Econ 101

Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Laffer Curve Tells Us

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Video description) Should Taxes Be Higher? It’s the million dollar question! Up? Down? No change? Where in the world should taxes go? In election years, the question of tax rates fills the airwaves. In non-election years, the question of tax rates, again, fills the airwaves. So what’s the answer? UCLA Professor of Economics Tim Groseclose explains his research on the topic. Basically, there’s a certain point at which higher tax rates actually reduce the amount of revenue the government collects. What’s that point? When are tax rates too high? Learn a valuable lesson in economics, and public policy.

Video Description:

President Obama has declared that the standard by which all policies and policy outcomes are judged is fairness. This video explores what it means for our economic system and our economic results to be “fair.” Does it mean that everyone has a fair shot? Does it mean that everyone gets the same? Does it mean the government is supposed to play the role of Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor? The surprising answer: Nations with free market systems that allow ALL people to get ahead are the fairest of them all.

Learn more in Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Truth about Taxes, Opportunity, and Wealth in America by Stephen Moore:

http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/whos-the-fairest-of-them-all/

Are People Born Good? This View Animates Conservatism (PragerU)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is one of two of the largest divides between the foundations of left/right philosophies.

(Video Description) In our universities, newspapers, and television shows, it is a given that external forces are the cause of crime. If not for poverty, murder and rape would be much lower. If not for racism, America’s inner cities would be far wealthier. So on and so on. At the core of this belief is that people are basically good, and it is society that makes them bad. This notion is simply not true. As Dennis Prager explains in this video, human nature is not basically good. It is not, though, basically bad. People are born more or less neutral. And it is incumbent upon parents, teachers, and yes, society, to turn children into good adults. It doesn’t happen on its own.

While Prager’s and my own theology differs a bit, ultimately the Judeo-Christian understanding of where we start is similar:

(4GospelTruth) ….We will examine several verses that prove that each and every human being born into this world has the same sinful nature, that we all inherited that sinful nature from Adam and Eve.  We are also going to discover what it actually means to be a sinner and how God describes our sinfulness.  This is VERY important because if we do not understand what God means when He tells us that we are sinners, we will not understand what God means when He tells us that we must repent of our sin.

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.  These are the words of David, who was a man “after God’s own heart”–this means that he was pleasing to God.  Yet, David tells us, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that he was shapen (formed in the womb) in iniquity–already IN sin, and that he was a sinner from the moment he was first conceived.  Surely, his fallen condition could NOT be worse than our own. Surely it could not be any different from our own.  The fact is, the fallen, human nature of David is the same fallen nature of EVERY other fallen human being.  This verse tells us WHEN we, as sinners, inherit the sin nature. We see from this verse that we inherit the sin nature from the MOMENT we are first conceived. This means that we never have even a moment of innocence in this life.  All of the innocence of man passed from the scene the moment man fell in the garden, and EVERY sinner born into the world subsequent to that fateful event, inherits a fallen, sinful nature, from the moment of his conception.  This verse tells us WHEN we inherit the sin nature, and the following Bible verses tell us that all human beings DO inherit the sin nature:  “For as by one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous (Romans 5:19).  This verse tells us that Adam’s sin was passed on to us.   For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (I Corinthians 15:22).  This verse tells us that our spiritual death, our fallen state of sinfulness, is the RESULT of Adam’s sin.  We became sinners THROUGH Adam. …

Read more on this topic at Gospel for Life.

This idea under-girds the philosophy of conservatism. In a section I added to the first chapter of my book, I note the strong underlying commitment in conservative philosophy (dare I say theology) by quoting Thomas Sowell, as found on my QUOTES page:

Christianity is closely tied to the success of capitalism,[1] as it is the only possible ethic behind such an enterprise.  How can such a thing be said?  The famed economist/sociologist/historian of our day, Thomas Sowell, speaks to this in his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. He whittles down the many economic views into just two categories, the constrained view and the unconstrained view.

