Tidbits Political Quotations
To Accompany the November 14, 2019 edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/Tidbits111419.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/
The published national debt is a lie
Here's the real federal debt ---
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/about/our_national_debt

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 



 

Thomas Piketty +++ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty

Billionaires (and millionaires)  hurt economic growth and should be taxed out of existence, says bestselling French economist ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html

 

Here's a humorous TED talk that seriously argues why the world needs billionaires

https://www.ted.com/talks/harald_eia_where_in_the_world_is_it_easiest_to_get_rich

 

Why did Cuba abandon its socialist/communist dream of equality for everybody?
The Guardian:  This was the egalitarian dream of Cuba in the 1960s: For years in Cuba, jobs as varied as farm workers and doctors only had a difference in their wages of the equivalent of a few US dollars a month.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/12/cuba 

 

Here's a somber and serious Guardian article on why the Cuban model of income equality for all is a disaster ---
Fidel Castro says his economic system is failing ---

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/09/fidel-castro-cuba-economic-model

 

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/

 

Excellent, Cross-Disciplinary Overview of Scientific Reproducibility in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2018/12/15/excellent-cross-disciplinary-overview-of-scientific-reproducibility-in-the-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/

[Researchers] are rewarded for being productive rather than being right, for building ever upward instead of checking the foundations.---
Decades of early research on the genetics of depression were built on nonexistent foundations. How did that happen?

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/waste-1000-studies/589684/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20191022&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

Bob Jensen:  My take on research validation or lack thereof is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

 

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
You must watch this to the ending to appreciate it.

 

And nevertheless conclude that the optimum amount of restriction of immigration is zero point zero, zero, zero? Amazing. Economics are generally skeptical models that yield corner solutions ---
https://www.econlib.org/do-you-talk-about-it-in-open-borders-yes/
Jensen Comment
To the list of questions I would add "Do your talk about the Tragedy of the Commons?"
The problem with open borders is somewhat related to the economic problem of "The Sharing of the Commons" where giving everybody the right to use a free resource leads to everybody losing that resource. At what point will allowing billions of people share in the free medical care, free college, and other scarce resources ruin it for everybody ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

 

Open immigration can’t exist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure healthcare and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global ---
Paul Krugman
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/724654-open-immigration-can-t-exist-with-a-strong-social-safety-net

 

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

 

Some Fatherly Words of Wisdom from Jack Bogle, Founder of Vanguard Investments, to My Sons ---
https://jborden.com/2019/06/16/some-fatherly-words-of-wisdom-from-jack-bogle-founder-of-vanguard-investments-to-my-sons/

 

Milton Friedman:  The Lesson of the Spoons ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/spoons-are-in-aisle-9.html
Chopsticks would be even better

 

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

 

The Amazon Rain Forest Is Nearly Gone ---
https://time.com/amazon-rainforest-disappearing/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20190914&xid=newsletter-brief
Amazon rainforest fires: Everything we know and how you can help ---
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/amazon-rainforest-fire-whats-happening-now-and-how-you-can-help-update-indigenous-tribes/
There Are More Fires Burning in Africa Than Anywhere on Earth ----
https://time.com/5665794/africa-forest-fires-amazon/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20190901&xid=newsletter-brief
If forests go up in smoke, so can carbon offsets ---
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/13/20859156/forests-fires-carbon-offsets-amazon-california

 

"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

Also see
 

Hermann Weyl born in Hamburg, Germany. He wrote, "One may say that mathematics talks about the things which are of no concern to men. Mathematics has the inhuman quality of starlight---brilliant, sharp, but cold ... thus we are clearest where knowledge matters least: in mathematics, especially number theory." ---
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Weyl.html
Also see Mathematical Analytics in Plato's Cave
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Analytics

 

Georges Simenon wrote nearly 200 novels. Hitchcock telephoned one day and was told, "Sorry, he’s just started a novel." "I’ll wait,’ came the reply
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/if-only-georges-simenon-had-been-a-bit-more-like-maigret/

 

12 inspiring quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.---
https://www.businessinsider.com/inspiring-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-2017-1

 

21 outstanding Warren Buffet quotations ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-21-best-quotes-2019-2
Also see
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-25-best-warren-buffett-quotes-in-one-infographic/

 

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

 

Walter E. Williams:  Youth and Ignorance ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/09/25/youth-and-ignorance-n2553511?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=09/25/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

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

From John F. Kennedy to Oprah and Steve Jobs, here are 20 of the best commencement speeches of all time ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-graduation-speeches-of-all-time-2016-6

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

 

Walter E. Williams --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
Walter E. Williams:  Young People Ignorant of History
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/11/13/young-people-ignorant-of-history-n2556294?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=11/13/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Walter E. Williams:  Who Cares About You?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/10/02/who-cares-about-you-n2553910?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=10/02/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Walter E. Williams --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
Racist Exam Questions?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/09/18/racist-exam-questions-n2553173?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=09/18/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Walter E. Williams:  Gun Grabbers Misleading Us ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/10/30/gun-grabbers-misleading-us-n2555471?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=10/30/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

The Sexual Exploitation of Young Girls in Japan Is 'On the Increase,' an Expert Says ---
https://time.com/5712746/japan-sex-trafficking-prostitution/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief-pm&utm_content=20191029&xid=newsletter-brief

The Atlantic:  What the U.S. Can Learn From Iranian Warfare (How to Wage War by Sponsoring Terrorism) ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/what-us-can-learn-iranian-warfare/600082/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20191020&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

 

The Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it. ---
https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-homeless-initiative-sends-people-across-us-without-telling-receiving-cities/

 

PG&E stock plunges to record low after Citi warns it could be worthless ---
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pge-stock-plunges-toward-record-low-after-citi-warns-it-could-be-worthless-2019-10-25

 

The S&P 500 hit a record high on Monday, while the Nasdaq fell just short of its lifetime high touched in late July as a more civil tone between the United States and China lifted hopes for a possible trade deal ---
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/trade-optimism-fed-rate-cut-expectation-sends-sp-500-to-record-idUSKBN1X715I

The Feds Spend More on National-Debt Interest Than You Think ---
https://mises.org/wire/feds-spend-more-national-debt-interest-you-think?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=eed26403e8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-eed26403e8-228708937

Hillary Clinton Is Not a Fan of Bernie’s or Warren’s Wealth Taxes ---

Click Here

She thinks they’re “unworkable” and would be “incredibly disruptive.”

 

Former Jets great Mark Gastineau reveals he was repeatedly raped as a child  ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/698059-former-jets-great-mark-gastineau-reveals-he-was-repeatedly-raped-as-a-child?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI

 

Economics from the Washington Post:  Why Alabama and Mississippi have suddenly gone in opposite directions ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/09/why-it-looks-like-alabama-mississippi-have-suddenly-gone-opposite-directions/

 

It’s true that European nations have lower G.D.P. per capita than we do, but that’s largely because, unlike most Americans, most Europeans actually have significant vacation time and hence work fewer hours per year. This sounds like a choice about work-life balance, not an economic problem ---
Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/europe-economy.html

Jensen Comment
Other factors contributing to the lower GDP include high prices of energy and labor costs coupled with labor protectionism.

 

The Truth About Teacher Pay ---
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-truth-about-teacher-pay

 

The Atlantic:  Nikki Haley’s Audacious Bet
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/nikki-haleys-book-audacious-bet/601726/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20191110&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

 

Adidas to Close Sneaker Factory in the U.S., Move Production to Asia ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/adidas-to-close-sneaker-factory-in-the-u-s-move-production-to-asia-11573485445?mod=djemCFO

 

Bernie Leads His Party to Open Borders ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2019/11/12/bernie-leads-his-party-to-open-borders-n2556311?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=11/12/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

History Has Shown That Socialism Isn't the Cure ---
https://townhall.com//columnists/victordavishanson/2019/11/07/history-has-shown-that-socialism-isnt-the-cure-n2556001?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 

Does Theranos Mark the Peak of the Silicon Valley Bubble?
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/does-theranos-mark-the-peak-of-the-silicon-valley-bubble?utm_source=frontpage&utm_medium=mview&utm_campaign=does-theranos-mark-the-peak-of-the-silicon-valley-bubble

 

Pension Bailouts (for Unions) Could Raise the National Debt by $7 Trillion ---
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/11/07/pension-bailouts-could-raise-the-national-debt-by-7-trillion/amp/

 

Social Security isn’t doomed for younger generations ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/social-security-isnt-doomed-for-younger-generations.html

AOC says there are only 12 years left for life on earth, so there aren't going to be future generations to worry about ---
https://pjmedia.com/trending/aoc-no-seriously-we-only-have-12-years-left/

 

More than 9,100 stores are closing in 2019 as the retail apocalypse drags on — here's the full list
https://www.businessinsider.com/stores-closing-in-2019-list-2019-3

 




 

Who wins New York’s landmark climate change lawsuit against Exxon Mobil is now up to a judge, but a dozen more climate lawsuits are pending, with trillions of dollars potentially in the balance ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-13/exxon-s-climate-trial-is-over-but-the-legal-war-is-just-beginning?cmpid=BBD111319_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=191113&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Jensen Comment
I can tell you who might eventually lose --- people buying fuel at the pumps, people buying airline tickets, people heating their homes with oil or gas, people buying food that farmers produce, etc.
Remember that big corporations like Exxon Mobil don't pay taxes and fines. They pass them on to customers in the form of higher prices. If they aren't allowed to raise prices they go out of business. That in turn hurts pension funds holding the stocks and bonds.


Politically Incorrect Paper of 2019 The United Fruit Company was Good! ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/politically-incorrect-paper-of-the-day-the-united-fruit-company-was-good.html

 

Politically Incorrect Paper of 1997
"In Praise of Cheap Labor," by Paul Krugman, Slate, March 21, 1997 ---
https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor.html

 


 

A Debate Issue Over Teacher Pay

 

K-12 Teachers are Underpaid ---
https://qz.com/1741568/early-educators-earn-too-little-and-it-could-hold-kids-back/

 

K-12 Teachers are Not Underpaid ---
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-truth-about-teacher-pay

 

Jensen Comment
Of one thing I'm certain.
Comparison of teachers academic-year (9 month) salaries with calendar-year (12 month) salaries is misleading. Teachers can and often do supplement their academic-year salaries in various ways during the other three months of each year. Sometimes they teach during the summer terms. Sometimes they work in other trades.

