Tidbits
Political Quotations
To Accompany the November 28, 2019 edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/Tidbits112819.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 --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
Walter E. Williams: Who Are the Racists?
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/11/27/who-are-the-racists-n2557042?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=11/27/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
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
Daniel Burns on Liberal Practice v. Liberal
Theory ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/11/20/daniel-burns-on-liberal-practice-v-liberal-theory
Florida: 99% of companies pay
no corporate income tax — with lawmakers’ blessing ---
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-florida-corporate-tax-avoidance-20191113-sx37z4l3d5b6viugtl4thlqxem-story.html#nws=true
South Dakota: The Great American Tax Haven
---
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-american-tax-haven-why-the-super-rich-love-south-dakota-trust-laws
Wisconsin facing retiree health care crisis
---
https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/wisconsin-facing-retiree-health-care-crisis
Maps show 500 suspected 're-education' camps and
prisons where China is locking up and torturing its Muslim minority ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-uighur-prison-camp-suspected-locations-maps-2019-11
The Russia Hoax was never about Russia.
It was always a cover story to unleash a legal assault on Team Trump, the sole
aim of which was to look for, and create, secondary crimes ---
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/the_real_reason_for_the_russia_hoax_and_ukraine_and_impeachment_and_the_next_thing.html
Also see
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/attorney-general-barr-left-systemic-sabotage
America’s public-sector pension schemes are
trillions of dollars short ---
https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/americas-public-sector-pension-schemes-are-trillions-of-dollars-short
Jensen Comment
The Sanders-Warren plan to destroy the stock markets will only make matters
worse.
Former President Barack Obama on Friday warned
the Democratic field of White House hopefuls not to veer too far to the left, a
move he said would alienate many who would otherwise be open to voting for the
party’s nominee next year . . . Though Obama did not mention anyone by name, the
message delivered before a room of Democratic donors in Washington was a clear
word of caution about the candidacies of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
Sanders
https://apnews.com/517d82ffc0954fd69958c437b20cb856
Jensen Comment
Remember how President Obama deported over one million undocumented immigrants.
Free medical care, free college, and guaranteed annual income would attract over
one billion "refuges."
Obama warns Democrats against going too far left:
‘We have to be rooted in reality’ ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/16/obama-warns-democrats-against-going-too-far-left.html
Elizabeth Warren Signals She Would Consider a
Universal Basic Income ---
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/11/18/elizabeth-warren-signals-she-would-consider-a-universal-basic-income/
Jensen Comment
UBI is not the same as the "negative income tax" favored by
conservative Milton Friedman. The UBI would be an income guarantee above and
beyond other social welfare programs such as free medical care and free college.
Friedman wanted the negative income tax to replace other social welfare
programs.
Left-Leaning Vox: Gordon Sondland and Kurt
Volker were not telling the whole truth ---
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/21/20976009/impeachment-hearing-hill-holmes-volker-sondland-burisma-biden
FBI has 1,000 investigations into
Chinese intellectual property theft ---
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3019829/fbi-has-1000-probes-chinese-intellectual-property-theft-director
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged
with bribery and fraud ---
https://qz.com/1753498/israels-netanyahu-charged-with-bribery-and-fraud/
$250 Trillion in Global Debt: Chinese and
European banks are in far worse shape than US banks. European banks are getting
hammered by negative rates ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2019/11/21/250-trillion-in-global-debt-how-can-that-be-paid-back-n2556861?bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=thdaily
DoD's
second financial audit uncovers 1,300 new deficiencies ---
https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/dods-second-financial-audit-uncovers-1300-new-deficiencies
Newspaper publisher McClatchy, which owns the
Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, and the Charlotte
Observer, among other publications, is seeking a bailout of its pension fund.
The company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
that it is in discussions with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)
for help ---
https://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/strapped-mcclatchy-seeks-pension-bailout
Rhode Island Supreme Court allows city to cut
pension benefits to avoid bankruptcy ---
https://yankeeinstitute.org/2019/11/18/rhode-island-supreme-court-allows-city-to-cut-pension-benefits-to-avoid-bankruptcy/
The Atlantic: Stop the Ethanol Madness ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/ethanol-has-forsaken-us/602191/
The 2020 Front-Runners Aren’t As Well-Liked As
Past Contenders ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-2020-front-runners-arent-as-well-liked-as-past-contenders/
A campaign event for former Massachusetts Gov.
