-1431644
Mueller Shuns Public Hearing as Talks Stall With
House Democrats ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-21/mueller-shuns-public-hearing-as-talks-stall-with-house-democrats?cmpid=BBD052119_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=190521&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily
As White House stonewalling continues, Democrats
are starting to speak more openly about the constitutional option, but their
leader isn’t budging ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/nancy-pelosi-last-barrier-between-trump-and-impeachment/589960/
The Washington Post: How San Francisco
Broke America's Heart ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-san-francisco-broke-americas-heart/2019/05/21/ef9a0ac0-70ea-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html?utm_term=.ea853a071c15
ICE: Maryland county released MS-13 illegal
aliens now suspected of brutal murder ---
http://www.gopusa.com/?p=69843?omhide=true
Pew Research: Low-Income and Minority
Students Are Growing Share of Enrollments ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Low-IncomeMinority/246346?cid=db
Poll: 67% of Democrats Believe the World Only Has
12 Years Left to Fight Climate Change (in part because AOC declared this to be a
fact) ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2019/05/22/poll-67-of-democrats-believe-the-world-only-has-12-years-left-to-fight-climate-n2546765?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/23/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Jensen
Comment
Remember that there are many reasons to distrust polls, especially this poll.
After being ridiculed by scientists, AOC said she was just kidding, but on MSNBC (March 29) it certainly did not seem like she was kidding. Some of her followers still think its a fact.
China just tested its 'nuclear option' in the
trade war ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-tests-nuclear-option-trade-war-sells-us-treasurys-2019-5
Jensen
Comment
The USA's booked national debt (excluding $100 trillion in unbooked
entitlements) stands at over $22 trillion ---
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
The big difference is that interest is currently being paid on the $22 trillion
in booked debt such that the full "nuclear option" of China could be a total
disaster for the USA annual budget.
9 mind-blowing facts about Venezuela's economy
---
https://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-economy-facts-2019-5
Major Media Blackout About Cuban Drug Trade
---
https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2019/05/25/castro-makes-utter-fools-of-obama-brennan-kerry-and-ben-rhodesmedia-silent-n2546847?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/25/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
"Deliver Us’ From The Evil Of ‘Straight White
Men’ And ‘Fossil Fuels"
Baptist Pastor Dan Freemyer Gives Benediction Prayer At Baylor Graduation
Watch the Video --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcVpUO3gjj4
NYT: America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame
Wealthy Liberals ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html
Protect your city from hordes of migrants by
increasing the minimum wage ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/the-minimum-wage-and-migration-decisions.html
Jensen Comment
This article ignores a couple of major factors that can attract migrants even
with high minimum wage increases. The first is being a sanctuary city (think San
Francisco) that will attract migrants even if jobs with benefits are
difficult to find. The second is a large underground labor market. Cities like
San Antonio have traditionally tolerated an underground labor market where day
workers collect on certain street corners to be picked up by employers who then
pay them cash wages but no benefits. Workers with skills (think mechanics) may
earn well above minimum wages. Government officials tolerate this underground
labor market because so many children are dependent upon wages earned by parents
in this manner (think maids, roofers, landscapers, etc.). San Antonio could
probably double the legal minimum wage and still have thousands of day workers
in the underground labor market. Other cities like (think Seattle) and small
towns do not have this underground labor market tradition to the extent that
cities and small towns closer to Mexico have traditionally relied upon for over
a century.
Yes there has been an American male culture
collapse ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/yes-there-has-been-an-american-male-culture-collapse.html
New Zealand (no-growth) productivity fact of the day.---
https://croakingcassandra.com/2019/05/18/perhaps-the-politicians-are-content-with-this-record/
The American Dream: Kurdish Immigrant Becomes a
Billionaire ---
TED Talk: Hamdi Ulukaya: The anti-CEO playbook ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playbook?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-05-24&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image
Jensen Comment
This video is not as anti-business as it sounds, and the fact that Ulukaya
became a billionaire as a CEO entrepreneur proves it. But he did in a socially
responsible way with hiring of refugees and local workers and the sharing of
corporate equity with employees.
Some things are overlooked in this otherwise inspiring video. Firstly, employees
that have their savings invested in their employer's company need, at some point
like retirement, to liquidate their holdings. In other words,
they need some kind of market for their shares that have
increased in value on paper but not necessarily in liquidity. One way
of achieving liquidity is the cursed IPO when private corporate shares are going
public to get into a cash market for those shares. Then
investors start asking questions like what are the profits and what is the
financial security of this investment?