 

My daughter was a biology teacher. She supplemented her income by also working week ends in a hospital laboratory as a medical technician. She also did this in the summertime, but the rest of her summer days were devoted to being with her children who were not in school during the summer months. Becoming a teacher is very attractive to parents who want to be with their children in the summer months.

 

I don't doubt that higher pay may help attract better teachers and help retain those teachers. This is true for almost any profession, although sometimes the pay issue is complicated. For example, a career in the USA's military does not pay very well, but there aren't many careers where after only 20-30 years you can get a lifetime pension, financial support for college,  and lifetime benefits like free medical care, free medicine, and heavily discounted shopping in base exchange stores. Some professions allow time independence for supplementing income. College professors, for example, generally are allowed time to write books and earn consulting income and speaker fees. Life was good to me as a college professor.

 

 


WSJ:  Is the Trade War Ending?
https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2019/11/07/newsletter-is-the-trade-war-ending/

China says Beijing and Washington have agreed to roll back tariffs, U.S. productivity is sputtering, and cleaner air in China might be good news for joggers but could signal weakness for the country's heavy industry.

Sign of Progress in Trade Talks

China said Beijing and Washington agreed to phase out existing tariffs if they strike a trade deal. “This is what [the two sides] agreed on following careful and constructive negotiations over the past two weeks,” Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said at a routine briefing, Grace Zhu reports.

·         If a phase-one deal is signed, China and the U.S. should remove the tariffs at the same time and by the same amount, Mr. Gao said, adding that it was an important condition for a deal.

·         He didn’t give any information on when and where a deal could be signed. “The trade war started with increasing tariffs and should end in removing all tariffs,” Mr. Gao said.

 

U.S. importers would be pleased with a rollback. The U.S. collected a record $7 billion in import tariffs in September as new duties kicked in on apparel, tools, electronics and other consumer goods from China. The revenue is a bounty for the U.S. Treasury, but is an increasing burden on the American businesses that import Chinese products, Josh Zumbrun reports.

 


 

Emmanuel Macron --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron

 

From The Economist on November 7, 2019:  Emmanuel Macron's Warning to Europe

Our cover this week considers Emmanuel Macron’s warning that Europe is “on the edge of a precipice”. In his Elysée Palace office, the French president spoke to The Economist in apocalyptic terms. NATO, the transatlantic alliance, is suffering from “brain-death”, he says; Europe needs to develop a military force of its own. The European Union needs to act not just as a market but as a political bloc, with policies on technology, data and climate change. And it must embrace realpolitik, for example by rebuilding relations with Russia. With protectionism and authoritarianism on the rise, Europe needs to wake up and prepare itself for a tougher, less forgiving world. It is hard to overstate the scale of the change Mr Macron is asking from his fellow Europeans. Is he right? At the very least, he deserves an answer.

Jensen Comment
While NATO is still preparing for a Russian invasion of Europe that won't happen Europe and the rest of the world must prepare for a war of terror that probably will happen as tensions rise in the Middle East, Africa, and between criminal "cartels." Look at the happenings in Sweden. Not only are there pockets if Islamic immigrants that paralyze the police, Sweden is now having bomb attacks reach unprecedented level as gangs feud ---
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/sweden-bomb-attacks-reach-unprecedented-level-as-gangs-feud

The terror of the cartels in Mexico and Sweden are signs of what can happen with a weak military like we find in Europe today. This can also happen in the USA if we allow more and more of these cartel gangs (including ISIS)  to infiltrate our own border.
List of gangs that are already in the USA --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gangs_in_the_United_States

 


 

Pollution, Politics, and Power: The Struggle for Sustainable Electricity ---
https://www.amazon.com/Pollution-Politics-Power-Sustainable-Electricity/dp/0674545435/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2RA17HCWKE711&keywords=pollution+politics+and+power&qid=1573335070&sprefix=pollution+politics%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-2/marginalrevol-20

 

California’s Self-Inflicted Energy Shortage ---
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/regulation/california-electricity-shortage-issues/

California is again having issues with adequate electricity and its customers are being told that summer blackouts may occur. Its utility scale generation is dependent primarily on natural gas and renewable generated electricity. California decided years ago that it would not build any coal-fired power plants and gets just 0.2 percent of its generation from a few coal units it still has on-line. (It should be noted, however, that California consumes electricity from coal generated out of state and imported to southern California–up to 50 percent at times.) The state retired two of its nuclear units in 2013 and is expected to retire its last two operating nuclear units over the next decade when their nuclear licenses expire, eliminating 9 percent of its carbon free electricity. California has mandated that 50 percent of its electricity come from renewable fuels by 2030, currently getting 30 percent of its utility scale electricity from renewable fuels and 59 percent from natural gas.

Jensen Comment
While generating most of its power from natural gas the state is doing its best to raise the prices of natural gas with regulations, including the banning of universities from investing in the oil and gas industry. This raises the cost of capital of oil and gas producers. It also limits their ability to invest in alternatives like hydrogen, wind, and solar power. It will be interesting to see if California changes its tune if and when it takes over PG&E and becomes responsible for electricity supply in most of the state. At present wind and solar cost sources cost over twice and much as fossil fuels. And California still imports grid power from out-of-state coal plants.

California’s Electricity Crisis What’s Going On, Who’s to Blame, and What to Do ---
https://www.amazon.com/Pollution-Politics-Power-Sustainable-Electricity/dp/0674545435/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2RA17HCWKE711&keywords=pollution+politics+and+power&qid=1573335070&sprefix=pollution+politics%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-2/marginalrevol-20

The California electricity crisis threatens not only the economic well-being of ratepayers in California but the economic well-being of the United States as well. Unfortunately, the political and economic commentary surrounding the crisis is shedding more heat than light. California has been victimized by several simultaneous and severe supply and demand shocks—most notably, a run-up in wholesale natural gas prices—that are outside the state’s political control. Those shocks were made more severe by air pollution regulations and retail price controls. Although California’s “deregulation” of the electric utility business is being blamed for the crisis by both the political left and the political right, we find that the 1996 restructuring law has little to do with the run-up in wholesale power prices. That law is primarily responsible for the blackouts, however, in that it prohibits utilities from passing on increases in fuel costs to consumers.

Virtually all the increase in wholesale prices can be explained by increases in production costs and overall scarcity. While there is some evidence of the existence of excessive generator “market power” (created not by the unfettered exercise of free markets but by poorly conceived regulation), it is relatively minor and responsible for only a small fraction of the price spike, if it exists at all.

We find little evidence to support the argument that environmentalists are primarily to blame for the crisis. We likewise are unconvinced that, had the state allowed utilities to enter into long-term contracts with generators, the crisis could have been either averted or made less severe. None of the remedies thus far proposed— such as a state takeover of the industry, the so-far minimal increase in power rates, energy conservation subsidies, prohibitions of “wasteful” energy use, more vigorous wholesale price controls, or the adoption of long-term power contracts with generators—will get the state through the next two years without frequent and widespread blackouts and significant economic damage. In fact, all of those alleged remedies would make matters worse. The only remedy to the crisis is the elimination of the retail rate cap and the institution of real-time pricing mechanisms for the largest segment of demand possible

Continued in article

Getting on the Hydrogen Highway
Bloomberg, August 30, 2019 pp 11-12
https://www.scribd.com/article/423708967/Getting-On-The-Hydrogen-Highway

. . .

For now, though, the dirtier forms (fossil-fuel-powered) hydrogen production remain less than half as expensive as renewable (solar- and wind-powered) ones. That's a headache for Norway's government, which plans to halt sales of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2025 and expects to have 500,000 hydrogen cars on the road in the country a few years later. At the very least, that would mean a lot more electrolyzers in places like Berlevag.

Jensen Comment
Norway is a small nation with 5+ million people and a Wealth Fund of over $1 trillion saved from oil and gas production profits. It can afford to generate expensive hydrogen to for 500,000 cars. The USA is a large nation with 350+ million residents and over $22 trillion in booked debt. The USA cannot possibly afford to produce enough expensive hydrogen cars to replace 270 million cars within 10 years unless there are tremendous breakthroughs allowing for the production of much cheaper hydrogen. However, over a longer horizon plentiful hydrogen is a much better looking solution than relatively scarce lithium that is highly polluting to produce for car batteries. The future of hydrogen fuel cell energy looks much brighter than other forms of renewable energy at the moment, although there are many developments taking place in nuclear, solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. Nations like Norway, China, Japan, and Germany are betting on hydrogen --- most likely in fuel cells.

Preview: The hydrogen economy in China ---
https://www.gasworld.com/preview-the-hydrogen-economy-in-china/2017616.article

Germany Turns to Hydrogen in Quest for Clean Energy Economy --- 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-02/germany-turns-to-hydrogen-in-quest-for-clean-energy-economy 
The French are Leaning Toward More Nuclear Power --- 
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614579/why-france-is-eyeing-nuclear-power-again/?utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&utm_medium=tr_social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1571934382 

California now requires solar power on all new building construction. This points to a technology risk with capital investment risk when hundreds of billions of dollars flow into capital investments (think solar, wind, and very expensive lithium power storage). Overnight discovery of a way of producing cheap hydrogen or nuclear power could render those billions of dollars wasted. Hydrogen fuel cells could then power every vehicle and building. Of course it can be a long wait for cheap hydrogen or nuclear power. Life is complicated.