Deval Patrick, who launched a late Democratic presidential bid last week,
reportedly was canceled Wednesday evening when only two people showed up ---
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/deval-patrick-cancels-campaign-event-at-atlanta-college-after-only-2-people-show-up
Were they his two daughters?
The Atlantic: Public Housing Becomes the
Latest Progressive Fantasy ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/public-housing-fundamentally-flawed/602515/
Describing the FBI’s actions as “gross
incompetence and negligence,” the Justice Department’s inspector general laid
out his findings on the bureau’s probe into Trump campaign links to Russian
election meddling ---
https://www.ozy.com/presidential-daily-brief/pdb-255365/?utm_source=pdb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=December%2012%2C%202019&variable=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&utm_term=OZY#article255837
However
the IG concludes the investigation itself was justified at the beginning
University of Pennsylvania
Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax
will raise $1 trillion less than expected and slow the economy, study finds ---
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2019/12/12/senator-elizabeth-warrens-wealth-tax-projected-budgetary-and-economic-effects
Jensen Comment
As of December 12, 2019 those of us in New Hampshire are being bombarded with
television advertisements for Bernie Sanders and none (as far as I can tell)
from Elizabeth Warren. It would seem that she's already conceded to losing to
Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire primary. Maybe she's concentrating her money
on the larger and more important states. Bernie is still being very ambiguous
about how he will finance his socialism takeover of the USA. He's less ambiguous
about spending plans ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Bernie_Sanders
Bernie probably stands the least chance of defeating Trump
because his political positions are the most radical of all the Democratic Party
presidential candidates. His new alliances with AOC and Omar probably hurt
rather than help his quest to defeat Trump.
The latest Quinnipiac University Scientific Poll found that any of the 2020
Democratic Party candidates (including Bernie Sanders)
will almost certainly clobber Trump in 2020 ---
https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/video/all-top-democrats-beat-trump-in-new-quinnipiac-poll-67668549781
Blast from the Past
August 25, 2016: New Quinnipiac University
Scientific Poll shows we're 'starting to hear the faint rumblings of a Hillary
Clinton landslide' ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/quinnipiac-poll-clinton-trump-landslide-2016-8
December 12, 1901
Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic
wireless communication, the three code dots signifying the letter "S."
Already well known, Marconi, at age 27, became world-famous overnight ---
Media Retract Stories After Realizing The Report Actually Cites How Many
Children The Obama Administration Detained ---
https://www.blabber.buzz/conservative-news/706263-outlets-retract-stories-after-realizing-the-report-actually-cites-how-many-children-the-obama-administration-detained-special?utm_source=c-alrt&utm_medium=c-alrt-email&utm_term=c-alrt-GI&utm_content=5iEzoSRA3OwmMZouDYnIqL3RgHsaffHcB6hB5DcjF-f0.A
Outlets including Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), NPR and Aljazeera jumped on a report from the United Nations, writing Monday that the country has the world’s highest rates of detained children.
The outlets reported that there are currently more than 100,000 children in immigration-related custody, which violates international law. A day later, Reuters and AFP deleted their stories after the U.N. clarified the numbers were from 2015, when President Barack Obama was in office. Neither outlet immediately responded to a request for comment on why they deleted the entire story, instead of issuing corrections and updating to reflect the numbers were from 2015.
The page where the article was featured now has a retraction on Reuters.
Continued in article
Caplan responds to Garett Jones on open borders ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwGBmtwFMgDWBCXxSGdPsmVkRhV
Jensen Comment
What these IQ arguments avoid is the obvious gaming that will take place with
open borders if anybody can enter for free medical care, free medicines, free
education, free everything needed for welfare. For example, if a nation is not
providing free long-term care for dementia patients by all means ship them to
the USA faster than the Mayor De Blasio in New York City is now shipping
hundreds of homeless people all over the USA with free prepaid rent for a a year
at their destinations. If their homelands are not providing dialysis treatments
for indigent patients ship them thru the open borders of a nation that will
provide free dialysis to all patients.
The Scandinavian nations now make it very difficult for resident refugees to attain citizenship due to the expense of all the free medical, education, and social services those nations provide to citizens. Instead they are denying citizenship and paying refugees to leave.