The bottom line is that this is a pro-capitalism video, and seemingly
anti-socialist if you watch it closely. But it's socially responsible capitalism
to a point of where employees and Ulukay himself (a billionaire on paper) want
to cash in on their shares.
The other thing to note about Ulaukaya's yogurt business is that this is a
labor-intensive business relative to more capital-intensive businesses (think
electric cars and pharmaceuticals) that need to justify "profits" or
"anticipated profits" to get investors to put money into the business.
Hence it's a great video for a business case where there's a lot to debate like
keeping wages relatively low by paying in ownership shares.
Poll: 67% of Democrats Believe the World Only Has 12 Years Left
to Fight Climate Change (in
part because AOC declared this to be a fact)
---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2019/05/22/poll-67-of-democrats-believe-the-world-only-has-12-years-left-to-fight-climate-n2546765?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=05/23/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Jensen
Comment
Remember that there are many reasons to distrust polls, especially this poll.
After
being ridiculed by scientists, AOC said she was just kidding, but on MSNBC
(March 29) it certainly did not seem like she was kidding.
Watch the video ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHk8nn0nw18
Maybe Peggy Lee had the best advice in 1969 ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M
Say
What? Kamala Harris promises free lifetime nursing home care and
medications to any disabled person in the world who can get to the USA
https://www.businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-flip-flops-on-private-health-insurance-ban-2019-5
Jensen Comment
This is an empty promise because by the time Kamala's program is in place all
the people on earth will be dead due to climate change (unless the world is
saved by the 2020 USA election).
From a MIT Newsletter on May 23, 2019
The apparent spike in CFC-11 production in China underscores the importance of ongoing emissions monitoring—and the limits of our current system.
Vanquished: CFC-11 depletes the ozone and is also a potent greenhouse gas. It was originally phased out in 2010 and levels began to drop. But a year ago scientists noticed some factories, somewhere, appeared to be producing it again.
Whodunit: A new paper in Nature adds compelling evidence against the leading suspect: factories in eastern mainland China. This source accounts for more than half of emissions spotted in last year’s paper, making the case “pretty definitive.”
However: We don’t know whether this action has the approval of the Chinese government. And that highlights an issue international climate treaties: there’s a lack of monitoring, or enforcement mechanisms. Without those, it’s hard to see how they can succeed.
How to Mislead With Statistics
RANKED: Every state in the USA by the strength of their public education
system ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-states-public-education-system-ranked-us-news-world-report-2019-4
Jensen Comment
When performance is a multivariate phenomenon, virtually all rankings can be
misleading. because of arbitrary weightings of criteria (e.g., graduation rates
versus college admission scores versus education of handicapped students).---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm#Rankings
Having said this there are some notable outcome among the Top 10 states out of 50 states in the above study.
Firstly, we might note that three states without income taxes made the Top 10 (Florida, New Hampshire, and Washington). However some states that tax everything imaginable also made the Top 10 (e.g., Taxachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont).
Secondly, we might note that some states in the Top 10 are mostly white with little diversity (e.g., Vermont and New Hampshire). However, some states in the Top 10 have a lot of diversity (e.g., Florida, New Jersey, and Massachusetts). Whitish states like Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota did not make the Top 10. Very diverse states like California and New York did not make the Top 10.
Thirdly, states with the USA's largest cities tended not to make the Top 10. School performances in Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, .New York City, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, San Antonio, etc. probably tended to pull their state averages downward. However, there were exceptions for Boston, Miami, and Omaha.
Heavily Hispanic states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California struggle with graduation rates. However, Florida appears to be an outlier in this regard.
Poverty hurts as evidenced by performance of West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Alabama.
Teachers Unions probably can't find a whole lot to brag about in this ranking. Granted the Number 1 state (Massachusetts) is a very pro union without exception. But not so much in New Hampshire. Heavily unionized states like Rhode Island, Illinois, California, and Michigan did not rank highly.
I tend to think that the most important "cause" of high education system performance has little to do with education systems per se. I think education performance depends most upon families. High ranking nations like Finland have low divorce rates and strong family bonds. I did not investigate, but states in the above study that have relatively low rankings perhaps rank highly in terms of single-parent homes. There will of course be exceptions.