 

 


Why do some other nations have more mini recessions than the USA?
Stall speed and mini-recessions ---

https://www.econlib.org/stall-speed-and-mini-recessions/

Over the past few years, I’ve done a number of posts discussing the mystery of “mini-recessions”. The mystery is the complete lack of mini-recessions in the US. After all, mini-earthquakes are much more common that big earthquakes, so why isn’t the same true of recessions? Why is it that when the unemployment rate jumps by more than a very small amount, it eventually rises by more than 2%. Why not increase by 1%, or 1.5%?

 

As far as I know, none of the major macro theories can explain the absence of mini-recessions. Indeed I have trouble even getting people interested in the topic.

 

And then there’s the mystery of why other countries do have mini-recessions.

 

Continued in article

 


Declining marriage incentives and male withdrawal from the labor force ---
https://e9b0558e-7a7d-4b8e-a3c1-ed599eb209e5.filesusr.com/ugd/c393c3_be1795fad1bb47cdbf28bed27ee45ea6.pdf

Why have so many young men withdrawn from the U.S. labor force since 1965? This paper presents a model in which men invest time in employment to enhance their value as marriage partners. When the marriage market return on this investment declines, young men’s employment declines as well, in preparation for a less favorable marriage market. Taking this prediction to data, I show that fewer young men sought employment after 2 interventions that reduced the value of gender-role-specialization within marriage: i) the adoption of unilateral divorce legislation, and ii) demand-driven improvements in women’s employment opportunities.

 

I then show, using a structural estimation, that half of the employment effect of a labor market shock to men’s wages is determined by endogenous adjustment of the marriage market to the shock. These findings establish the changing marriage market as an important driver of decline in young men’s labor market involvement.

Jensen Comment
These conclusions drive me to think that the underground economy is a confounding factor, particularly when crime opportunities (think drug selling and car theft) exceed the value of minimum-wage legitimate labor.

 


 

Corruption Per Usual in Illinois

 

Former Exelon CEO Anne Pramaggiore, who abruptly retired amid federal probe, also has resigned as Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago chair ---
https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/former-exelon-ceo-anne-pramaggiore-who-abruptly-retired-amid-federal-probe-also-has-resigned-as-federal-reserve-bank-of-chicago-chair

 

Illinois Assistant Majority Leader arrested on federal bribery charge

https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/illinois-assistant-majority-leader-arrested-on-federal-bribery-charge

 


 

How to Mislead With Statistics

 

The 25 omissions in the federal poverty rate index completely ignores: Why we really can't compare poor people in the USA with poor people in other parts of the world ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/11/08/25-facts-of-life-the-federal-poverty-rate-completely-ignores/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter&utm_content=NOV112019a

 

01 Differences in Cost of Living
02 Financial support from family members (even rich parents)
03 Savings (if there is no taxable income such as stock and real estate investments that can grow in value without being taxed until sold)
04 Child support and alimony payments (in or out)
05 Income tax and payroll tax (out)
06 Work expenses (out)
07 Degree of poverty (e.g., having a $10,000 income versus a $25,000 income)
08 Takes into account the differences in cost of food but ignores changes to costs of other basic necessities, including clothing, home costs, and utilities (covered in 01 above)
09 Differences in housing expenses (covered on 01 above)
10 Differences in utility expenses (covered on 01 above)
11 Incarceration (expenses and income not factored into the poverty intex)
12 Military living in barracks (benefits not factored into poverty index)
13 School dormitory expenses and benefits (not factored into the poverty index)
14 Nursing home benefits and expenses (not factored into the poverty index)
15 Homeless people (they are ignored when calculating the poverty index)
16 Foster children (costs and benefits of their care are not factored into the poverty index)
17 Noncash benefits like food banks, food stamps, transportation freebies, and handouts behind restaurants
18 Car ownership (even though the majority of poor people in the USA own a car, the expenses of car ownership are not factored into the poverty index)
19 Refundable tax credits (e.g., the earned income tax credit is not factored into the poverty index)

20 Medical expenses and benefits
21 Accumulated debt
22 Housing subsidies
23 Childcare expenses
24 School lunch programs
25 Personal happiness freebies (e.g., libraries, museums, free television programs, radio programs, street entertainment, etc.)

Jensen Comment
Much more importantly the poverty index ignores wages earned in the $2+ trillion underground economy (think of cash wages to house cleaners, child care providers, lawn care workers, ranch helpers, roofers, construction workers, taxi drivers, dish washers, crop pickers, security guards, etc.)
This alone badly overstates the degree of poverty in the USA by billions.
This also deprives poor people of benefits such as Social Security, earned income tax credits, medical coverage, etc.
Wages in the underground economy are sometimes below minimum wage, but they are often well above minimum wage when skills (think of undocumented workers who are car mechanics) or integrity is involved (think house cleaners and child care providers).
The poverty index does not factor in expenses and income from crime (think drug dealing and shop lifting) and panhandling

 


How to Mislead With Statistics

 

Inequality is higher in some states like New York and Louisiana because of corporate welfare (financial incentives to invest in and create jobs)
https://theconversation.com/inequality-is-higher-in-some-states-like-new-york-and-louisiana-because-of-corporate-welfare-126406

 

Jensen Comment
This article provides teachers with an illustration of flawed and biased statistical analysis. Inequality variation among the 50 USA states, like cancer, is horribly complicated with many complex and interactive causes. The title alone is a warning:  "Inequality in New York and Louisiana is higher because of corporate welfare (incentives given to corporations to invest in new jobs).

 

I begin with a warning about cancer:
How to Interpret News About Cancer Causes ---
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/general-info/does-this-cause-cancer.html

It's quite easy to assume simplistic cancer causes analogous to simplistic attributions of poverty causes or inequality causes.

 

First  I stress than inequality in and of itself is not a bad thing.
Exploring Wealth Inequality:  Poverty Matters, Not Wealth Inequality ---
https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/exploring-wealth-inequality

 

Second I stress that "corporate welfare itself" as defined in this study leaves out a lot of stuff that can cause inequality and poverty. A wonderful example is the following quotation from the above article

"But the amount of incentives states offer can vary significantly. For example, New Hampshire spent just $9.9 million on incentives, or 75 cents for every state resident, per year from 1999 to 2014, while Louisiana paid out an average of $1.2 billion a year, or $267 per capita.

I absolutely know that New Hampshire really spent more than 75 cents for every state resident on corporate incentives. Firstly, New Hampshire has no state income tax or sales tax. That's why Walmart spends  tens of millions of dollars building super stores just inside the borders of New Hampshire. For example, Walmart built a relatively new enormous super store in New Hampshire's rural Woodsville (population 1,176). Walmart did not locate in Woodsville because of any financial incentives offered by Woodsville or the State of New Hampshire. Walmart invested millions in the Woodsville store because Woodsville sits on the Connecticut River border between New Hampshire and Vermont. Vermont citizens (and Canadians) stream across the bridge into Woodsville for two reasons:  One is cheaper prices at Walmart, and two is avoidance of the Vermont sales tax. The above study leaves out the "corporate welfare" of not having a state sales tax like all the states surrounding New Hampshire. Walmart isn't about to build a store in the high tax state of Vermont.

 

Not having a sales tax costs the state of New Hampshire more than "75 cents" per capita.  But a gain to New Hampshire arises from the jobs that Walmart stores create regionally in relatively rural towns that would otherwise have much higher rates of unemployment.

 

By the way, the NH Walmart stores are so popular with out-of-state residents (and Canadians) that new hotels are often built across from the Walmart stores in New Hampshire. Exhibit A is the large Hampton Inn that was built directly across the street from the Littleton, NH Walmart store. I cannot think of any other attraction to stay in this particular hotel other than the attraction for out-of-state shoppers to get Walmart prices and no sales taxes. Walmart invests zero for new stores in the high tax state of Vermont. Many of the cars in the Hampton Inn parking lot are pulling trailers for Walmart shopping.

 

But my main objection with the above article is how inconsistent the conclusions are with the data that was used in the study. The author obviously has a political bias that is stretched to the limit. The first bias is in the unmentioned limitations of the Gini Coefficient upon which the entire analysis is based. Read the following at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Limitations

The Gini coefficient is a relative measure. Its proper use and interpretation is controversial. It is possible for the Gini coefficient of a developing country to rise (due to increasing inequality of income) while the number of people in absolute poverty decreases. This is because the Gini coefficient measures relative, not absolute, wealth. Changing income inequality, measured by Gini coefficients, can be due to structural changes in a society such as growing population (baby booms, aging populations, increased divorce rates, extended family households splitting into nuclear families, emigration, immigration) and income mobility. Gini coefficients are simple, and this simplicity can lead to oversights and can confuse the comparison of different populations; for example, while both Bangladesh (per capita income of $1,693) and the Netherlands (per capita income of $42,183) had an income Gini coefficient of 0.31 in 2010, the quality of life, economic opportunity and absolute income in these countries are very different, i.e. countries may have identical Gini coefficients, but differ greatly in wealth. Basic necessities may be available to all in a developed economy, while in an undeveloped economy with the same Gini coefficient, basic necessities may be unavailable to most or unequally available, due to lower absolute wealth.

 

Different income distributions with the same Gini coefficient (think California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Louisiana all having about the same Gini Coefficient for vastly different reasons)

Even when the total income of a population is the same, in certain situations two countries with different income distributions can have the same Gini index (e.g. cases when income Lorenz Curves cross). Table A illustrates one such situation. Both countries have a Gini coefficient of 0.2, but the average income distributions for household groups are different. As another example, in a population where the lowest 50% of individuals have no income and the other 50% have equal income, the Gini coefficient is 0.5; whereas for another population where the lowest 75% of people have 25% of income and the top 25% have 75% of the income, the Gini index is also 0.5. Economies with similar incomes and Gini coefficients can have very different income distributions. Bellù and Liberati claim that to rank income inequality between two different populations based on their Gini indices is sometimes not possible, or misleading.