Don't believe the wild claims of open border advocates that most of the people are now crossing the borders in fear of their lives. Many are indeed crossing the USA border illegally because of this fear, but even more are crossing because of their economic, medical, and education needs. With open borders there will be no limit to how many stream into the USA from virtually everywhere on earth.
Al Sharpton Sells His Life Story Rights for Over Half a Million
(some reports say a million) Dollars To His Own Charity ---
http://www.michellesmirror.com/2019/11/a-true-bags-to-bitches-story-real-al.html#.XdQCw3dFznt
Jensen Comment
People gave money to that charity thinking it would be redistributed to the
poor, not to Al Sharpton's pockets.
Of course Donald Trump also treated his charity like his personal piggy bank.
This is common in the world of politician owned charities.
How to Mislead With Statistics
Is China Actually Stealing American Jobs and Wealth?
by John L. Graham and Benjamin Leffel
Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2019/11/is-china-actually-stealing-american-jobs-and-wealth?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=finance_not_activesubs&referral=00209&deliveryName=DM57237
Jensen Comment
It's hard to believe that the authors can conclude that China is not hurting USA
incomes or jobs without ever mentioning the balance of trade between the two
nations and the so-called "China Shock" ---
https://hbr.org/2019/11/is-china-actually-stealing-american-jobs-and-wealth?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=finance_not_activesubs&referral=00209&deliveryName=DM57237
. . .
Some Democratic lawmakers, labor groups, and manufacturers also criticize the deficit on the grounds that some foreign countries—especially China—have used unfair practices like currency manipulation, wage suppression, and government subsidies to boost their exports, while blocking U.S. imports. Some economists argue that China’s competitiveness stems from its protectionism and state involvement in the economy, giving its exports an unfair edge and violating global trade rules. Research by Peterson Institute economists C. Fred Bergsten and Joseph E. Gagnon blames China’s “massive and sustained” currency manipulation from 2000 to 2010 for widening the trade deficit to historic levels.
Though such aggressive manipulation has eased since then, CFR Senior Fellow Brad Setser, a former Treasury official, writes that there is still an East Asian “savings glut,” in which exceptionally high savings rates in the region, partially due to government policy, drive large trade surpluses, which must be absorbed by deficit countries, like the United States.
Meanwhile, the deficit’s concentration in the manufacturing sector has heightened concerns among some economists over job losses and their repercussions in local communities. (Of the $891 billion goods deficit, over $650 billion consisted of [PDF] manufactured consumer goods and automobile parts.) Research by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that the surge in Chinese imports has lowered wages for non-college-educated workers and cost the United States 3.4 million jobs from 2001-2015, while research published by the University of Chicago put that number [PDF] at closer to 2 million over a similar period (1999-2011). Many economists fear that import-related job losses are driving a populist backlash to trade and globalization that will cause political volatility.
Some economists worry about the consequences of large and persistent imbalances. The Peterson Institute’s Gagnon warns that the debt necessary to finance the deficit is heading toward unsustainable levels. Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Jared Bernstein, an economic advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have argued that the large inflows of foreign capital that accompany trade deficits can lead to financial bubbles and may have contributed to the U.S. housing crash that began in 2006. Others note that a growing deficit has been associated with a weak economy, as in the early 2000s, which they say is evidence of the potential for a large deficit to drain demand from the domestic economy and slow growth when the economy is performing under its potential.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The above article points out that it's possible to put too much emphasis on the
trade deficit when setting trade policy with China. However, Graham and Benjamin
Leffel clearly leave out the unfair trade practices of China in their article,
especially the blocking of imports from the USA to the detriment of fair trade
between the two nations.
This is a political article rather than a scholarly article.
How to Mislead With Statistics
11 mind-blowing facts about China's economy ---
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/china-economy-facts-2019-5-1028172022#china-imports-more-us-agricultural-products-than-canada-and-mexico1
The article fails to mention the impact of China's terrible record on human
rights affecting millions of poor people, particularly its minority Muslim
population.
The article also fails to mention the enormous economic corruption.
Jensen Comment
The claim that "With a much bigger population, China has fewer poor people than
the US" is misleading because different definitions of "poor" are used. The
World Bank defines being poor in China as living on less than $1.90 per day ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China
The USA has many more safety nets for the poor such as Medicaid coverage of
poor people, including those in nursing homes, as well as much more generous
welfare programs ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare
There are wider differences in quality of medical care and education in China
relative to the USA ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China
In fairness, China has done spectacularly in reducing poverty.