Say What? Judy Woodruff on the PBS News Hour argues that to keep prices low in the USA we should export more jobs to low wage countries like China ---
Say What? Trump’s Tariffs Only Work If Americans Pay Them
---
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/trumps-china-tariffs-only-work-if-americans-pay-them.html
Jensen Comment
Actually Trump's tariffs work better at hurting the
Chinese economy if Americans don't pay them
just like Chinese tariffs (think soybeans) hurt American farmers when the
Chinese refuse to pay USA tariffs.
Demand Curve ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_curve
Both nations are hurt badly with tariff walls. It hurts for Chinese to do
without high quality soybeans from the USA. It hurts Americans to not have as
much lithium coming from China for use in batteries.
Who Loses Most from the US-China Trade War ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/who-loses-most-from-the-u-s-china-trade-war.html
Who's the Most Vulnerable in a Trade War? ---
https://www.econlib.org/who-is-most-vulnerable-in-a-trade-war/
The growing problem is that economic issues in trade talks are
turning into face-saving politics where each nation is shooting itself in the
foot with pride and politics.
How to Be Enlightened About the US-China Trade War:
Watch This PBS Video
China does not want a fair game in tariffs. The
head of the Teamsters Union made it very clear to an obviously-disappointed Judy
Woodruff on the PBS News Hour last night. Judy did not
want to hear this ---
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-teamsters-president-supports-trumps-new-tariffs
In my opinion, the world benefits most with free trade (no tariffs except on strategic military products and services).
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on May 20, 2019
Setting the budget for a company's capital spending is a key task for finance chiefs. By allocating funds for new factories, equipment and other capital goods, CFOs signal their level of optimism for the coming quarters. Capital expenditure plans at large, listed U.S. firms recently pointed towards slower economic growth, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Capital spending rose 3% from a year earlier in the first quarter at 356 S&P 500 companies that had disclosed figures in quarterly regulatory filings through midday May 8, according to an analysis of data supplied by Calcbench. That is down from a 20% rise in the year-ago period for the same companies, the analysis shows.
Executives at several companies said lingering trade tensions with China were making them and their customers cautious, raising the prospect that slower business spending could hamper economic growth later in 2019 and in 2020. U.S. nonresidential fixed investment—which reflects business spending on software, research and development, equipment and structures—rose at a 2.7% annual rate in the first quarter, pulling back from a 5.4% pace in the fourth quarter, the government said last month.
“Any time there’s trade tensions of this kind, it does put a certain amount of conservatism, I think, into all of our plans for capital spending,” Caterpillar Inc. Chief Executive Jim Umpleby said on the company’s April 24 earnings call. The maker of heavy machinery lowered capital spending to $547 million in the first quarter from $757 million in the same period a year earlier.
Jensen Comment
In many instances capital spending is inhibited by worries that there will be a
trade agreement. Many companies in the USA would like to produce goods now made
in China using cheap labor, but it's a capital-spending gamble when there's a
threat that tariffs on cheap-labor Chinese products will be dropped in a trade
agreement.
I get a chuckle by watching ABC News that a couple of years
back had a "Buy American" module on nearly every show that featured factories in
the USA producing goods ---
https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/america-strong
ABC's America Strong programming shifted almost entirely into human interest
stories rather than buy-American segments. What could be
the reason for this? I think it's because buy-American can now be
perceived as supporting President Trump's tariff war. The major media avoids
supporting Trump on everything.
Say What? Judy Woodruff on the PBS News Hour argues that to keep prices low in the USA we should export more jobs to low wage countries like China ---
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on May 20, 2019
Setting the budget for a company's capital spending is a key task for finance chiefs. By allocating funds for new factories, equipment and other capital goods, CFOs signal their level of optimism for the coming quarters. Capital expenditure plans at large, listed U.S. firms recently pointed towards slower economic growth, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Capital spending rose 3% from a year earlier in the first quarter at 356 S&P 500 companies that had disclosed figures in quarterly regulatory filings through midday May 8, according to an analysis of data supplied by Calcbench. That is down from a 20% rise in the year-ago period for the same companies, the analysis shows.
Executives at several companies said lingering trade tensions with China were making them and their customers cautious, raising the prospect that slower business spending could hamper economic growth later in 2019 and in 2020. U.S. nonresidential fixed investment—which reflects business spending on software, research and development, equipment and structures—rose at a 2.7% annual rate in the first quarter, pulling back from a 5.4% pace in the fourth quarter, the government said last month.
