"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

Dude, it's clear that you're much more up to speed on this stuff than I
am.
I've got to read some of your statements 5 times before I follow what
you're
saying. Anyone who thinks selecting a Medicare provider is easy hasn't
waded through the miasma that they send my neighbor. This year we're
weighing it because I'm going to write an article on how virtually
impossible it is for anyone but a subject matter expert to wade through
it.
But I digress.

And the Part D hooha is even worse, unfortunately, because of the
various formularies. You have to match the provider's plans with your
constellation of medicine.

I've done that for my neighbor three years running and two months after she
switches to another plan the formulary changes. From the number of times
I've complained on her behalf (which "HIPPO" (sic) makes very nearly
impossible, FWIW) the answer I get is "we can change our formulary at any
time by giving notice." That's changed slightly from the first time I
called. It used to be said without the "notice" part. I guess somebody
complained. By the thousands.

There certainly IS a distinction to be made between working for your
money
and having enough money to have it work for you in addition to your own
labor. The distinction is what the progressive tax code was *meant* to
be
all about but moneyed interests have bought changes that continue to
favor
them in ways that mean the divide between the richest and the poorest
keeps
expanding. I will admit there have been attempts at corrections, but
the
bottom line is that the net worth of the wealthiest people has
skyrocketed.

But we don't tax on wealth (at least yet, although I suppose the case
could be made that the estate tax comes close).

Wait. What would make it NOT a tax on wealth. If you inherit over X
dollars, Uncle Sam and his state cousins will have their hand out for a big
chunk. We've also had a round of luxury taxes in the US that some talk
about reviving even though the results were not what the Feds expected.
Both are taxes poor people can only wish they'd have to pay. Mostly what
the poor inherit is the cost of burying their parents and getting phone
calls from creditors trying to convince them they're liable for their
parent's debts. They are not, but many pay anyway.

The facts are and always
will be, that on INCOME taxes, the rich payer a higher percentage of
their income on taxes than the poor do. (Okay maybe not always, but
always under the current system).

Don't you mean that they are "supposed to pay a higher percentage?" Warren
Buffet strenuously claims the reverse of what you are saying is true.
Buffet says he pays a lower overall percentage than his staff.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...s-millionaire/

says: Their conclusion: As we said at the outset, we don't get into
questions of opinions such as whether secretaries should pay a higher tax
rate than billionaire bosses. But that situation is possible under the
current tax code, if an employee is sufficiently well paid and if the boss's
income comes from stock market investments or managing a hedge fund. Is it
the norm? No. Millionaires who count on a salary pay higher taxes than those
who draw most of their earnings from investment income. And most secretaries
earn too little to pay such high rates.

The rate of taxation takes total
income and total taxes which smoothes out all of the differing stuff
inside the box.

What box? (-:

Krugman claims the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle
of
the income distribution rose 21 percent and that over the same period,
the
income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income
distribution, rose by 480 percent. In other words at the very top the
average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3
million.
That's staggering and it's an indication that progressive taxation is
failing from both ends and depleting the middle class.

I don't get how. We, again, are talking wealth and that has nothing
to do with the relative progressiveness of taxes. If you want to
regulate wealth by taxation you have to make it VERY regressive at the
top end. Which is a whole ball of policy wax.

Indeed. Very steep taxes for the uber-rich may eventually come to pass as
the gulf between American's richest and poorest people widens. I don't know
where the answers lie, just that there are some troubling issues to be dealt
with, like people with skills willing to work but unable to find jobs. You
know there's trouble when Wal*mart advertises for 100 new positions and gets
10,000 applicants, even with crappy benefits. They are also pros at hiring
mostly part time workers whom they don't have to pay ANY health bennies.

OWS might finally convince Wall St. that if they can't rein in excessive CEO
compensation, they run the risk of Congress doing it for them. While you've
talked about how that's been a failure, given enough time, they could close
the necessary loopholes to make it so. In the long run, very few people are
going to vote for taxing themselves and not the uber-rich. As you've noted,
when they're compensated in stock, that devalues every other shareholder's
investment. With so damn few people supporting it, I find it amazing that
it not only persists, but appears to be growing each year.

Krugman likes to ignore those stats that disagree with what he
wants
to say.

Is it my turn to say "you say you've been watching Washington, DC
operate
for how long?" (-:

Never said otherwise, did I? Just making a comment (okay, stating
the obvious).