Extreme wealth inequality, yet low income Gini coefficient (think of New York City versus Woodsville, NH)

A Gini index does not contain information about absolute national or personal incomes. Populations can have very low income Gini indices, yet simultaneously very high wealth Gini index. By measuring inequality in income, the Gini ignores the differential efficiency of use of household income. By ignoring wealth (except as it contributes to income) the Gini can create the appearance of inequality when the people compared are at different stages in their life. Wealthy countries such as Sweden can show a low Gini coefficient for disposable income of 0.31 thereby appearing equal, yet have very high Gini coefficient for wealth of 0.79 to 0.86 thereby suggesting an extremely unequal wealth distribution in its society. These factors are not assessed in income-based Gini.

 

Small sample bias (think of New Hampshire versus New York state)  – sparsely populated regions more likely to have low Gini coefficient

Gini index has a downward-bias for small populations. Counties or states or countries with small populations and less diverse economies will tend to report small Gini coefficients. For economically diverse large population groups, a much higher coefficient is expected than for each of its regions. Taking world economy as one, and income distribution for all human beings, for example, different scholars estimate global Gini index to range between 0.61 and 0.68. As with other inequality coefficients, the Gini coefficient is influenced by the granularity of the measurements. For example, five 20% quantiles (low granularity) will usually yield a lower Gini coefficient than twenty 5% quantiles (high granularity) for the same distribution. Philippe Monfort has shown that using inconsistent or unspecified granularity limits the usefulness of Gini coefficient measurements.

The Gini coefficient measure gives different results when applied to individuals instead of households, for the same economy and same income distributions. If household data is used, the measured value of income Gini depends on how the household is defined. When different populations are not measured with consistent definitions, comparison is not meaningful.

Deininger and Squire (1996) show that income Gini coefficient based on individual income, rather than household income, are different. For example, for the United States, they find that the individual income-based Gini index was 0.35, while for France it was 0.43. According to their individual focused method, in the 108 countries they studied, South Africa had the world's highest Gini coefficient at 0.62, Malaysia had Asia's highest Gini coefficient at 0.5, Brazil the highest at 0.57 in Latin America and Caribbean region, and Turkey the highest at 0.5 in OECD countries.

 

Inability to value benefits and income from informal economy affects Gini coefficient accuracy (New York City is full of welfare benefits whereas there are relatively none in Woodsville, NH)

Some countries distribute benefits that are difficult to value. Countries that provide subsidized housing, medical care, education or other such services are difficult to value objectively, as it depends on quality and extent of the benefit. In absence of free markets, valuing these income transfers as household income is subjective. The theoretical model of Gini coefficient is limited to accepting correct or incorrect subjective assumptions.

In subsistence-driven and informal economies, people may have significant income in other forms than money, for example through subsistence farming or bartering. These income tend to accrue to the segment of population that is below-poverty line or very poor, in emerging and transitional economy countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Informal economy accounts for over half of global employment and as much as 90 per cent of employment in some of the poorer sub-Saharan countries with high official Gini inequality coefficients. Schneider et al., in their 2010 study of 162 countries, report about 31.2%, or about $20 trillion, of world's GDP is informal. In developing countries, the informal economy predominates for all income brackets except for the richer, urban upper income bracket populations. Even in developed economies, between 8% (United States) to 27% (Italy) of each nation's GDP is informal, and resulting informal income predominates as a livelihood activity for those in the lowest income brackets. The value and distribution of the incomes from informal or underground economy is difficult to quantify, making true income Gini coefficients estimates difficult. Different assumptions and quantifications of these incomes will yield different Gini coefficients.

Gini has some mathematical limitations as well. It is not additive and different sets of people cannot be averaged to obtain the Gini coefficient of all the people in the sets.

Continued in article

 

I could go on and on and on about how really bad is the analysis that concludes: 
"Inequality is higher in some states like New York and Louisiana because of corporate welfare" (incentives to business firms to invest in facilities and create jobs).

 

Economics from the Washington Post:  Why Alabama and Mississippi have suddenly gone in opposite directions ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/09/why-it-looks-like-alabama-mississippi-have-suddenly-gone-opposite-directions/

Rep. AOC (Alexandria) naively fought against having the second Amazon headquarters, warehouses, and jobs in NYC. The leftist Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio were furious with her for good reason ---

 

Bill de Blasio corrects Ocasio-Cortez's claim about spending Amazon tax break money ---
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/de-blasio-ocasio-cortex-claim-spending-amazon-tax-break-money

 

Will $120 per year tax credit for each Queens taxpayer have the same impact as the Amazon deal will have on Queens?
https://ny.curbed.com/2018/11/16/18098589/amazon-hq2-nyc-queens-long-island-city-explained

According to the state, Amazon will generate $27.5 billion in state and city revenue over 25 years, a 9:1 ratio of revenue to subsidies—an arrangement Cuomo called “the highest rate of return for an economic incentive program the state has ever offered.

Even if we complicate the analysis with time value of money Alexandria's proposal is what I call Democratic Socialist economics.
She never would've allowed Silicon Valley to be developed.


 

Minimum Wages Versus Labor Subsidies
Economics and cognitive dissonance --- https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/10/economics-and-cognitive-dissonance.html

Jensen Comment
Without researching the issue I have rather strong opinions on minimum wages.

One is that a minimum wage hike that is not a disaster in a city (think Seattle) may be a disaster for employment in a small rural town where each type of service (cafe, landscaping, fuel station, etc.) may only have one business firm, and those local firms may be operating at almost no profit before the minimum wage hike, especially if those businesses are very seasonal and dependent upon tourists.

Two is that a minimum wage change (always up and never down) is much more sticky than the demand for labor. For example, at the moment there are "Help Wanted" signs all over our region due in part to low fuel prices and the booming USA economy with lots of tourists and skiiers/hikers visiting our mountains. Increasing the minimum wage may not cause as much unemployment now as it will if there's a downturn when firms have to make a decision regarding whether to lay workers off.

There's a huge difference when cities make their own minimum wage increases versus when the entire USA has an increase in minimum wages. Rural America is becoming less represented in Washington DC. Workers in rural America enjoy lower housing cost, but without jobs they can't afford housing at any cost.

MIT:  Downward Rigidity in the Wage for New Hires ---
http://economics.mit.edu/files/18395

If wages are more rigid downward than upward, then unemployment is volatile during recessions. In benchmark models, the wage for new hires is particularly important for unemployment  fluctuations, but there is limited evidence of downward rigidity on this margin. We introduce a dataset that tracks the wage for new hires at the job level—that is, across successive vacancies posted by the same job title and establishment. We show that the wage for new hires is more rigid downward than upward, in two steps. First, the nominal wage rarely changes at the job level. When wages do change, they fall infrequently, suggesting a constraint from beneath. Second, when unemployment rises, wages do not fall for new hires—though wages rise strongly as unemployment falls. We show that prior work, which studies the average wage for new hires, cannot detect downward rigidity due to changing job composition. Finally, we match a standard labor search model to our estimates, and uncover state dependent asymmetry in unemployment dynamics. After contractions, unemployment responds symmetrically to labor demand shocks; after persistent expansions, unemployment is as much as twice as sensitive to negative than positive shocks.

 

Continued in article

 


 

Does History Repeat Itself

 

Years ago Russia pulled its butt out of Afghanistan before the USA swooped in to become involved in an endless civil war.

 

Recently the USA pulled its butt out of Syria before Russia swooped in to become more involved in an endless civil war.

 

Why don't these world powers just let those civil wars run their course?
 


Two online news services, Bloomberg and Business Insider, I surf daily both are best described as anti-Trump. It came, therefore, as somewhat of a surprise when they divided rather sharply on the "truce" Turkey and the Kurds and Syria.

Business Insider:  Vladimir Putin is looking unstoppable after a string of victories that Trump handed to him on a plate ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/

Bloomberg:  Trump Outsmarts Putin With Syria Retreat Russia will soon find itself caught between Turkey and Syria.---
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-25/trump-outsmarts-putin-with-syria-retreat?cmpid=BBD102519_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=191025&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Jensen Comment
I found the Bloomberg article to be a more complete analysis of the turmoil in that part of the world. This is becoming a particularly dirty war.

 

Shi'ite Islam --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam

 

Sunni Islam --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Islam

 

Did You ever Wonder Why?

 

Shi'ites and Sunnis are sending missiles and drones at each other over the Persian Gulf? ---
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/middleeast/iran-oil-tanker-red-sea-intl-hnk/index.html

 

Shi'ites and Sunnis are still shooting at each other along the Turkish border occupied by Shi'ite Kurds?--- 
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50058859
 

The USA is dropping a record number of bombs on the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan? ---

https://reason.com/2018/11/16/first-full-year-of-trump-run-foreign-pol/

 

While residents of a village called Trump Heights in the Golan Heights sit outside after dark to watch or imagine the sky lighting up far, far away where Shi'ites and Sunnis play. ---
https://www.janglo.net/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=display&catid=99&tid=468432

 

What isn't the media telling us?
Did you ever wonder why?

 

The Atlantic:  What the U.S. Can Learn From Iranian Warfare (How to Wage War by Sponsoring Terrorism) ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/what-us-can-learn-iranian-warfare/600082/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20191020&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

 

The Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it. ---
https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-homeless-initiative-sends-people-across-us-without-telling-receiving-cities/

 

PG&E stock plunges to record low after Citi warns it could be worthless ---
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pge-stock-plunges-toward-record-low-after-citi-warns-it-could-be-worthless-2019-10-25

 

The S&P 500 hit a record high on Monday, while the Nasdaq fell just short of its lifetime high touched in late July as a more civil tone between the United States and China lifted hopes for a possible trade deal ---
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/trade-optimism-fed-rate-cut-expectation-sends-sp-500-to-record-idUSKBN1X715I

 


 

The US has 50 nuclear bombs stored in Turkey. As tensions rise between the two countries, a look at how they got there and what might happen next ---
https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-has-nuclear-weapons-in-turkey-and-may-try-to-put-the-bombs-away-125477

 


Stanford University:  Public Employee Pensions and Municipal Insolvency ---
https://web.stanford.edu/~smyers2/Myers_JMP.pdf

This paper studies how governments manage public employee pensions and how this affects insolvency risk. I propose a quantitative model of governments that choose their savings and risk exposure by borrowing/saving in defaultable bonds, borrowing in non-defaultable pension benefits, and saving in a pension fund that earns a risk premium. In insolvency, the government can receive transfers from households who may differ from the government in their preferences for public services and private consumption. I match the model to a panel of CA cities and a hand-collected record of fiscal emergencies. The model predicts that governments are highly vulnerable to another stock market bust. A hypothetical shock to pension funds in 2015 produces twice as many fiscal emergencies as the original 2008-10 shock. In the quantified model, the government undersaves and take excess risk relative to what a benevolent government would choose. Savings requirements that limit spending to essential services plus 0.3% of cash-on-hand produce large welfare gains for households. Requiring the pension fund to invest more in safe assets decreases household welfare because the lower average return discourages the government from saving.