But it's far better to be poor in the USA relative to China ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
Also poverty is significantly overstated in the USA by failing to factor in the
$2+ trillion underground economy where cash wages of poor people are never
recorded.
NY Times:
Warren Wealth Tax Would Slow Economic Growth By 13% According To Penn Wharton
Budget Model ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/business/warren-wealth-tax-economy.html
Larry Summers --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers
Summers on the Wealth Tax ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/10/summers-on-the-wealth-tax.html
Larry Summers is my favorite liberal economist because even while maintaining his liberal values he never stops thinking like an economist. That makes him suspect among the left but it means that he is always worth listening to. The video below with Saez, Summers and Mankiw (with Rampell moderating) is excellent throughout. I cribbed a number of points from Summers:
“I have studied last week’s twitter war very carefully and I have to say that I am 98.5% convinced by the critics that the Zucman-Saez data are substantially inaccurate and misleading.”
The arguments around political power are not persuasive. Most of what is wrong with politics is because that is what the people want (I’m filling in a bit here from comments throughout). A wealth tax does nothing about corporate lobbying and would increase the incentive to give to political organizations. If you cut wealth at the top by 30% that wouldn’t change relative political power in the slightest.
Wealth is up in large part because interest rates are down which means that permanent income hasn’t increased.
Forced savings programs like social security and unemployment insurance mean that people at the bottom need to save less and thus their wealth falls even as their welfare increases.
A wealth tax increases the incentive to consume instead of save and invest.
On employee stock ownership plans: “When you put workers in control of firms and you give them substantial control–see Israeli kibbutz’s, see Yugoslav cooperatives, see universities where faculties have a powerful voice–the one thing you do not get is expansion. You get more for the people who are already there. That does not seem to be an attractive position for progressives.”
In the Q&A Summers just goes to town on Saez when Saez claims 90% tax rates are a great American invention. “The people who were around in the Kennedy administration who were at least as progressive as you are were united in the belief that 90% tax rates were a bad idea….The number of people who paid those 90% tax rates was trivial and it wasn’t because there weren’t a lot of rich people.” Greg Mankiw, who gives a nice parable in his remarks, has to stifle a laugh as Summers lets rip.
Jensen Comment
I've no objection to a modest wealth tax that does not badly destroy the wealth tax. But to raise $20+ trillion annually needed to fund Democratic Party spending proposals (Green Initiative, free medical care, free medicines, free college, guaranteed annual income for 350+ million USA residents, reparations, open borders, etc.) would wipe out the stock markets. That, in turn, would wipe out most pension funds in the USA and make it impossible for business firms to raise capital. In short it means the destruction of capitalism where business firms raise capital from the private sector.
**How to Mislead With Statistics
The Wealth Tax Runs Counter to the Objectives of Its Advocates
Comment on “Progressive Wealth Taxation” by Saez and Zucman prepared for the
Fall 2019 issue of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity ----
http://www.columbia.edu/~wk2110/bin/BPEASaezZucman.pdf
Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman offer a discussion of rationale for, implementation and implications of introducing wealth taxation in the United States. In my comments, I will primarily focus on three topics: economic arguments for having this form of taxation, practical issues in implementing it, and a few aspects of underlying data and assumptions that authors rely on in evaluating the impact of this proposal.
A general wealth tax does not exist in the United States. However, the U.S. has a highly progressive estate tax and it taxes capital income through a mix of (1) personal income taxes on dividends, interest, capital gains, royalties and business incomes, and (2) corporate taxation. Bases of all these taxes overlap with the base for wealth taxation, although they are not economically or administratively identical. Thus, the right question in my mind is whether a wealth tax is desirable given existence of these other instruments. In my view, as elaborated below, the case for wealth taxation over capital income taxation in general is quite weak and rests on either desirability of one time ,ideally unexpected, taxation or on the presence of externalities from wealth concentration (that ideally should be treated using instruments tailored to specific problems). From the administrative point of view, even then the challenging and ambitious solutions that could make wealth tax feasible apply equally well to (otherwise preferred) capital income taxation.
The case that authors make is not helped by optimistic empirical assumptions that do not highlight uncertainty, which is likely to run mostly in one direction; that may be a plus for public presentation of the plan, but not for an economist. I discuss these issues at the end of the comment.