The problem is that what's obvious to you is not obvious to a lot of people.
Small armies of people on both sides believe everything Krugman and Limbaugh
have to say about the economy. Cherry picking stats, generalizing from
small, poor examples, etc. are techniques used by both sides. I'd say very
few people take economics courses by choice so they end up extrapolating
their own experience to how the government collects and spends money. They
don't realize the economic laws of the small household just don't "scale up"
to the operations of the Federal government.

HeyBub, IIRC, is fond of saying Obama's stimulus money just disappeared.
But money doesn't vanish. People who get even "make work" jobs spend that
money in the economy which keeps it from shrinking even more. People who
get unemployment money are often so close to the edge that their checks are
spent as soon as they get them, and probably a lot sooner since they're
likely in serious debt. An article in today's NYT claims the only different
between OWS and the Tea Party is who they blame for the 2008 crash. Another
interesting column by David Brooks talks about whether we're really the
rational agents that economic theories often rely on:

Pro golfers putt more accurately from all distances when putting for par
than when putting for birdie because they fear the bogie more than they
desire the birdie. Israeli parole boards grant parole to about 35 percent of
the prisoners they see, except when they hear a case in the hour just after
mealtime. In those cases, they grant parole 65 percent of the time. Shoppers
will buy many more cans of soup if you put a sign atop the display that
reads "Limit 12 per customer."

Unfortunately, business is well aware of these foibles and uses them to
sell, sell, sell. That pressure pushes a lot of people to think they need
something they really don't. Part of the great real estate crisis was the
belief that owning a home was a one-way ticket to wealth and that houses
will always rise in cost. It sadly parallels the belief that a college
diploma is an automatic ticket to wealth.

But none of that is shown by the stats instead of the estimates.

If you're saying he's a liar, you'll have to take it up with him.

Actually I thought it was rather clever that all of a sudden he
brings in AND PAYROLL taxes, including the SS taxes. This, of course, is
going to skew the results to where he wants them because of the cap on
SS taxes. But again, the cap on taxes coincides with the cap on
benefits. If you want to change one of the bedrock principles of the
system from the getgo and not base paying in on what one is getting in
return, debate it out front and don't even begin to pretend it is some
sort of unfairness in the system.

We're going to eventually see a debate about "where wealth comes from" and
whether accumulated wealth should be taxed heavily to prevent so much money
from concentrating in the hands of so few that the economy locks up. Henry
Ford presciently said he paid his workers a good wage so that they could
afford to buy his products. Turning that premise on its head, Wal*mart just
announced it's cutting back on the meager health benefits that it pays its
workers. If people can't work hard and become successful, the American
Dream is dying. And people at Wal*mart work pretty damn hard to get mostly
nowhere. That worries me.

Another thing that worries me is how cut-throat and unethical parts of Wall
St. have become:

Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled its latest charges involving
mortgage-backed securities. In what may be a new low for conduct by a major
Wall Street firm in the walk-up to the financial crisis, Citigroup settled
charges (without admitting or denying guilt) that it defrauded investors by
creating a package of mortgage-backed securities for which it selected a
pool of mortgages likely to default, bet against the security for the bank's
benefit by shorting it and then foisted it off on unwitting investors
without disclosing any of this. According to the S.E.C., one trader
characterized this particular security in an all-too-candid e-mail as
"possibly the best short EVER!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/bu...ef=todayspaper

"Without admitting to guilt." A blind man could "see" their guilt with his
cane.

(-: If
it's true, it's more evidence that the middle class takes the lumps, the
upper class gets the lion's share and they give the lower class a break
to
keep the bread and circuses flowing. I will agree, however, that
estimates
are like opinions are like "hassles" - everyone's got one and no one
think's
theirs stinks.

Not really, especially with the SS taxes artificially tossed in.

If you're saying the middle class is still A-OK, I've got to strongly
disagree. When Wal*mart ****s (oops, shifts!) the burden of health care
costs onto the backs of its middle and lower class employees, they are
taking a serious pay cut. Wal*mart stockholders (whom I believe are mostly
upper class and wealthy) gain, middle and lower class workers lose. That
same scene is being repeated all across America. It's a recipe for social
disaster. Part of the reason fewer jobs are open to young people is that
older folks have determined they HAVE to keep on working until they can't
work anymore just to be sure to have enough to survive their old age.

Okay, I had to check. Here's the scoop on Wal*mart:

Walton Enterprises LLC owns an estimated 1,680,506,739 shares of Wal-Mart
stock. The entire Wal-Mart company is divided into 3,636,547,192 shares.
That means that the family holds somewhere around 46.2% of the firm with
other investors owning the other 57.4%. We know that Wal-Mart Stores pays a
dividend of $1.21 per share. That means that the family holding company,
Walton Enterprises LLC, collects a staggering $2,033,413,154+ before taxes
each year in dividend income.

http://www.joshuakennon.com/walton-e...lding-company/

And who says the gulf between rich and poor isn't widening? (-:

That is another debate, one we probably would be closer in thoughts
on.
Although I would also remind one and all that you have to wade through
the first 15 "tax expenditures" (what the government euphemistically
calls tax breaks) before you get to one that is business related.