“Any time there’s trade tensions of this kind, it does put a certain amount of conservatism, I think, into all of our plans for capital spending,” Caterpillar Inc. Chief Executive Jim Umpleby said on the company’s April 24 earnings call. The maker of heavy machinery lowered capital spending to $547 million in the first quarter from $757 million in the same period a year earlier.
Jensen Comment
In many instances capital spending is inhibited by worries that there will be a
trade agreement. Many companies in the USA would like to produce goods now made
in China using cheap labor, but it's a capital-spending gamble when there's a
threat that tariffs on cheap-labor Chinese products will be dropped in a trade
agreement.
I get a chuckle by watching ABC News that a couple of years
back had a "Buy American" module on nearly every show that featured factories in
the USA producing goods ---
https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/america-strong
The America Strong programming shifted almost entirely into human interest
stories rather than buy-American segments. What could be
the reason for this? I think it's because buy-American can now be
perceived as supporting President Trump's tariff war. The major media
avoids supporting Trump on everything.
Say What? Judy Woodruff on the PBS News Hour argues that to keep prices low in the USA we should export more jobs to low wage countries like China ---
The American Dream: Kurdish Immigrant
Becomes a Billionaire ---
TED Talk: Hamdi Ulukaya: The anti-CEO playbook ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playbook?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-05-24&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image
Jensen Comment
This video is not as anti-business as it sounds, and the fact that Ulukaya
became a billionaire as a CEO entrepreneur proves it. But he did in a socially
responsible way with hiring of refugees and local workers and the sharing of
corporate equity with employees.
Some things are overlooked in this otherwise inspiring video. Firstly, employees
that have their savings invested in their employer's company need, at some point
like retirement, to liquidate their holdings. In other words,
they need some kind of market for their shares that have
increased in value on paper but not necessarily in liquidity. One way
of achieving liquidity is the cursed IPO when private corporate shares are going
public to get into a cash market for those shares. Then
investors start asking questions like what are the profits and what is the
financial security of this investment?
The bottom line is that this is a pro-capitalism video, and seemingly
anti-socialist if you watch it closely. But it's socially responsible capitalism
to a point of where employees and Ulukay himself (a billionaire on paper) want
to cash in on their shares.
The other thing to note about Ulaukaya's yogurt business is that this is a
labor-intensive business relative to more capital-intensive businesses (think
electric cars and pharmaceuticals) that need to justify "profits" or
"anticipated profits" to get investors to put money into the business.
Hence it's a great video for a business case where there's a lot to debate like
keeping wages relatively low by paying in ownership shares.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_standard
Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Accounting_Standards_Board
Elizabeth Warren's 7% Real Corporate Profits Tax Would Politicize GAAP, Harm
Investors And Employees ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/05/elizabeth-warrens-7-real-corporate-profits-tax-would-politicize-gaap-harm-investors-and-employees.html
Wall Street Journal op-ed: Don’t Let Warren Politicize Accounting, by Scott Dyreng (Duke):
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is campaigning for president like Robin Hood in the Hamptons. But the Massachusetts Democrat’s proposed Real Corporate Profits Tax—her plan to tax highly profitable companies on their financial accounting incomes—may do more harm than good to the working class she claims to champion.
The U.S., like other developed nations, uses two accounting systems. Companies report income to investors following Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, which are determined by the private, nonpolitical Financial Accounting Standards Board. The paramount purpose of this standard is to provide investors with information they can use to allocate capital soundly.
To file their taxes, companies follow different accounting rules, defined by the Internal Revenue Code. Congress has multiple goals in the way it defines the corporate tax, from raising revenue and redistributing wealth to regulating companies’ behavior and increasing U.S. competitiveness.
Ms. Warren calls for a 7% levy on financial-accounting earnings above $100 million, on top of the 21% tax corporations already pay on taxable income. Even putting aside its negative impact on profits, the new tax would hurt investors by subjecting accounting standards to politics.
If taxes become tied to GAAP earnings, financial accounting standards will inevitably be distorted. Politicians would pressure the Financial Accounting Standards Board to adjust GAAP in a way that increases government revenue, or punishes or rewards certain corporate expenditures. In short order, financial reports would come to reflect Congress’s objectives. ...
Trying to fix the corporate-tax system using financial-accounting standards is like trying to fix a car at a doctor’s office. And the likely victims of the ensuing shenanigans will be the workers and small investors Sen. Warren wants to protect.