 


 

Bernie Leads His Party to Open Borders ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2019/11/12/bernie-leads-his-party-to-open-borders-n2556311?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=11/12/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 


How to Mislead With Statistics

Capital-Labor Substitution --- http://meta-analysis.cz/sigma/

We show that the large elasticity of substitution between capital and labor estimated in the literature on average, 0.9, can be explained by three factors: publication bias, use of aggregated data, and omission of the first-order condition for capital. The mean elasticity conditional on the absence of publication bias, disaggregated data, and inclusion of information from the first-order condition for capital is 0.3. To obtain this result, we collect 3,186 estimates of the elasticity reported in 121 studies, codify 71 variables that reflect the context in which researchers produce their estimates, and address model uncertainty by Bayesian and frequentist model averaging. We employ nonlinear techniques to correct for publication bias, which is responsible for at least half of the overall reduction in the mean elasticity from 0.9 to 0.3. Our findings also suggest that a failure to normalize the production function leads to a substantial upward bias in the estimated elasticity. The weight of evidence accumulated in the empirical literature emphatically rejects the Cobb-Douglas specification.

 


 

Warren (and Senator Ron Wyden)  Wants To Tax Unrealized Capital Gains ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2019/11/08/warren-wants-to-tax-unrealized-capital-gains-n2556165?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f

Under current law, long-term capital gains are taxed at rates up to 20%—plus a 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge on investment income—only after the asset is sold. Mr. Wyden calls this a loophole. …Mr. Wyden…proposes an annual “mark to market” scheme… As an asset rises in value, its owners would pay tax each year on the incremental gain. This would create an enormous new accounting burden. Mr. Wyden may say that his mark-to-market rule will apply only to the top 1% or 0.1%, but it would still be a bonanza for tax attorneys. How will people in the top 2% know whether they’ve passed the threshold, and how far will they go to avoid it? …Mr. Wyden’s plan would tax gains that exist merely on paper. …And what about illiquid investments, such as private companies or real estate? As with Ms. Warren’s suggested wealth tax, no one knows how Mr. Wyden would go about valuing them. …Would the owner of an apartment building be asked to revalue it every year? Will an art investor be told to mark that Picasso to market? Good luck.

Jensen Comment
What is unspoken is that only value increases are taxed while value decreases get no tax break for unsold property. This greatly complicates portfolio risk sharing and diversification. Presumably the aggregated value of an investment portfolio would become irrelevant for tax purposes even though portfolio valuation is vital to risk diversification strategies ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversification_(finance)

 

In fact since an enormous portion of most wealthy people is invested in the capital markets (think stocks, bonds, and real estate) this change in taxation could throw those markets in total disarray.

 

This could also affect property improvement strategies. For example, one of my neighbors not far away is in the land investment business. He owns land parcels near NH cities (think Manchester). His company eventually plots out lots, and he builds streets and develops those urban lots with sewer, buried power lines, some landscaping, and street lights. As it stands he does not have to pay capital gains taxes on those lots until he sells them to house builders. He has substantial investment risk in his lots. His strategy is that he's willing to accept losses on some lots because of expected long-term gains on other lots .He has a portfolio diversification strategy that would be thrown into disarray by a capital gains tax on property appreciation in value. Should he be taxed on value appreciation of the entire development or upon value appreciation of each lot?

 

My point here is that, if there's no incentive to develop the investment speculation lots at the moment, there's even less incentive to do so with annual capital gains taxes on unsold lots. These lots are definitely very long-term investments with little hope of making money unless there's a substantial increase in demand for housing. Interest of wealthy people making long-term investments in land will go down rather than up if they must dole out cash over each of those years that they hold the long-term investments. Ms. Warren and Mr. Wyden are definitely taking a step in the wrong direction if they hope to ease housing shortage in the USA.

 


 

This map shows how many homeless Americans there are in every state ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/map-how-many-homeless-americans-there-are-in-each-state-2019-11

 

Jensen Comment
For me there were some surprises.
Compare New Jersey with New York.
Compare California with Florida and Texas --- all three of these states have high concentrations of undocumented immigrants.

Compare the "poor" states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia with all 47 other states.
Homelessness is complicated because there are so many causes ranging from extreme addictions to mental illness to weather to being undocumented in a sanctuary state.
Even Karl Marx recognized that there will be an "army" of homeless unemployed even when job opportunities are plentiful.
I don't think Marx anticipated homeless people who are earning over $100,000 per year (think Silicon Valley)

 


 

The Atlantic: Unhappy Socialists of South America ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/evo-morales-finally-went-too-far-bolivia/601741/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20191111&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

. . .

When an independent observer mission from the Organization of American States published its audit of Bolivia's election yesterday, the game was finally up. After the OAS announced that there had been “clear manipulations” of the vote in a scathing report, Morales agreed to new elections. A few hours later, as scores of his own allies started to abandon the sinking ship, he resigned from office. Though the future of Bolivian democracy still remains radically uncertain, this is a momentous turning point: one of the first times in recent memory that an authoritarian populist has been forced to vacate his office, because his own compatriots would not stand for his abuses.

Morales’s departure from office marks both a sea change in Latin American politics and a stinging rebuke to the naïveté of parts of the Western left. Even though there had always been strong evidence of their anti-democratic leanings, new socialist leaders such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia were widely celebrated throughout the first decade of the 21st century as the future face of Latin America.

Now virtually nothing remains of their erstwhile (socialist) appeal. Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have made Venezuela deeply authoritarian and shockingly poor. Meanwhile, the Bolivian people have come out in great numbers to stop Morales from violently crushing their protests. As one of the most famous slogans of the Latin American left holds, El pueblo unido jamás será vencido: The people united will never be defeated.

From east to west, and south to north, the dream of Latin America’s so-called pink wave has turned into a nightmare. And the many scholars, writers, and politicians who have for years sung the praises of aspiring dictators like Maduro and Morales should not be easily forgiven for sacrificing the rights of distant people on the altar of their rigid ideology.

 

Continued in article

Jensen Comment

The so-called pink wave moved north among the faculties and students of universities in the USA who applaud tens of trillions of dollars in annual spending proposals for green initiatives, free medical treatments, free medications, free college, guaranteed annual income, reparations, housing subsidies, and open borders --- spending proposals that threaten whatever's left of capitalism in the Western hemisphere

 

Meanwhile capitalism thrives on the other side of the globe in parts of Europe and in Asia.

 


 

History Has Shown That Socialism Isn't the Cure ---
https://townhall.com//columnists/victordavishanson/2019/11/07/history-has-shown-that-socialism-isnt-the-cure-n2556001?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 


 

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?

 

 


NYT: The Happy, Healthy Capitalists of Switzerland ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/opinion/sunday/switzerland-capitalism-wealth.html

 

Like many progressive intellectuals, Bernie Sanders traces his vision of economic paradise not to socialist dictatorships like Venezuela but to their distant cousins in Scandinavia, which are just as wealthy and democratic as the United States but have more equitable distributions of wealth, as well as affordable health care and free college for all.

There is, however, a country far richer and just as fair as any in the Scandinavian trio of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. But no one talks about it.

This $700 billion European economy is among the world’s 20 largest, significantly bigger than any in Scandinavia. It delivers welfare benefits as comprehensive as Scandinavia’s but with lighter taxes, smaller government, and a more open and stable economy. Steady growth recently made it the second richest nation in the world, after Luxembourg, with an average income of $84,000, or $20,000 more than the Scandinavian average. Money is not the final measure of success, but surveys also rank this nation as one of the world’s 10 happiest.

This less socialist but more successful utopia is Switzerland.

While widening its income lead over Scandinavia in recent decades, Switzerland has been catching up on measures of equality. Wealth and income are distributed across the populace almost as equally as in Scandinavia, with the middle class holding about 70 percent of the nation’s assets. The big difference: The typical Swiss family has a net worth around $540,000, twice its Scandinavian peer.

 

Switzerland did draw 15 minutes of media attention around 2010, when Obamacare was still new — but only for its health care system, which requires all residents to buy insurance from private providers and subsidizes those who can least afford it. Admirers said Swiss health care had something for everyone: universal coverage for liberals, private providers and consumer choice for conservatives.

But for the most part, intellectuals ignore Switzerland as a model, perhaps put off by its exaggerated reputation as a shady little tax haven, where Nazi gold and other illicit fortunes hide behind strict bank secrecy laws. In 2015, Switzerland agreed under pressure to share bank records with foreign tax authorities, but that has not slowed the economy at all. Switzerland always was more than secretive banks.

Capitalist to its core, Switzerland imposes lighter taxes on individuals, consumers and corporations than the Scandinavian countries do. In 2018 its top income tax rate was the lowest in Western Europe at 36 percent, well below the Scandinavian average of 52 percent. Government spending amounts to a third of gross domestic product, compared with half in Scandinavia. And Switzerland is more open to trade, with a share of global exports around double that of any Scandinavian economy.

Streamlined government and open borders have helped make this landlocked, mountainous country an unlikely incubator of globally competitive companies. To build wealth, a country needs to make rich things, and an M.I.T. ranking of nations by the complexity of the products they export places Switzerland second behind Japan, well ahead of the Scandinavian countries, whose average rank is 15.