Continued in article
Jensen
Comment
Along with destruction of pension fund investments in failed stock markets.
Taxing The “Rich” Won’t Pay For Politicians’ Promises ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/10/taxing-the-rich-wont-pay-for-politicians-promises.html
Hillary Clinton Is Not a Fan of Bernie’s or Warren’s Wealth Taxes
---
Not every campus is a political battlefield ---
https://theconversation.com/not-every-campus-is-a-political-battlefield-128196
Jensen
Comment
My own experience across 40 years of teaching full time at four universities is
that students are more concerned about grades than politics. Their knowledge of
government budgets, taxation, and personal finance is very limited.
Last night I saw a New Hampshire television add featuring Presidential candidate Andrew Yang and his wife. Yang claimed that instead of taxing people "We're going to fund Medicare-for-All by making big companies like Amazon pay for it."
Are
students really naive enough to believe this? I think the answer is YES!
Students don't ask where Amazon and Walmart get the money to pay for the $39+
trillion Medicare-for-All tax?
Urban Institutue: 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
Three of the Big Four multinational accounting firms are
among the very top companies of the the world for working moms at Ranks 4/100,
5/100, 8/100
And all four are in the 15-year Hall of Fame for working moms
---
https://www.workingmother.com/working-mother-100-best-companies-winners-2019
The Big Four firms are among the very best companies to work for in
general at Ranks 26/100, 34/100, 36/100, and 44/100
---
https://fortune.com/best-companies/
While wind power leaps ahead in the UK, Denmark, and offshore
elsewhere it hits a stumbling block after soaring in Germany---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/germany-wind-power-fact-of-the-day.html
Jensen Comment
Off shore wind power is the most effective wind power but not necessarily the
most efficient in terms of offshore costs. There's increased interest in wind
power along the USA's Pacific coast ---
https://www.enr.com/articles/44672-us-offshore-wind-power-is-blowing-on-west-coast
Wind power still requires transmission lines which scientists hope will be less
important with development of fuel cells like hydrogen fuel cells that can
generate electricity on site and even in vehicles. Norway plans to have 500,000
hydrogen vehicles on the road in less than a decade. Germany is already running
a hydrogen train. China has the most wind power of any nation but is betting on
hydrogen for the long run ---
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
Empowering Accountants: Shrinking the Tax
Gap Approaches and Revenue Potential
by Natasha Sarin and Lawrence H. Summers
https://www.taxnotes.com/special-reports/compliance/shrinking-tax-gap-approaches-and-revenue-potential/2019/11/15/2b47g
In this report, Sarin and Summers argue that more resources for conducting IRS examinations (particularly of high-income earners), increasing cross-party reporting requirements, and overhauling outdated IRS technology would enable the agency to shrink the tax gap by around 15 percent in the next decade.
Jensen Comment
The downfall of gangster Al Capone is one of the many examples where accounting
power wins when other forms of law enforcement are failing.
Weak tax law enforcement and government corruption go hand in hand in promoting private sector corruption.
It will be interesting to see if obscure tax accountants succeed in bringing down Trump when the Pelosi's coup attempt fails.
Report: War on Terror Will Cost the US About $6.4 Trillion by Fiscal 2020’s End
Jensen Question
Is this a continuing taxpayer obligation that's never mentioned by the 2020
Democratic Party presidential candidates? What does it entail and what's its
priority?
Exhibit A is the never-ending wars with Al-Qadea, the Taliban, and ISIS. Exhibit B is the never-ending occupation in Korea. Exhibit C is how the war on terror becomes entangled in the ceaseless drug wars against vicious cartels.
The War on Terror with boots on the ground and ships at sea is one of the many enormous expenses that make the USA brand if capitalism different than capitalism in smaller nations like Scandinavian nations, Switzerland, and Canada that live in the umbrella of USA protections. Like it or not the USA became a police force of the world long before Trump became president. The War on Terror continues to be an on-going drain on taxpayers. And with cyber warfare and robotics it's becoming more and more expensive.
Opioid deaths are not mainly about prescription opioids
---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/opioid-deaths-are-not-mainly-about-prescription-opioids.html
A recent study of opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts underlines this crucial point, finding that prescription analgesics were detected without heroin or fentanyl in less than 17 percent of the cases. Furthermore, decedents had prescriptions for the opioids that showed up in toxicology tests just 1.3 percent of the time.