The constrained vision is a tragic vision of the human condition. The unconstrained vision is a moral vision of human intentions, which are viewed as ultimately decisive. The unconstrained vision promotes pursuit of the highest ideals and the best solutions. By contrast, the constrained vision sees the best as the enemy of the good— a vain attempt to reach the unattainable being seen as not only futile but often counterproductive, while the same efforts could have produced a more viable and beneficial trade-off. Adam Smith applied this reasoning not only to economics but also to morality and politics: The prudent reformer, according to Smith, will respect “the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people,” and when he cannot establish what is right, “he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong.” His goal is not to create the ideal but to “establish the best that the people can bear.”[2]

Dr. Sowell goes on to point out that while not “all social thinkers fit this schematic dichotomy…. the conflict of visions is no less real because everyone has not chosen sides or irrevocably committed themselves.” Continuing he points out:

Despite necessary caveats, it remains an important and remarkable phenomenon that how human nature is conceived at the outset is highly correlated with the whole conception of knowledge, morality, power, time, rationality, war, freedom, and law which defines a social vision…. The dichotomy between constrained and unconstrained visions is based on whether or not inherent limitations of man are among the key elements included in the vision.[3]

The contribution of the nature of man by the Judeo-Christian ethic is key in this respect. One can almost say, then, that the Christian worldview demands a particular position to be taken in the socio-economic realm.* You can almost liken the constrained view of man in economics and conservatism as the Calvinist position.  Pulitzer prize winning political commentator, Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), makes the above point well:

At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.[4]

A free market, then, is typically viewed through the lenses of the Christian worldview with its concrete view of the reality of man balanced with love for your neighbor;

Sean Giordano (AKA. Papa Giorgio), Worldviews: A Click Away from Binary Collisions (Religio-Political Apologetics), found in the introductive chapter, “Technology Junkies”

[1] See for instance: R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000 [originally 1926]); Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003 [originally 1904]); Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York, NY: Random House, 2005); Thomas E. Woods, Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005).

[2] Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 27.

[3] Ibid., 33, 34.

[4] Walter lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, NY: Freee Press, 1965), 80.

The above drives or animates conservatives, and causes us to ask fundamental questions that those on the left may ask in their household — but not in society [writ large]. It is why conservatism, while not the Gospel, will always be closer to reality in it’s cures and responses to man’s societal ills than any other viewpoint:

1) compared to what?
2) at what cost?
3) what hard-evidence do you have?

Politics & The Modern Liberal Contradiction

Arbitrary Values / Relativism

In many cases, “modern liberal” positions are based on the idea of tolerance, the freedom of the individual to do as he or she pleases.  This in turn is based on moral relativism, the idea that morality is relative to the individual and the situation (which distinguishes it from “classical liberalism”).  Again, what is right or wrong for you may not be right or wrong for others.  As a result, you cannot tell others not to have an abortion, not to look at or publish pornography, or not to live by an “alternative lifestyle.”  Educational environments must be “value free,” there must be no restrictions on sexual and artistic freedom, and according to some, even activities such as recreational drug use should be decriminalized.  Because there are no absolute values, each person must discover his own morality, a process taught in our schools as “values clarification.”

The liberal contradiction lies in the fact that every liberal position claims to be morally correct and objectively true.  It is right to allow abortions and wrong to oppose them.  Tolerance (in its modern definition) is good, intolerance is bad.  Children should be allowed to grow up in a value-free environment; parents should not impose their own values.  Modern liberalism takes a moral stance on every issue, but it undermines its own foundation by claiming that there is no moral absolute or guide to adhere to.

To put it into simple terms, yet once more, when a liberal tells you that you cannot tell other people what to do, he or she is contradicting himself by telling you what to do!  And there is another side to the liberal contradiction.  While many liberal positions are based on tolerance and complete individual freedom, other liberal positions are based on strict authoritarianism.

According to contemporary liberalism, the common good (what Rousseau called “the general will”) necessitates the suppression of individual rights when it comes to “saving” the environment, creating a more “equitable distribution” of wealth, achieving “equality” between races and sexes in all walks of life, and enforcing a strict separation of church and state.  Paradoxically, that same “common good” takes a back seat to individual freedoms when it comes to the detrimental effects of: pornography and sexual freedom, reduced police power and criminal punishment, or drug use, or firearm mandates, etc..