The Swiss excel in just about every major industry other than oil, often by targeting specialized niches, such as biotech and engineering. The country is home to 13 of the top 100 European companies, more than twice as many as in the three Scandinavian nations combined. And most top Swiss firms dwarf Scandinavian peers. Nestlé, with a stock market value of $320 billion, is 15 times larger than its closest Scandinavian rival.

 

Though major multinationals are concentrated in big cities, the Swiss economy is as decentralized as its political system. Traveling southwest from Zurich to Geneva recently, I was struck by how many iconic Swiss exports also originate in its provinces — Swiss Army knives from Schwyz, watches from Bern, St. Bernard puppies from a mountain pass in Valais, cheese and chocolates from Fribourg. Small companies anchor the economy, accounting for two of every three jobs. Only one in seven Swiss work for the government, about half the Scandinavian average.

No other nation’s currency has been rising faster against its trading partners, and normally a rising franc should erode Swiss exports by making them more expensive. Instead, while most rich countries (including Scandinavia’s) saw their share of global exports fall over the past decade, Switzerland’s continued to rise. Such is the reputation of its engineers and chocolatiers that customers readily pay more for Swiss goods.

The premium the world is willing to pay for Swiss goods and services helps deter capital flight and stabilize the economy. Switzerland has not been hit by a domestic financial crisis since the 1970s; the Scandinavian countries were wracked by crises in the 1990s and suffered sharper downturns than Switzerland did following the global crisis of 2008.

If there is any fault line, it is that in trying to slow the rise of the franc, Switzerland cut interest rates to record lows ahead of its European peers, triggering a lending boom that has driven private corporate and household debt up to 250 percent of G.D.P., a risky height. No paradise is perfect.

For all its local charms, Switzerland is worldly in the extreme. The Swiss are a polyglot mix of German, French and Italian speakers, many intimidatingly fluent in multiple languages. The foreign-born population has been increasing for more than a century and accounts for a quarter of the whole, 40 percent non-European Union.

True, the rise of anti-immigrant parties across Europe has an offshoot in Switzerland. The country has always been choosy, accepting new arrivals based on their professional résumé more than family ties or humanitarian need. But Australia and Canada also filter immigrants to fill jobs and are widely studied models of how rich economies can survive the aging of their domestic work forces.

Switzerland has been welcoming more immigrants than any Scandinavian country since the 1950s. It is on track to accept more than 250,000 immigrants between 2015 and 2020, expanding its population by 3 percent. That immigration rate is nearly double the Scandinavian average, and one of the highest among large, developed countries. Immigrants are also significantly more likely to hold jobs in Switzerland, in part because most are required to land one before they arrive.

 

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
.The Swiss are very controlling about immigration whereas in the USA illegal immigration is rampant through leaky borders. With controlled immigration Switzerland expands its population by roughly 3% annually. In the USA legal there's controlled legal immigration coupled with leaky borders. The uncontrolled illegal immigrants in the USA comprise much more than the entire population of Switzerland. It's virtually impossible to determine the exact number, but it's well in excess of 12 million.

 

Whereas Switzerland loves its brand of capitalism, a rising population in the USA is clamoring for big government socialism and open borders, especially among youth and universities. Not so in Switzerland.

 


 

Why is Capitalist Finland so Rich?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/why-is-finland-so-rich.html

Read the comments --- Finland encourages wealth incentives

 

Education in Finland, recipe for success?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/04/education_in_fi.html

Jensen Comment
One of the key differences between Finland and the USA, in my opinion, is that Finland has a greater proportion of two-parent homes --- sounds so old fashioned

 

Honest Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
The USA is dragged down by so much corruption in city, state, and federal government, although business firms are often partners in this corruption

 

Demographics in Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland
Low on racial diversity and immigration

 

Healthcare in Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Finland
The Dark Side (funding and sustainability) --- https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/15/world/finland-health-care-intl/index.html

 

Religion in Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Finland#targetText=Finland is a predominantly Christian,, Judaism, folk religion etc.
On the decline following a general trend in Europe

 

Sex in Finland  ---
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/study_more_finns_opting_for_solo_sexual_satisfaction/9090220
Is this a trend among all developed nations?

 


Deirdre McCloskey:  Reflections on My Decision to Change Gender
https://quillette.com/2019/11/10/reflections-on-my-decision-to-change-gender/

Deirdre is the most famous transgender economics professor in the world and stands out among transgendered academics of all disciplines. She's best known as an economic historian, but her writings and speaking engagements cover a wide range of specialties.

I met her live when she was a plenary speaker at an American Accounting Association annual meeting. I had the honor of being one of the discussants of her speech. I was also delighted to have breakfast with her prior to the session. She was introduced at the session as a:
"literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive Episcopalian, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not 'conservative'! I'm a Christian libertarian."
Some of her books are listed at
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Deirdre+McCloskey&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Her speech that day was in the area of Cliometrics ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliometrics

 2012 AAA Meeting Plenary Speakers and Response Panel Videos  (Washington DC, August 6, 2012)  ---
 http://commons.aaahq.org/hives/20a292d7e9/summary
 I think you have to be a an AAA member and log into the AAA Commons to view these videos.
 Bob Jensen follows another discussant, Cornell's Rob Bloomfield, in the Follow-up Panel Video ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/a0be33f7fc

Deirdre is a prolific scholar who is also a woman of remarkable courage. For example, if I had her stammer I would probably never agree to speak in public, especially in front of very large audiences. This affliction does not inhibit Deirdre in the least, and after she commences to speak this stammer becomes less and less distracting even if it is a bit time consuming.

She's a role model for both transgendered scholars and scholars in general. Her prolific writings are amazing amidst all her other professional obligations.

You can read more about Deirdre at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey




Updates on Medical Insurance

 

The Prescription Escalator ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/the-prescription-escalator.html

 

Between 1982 and 2015, for example, the US saw the launch of 719 new drugs, the most of any country in the sample; Israel had about half as many launches ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/04/peter-thiel-on-medicine-and-longevity.html

 


 

Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Really Have a Plan to Pay for Medicare for All ---
https://reason.com/2019/11/12/elizabeth-warren-doesnt-really-have-a-plan-to-pay-for-medicare-for-all/

The presidential candidate wanted a proposal that was airtight and easy to explain. Her plan is neither.

 

Late last month, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) was under increasing pressure to explain how she would pay for Medicare for All, the single-payer health care system she supports, The Washington Post reported that the presidential hopeful was working with liberal economists to put together a financing plan. 

This was a challenge, the piece noted, partly because the plan would require so much additional government spending, and partly because Warren herself had committed to not financing the program via middle-class taxes, as most countries with national health care systems have done. 

More broadly, Warren wanted a plan that was simple and straightforward. As one anonymous outside advisor told the Post, "They want to figure out—with one go—how to stop the 'How are you going to pay for it?' question…She wants something airtight but easy to understand."

In the end, her plan turned out to be neither. Her proposal is, on the one hand, unwieldy and complex, a lengthy list of provisions that are difficult to capture in a few sentences. And, in part because of its complexity, it is also far from airtight. The plan is full of dubious assumptions about the cost-savings that could be achieved under a single-payer system and the revenue that could be raised by the taxes and fees she would impose. It is not really a plan at all. 

That is the essential point that Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, drives home in a new analysis of the fiscal effects of Warren's financing plan. Roy's analysis assumes that all of the policies Warren calls for—even those that are quite politically unlikely, such as the passage of comprehensive immigration reform—actually go into effect. 

Roy concludes that Warren's plan would raise far less money than assumed, and would cost far more. Broadly speaking, Warren's plan doesn't account for the likely economic ripple effects it would almost certainly cause; instead, she assumes that even with an array of new taxes and fees on businesses and wealthy individuals, economic growth would continue without change. Corporate tax rates would go from 21 percent to 35 percent, which, as Roy notes, "would have a meaningful effect on employment and economic growth, especially in the manufacturing sector and other capital-intensive industries." This allows her to claim far more tax revenue than is realistic.

In addition, Warren assumes that by moving nearly all of America's health care financing to the federal government, administrative costs—the overhead that supports the actual delivery of care—can be cut down to levels that few independent experts believe possible. 

For example, Roy points out, rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse is an administrative cost; currently, about 10 percent of Medicare spending falls into one of these categories. With radically reduced administrative spending, that figure would likely be far higher than Warren estimates, leading to about $3 trillion in additional spending over a decade. 

All together, Roy estimates that far from fully financing Medicare for All, Warren's plan would end up increasing deficits by about $15 trillion over a decade. 

Roy is a former Republican health policy adviser who has often been skeptical of large-scale liberal health plans. But what's notable about his estimate is how close it is to a similar figure put forth by Emory University health policy scholar Kenneth Thorpe, who has at times been supportive of single-payer health care plans. Although some of the particular underlying assumptions differ, Thorpe estimates that Warren's plan comes up about $14 trillion short. 

Like Roy, Thorpe takes issue with Warren's savings estimates. Quoted in a new essay by Philip Klein of The Washington Examiner, Thorpe calls her administrative savings numbers "unrealistically low," and is particularly harsh on her estimates for prescription drug savings: 

The Warren campaign claims that through more aggressive negotiation and threats to rescind patent and licensing protections, it could cut the price that Medicare pays by 70% for brand-name prescription drugs and by 30% for generics, saving $1.7 trillion relative to the Urban Institute forecast. But Emory's Thorpe says such targets are "not even close" to realistic. "It would be the end of any type of research and development and innovation in this country," Thorpe says. "Nobody would invest in the pharmaceutical industry at those numbers."

Klein went through the various points of Warren's plan, and throughout the process, Klein writes, Thorpe kept repeating some variation on the phrase: "That doesn't make any sense." 

The point, I suspect, isn't to make sense, or to add up in any conventional sense. The point is to divert the discussion into technical analysis that many people will tune out, and wave away critics who point out that her assumptions are hokum. 