Jensen
Comment
Congress has a history of trying to influence behavior using the tax code. For
example, both property taxes and mortgage interest were declared deductions from
personal income for tax purposes to encourage home ownership that Congress
deemed to be good for society in terms of both creating more housing and in
keeping houses maintained. In addition, home mortgages forced savings behavior
where it is common for retirees to have larger retirement savings than renters
who are not forced to save monthly in rental payments.
Corporate income tax accounting rules departed from what accounting standard setters (think the FASB and its predecessors ) deemed the 'better" accounting for investors to evaluate accounting performance businesses and make portfolio investments. For example, to stimulate business capital investment the corporate tax depreciation rules allowed accelerated depreciation write-offs that did not correlate well with value changes of manufacturing and farm equipment having longer usage lives. Accounting standard setters deemed less aggressive depreciation more relevant to investors. This led to income tax losses that accounting standard setters felt misled investors rather than GAAP income reporting. Of course there were exceptions that I don't think can be justified (such as LIFO inventories).
Note that in the good old days Congress wisely felt that reducing business taxes could greatly stimulate economic growth and jobs in the nation. The assumption was that government collected more taxes from a growing economy than one than a stagnant or declining (think recession) economy. Elizabeth Warren and her sympathizers are distressed by the idea that business firms fueling the economic growth engine of the USA could use tax deferrals or avoidances to pay outrageous executive salaries and fuel shareholder value increases for fat cats while paying less to the IRS, although I think she does not give credit where credit is due when making corporations wildly profitable under GAAP does frequently stimulate economic growth, job creation, and net increases in taxes (supply-side theory) collected by the government from workers and happy investors. The extent to which business success creates tax collection success is the subject of vicious debate (e.g., supply-side disputes) between conservatives and liberals that is chronic and complicated.
Elizabeth Warren now wants to base business taxes based upon GAAP profits rather than accounting profits under tax code accounting rules --- rules written into the tax code for both good economic reasons (economic growth stimulus) and bad reasons (business lobbying crime).
The FASB genuinely takes pride in being independent of business lobbying (not all accountants like Tom Selling agree), but there is evidence of such independence (such FAS 123R rules for stock option accounting under GAAP, rules that the tech industry despises). Of course the SEC that can override the FASB in the setting of GAAP at any time. On rare occasions the SEC caved into business lobbies for the wrong reasons when overwriting the FASB rules. The classic case is the time the SEC overrode sensible "successful-efforts" FASB rules on oil and gas write offs of dry holes in oil well drilling. In that disgrace the SEC blatantly allowed bad rules for keeping worthless oil wells on the books as phony assets. Except for relatively rare lapses (like writing off dry holes) the SEC has wisely let the FASB set most GAAP accounting standards to keep business lobbies off the SEC's back.
The above article wisely suggests that Elizabeth Warren's tax proposal will now subject the FASB to business lobby pressures that have plagued (and sometimes corrupted) the IRS for decades relative to the wall the SEC created to protect itself from business lobbies by transferring GAAP authority to the non-governmental FASB.
Personally, I don't think that there should be a corporate income tax. There will always be too many loop holes imposed by lobbyists in the calculation of taxable business income. I prefer a VAT tax that is easier to compute and certainly easier to collect as evidenced ty the European VAT taxes. Of course business firms generally hate the VAT tax but I still think it's the way to go even if it does put a lot of lawyers and tax accountants out of business and raise prices.
My liberal friends argue that a VAT tax is regressive and raises prices for consumers. However, the corporate income tax that Elizabeth Warren proposes is also regressive.
Business firms don't pay any taxes levied upon them. They collect taxes from customers. If Elizabeth Warren levies regressive income taxes on the GAAP earnings of Amazon and Walmart those taxes will be passed on in the form of higher prices to you, me, and the other customers of Walmart no different than is Elizabeth Warren imposes a VAT tax on Amazon and Walmart.
The advantage of the VAT tax is that the FASB can continue to set accounting standards to help investors make portfolio decisions about stocks and bonds of companies. Of course if companies must pay $100+ trillion in taxes for new social programs there won't be any stock markets or bond markets left. Pension savings in such funds as CREF and CalPERS will get wiped out. Think about it! To raise over $100 million most of the money is going to have to come from investors themselves since Sen. Warren's proposed corporate income tax on GAAP and her wealth tax proposal will not raise nearly that much money. Taking $100+ trillion from investiors will wipe out both stock and bond markets.