Let me hasten to add that I too am for tolerance, equal rights, and ending unjust discrimination.  I too am for freedom of speech, artistic freedom, academic freedom, and the separation of church and state.  I too am for protecting the environment and helping the underprivileged.  But I am for these things because I believe in the tenants of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, not because I reject these absolutes.

If I were to reject the idea of moral truths, what possible motivation (moral duty) could I have to champion these or any other causes?  More important, on what basis could I hope to persuade others of the importance of these causes?  It is inconsistent to claim to be concerned about rights while rejecting the moral foundation from which rights are derived.

The rejection of one’s own moral foundation leads one to be not only immoral, but also illogical.  It leads to positions that are inconsistent with themselves and each other (self-deleting).  It leads to outcomes that directly counter one’s original intention and that threaten one’s own goals.  It is unfortunate for the liberal agenda, but the liberal contradiction poses just such a threat.  And it is not a threat from “conservatives” or from any outside source – it is a threat from within.  Because of the rejection of the moral foundation for liberalism, liberalism is failing to protect the rights it claims to cherish.  “What is is?”  Please Mr. President!

…read more…

A couple more recommended resources for a quick overview of this internal/foundational battle “for the soul” are as follows (the first being mine):

The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (video below)

“The Kronies” ~ Obama-Aged Action Figures

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via a hat-tip to MoonBattery, and the site for the figures is here: thekronies.com/

And at The Blaze you can find an interview with their creator. Here is the first video of the interview, but… before you watch it, one should familiarize themselves with what George Gilder said about a “static government,” and what Milton Friedman says about government monopolies:

“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”

~ George Gilder, Interview by Dennis Prager

{Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it” (see below) enforcers George Gilders contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works.}

Bernie `Socialist` Sanders debates Michele Bachmann on Economy (CNN)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Read more at Media’ite:

The Guarding confirms the statement of Michele Bachmann (implicitly) in the emboldened portion — GM is pulling out of Australia… Toyota probably following. Minimum wage increases adding pressures to business:

…GM Holden will cease producing cars in Australia from 2017, putting 2,900 employees out of work and Australia’s remaining car and components industry and its 45,000 workers in immediate danger.

“The decision to end manufacturing in Australia reflects the perfect storm of negative influences the automotive industry faces in the country, including the sustained strength of the Australian dollar, high cost of production, small domestic market and arguably the most competitive and fragmented auto market in the world,” GM Holden’s chairman, Dan Akerson, said.

In a statement from Detroit, Holden said “approximately 2,900 positions will be impacted over the next four years. This will comprise 1,600 from the Elizabeth vehicle manufacturing plant [in South Australia] and approximately 1,300 from Holden’s Victorian workforce…

Common Sense Questions Abaout Redistribution

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Trib Live, and is by Donald J. Boudreaux who is a professor of economics and Getchell Chair at George Mason University in Fairfax. Here are his common sense questions:

  • Do you teach your children to envy what other children have? Do you encourage your children to form gangs with their playmates to “redistribute” toys away from richer kids on the schoolyard toward kids not so rich? If not, what reason have you to suppose that envy and “redistribution” become acceptable when carried out on a large scale by government?
  • Do you not worry that creating government power today to take from Smith and give to Jones — simply because Smith has more material wealth than Jones — might eventually be abused so that tomorrow, government takes from Jones and gives to Smith simply because Smith is more politically influential than Jones?
  • Suppose that Jones chooses a career as a poet. Jones treasures the time he spends walking in the woods and strolling city streets in leisurely reflection; his reflections lead him to write poetry critical of capitalist materialism. Working as a poet, Jones earns $20,000 annually. Smith chooses a career as an emergency-room physician. She works an average of 60 hours weekly and seldom takes a vacation. Her annual salary is $400,000. Is this “distribution” of income unfair? Is Smith responsible for Jones’ relatively low salary? Does Smith owe Jones money? If so, how much? And what is the formula you use to determine Smith’s debt to Jones?
  • While Dr. Smith earns more money than does poet Jones, poet Jones earns more leisure than does Dr. Smith. Do you believe leisure has value to those who possess it? If so, are you disturbed by the inequality of leisure that separates leisure-rich Jones from leisure-poor Smith? Do you advocate policies to “redistribute” leisure from Jones to Smith — say, by forcing Jones to wash Smith’s dinner dishes or to chauffeur Smith to and from work? If not, why not?
  • Surveys show that Americans in general are not as bothered by income inequality as are academics and media pundits. Are the many Americans who don’t suffer deep envy of others’ monetary incomes naïve? Do the professors and pundits who fret incessantly over income inequality know something that most Americans don’t? If so, what?
  • You allege that great differences in incomes are psychologically harmful to poor people even if these poor people are, by historical standards, quite wealthy. So how do you explain the great demand of very poor immigrants to come to America — where these immigrants are relatively much poorer than they are in their native lands?
  • Do you believe that someone to whom government gives, say, $100,000 year in and year out, simply because that person is a citizen of the country, feels as much psychological satisfaction as that person would feel if he learned a trade or a profession at which he earns an annual salary of, say, $80,000?
  • Would you prefer to live in a society in which everyone’s annual income is $50,000 or in a society with an average annual income of $75,000 but in which annual incomes range from $10,000 to $1 million? And regardless of the choice you would make, do you think others who choose differently are in error?

Another Bailout Around the Corner ~ `The Hammer` Was Right!

Published by Papa Giorgio
Economic Laws

✿ “A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”

{Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it” (see below) enforcers George Gilders contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works.}

Via Gateway Pundit:

This come via the Weekly Standard, but note that Charles “the Hammer” Krauthammer predicted this at the end of last year:

Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.
Obamacare

For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.

Here, US-RUSSIA talks about some of the key differences between the Russia of today and the USSR of yesteryear:

…But what Russia does not suffer from is what the Soviet Union suffered from: massive economic distortion through state subsidies and outright fiat. The Soviet Union’s policy to contain inflation was not to raise interest rates or limit bank lending but to make inflation illegal. Inflation was banned and prices on a host of important goods were frozen (consumers, of course, paid the increased cost through ever-more-pervasive shortages). The Soviet treatment of unemployment was similar. The Soviet Union sought to lower unemployment not through tax credits or through loose monetary policy but by making unemployment a crime and forcing enterprises to boost their payrolls. Stories abound of Soviet grocery stores that had  four different ticketing systems and ten different cashiers. This sort of inefficiency wasn’t some mysterious manifestation of eastern barbarism, it was an entirely predictable result of Soviet economic policy…

The question is, what is the healthiest direction/pulse of the nation to go? Making market “realities” a fiction, and artificially insulated from what the public wants… thus increasing the government’s involvement (increasing it’s growth and stripping away freedoms in order to artificially prop-up parts of the market) in our personal lives and restricting of choices? Or a free’er market which increases our freedoms and allows products and reforms to be MOST affected and guided by the people?

One last point, the most important. Unlike big business when it makes mistakes, big government cannot go out of business. Unlike corrupt government, corrupt business cannot print money and thereby devalue a nation’s currency. Businesses cannot coerce you by force (tax liens, garnishing of wages, or armed IRS officials, etc) into an action. So the “greed” of the corporation pales in comparison to the greed of government.[6] Which is why our Founders stated that, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government” (Patrick Henry); “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master” (George Washington). (Read More)

The Counter Culture vs. God ~ A Skateboarding Magazine Tells Its Readers to Steal

Published by Papa Giorgio

The above comes from the April 2013 (vol 31) Transworld Skateboarding magazine. They are effectively telling its readers to steal from someone they love, thus breaking a commandment they picture in the magazine. Many in this generation do not know the full impact of these commandments and the entirety of a life lived… a life lived well that is.  As an ex-three-time felon, I know how hard it is to live a life well in God’s eyes… and I couldn’t do it at all without His daily help.