And you don't necessarily need to dig into the finer points of health care economics to see how flimsy her proposal is. Just look at how Warren herself is describing it. Her Medicare for All plan includes a 6 percent wealth tax, up from the 2 percent wealth tax she proposed earlier this year. Yet she has continued to describe it as a two-cent tax on billionaires. 

Continued in article

 


Leading Leftist Economists Split over Feasibility of Medicare-for-All
 

Lawrence Summers --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

 

Paul Krugman --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

 

Former Harvard University President and USA Treasury Secretary under President Obama argues that Medicare-for-All replacement of private sector coverage is not feasible  ---
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/03/joe-biden-larry-summers-elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all/
Also see his comments on a wealth tax intended to partially fund Medicare-for-All
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/10/summers-on-the-wealth-tax.html

 

Former Princeton Nobel Economist and New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman argues that Medicare-for-All replacement of private sector coverage is feasible ---

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/did-warren-pass-the-medicare-test-i-think-so.html

 

Jensen Comment
By the way, the radical Paul Krugman will no longer be subjected to the editorial restraints of the New York Times--

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/the-blog-moves-on/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

A message for regular readers of this blog: unless something big breaks later today, this will be my last day blogging AT THIS (NYT) SITE. The Times is consolidating the process, so future blog-like entries will show up at my regular columnist page. This should broaden the audience, a bit, maybe, and certainly make it easier for the Times to feature relevant posts.

It will also, for technical reasons, make my life simpler — you’d be surprised how many hoops I have to go through to get these (NYT) things posted. But that’s not the reason.

Anyway, I expect to be doing the same sort of thing, mixing regular columns with stuff, usually wonkish, that doesn’t belong in the regular paper. Old blog posts will remain available

Paul Krugman

Jensen Comment

One of the things I don't like about Paul Krugman is his inconsistency in bending his economics to fit his political agenda.

The "social safety net" includes such things as free medical care, free education, food stamps, housing subsidies, and welfare.

Open immigration can’t exist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure healthcare and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global ---
Paul Krugman
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/724654-open-immigration-can-t-exist-with-a-strong-social-safety-net

 

But now that Paul Krugman wants Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders to be President of the USA he changed his tune about a global offer and promotes a honey pot of safety nets to anybody who can sneak across the USA border, including free medical care, free education, food stamps, housing subsidies, and guaranteed annual income.

 

You can't have it both ways on global offers Paul.

 

Nancy Pelosi Is 'Not a Big Fan of Medicare For All’ ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2019/11/01/nancy-pelosi-is-not-a-big-fan-of-medicare-for-all-n2555747?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=11/02/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 


On a state-by-state basis, the cost differential for nursing home care is far steeper, ranging from $67,525 a year on average for a private room in Oklahoma to $362,628 a year in Alaska

Cheapest States for Long-Term Care: 2019 ---
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2019/10/29/15-cheapest-states-for-long-term-care-2019/?slreturn=20190931094107

 

Jensen Comment
Medicare, unlike Medicaid, does not pay for long-term nursing care, but with years of planning many estates are siphoned off by heirs to get loved ones poor enough for Medicaid ---
https://longtermcare.acl.gov/medicare-medicaid-more/medicaid/medicaid-eligibility/

 

October 31, 2019 reply from Amy Dunbar

Glad I’m not in Alaska. I pay approximately 15K a month for my husband in Connecticut. John is currently in an assisted living center with around-the-clock aides. He has been in three nursing homes and two assisted living institutions. Assisted living is by far the best, probably because they are typically private pay (no Medicaid patients accepted). My costs have ranged from 14K to 16K per month. I know he will eventually be back in nursing home because his needs will increase. For now, I count my blessings that I found another assisted living place that would accept him. We constantly struggle with the right mix of drugs as his Parkinson’s related dementia advances, and thus the odyssey from one institution to another. John’s retirement funds will eventually run out, and I will have to turn to Medicaid. I am dreading that day.

Amy Dunbar

Director of Online Programs in Accounting

Associate Professor, Accounting Department

University of Connecticut School of Business

2100 Hillside Road

Storrs, CT 06269

 


 

The Atlantic:  But the profits of health insurers are not that exorbitant compared with other parts of the health-care system. And in fact, many scholars suggest that American health care is so dysfunctional because it simply costs too much. That’s the fault of doctors, drugmakers, and hospitals, too, not just insurers ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/07/kamala-harris-blames-health-insurers-she-right/595252/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=politics-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20191101&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

 


 

Nancy Pelosi Is 'Not a Big Fan of Medicare For All’ ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2019/11/01/nancy-pelosi-is-not-a-big-fan-of-medicare-for-all-n2555747?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=11/02/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167

 


How to Mislead With Political False Promises

Elizabeth Warren Finally Says How She'll Pay for Medicare for All

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-01/warren-pays-for-medicare-for-all-by-taxing-companies-wealthy?cmpid=BBD110119_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=191101&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Senator Elizabeth Warren said she would fund her version of Medicare for All with taxes on large corporations and the wealthy, a tax evasion crackdown, a reduction in defense spending and by putting newly legalized immigrants on the tax rolls.

 

Her advisers also lowered the estimate of Medicare for All’s price-tag to $20.5 trillion over 10 years from the $34 trillion the Urban Institute predicted, by using the new Medicare-for-All negotiating power to slash administrative spending, drug prices and provider payments.

 

Jensen Comment

She also promises that there will be zero taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare-for-All, Free. Plus she did not factor in the additional trillions for Green Initiatives, Free College, Guaranteed Annual Income, Reparations, and on and on and on.

 

Her promise of zero taxes on the middle class is misleading. Who does she think ultimately pays for the taxes on large corporations (think Walmart, Amazon, and Exxon)? Large corporations don't pay taxes. They collect taxes in prices to their customers which in most cases are the poor and the middle class customers. Warren will even collect from transactions that are exempt from sales tax such as when the Pentagon pays billions to Boeing for aircraft and Microsoft for cloud services.

 

And what happens if you confiscate the wealth of Americans. They have to liquidate their investments in stocks and real estate, thereby confiscating the pensions and savings of the poor and middle class.
 

 “80% of the assets of the rich are publicly traded stocks, bonds, real estate (upon which most of the USA's pension and savings plans depend) ---
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/facts-on-warrens-wealth-tax-plan/

 

 

Notice that she never says how she will keep savings investments pension pension incomes viable when the stock markets crash for good!

 

Facts on Warren’s Wealth Tax Plan ---
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/facts-on-warrens-wealth-tax-plan/

 

. . .

How would the (wealth) tax revenues be spent?

Warren is banking on a $2.75 trillion revenue projection from Zucman and Saez to fund a host of her priorities. In speeches, she has laid out those beneficiaries:

 

The Warren campaign estimates the first three programs — dealing with child care and universal pre-K — would cost about $700 billion over 10 years. And the next three — free public college tuition, money for historically black colleges and canceling most student loan debt — would cost about $1.25 trillion over 10 years. That would leave more than about $750 billion for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, the campaign says. That’s not enough to fully fund either one, but Warren says it is enough for a “down payment” on each.

How reliable is Warren’s $2.75 trillion revenue forecast?

Whether Warren’s plan would actually raise $2.75 trillion is a matter of debate among economists.

Th$2.75 trillion forecast comes from Zucman and Saez. To estimate how much revenue the tax would generate on wealth over $50 million, the economists used data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve Board and the Distributional National Accounts recently created by economist Thomas Piketty, Saez and Zucman. To estimate the revenue from the tax on billionaires, the economists used the Forbes 400 list of the richest 400 Americans in 2018.

 

Zucman and Saez estimated that people would reduce their reported wealth by 15% “through a combination of tax evasion and tax avoidance.” The authors wrote that “recent research shows that the extent of wealth tax evasion/avoidance depends crucially on loopholes and enforcement. The proposed wealth tax has a comprehensive base with no loopholes and is well enforced through a combination of systematic third party reporting and audits. Therefore, the avoidance/evasion response is likely to be small.”

 

But some economists think that assumption is too rosy.

While neither the Tax Policy Center nor the Tax Foundation has yet released a full analysis of Warren’s plan, economists at both said there is reason to believe Warren’s revenue estimate is too high.

Kyle Pomerleau, chief economist and vice president of economic analysis at the nonprofit, pro-business Tax Foundation, said that the assumption of 15% tax evasion/avoidance is “actually the average avoidance for the entire U.S. tax system, which is primarily the income tax and payroll tax. These taxes are, in principle, much harder to avoid than a wealth tax because the transaction (income) is hard to game or hide from the tax authorities. There is a good record of how much you are being paid by your employer.”

“A wealth tax, on the other hand, is much harder to enforce,” Pomerleau said. “For one, much of the wealth tax base doesn’t have a market price. For example, we don’t really know how much a particular privately-held business is worth because equity (stocks) in that company are not regularly traded on the open market.”

Pomerleau also warned that because the wealth tax is a significant tax on savings, it will discourage people from holding on to assets. “This effect will reduce the potential tax base,” Pomerleau said, a trend that was not accounted for in Warren’s estimate.

Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, has similar concerns.

“First, while her plan anticipates some tax avoidance, it will be very difficult for the IRS to keep up with the tax planning that highly-paid lawyers and accountants can devise,” Gleckman told us via email. “With so much money at risk, the wealthy will have powerful incentives to hire smart advisers to help avoid, or at least reduce, their tax liability.

“Second, a large share of wealth held by the high net worth taxpayers is in the form of privately held businesses,” he said. “And these are notoriously difficult to value. In effect, the IRS would have to prove that a taxpayer’s valuation is unreasonably low.”

“I suspect she would collect less revenue than she predicts, but I cannot say how much less,” Gleckman told us.

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post on April 4, Lawrence Summers, a Harvard University professor who was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010, and Natasha Sarin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an assistant professor of finance at the Wharton School, took direct aim at the $2.75 trillion estimate.

“Common-sense revenue estimates by economists who are not very deeply steeped in revenue estimation tend to be overly optimistic,” Summers and Sarin wrote.