I did look that up and spend considerable time trying to shoot holes in
it.
You're right. The hoi polloi get most of the joy, tax wise. It's
coming
more and more clear that *no one* is paying their fair share, at least
when
you consider how much everyone is spending on present and (mostly)
future
tax dollars on.

That is one of the most interesting (and annoying) things to look at
each year. It is probably the biggest indictment of the (alleged) system
of taxes that you can find.

All deficit spending needed was to "appear" to have worked once. Then the
fix was in. Why budget when some economic miracle in the future would pull
your butt out of the fire?

They
get theirs, but we get ours too and these end up to be a MUCH greater
burden to revenue. So, we need to keep both in the discussion.

Cain's flat tax could actually work with the right formula - food would
be
tax free and other necessities could be exempted to make it somewhat
less
burdensome on the poor.

And everybody against it tries to pretend it is rocket science to do
that, conveniently forgetting that pretty much every state sales tax
does exactly the same thing.

People hate change, even small amounts of it. Rewriting the entire tax code
short of rebuilding the nation after a nuclear war isn't going to happen.
Only disaster spurs massive change. It won't come from the stalemate we're
currently seeing between Democrats and Republicans.

The Tax Code has passed the point of what my CMSC
610 prof (who was the retired head of the FBI data operations in DC)
said
was ""intellectual control." It has become so vast, arcane and
specialized
that only accountants with detailed specializations can understand it or
when it's been violated. I watched my dad struggle for ten years with
an
oil and gas partnership that the IRS took a dislike to. That required
energy tax lawyers, CPAs and years of mail tag and finally tax court by
which time the partnership one, but the profits had largely been paid to
lawyers defending the profits.

When even the IRS won't stand behind what its own employees tells
you over the phone...

My journalism professor was of a mind that if it happened over the phone, it
didn't really happen. Sort of like Tip O'Neill's (IIRC) famous comment "why
write what you can say, why say what you can nod, why nod what you can
wink?" when talking about being held to something you've written in a memo.

Never said that now did I? I find that especially entertaining
since you exclaim your rights to have an opinion while taking away
mine.

It's the new order my friend. Sorry for being so harsh. I should have
said
"Do I look like Tax Cheatin' Timmy G? I don't formulate no stinkin' tax
policy." (-"

Happens a lot in political debate any more.

Is that really the right use of any more? (-:
Trying to give the benefit of the doubt (g).

I'm not trying to be a needle-dicked bug raper, but what "IT" do you
mean?
I am going to beat proper pronoun reference into you if it's the last
thing
I do, and it could easily be. (-:

It was the entire section above it about how revenue plummeted. I
figured that since it was your discussion, you would realize that. I
guess I am underthinking at the same you are overthinking (g).

OK, I'll buy that, but you have to remember I have some serious short term
memory problems and apparently that's one way they evidence themselves, as
in WTF is he referring to? The STML doesn't seem obvious in writing posts
because it takes 8 hours of writing to pound out what I used to be able to
write in 8 minutes. Eventually I'll have to stop when things erode too
much. So far, my neuro says this is good therapy. Doesn't feel like it.

The dirty little secret that both sides like to ignore is that
the
state of the economy is the biggest part of the revenue puzzle.

Agreed. While reducing expenditures is in theory a good idea, in
practice
it's an awfully painful one. I don't expect a recovery any time soon
and in
fact believe we're seeing 1929 play out in slow motion.

We had one of the longer expansions with (relatively) light
recessions until this one. EVERYBODY (government, consumer, industry)
got caught up in the Euphoria deciding that this time was different
(about the time I automatically start raising cash-g) and that this
particular tree would, indeed, grow to the sky.

What bothers me is the banks and Wall Streets resistance to reinstating some
sort of law that would reduce the exposure of FDIC insured banks from huge
speculative losses.

Heck, if you bought into the Prevailing Wisdom, even the bad loans
were a great idea since (both sides of the equation thought) the house
HAS to be worth a lot more in a couple of years than it was now. So, the
homeowner KNEW that they would be able to sell the house for more than
the balloon payment or that their salary HAD to keep going up. The worst
case scenario for the lenders was they foreclosed and got a house to
resell on the cheap. (There were similar idiocies on the general
business side)

Until there were so many foreclosures that they collapsed the entire market.