Let us just peruse some commentary on Commandment number eight from a few different sources:

There is only one solution to the world’s problems, only one prescription for producing a near-heaven on earth. It is 3,000 years old. And it is known as the Ten Commandments.

Properly understood and applied, the Ten Commandments are really all humanity needs to make a beautiful world. While modern men and women, in their hubris, believe that they can and must come up with new ideas in order to make a good world, the truth is there is almost nothing new to say.

If people and countries lived by the Ten Commandments, all the great moral problems would disappear.

Or, to put it another way, all the great evils involve the violation of one or more of the Ten Commandments.

8. Do not steal.

This commandment prohibits the stealing of people, the stealing of property, and the stealing of anything that belongs to another. The first prohibition alone, if obeyed, would have rendered the slave trade impossible.

Protecting the sanctity of private property makes moral civilization possible. That is why the recent riots in London should frighten every citizen of the U.K. and the West generally. Just as the burning of books leads to the burning of people, so, too, the smashing of windows and the looting of property leads eventually to the smashing of heads.

The rampant violation of this commandment by the governments of Africa is the primary reason for African poverty. Corruption, not Western imperialism, is the root of Africa’s backwardness.

(Prager)

There are also economic systems in mind all-thru-out the Bible, and they do not — even the eighth commandment — support socialism as an economic system.

Obamacare, Corporate Profits, and Economic Laws

Published by Papa Giorgio

Daily Bewilderment at the Left

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.” ~ Thomas Sowell

Some conversation and a post by Libertarian Republican as well as news about Sweden trying to pass a law to reduce CEO pay got me thinking (at 3am in the morning, aaargh!). I pointed out to Mark that when a corporation is taxed more… in order to stay competitive, they a) either raise the cost of what they sell to soak up the rising taxes against them, or b) cut fat (jobs, outsource, etc), or c) both.

The conversation focused around medical giant, Stryker, who has stated that due to the 2.3% medical device tax it will be forced to lay people off. In fact, the company has already tried to streamline its operations over the past few years in preperation for it:

….Executives for Stryker have placed the blame squarely on the coming tax ever since it gained more steam in Washington.

“Here we are, one of the greatest industries in the country, and we’re staring down on Jan. 1, 2013 and the addition of a 2.3 percent excise tax, while meanwhile on the other side all the discussion in Washington is about creating jobs,” Stryker President and CEO Stephen McMillian said during a national conference of medical device manufacturers in Washington, D.C. last September.

Positions within the company were eliminated altogether after the announcement and have since contracted out many of their current roster of employees to keep costs down, an employee with Stryker, who spoke to FoxNews.com under the condition of anonymity, said.

“They really trimmed the fat with the last layoffs in 2009 and the year after which is probably why we are finally on budget for the first time since 1999,” the employee added…. (Fox)

But in our conversation Mark said the following:

Sean, there are several other options you are ignoring that a corp has to manage increased expenses like taxes. This is what they call a False Dilemma; they could innovate, reduce CEO pay, etc. c) reduce profits and make less money for shareholders. Why didn’t you think of that? Are corporate profits sacred to you Sean?

To which I simply respond:

So, Mark, you are saying that someone you know who owns a business (I know many) will choose your option c? Please, ask a friend of yours who owns a business… especially shareholders who are mainly people with investment packages who have worked hard their whole lives and are looking forward to retiring or are retired (e.g., the older folk of our nation — my wife for instance has a 401K plan that invests partly in stock) if they would lower profits for themselves and their investors and shareholders (if a small business, the nest-egg they were or are planning on leaving their children and grandchildren). Why would they want to be in business, to be a great person? Profit motivates and allows the market (people) to choose what they want. If you have a centrally planned choice you end up with warehouses full of useless gadgets, like in the USSR.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” ~ C. S. Lewis

Then a day or two after I posted the above, I read from Libertarian Republican (LR) a small piece about Sweden passing a law so intrusive that it will stymy and business sense left in that country. Here is part of the story:

 

The left has discovered that popular initiative can be used to advance some of their more wacky ideas. This November, they will vote on the so-called “1-to-12” initiative and at later date, not yet determined, on the so-called “basic income” initiative. Here in the United States, a comparable wackiness is initiatives to raise the minimum wage. 