Alexander Walley, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University, and five other researchers looked at nearly 3,000 opioid-related deaths with complete toxicology reports from 2013 through 2015. “In Massachusetts, prescribed opioids do not appear to be the major proximal cause of opioid-related overdose deaths,” Walley et al. write in the journal Public Health Reports. “Prescription opioids were detected in postmortem toxicology reports of fewer than half of the decedents; when opioids were prescribed at the time of death, they were commonly not detected in postmortem toxicology reports….The major proximal contributors to opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts during the study period were illicitly made fentanyl and heroin.”
The study confirms that the link between opioid prescriptions and opioid-related deaths is far less straightforward than it is usually portrayed. “Commonly the medication that people are prescribed is not the one that’s present when they die,” Walley told Pain News Network. “And vice versa: The people who died with a prescription opioid like oxycodone in their toxicology screen often don’t have a prescription for it.”
Jensen
Comment
Yeah, but a whole lot of phony prescriptions were written by a whole lot of
fraudulent physicians and filled by greedy pharmacies who knew that what they
were doing was against the law.
How to Mislead With Statistics
The Wealth Tax Runs Counter to the Objectives of Its Advocates
Comment on “Progressive Wealth Taxation” by Saez and Zucman prepared for the
Fall 2019 issue of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity ----
http://www.columbia.edu/~wk2110/bin/BPEASaezZucman.pdf
Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman offer a discussion of rationale for, implementation and implications of introducing wealth taxation in the United States. In my comments, I will primarily focus on three topics: economic arguments for having this form of taxation, practical issues in implementing it, and a few aspects of underlying data and assumptions that authors rely on in evaluating the impact of this proposal.
A general wealth tax does not exist in the United States. However, the U.S. has a highly progressive estate tax and it taxes capital income through a mix of (1) personal income taxes on dividends, interest, capital gains, royalties and business incomes, and (2) corporate taxation. Bases of all these taxes overlap with the base for wealth taxation, although they are not economically or administratively identical. Thus, the right question in my mind is whether a wealth tax is desirable given existence of these other instruments. In my view, as elaborated below, the case for wealth taxation over capital income taxation in general is quite weak and rests on either desirability of one time ,ideally unexpected, taxation or on the presence of externalities from wealth concentration (that ideally should be treated using instruments tailored to specific problems). From the administrative point of view, even then the challenging and ambitious solutions that could make wealth tax feasible apply equally well to (otherwise preferred) capital income taxation.
The case that authors make is not helped by optimistic empirical assumptions that do not highlight uncertainty, which is likely to run mostly in one direction; that may be a plus for public presentation of the plan, but not for an economist. I discuss these issues at the end of the comment.
Continued in article
Larry Summers --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers
Summers on the Wealth Tax ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/10/summers-on-the-wealth-tax.html
Larry Summers is my favorite liberal economist because even while maintaining his liberal values he never stops thinking like an economist. That makes him suspect among the left but it means that he is always worth listening to. The video below with Saez, Summers and Mankiw (with Rampell moderating) is excellent throughout. I cribbed a number of points from Summers:
“I have studied last week’s twitter war very carefully and I have to say that I am 98.5% convinced by the critics that the Zucman-Saez data are substantially inaccurate and misleading.”
The arguments around political power are not persuasive. Most of what is wrong with politics is because that is what the people want (I’m filling in a bit here from comments throughout). A wealth tax does nothing about corporate lobbying and would increase the incentive to give to political organizations. If you cut wealth at the top by 30% that wouldn’t change relative political power in the slightest.
Wealth is up in large part because interest rates are down which means that permanent income hasn’t increased.
Forced savings programs like social security and unemployment insurance mean that people at the bottom need to save less and thus their wealth falls even as their welfare increases.
A wealth tax increases the incentive to consume instead of save and invest.
On employee stock ownership plans: “When you put workers in control of firms and you give them substantial control–see Israeli kibbutz’s, see Yugoslav cooperatives, see universities where faculties have a powerful voice–the one thing you do not get is expansion. You get more for the people who are already there. That does not seem to be an attractive position for progressives.”