Regarding Elizabeth Warren. she just wants to spend over $100 trillion annually in a way that will destroy the USA economic engine of the USA for her green initiatives, free medical care, free medications, forgiveness of student debt, free college, guaranteed minimum income for all residents of the USA (including non-citizens), reparations for African and Native Americans, and on and on and on without an end to spending. There's no chance in Hell that the USA as we know it today can afford all the programs Sen. Warren and her friends want to fund.
So I say keep the government and business lobbies out of the setting of GAAP to the extent possible! Collect taxes in some way for achievable social goals that will will not destroy the economic engine of the USA and turn it into a third world, overpopulated, and starving nation.
Young people especially wonder why Joe Biden is leading in the 2020 polls for Democratic party nomination. The reason is that the majority of voting Democrats do not want to destroy the economic engine of the USA by spending over $100 trillion annually for spendthrift social programs that cannot possibly be afforded even by the greatest economy on earth. Don't let ignorant spenders ruin it all.
Michael Shellenberger --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger \
Michael Shellenberger Says Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us Now ---
https://reason.com/video/this-environmentalist-says-only-nuclear-power-can-save-us-now/
. . .
From 2009 to 2015, the Obama administration took up that call and put billions of dollars into renewable energy subsidies. That, Shellenberger says, opened his eyes to the fact that no amount of government funding can overcome the inherent drawbacks of renewables.
When California invested heavily in wind and solar, Shellenberger says it led to energy price increases at a rate about six times faster than the national average, despite the falling cost of solar panels.
Shellenberger says that the allure of nuclear power is its "energy density"—he estimates that the energy consumption of the average human being from birth to death can be provided by a single 12-ounce soda can's worth of uranium. He believes a nuclear renaissance could unlock a world of clean energy abundance, an idea he explores further in a document he co-authored, titled "An Ecomodernist Manifesto."
He contrasts his pro-growth, urbanist "ecomodernism" with the Malthusian, neo-primitivist "dark green" environmentalism that he thinks motivates many proponents of the Green New Deal.
"If you want to save the natural environment, you just use nuclear. You grow more food on less land, and people live in cities. It's not rocket science," says Shellenberger. "The idea that people need to stay poor…that's just a reactionary social philosophy that they then dress up as a kind of environmentalism."
Watch the above video to learn more about the history of nuclear energy and to hear more from Shellenberger about his case for nuclear power, as well as his response to concerns about radiation, nuclear weapons, and nuclear's economic viability. The video also features solar energy advocate Ed Smeloff, who served on the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District board during the shutdown of California's Rancho Seco nuclear plant. Smeloff argues that nuclear power simply can't compete in the marketplace.
Continued in article
No Government Bailout: Britain's second-biggest steel maker collapsed
on Wednesday, putting about 5,000 jobs at the company directly at risk, and
threatening another 20,000 at suppliers ---
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/british-steel-collapses-putting-thousands-of-jobs-at-risk/ar-AABJsl3?ocid=ientp
A Sociology Professor at Notre Dame:
And it’s mortally corrosive to society
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Higher-Education-Is-Drowning/242195
Thank you Ed Scribner for the heads up.
Health Insurance
Finland’s government collapses over failed health care reform ---
https://www.politico.eu/article/finlands-government-collapses-over-failed-health-care-reform/?fbclid=IwAR3ZUM2rsGzcoIVMFVHwwTfE15MAxpo_9poClu2d7pjzFdrz84WORKZTSX0
Bernie Sanders: "You’re Damn Right We’re Going to Destroy Private Health
Insurance" ---
Click Here
Reason Magazine's Really Important Concerns about Medicare-for-All
The Contradiction at the Heart of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All Plan ---
https://reason.com/2019/04/24/the-contradiction-at-the-heart-of-bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all-plan/
There is a huge contradiction at the heart of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan.
On the one hand, Sanders not only wants to expand government-provided coverage to everyone in the country, he wants that coverage to be significantly more generous than Medicare, private insurance, or comparable government-run systems in other countries. On the other hand, he wants to drastically cut payments to hospitals, many of which lose money on Medicare right now, making up for the program's relatively low payments by charging much higher prices to private insurers.
What Sanders is proposing, in other words, is that the government finance a significant increase in government services while also radically reducing the amount it pays for those services. Even making generous assumptions, it's almost impossible to see how his plan could work.
