Economic Humor

More Financial Planners Serving Day Care Centers
Kansas City, Kansas--Now that each child born will have a $30,000 share of a runaway national debt, more and more financial planners are serving in day care centers nationwide.

"Kids need to get a head start on their payment obligations these says," said one center worker. "So it only makes sense to add a review of future tax obligations to the mix of activities day care centers have to offer."

One financial planner said he enjoyed providing the service, but noted "the crying can get to you after a while." Still, he said, "lots of kids eventually do come to understand the need to invest a portion of their allowances in flexible foreign funds."

When asked about her investment plan, one child, Mary Stennings, said "I like gold. And pink."

Associated article: PolitiFact

http://optoons.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-financial-planners-serving-day.html

Global Warming, Part 3

I am not opposed to the idea of climate change and I am concerned about the effects of carbon monoxide, and other gases, building up in the atmosphere. All lifeforms have an effect on their environment and certainly homo sapiens have a large impact.

However, I dislike the idea that "this is settled science". Science needs skeptics and there is nothing "settled".

Our Energy Secretary would like us to paint our roofs white to reflect heat and therefore reduce global warming. Meanwhile, global warming is causing ice to melt, releasing more moisture into the atmosphere which causes more rain and snow. And the snow reflects heat which causes global cooling. OK, now I see.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513204576047741057676566.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Humor in Government

In Garden City, Idaho, 2 employees of DeBest, Inc heard some screams and discovered a person stuck in a collapsed trench, with dirt over his head. They jumped in an rescued the individual. Their reward? OSHA fined them $7,875 for not wearing a hard hat while in the trench and not fortifying the trench walls to insure against further collapsed. Unfortunately, the person saved was not an OSHA manager, apparently. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930913&slug=1720788

In Baltimore County, two men rescued a deer that had fallen through ice and was struggling. They were fined $90 each for not wearing a lifejacket while they paddled the inflatable raft in the rescue.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/local-government-stupidity-contest/

Merry Christmas to All

Every year at this time numerous conflicts arise regarding religion and society. Many people seem to believe that the law of the land is the separation of church and state and that this means that religion is barred from the public arena. There are at least two major problems with this view. The first is that the Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor preventing the free exercise thereof." The "separation of church and state" idea is from private correspondence written years later.

But perhaps the better argument is from Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by the US.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

Now, lawyers can probably shred this into meaningless garbage but I read it as allowing the public practice, worship and observance of religion. Religion was not meant to be practiced only in the privacy of one's own home.

Joke of the Day

Baltimore, Maryland--With the economy tanking and a record one in six Americans taking part in various government anti-poverty programs, the Six Flags amusement park announced the opening of it's latest roller coaster.

"It's called the Obamarator," said a park spokeswoman, who said it consists of a winding but ever low-spiraling ride in cars fitted with video screens showing the latest economic indicators.

"With the latest data showing Medicaid enrollment at record highs even before 16 million people are added by the ObamaCare law in 2014, a 50% rise in food stamp participants, a 400% increase in those receiving unemployment insurance, and an 18% increase in the welfare rolls," said the spokeswoman, "we didn't have to do much more to make this one of the most frightening Six Flags coasters ever."

One man who rode on the coaster's maiden run said "After the very first turn -- where you see that Medicaid costs have jumped 36% in two years to $273 billion, jobless benefits soared from $43 billion to $160 billion, and food stamp and welfare costs have risen 80% and 24% -- I almost lost my lunch."

http://optoons.blogspot.com/2010/12/six-flags-opens-new-obama-themed-roller.html

Oregon and Tax revenues

I was amused by the complaint from Oregonians about "Bush's tax break for the rich" (now to be known, I guess as "The Bush-Obama tax break for the rich"). Oregon had one of the least progressive "progressive" tax rates with individuals making $14,000 paying the same marginal rate as billionaires such as Phil Knight of Nike. Almost every other state had higher rates for wealthier individuals. But Oregon finally attempted to fix this.

"Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. The sun also rose in the east, and the Cubs didn't win the World Series.

In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City's rate is higher. Oregon's liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their "shared sacrifice."

Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper reports that after the tax was raised "income tax and other revenue collections began plunging so steeply that any gains from the two measures seemed trivial."

One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing. The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did. Funny how that always happens. These numbers are in line with a Cascade Policy Institute study, based on interstate migration patterns, predicting that the tax surcharge would lead to 80,000 fewer wealthy tax filers in Oregon over the next decade."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704034804576026233823935442.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The most important part is the last paragraph. Although one could argue now that $130 million extra is better than nothing, what will happen over the next decade if this tax leads to 80,000 wealthy tax filers leaving the state?

The Public Pension mess

Private pension plans tend to be defined-contribution pensions -- in which the employer makes a fixed contribution to the employee's retirement account, rather than guaranteeing a fixed payout.

By contrast, nearly all of the more than 22 million federal, state and local public employees enjoy defined-benefit pensions -- with payouts fixed at some percentage of the individual's pay for the last year or two they worked (often including overtime and payments for unused sick or vacation days).

These public pension plans are a ticking time bomb, with an estimated $3.2 trillion in unfunded mandates, or $21,500 per household. (That is taxpayer household, not recipient household.)

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/facing_the_pension_mess_2x9CfnClQRu9usCxH5E1eO#ixzz18lqxkGci
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/facing_the_pension_mess_2x9CfnClQRu9usCxH5E1eO

State Budgets and Health Care

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS:
"If state Medicaid spending increases by 41 percent as projected by CMS, then by next year Medicaid could end up consuming nearly 30 percent of the average state budget. Medicaid would greatly exceed all other state priorities, including education, which tops state budgets at about 22 percent. In fact, state spending on education would experience certain cuts next year.

Presumably, the state spending increase is so high because the enhancement of the federal Medicaid match will expire at the end of 2010. CMS projects that federal spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will decrease 7.1 percent between 2010 and 2011. The loss of federal funds will drive most of the increase in state Medicaid obligations.

Unfortunately, states have lost considerable flexibility to reduce Medicaid’s burden on their budgets. As a condition for receiving the additional federal dollars, both the stimulus bill and PPACA contain maintenance-of-effort (MOE) provisions that prohibit states from changing eligibility levels. "

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/20/how-obamacare-is-hastening-the-day-of-reckoning/

One of the promises of the Health Care "reform" is that the reform would "bend the curve" of medical costs and the Federal Government could actually provide health care to 30 million people at less cost than current. That made no sense but people bought it. And maybe it was true-Federal costs go down but state costs go up.

Wikileaks

To save time, the following is basically what is in the quarter million Wikileak documents:

Berlusconi likes girls.
Sarkozy likes himself.
Angela Merkel is boring.
David Cameron is more boring.
Hillary thinks Cristina needs a shrink.
Benjamin Netanyahu can’t stand Ehud Olmert.
Al Qaeda hates America.
Yemen’s president hates Al Qaeda
Ahmadinejad is Hitler
North Korea likes Iran.
Saudi Arabia hates Iran
Julian Assange is Dennis Kucinich.
PFC Manning will never see the sun again.
America needs a new president.

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/11/30/wikileaks-as-seen-by-dolphins/

The lessons that I learned from this are:
1. We keep too many secrets
2. The is poor control over classified documents
3. Leaking this information is good-don't we want transparency?
4. People should be fired, for writing such stuff, for leaking such stuff, for managing such stuff, and for (not) controlling such stuff.