On November 27, the Swiss will vote on an initiative to limit the compensation of any employee to twelve times the compensation of the lowest paid worker for the company. The argument is either that corporate executives aren’t worth what they’re paid or that it’s not fair. As to why corporate executives are singled out for this treatment, I don’t know. As compared to the elite performers in the entertainment industry and professional athletes, corporate executives are paid rather modestly. Here are some representative figures: Median average salaries of selected corporate executives in the U.S.:

⚑ Chief Executive Officer – $754,972 

⚑ Chief Operating Officer – $433,325 

⚑ Chief Financial Officer – $307,129 from Salary.com

Average salaries of major league sports players:

⚑ National Basketball Association – $5.15 million 

⚑ Major League Baseball – $3.31 million 

⚑ National Hockey League – $2.4 million 

⚑ National Football League – $1.9 million from Yahoo Sports

Without knowing the fine print of the Swiss proposal, it would seem to me rather easy to work around a 12-to-1 rule. Outsource work both at the top and the bottom. A financial institution would, for example, contract for janitorial services; and also would relocate its global headquarters to a bank haven, leaving only mezzanine-level managers in Switzerland. The funny thing about such a consequence (corporate headquarters moving out of Switzerland) is that Switzerland became wealthy being a bank haven. If the 12-to-1 initiative isn’t wacky enough, another initiative has just been approved (although a date has not yet been set). It is to guarantee every adult citizen and legal resident of the country an unconditional income of $33,600 per year.

…read more…

 

LR also notes that — supporting my past few days of listening to people calling into radio talk shows saying under the exchanges their out of pocket AND premium costs are up via “Covered California” — even those who do not support Republicans are coming to our side after seeing that their hard-earned money is being taken at even a higher percentage. Which, I think, officially will put many in California firmly over the 50% mark in money taken for taxes.

From the  San Jose Mercury News, Obamacare’s winners and losers in Bay Area:

People like Marilynn Gray-Raine. The 64-year-old Danville artist, who survived breast cancer, has purchased health insurance for herself for decades. She watched her Anthem Blue Cross monthly premiums rise from $317 in 2005 to $1,298 in 2013. But she found out last week from the Covered California site that her payments will drop to about $795 a month. 

But people with no pre-existing conditions like Vinson, a 60-year-old retired teacher, and Waschura, a 52-year-old self-employed engineer, are making up the difference. 

“I was laughing at Boehner — until the mail came today,” Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare. “I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.”

Lady Margaret Thatcher,  in a television interview for Thames TV This Week on February 5, 1976, said,

“…and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.”

A government that can tell private persons how much they should make, what insurance coverage they must have, and which light bulbs you should use, is not a free-market, capitalist country. I make this point with a young man that is helping at work… who parroted something I am sure he heard either from his professor or fellow students who heard it from a professor — at any rate, I mentioned this in the post:

So if you have a professor who is harping on Capitalism, Bush, Republicans, Reagan, Newt, Ted Cruz, whomever…, you just need to point out that since  FDR’s “New Deal“ and Johnson’s “Great Society” all they are really criticizing is regulation and redistribution. Because we are far from a truly free-market.

Oh how the bell tolls. One would think compassion lays at the center of these peoples plans… but that is never the case:

It’s an Obama world, and pure evil IMO. An elderly couple who own and lived in their home for 40 years are kicked out of the home because the man-child Obama is throwing a tantrum and wants to punish Americans during the government shutdown. Obama gave orders to close down the federally-funded roads that lead to the home of Joyce Spencer (77-yr-old) and her husband Ralph (80). Joyce and Ralph were told to pack up Ralph’s walker and scooter—and leave their home.

Just imagine the compassion for our healthcare under these bureaucrats.

It is. It is an Obama world… get ready for more of this.