Let's start with the promises Sanders makes about Medicare for All. No networks, premiums, deductibles, or copayments. Under his plan, essentially all non-cosmetic services would be free at the point of care for everyone.
Sanders calls this Medicare for All, but what he's describing isn't Medicare as we now know it. As The New York Times noted earlier this year upon the release of a Sanders-inspired Medicare for All bill in the House, the new program would "drastically reshape Medicare itself," changing both what it pays for and how. In many ways, it would be a completely different program. Medicare for All, in other words, isn't really Medicare.
And that program would be far more expansive and expensive than nearly any other comparable system. It would cover more, and require less direct financial outlays (not including taxes), than either today's Medicare or typical private insurance plans in the U.S.
It would also be substantially more generous than the national health systems set up in other countries. Sanders likes to unfavorably contrast America's mixed public-private health care system with foreign systems where the government is more directly involved. When he announced the 2017 version of his Medicare for All plan, for example, he bemoaned the state of affairs in the United States "a time when every other major country on earth guarantees health care to every man, woman, and child." Discussions about health care policy on social media often include some variant of the question, "If every other country with a developed economy can do it, why can't the United States?"
The problem with this line of questioning is that what Sanders is proposing isn't what other countries do. Canada, for example, has a single-payer system, but it doesn't cover dental care, vision, drugs, or any number of other services. A majority of Canadians carry private insurance in order to cover those services. In Britain, which offers a fully socialized medical system where health care providers are government employees, many resident still buy private coverage. Sanders, on the other hand, would effectively wipe out private coverage in the space of just four years.
There are similar limitations on coverage in other countries, like the Netherlands. It's also true in Australia, where patients typically pay a percentage of the cost of specialty services. It's true that in these countries, government plays a more central role in health care financing. But their systems have also reckoned with costs and tradeoffs in a way that Sanders, after so many years, has not.
Indeed, the main trade-off that Sanders seems willing to discuss is the elimination of insurance companies, which he portrays as greedy middlemen driving up the cost of health care. Wiping out the industry in one fell swoop, as Sanders has proposed, would be a unprecedented and disruptive move that would have significant economic repercussions, including the probable loss of thousands of insurance industry jobs. But it still wouldn't do much to bring down the cost of health care, because so much money in the nation's health care system is tied up in provider payments, especially hospitals.
And therein lies the (first) contradiction.
Most people probably think of hospitals as places where you go to get health care services. Politically and economically, however, they also fulfill another role: They are hubs for stable middle-class jobs, paying reasonably good wages to thousands of highly trained workers, most of whom are not doctors or specialists earning stratospheric salaries.
To acquire the revenue to pay for all these jobs, hospitals rely on a mix of private and public payments. Public payments make up a somewhat larger share of total hospital budgets, but private payers are typically charged much higher prices.
Hospitals like to argue that Medicare and Medicaid payments are too low to cover their costs, and that as a result, higher private payments effectively subsidize public health coverage. Critics (with some evidence) often respond that hospitals either overstate or don't really understand their own costs, and that this is just a ploy to extract more money from government health programs and private payers.
But when considering Medicare for All, the particulars of this debate are largely beside the point, because there is simply no question that eliminating private insurance and payment for all services would drastically reduce the amount of revenue for hospitals.
Yet that is exactly what Sanders wants to do. His plan calls for paying for health care services at Medicare rates, which means that, practically overnight, hospitals would end up with far, far less revenue. Exactly how much is unclear, but one estimate indicated that payments could drop by as much as 40 percent.
That would leave hospitals with a couple of difficult choices. They could eliminate services. They could try to force some employees to take pay cuts. They could fire large numbers of workers. Or they could simply shut down. As a recent New York Times report on how Medicare for All would affect hospitals noted, rural hospitals—many of which are already struggling to stay afloat—would be particularly at risk of closing.
Whatever ended up happening, there is simply no way most hospitals would or could continue operating as they do now under the payment regime that Sanders envisions. Lots of middle class jobs would disappear. Services would be eliminated or cut back.
Yet Sanders not only imagines that hospitals would continue to operate as they do now, but that they would expand their services to even more people, since more people would have coverage. And since he also imagines a system with no deductibles or copays, those people would almost certainly end up dramatically increasing utilization of hospital services.