In the Q&A Summers just goes to town on Saez when Saez claims 90% tax rates are a great American invention. “The people who were around in the Kennedy administration who were at least as progressive as you are were united in the belief that 90% tax rates were a bad idea….The number of people who paid those 90% tax rates was trivial and it wasn’t because there weren’t a lot of rich people.” Greg Mankiw, who gives a nice parable in his remarks, has to stifle a laugh as Summers lets rip.
Jensen Comment
I've no objection to a modest wealth tax that does not badly destroy the wealth tax. But to raise $20+ trillion annually needed to fund Democratic Party spending proposals (Green Initiative, free medical care, free medicines, free college, guaranteed annual income for 350+ million USA residents, reparations, open borders, etc.) would wipe out the stock markets. That, in turn, would wipe out most pension funds in the USA and make it impossible for business firms to raise capital. In short it means the destruction of capitalism where business firms raise capital from the private sector.
Taxing The “Rich” Won’t Pay For Politicians’ Promises ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/10/taxing-the-rich-wont-pay-for-politicians-promises.html
Hillary Clinton Is Not a Fan of Bernie’s or Warren’s Wealth Taxes
---
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.
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?
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
Los Algodones, in Mexico, isn’t very big. Just 14 miles
from Yuma, Arizona, it has fewer than 5,000 permanent residents. But Los
Algodones has approximately 600 dentists, and they do huge business each year
serving thousands of Americans and Canadians looking to save 40 to 60 percent on
dental services ---
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/welcome-to-molar-city-mexico-the-dental-mecca-americas-health-care-costs-built_n_5dc5772ae4b0fcfb7f651721?1jg
NY Times: Democratic Presidential Tax Plans Would Hit Blue States The
Hardest ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/11/ny-times-democratic-presidential-tax-plans-would-hit-blue-states-the-hardest.html
New York Times, How Democrats Would Tax High-Income Professionals (Not Just the Mega-Rich):
Moody’s data shows that higher taxes would be paid disproportionately in Democratic-leaning states.
Much of the Democratic primary race has focused on taxes aimed at the billionaire class — policies devised to reduce inequality and fund progressive goals on health care and education.
But there’s also a less discussed tax increase in leading Democratic policy proposals that would affect not just a tiny sliver of the ultra-wealthy, but also millions of high-income workers. For these people, many of them affluent professionals in Democratic strongholds, it would be the biggest tax increase in recent memory.
This year, American workers and their employers owe a combined 12.4 percent on Social Security payroll taxes for income up to $132,900 (rising to $137,700 in 2020). They owe nothing on earnings above that level.
Some Democrats in the thick of the presidential race and on Capitol Hill now seek to change or eliminate that cap — potentially placing a new double-digit tax on high earners, with several plans focusing on earnings above $250,000. ...
Moody’s data also shows that the higher taxes would be paid disproportionately in Democratic-leaning states. The 12 states with the highest share of earners who would owe higher taxes all voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, led by New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Jensen Comment
The most liberal candidates spending plans for green initiatives, medicare-for-all,
free college, guaranteed income, reparations, and open borders will also destroy
stock markets, real estate markets, and pension savings
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on November 21, 2019
Hospitals are pushing back against the Trump administration’s new health-pricing disclosure rule, with the industry planning a legal challenge to block it.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on November 26, 2019
Good morning. The uncertainty of a tax on pricey health coverage hangs over finance chiefs as they aim to cut costs and prepare for the levy despite its possible repeal, CFO Journal's Mark Maurer reports.
The federal government in 2022 is scheduled to begin collecting the 40% tax on U.S. employer benefit plans whose values exceed government-set thresholds. The so-called Cadillac tax, which is a part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, has been delayed twice, feeding doubts that it will ever come to fruition.
The tax was developed to help fund the provisions of the Affordable Care Act and battle rising health-care costs. It is projected to record gross collections of $96 billion between 2022 and 2029, according to a May report from the Congressional Budget Office.
But some aspects of the plan remain unresolved. Some executives say they don’t have enough information from the U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service to know whether their efforts to reduce plan costs will be enough to dodge the tax. The Treasury requested feedback from companies in 2015 and 2016, but hasn’t released guidance since.
It is also unclear whether benefits such as retiree medical coverage, dental and vision plans and on-site medical clinics will be subject to the tax. If they are, it could bring the total cost of company health plans closer to “busting through the tax threshold,” according to J.D. Piro, a senior vice president at Aon, a professional-services firm.
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/