When that (surprise, surprise) did not happen, the house of cards
collapsed. So, with Everbody leveraged to the eye balls, there was
nobody to lead us out of the recession. Deleveraging is a bear (so to
speak). I also would like to note from a purely statistical aspect,
quite a bit of this is returning to the norm. You have an extended time
of above average growth, you have to have a time of below average.

So what you're saying is look for a turn-around in 2016. I might not even
know who I am by 2016. Perhaps it's time to spend while I can still
appreciate it. Actually, Medicare will pressure me to spend wildly and
divorce my wife just to be eligible for nursing home care. We keep joking
that we should get divorced now so it won't be considered a sham divorce.

An explosion like the 2008 debacle every once in a while serves to make
people stop and really examine what's going on. I think the unfunded
pensions and health benefits hand grenade might have really grown in
explosive power if the crash hadn't occurred and sent all the states
scurrying to look more closely at expenditures.

Yet we are ignoring the single biggest unfunded liability, the SS
"surplus"

Well, if we're ignoring the liability of the states, why not the much larger
one? They're all invisible elephants in the room.

Obama's job plan would have at least tried to get some segments of the
economy back on track so that growth can resume. I suspect no matter
which
side wins in 2012, we're going to continue in our lost decade just the
way
the Japanese did.

Largely the union segments. Found it interesting, at least from an
Indiana perspective, that the places in the state getting all of the
green seed money are places like GM, Delphi, etc., that are UAW while a
maker of green police cars and a couple other real start-ups are still
waiting.

The power of lobbying. It doesn't surprise me a bit.

There are no accounting tricks that make it look smaller. It is what
it
is. Although there is a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophesy
about
how the total package is put together. Sorta like Canada does with
their
brand name medications. They use a market basket of the countries that
pay the least.

Ah yes, one of the very tricks I was talking about. The statistics
about
labor and income from now and 30 years ago require so many adjustments
to
draw valid comparisons that I'll bet a good economist could make a case
for
the equivalent of economic anti-gravity. When I grew up, most fathers
worked, most women stayed at home and we enjoyed a comfortable standard
of
living. Now, to enjoy that same standard, both parents have to work.

Houses are now almost 1/4 bigger than they were in the 50s (although
that might be heading back down). We have internet, A/C, regulations
adding something like $1500 to the cost of a car and around $7500 to the
cost of a house, etc. etc. We are enjoying a better standard and for
that both have to work.

Is it really that much better? The fact that the poor have such "amenities"
now indicates that the baseline has moved, but that a higher income is not
necessarily required to have those things.

The first $100 million is a struggle, the second $100 million is
inevitable (g).

I know enough millionaires to know that being a millionaire sure doesn't
mean what it used to mean.


I ran a million through an inflation calculator using 1980 as the
base year (rather arbitrarily half way between the start of Standard Oil
and its break up. "RIch as Rockefeller" seems to be about the time
millionaire was brought into the vernacular. You would arond $24 million
to be a millionaire in what I will whimsically call "real money".
Doesn't really add anything to the discussion, but was a mildly amusing
what if game.

I read another disturbing item in the NYT that makes me wonder if we haven't
changed for the worse. It's about how accounting firms can keep charges of
malfeasance against them on the down low for years:

The board also has the authority to file enforcement actions against
auditors, but those, too, are private until the S.E.C. rules on an appeal.
It is as if charges of robbery had to be kept confidential until all appeals
had been completed. There is no way to know if the accounting board has
taken action against anyone. An auditor that the board deems to be in
violation of rules may keep working for years while secret proceedings
continue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/bu...ef=todayspaper

We're in a nasty state with control shifting back and forth between
elections, Supreme Court decisions of 5-4 inviting future (and now it seems
inevitable) reversal. We're acting like a poorly designed thermostat that
rapidly switches on and off when the set temperature is reached instead of
staying on or off until room temperature has varied by a few degrees.

I'm not sure what can be done to fix it. Both sides dream of a getting a
massive majority in the House, Senate and Supreme Court, but that's probably
not going to happen any time soon. As dissection of a battery will tell
you, differences in polarity can result in a lot of work being done, and
once upon a time America could do that. Now, we seem utterly paralyzed with
neither side willing to give a millimeter to the other. Has the battery of
economic power in America finally run down? I'm worried that everyone's
struggling to reach a level of post WWII prosperity that was an incredible
fluke and the likes of which we'll never see again.

--
Bobby G.