Studies of health insurance have consistently shown that expansions of health insurance result in increased demand for (and use of) health care services; more people with coverage means more people lining up to get care. (Relatedly, introducing even very small copays—on the order of just a few dollars—can reduce the number of visits to doctors and hospitals.) Greater utilization of health care services does not necessarily translate into measurably better physical health outcomes. But it does increase the strain on the health care delivery system—which is to say, it puts a huge amount of pressure on hospitals.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Another contradiction is that to pay for Medicare-for-All Bernie Sanders wants
to tax most of what high-income workers earn, and the highest income
professionals in the USA on average are physicians. There is currently a
shortage of physicians. This shortage will become critical as medical care
becomes virtually free and often overused as a free service by hundreds of
million residents of the USA.
Here's the second contraction
Taxing physician income at 70% or more will discourage students from becoming physicians and will give existing physicians incentives to retire early or work at leisurely part-time doctoring. Far better work two days per week and pay a 30% income tax rate than to be a 60--hour week highly stressed, and overworked physician being taxed at 70% of every extra dollar earned.
Medicare-for-All is a Tragedy of the Commons ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Jensen Comment
Bernie Sanders and AOC have jointly proposed legislation to cap credit card
interest to 15% ---
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/09/aoc-bernie-sanders-want-cap-credit-card-interest-15/1150746001/
Many people in the USA will then not be able to get a credit card.. Below I link
to an academic study on this topic.
I might note that in a similar vein I've had a long time distaste for these companies that set up storefronts near military bases and factories, store fronts that charge very high interest rates for payday loans --- high interest loans in advance of payday. Of course one of their incentives is to have borrowers fail to payoff those loans on payday such that the high interest rate earnings continue on for months or even years.
I was a proponent of interest rate caps. Then a well-known finance professor colleague, whose office was two doors down from mine, explained why he's against interest rate caps. The main reason is that people who borrow at such high interest rates are usually desperate. For example, they may be on the verge of being evicted from housing. They may have a desperately ill child. If they can't get a credit card charging a 22% apr they might have to resort to predatory lenders charging a 100% apr, lenders that break knee caps to collect overdue loans.
In the case of credit cards perhaps they have no intention of borrowing at an enormous interest rate of something like 25% on the card. However, if their credit is so lousy that they cannot otherwise get a credit card they're up the well-known creek just by not having a credit card. For example, you cannot rent a car in the USA or maybe even get a hotel room without having a valid credit card even if you don't borrow on that card. In other words, in some instances the legislation proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez simply means not being able to get a credit card!
Here's an academic study on usury and interest rate caps.
Price Regulation in Credit Markets: A Trade-off between Consumer
Protection and Credit Access*
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_toHlf2fvvtckCSrSi-zmnsexNGcDqrK/view
Abstract. Interest rate caps are widespread in consumer credit markets, yet there is limited evidence on its effects on market outcomes and welfare. Conceptually, the effects of interest rate caps are ambiguous and depend on a trade-off between consumer protection from banks’ market power and reductions in credit access. We exploit a policy in Chile that lowered interest rate caps by 20 percentage points to understand its impacts. Using comprehensive individual-level administrative data, we document that the policy decreased transacted interest rates by 9%, but also reduced the number of loans by 19%. To estimate the welfare effects of this policy, we develop and estimate a model of loan applications pricing, and repayment of loans. Consumer surplus decreases by an equivalent of 3.5% of average income, with larger losses for risky borrowers. Survey evidence suggests these welfare effects may be driven by decreased consumption smoothing and increased financial distress. Interest rate caps provide greater consumer protection in more concentrated markets, but welfare effects are negative even under a monopoly. Risk-based regulation reduces the adverse effects of interest rate caps, but does not eliminate them.
Alas. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Bob Jensen's
Tidbits Archives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm
Bob
Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Summary of Major Accounting Scandals --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals
Bob Jensen's threads on such scandals:
Bob Jensen's threads on audit firm litigation and negligence ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
Current and past editions of my
newsletter called Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Enron --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm
Rotten to the Core --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
American History of Fraud --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudAmericanHistory.htm
Bob Jensen's fraud
conclusions ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on
auditor professionalism and independence are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on
corporate governance are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance
Shielding
Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
· With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
· With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
· With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR
· With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
Shielding
Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen
What went
wrong in accounting/accountics research? ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most
Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW:
1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox)
that probably will never be solved
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
Bob Jensen's economic crisis messaging http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Bob Jensen's threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/