The two looked at the U.S. experience with estate tax data and concluded Warren’s wealth tax would only raise about 40% of the amount estimated by Saez and Zucman. And that’s being “maximally optimistic about the wealth tax’s revenue potential,” Summers and Sarin wrote.

“We suspect that to a great extent it reflects the myriad ways wealthy people avoid paying estate taxes that in some form will be applicable in any actually legislated wealth tax,” Summers and Sarin wrote. “These include questionable appraisals; valuation discounts for illiquidity and lack of control; establishment of trusts that enable division of assets among family members with substantial founder control; planning devices that give some income to charity while keeping the remainder for the donor and her beneficiaries; tax-advantaged lending schemes; and other complex devices known only to sophisticated investors. Except for reducing a naive calculation by 15 percent, Saez and Zucman do not seem to take account of these devices.”

“If our suspicion is correct, such a wealth tax will not yield the revenue that its proponents hope for, and that when actual scorekeepers score actual proposals, their estimates will disappoint advocates,” they concluded.

“In our view, the $2.75T is not realistic,” Sarin wrote to us in an email. “The closest we get based on extrapolation from the estate tax (which seems relevant because it involves a very similar population and thus many of the same evasion incentives and possibilities) is around 40% of this estimate.”

In an email response to FactCheck.org, Saez challenged the Summers and Sarin use of the estate tax to estimate the effects of Warren’s wealth tax proposal.

“It is well known that the estate tax is very poorly enforced and that the rich manage to largely avoid/evade it by giving to heirs before death, spouses, and charity, using lots of trick to discount assets,” Saez wrote.

“We have assumed an evasion rate of 15% based on the best literature on the question (as we discuss in our letter and in more detail here),” Saez added.

Saez said the Summers-Sarin estimate that the tax on those with assets worth more than $50 million would bring in just $25 billion a year implicitly assumes “that over 90% of the wealth will be hidden.” That’s not reasonable, Saez said, because “80% of the assets of the rich are publicly traded stocks, bonds, real estate for which there are clear market values

 

Continued in article

 


Urban Institute: From Incremental to Comprehensive Health Reform: How Various Reform Options Compare on Coverage and Costs ---
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/incremental-comprehensive-health-reform-how-various-reform-options-compare-coverage-and-costs

Report:
From Incremental to Comprehensive Health Insurance Reform: How Various Reform Options Compare on Coverage and Costs

Brief:
Comparing Health Insurance Reform Options: From “Building on the ACA” to Single Payer

Blog Post:
Don’t Confuse Changes in Federal Health Spending with National Health Spending

Policymakers, including candidates in the 2020 presidential campaign and members of Congress, have proposed a variety of options to address the shortcomings of the current health care system. These range from improvements to the Affordable Care Act to robust single-payer reform.

There are numerous challenging trade-offs when choosing an approach to health care reform, including covering the uninsured, improving the affordability of health care, and raising the government funding required to implement them. The public and policymakers alike need more information about the potential effects of various health reform proposals.

This study, funded by the Commonwealth Fund, analyzes eight health care reforms and their potential effects on health insurance coverage and spending. Each of the analyzed reform proposals makes health insurance considerably more affordable by reducing people’s premiums and cost sharing. Some reforms also reduce US health care costs, and all require additional federal dollars.

Key findings:

·         Within the existing public-private health care system, near universal coverage and improved affordability could be achieved with moderate increases in national health spending. Under one of the plans modeled in the report, which proposes a mix of private and public health insurance, everyone in the US could be covered except for undocumented immigrants. The plan would enable workers to opt for subsidized nongroup coverage instead of their employer’s insurance plan. It would also improve the ACA’s subsidies to help people afford coverage, cover people in states that have not expanded Medicaid, require everyone to have insurance with an auto-enrollment backup, offer a public insurance option, and cap provider payment rates.

Coverage and costs:
This reform plan achieves universal coverage for people legally present in the US, covering 25.6 million people who would otherwise be uninsured. However, the plan leaves 6.6. million undocumented immigrants without coverage. National spending on health care would decrease modestly, by $22.6 billion or 0.6 percent, compared with current law in 2020. Federal government spending would increase by $122.1 billion in 2020, or $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

·         One single-payer approach would leave no one uninsured and largely eliminate consumers’ out-of-pocket medical costs but would require much greater federal spending to finance. The modeled “enhanced” single-payer system would cover everyone, including undocumented immigrants. The reform would include benefits more comprehensive than Medicare’s—including adult dental, vision, hearing, and long-term services and supports—with no premiums or cost sharing. All current forms of insurance for acute care would be eliminated, including private insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare, and everyone residing in the US would be covered by a new public insurance program. Providers would be paid rates closer to Medicare’s. Health spending by employers would be eliminated, and household and state health spending would decline considerably while federal spending would increase significantly.

Coverage and costs:
This reform option covers the entire US population. National spending on health care would grow by about $720 billion in 2020. Federal government spending would increase by $2.8 trillion in 2020, or $34.0 trillion over 10 years.

·         A second single-payer approach can be constructed with lower federal and system-wide costs. In addition to the enhanced single-payer plan above, researchers examined a single-payer “lite” plan that is similar to the enhanced version but includes cost sharing for out-of-pocket expenses based on income, adds fewer new covered benefits, and only covers legally residing US residents. Single-payer “lite” lowers total national health spending, decreasing health spending by households, employers, and state governments and increasing federal government spending by less than the enhanced single-payer reform.

Coverage and costs:
This reform plan achieves universal coverage for people legally present in the US, covering 25.6 million people who were uninsured. However, the plan leaves all 10.8 million undocumented immigrants without coverage (due to the elimination of private insurance). National spending on health care would decrease by $209.5 billion, or 6 percent, in 2020. Federal government spending would increase by $1.5 trillion in 2020, or by $17.6 trillion over 10 years. The analysis demonstrates that there is more than one effective approach to achieving universal health care coverage in the United States and highlights the trade-offs of different reform strategies.

The analysis demonstrates that there is more than one effective approach to achieving universal health care coverage in the United States and highlights the trade-offs of different reform strategies.

Continued in article

Rob Rrownstein:  The Eye-Popping Cost of Medicare for All According to new figures: more than the federal government will spend over the coming decade on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/high-cost-warren-and-sanderss-single-payer-plan/600166/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=politics-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20191016&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

The Urban Institute estimates that a single-payer plan would require $32 trillion in new tax revenue over the coming decade.

 

How big a lift is it to raise $32 trillion? It’s almost 50 percent more than the total revenue the CBO projects Washington will collect from the personal income tax over the next decade (about $23.3 trillion). It’s more than double the amount the CBO projects Washington will collect over the next decade from the payroll tax that funds Social Security and part of Medicare (about $15.4 trillion).

Jensen Comment
And the Medicare for All Spending initiative is a relatively small part of what most 2020 Presidential Candidates (except for Biden) want to spend on social programs. To the average $3.2 trillion annual cost of Medicare for All the annual cost of their Green Initiatives, free medications, student loan forgiveness followed by free college for everybody, guaranteed annual income for 350+ USA residents, housing-for all, reparations for African and Native Americans, and billions for new subsidized housing on top of existing safety nets such as food stamps and welfare and housing. 

 

Add to this the free medical care, free college, housing, and food advertising for poor people all over the world in cross-over-the-border invitations and you're easily talking over $20 trillion per year. Whereas President Obama deported over a million undocumented immigrants, the 2020 candidates are inviting people to cross over the USA borders.

 

The most misleading statement in the October 15, 2019 debates was Elizabeth Warren's comment that she will not promote any "spending program that taxes the middle class." But notice that she says nothing about destruction of the middle class pensions dependent upon stock market prices (think CREF and CalPERS). She's probably right about middle income retirees not paying more taxes. We won't have any incomes left to tax if you destroy the stock markets.

 

And when the stock markets are destroyed unemployment will soar because business firms will lose the ability to raise capital necessary for operating businesses. Businesses can turn to government for capital, but the cupboard will be bare due to all the social programs draining $20 trillion from the economy.

 


 

Rob Rrownstein:  The Eye-Popping Cost of Medicare for All According to new figures: more than the federal government will spend over the coming decade on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/10/high-cost-warren-and-sanderss-single-payer-plan/600166/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=politics-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20191016&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0

The Urban Institute estimates that a single-payer plan would require $32 trillion in new tax revenue over the coming decade.

 

How big a lift is it to raise $32 trillion? It’s almost 50 percent more than the total revenue the CBO projects Washington will collect from the personal income tax over the next decade (about $23.3 trillion). It’s more than double the amount the CBO projects Washington will collect over the next decade from the payroll tax that funds Social Security and part of Medicare (about $15.4 trillion).

Jensen Comment
And the Medicare for All Spending initiative is a relatively small part of what most 2020 Presidential Candidates (except for Biden) want to spend on social programs. To the average $3.2 trillion annual cost of Medicare for All the annual cost of their Green Initiatives, free medications, student loan forgiveness followed by free college for everybody, guaranteed annual income for 350+ USA residents, housing-for all, reparations for African and Native Americans, and billions for new subsidized housing on top of existing safety nets such as food stamps and welfare and housing. 

 

Add to this the free medical care, free college, housing, and food advertising for poor people all over the world in cross-over-the-border invitations and you're easily talking over $20 trillion per year. Whereas President Obama deported over a million undocumented immigrants, the 2020 candidates are inviting people to cross over the USA borders.

 

The most misleading statement in the October 15, 2019 debates was Elizabeth Warren's comment that she will not promote any "spending program that taxes the middle class." But notice that she says nothing about destruction of the middle class pensions dependent upon stock market prices (think CREF and CalPERS). She's probably right about middle income retirees not paying more taxes. We won't have any incomes left to tax if you destroy the stock markets.

 

And when the stock markets are destroyed unemployment will soar because business firms will lose the ability to raise capital necessary for operating businesses. Businesses can turn to government for capital, but the cupboard will be bare due to all the social programs draining $20 trillion from the economy.

 




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/