Category Archives: Economy

Global Tax Troglodyte

Business, Economy, Hillary Clinton, Human Accomplishment, Propaganda, Taxation

“There are rich people everywhere, and yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries” was the obscene comment made by Hillary Clinton, at the Clinton Global Initiative, on Monday.

Worse than her global crusade against under-siege, “market-dominant minorities” worldwide is Clinton’s crushing ignorance. As Economist George Reisman put it, “a Highly Productive and Provident One Percent Provides the Standard of Living of a Largely Ignorant and Ungrateful Ninety-Nine Percent.”

Contrary to such beliefs, in the modern world in which we actually live, the wealth of the capitalists is simply not in the form of consumers’ goods to any great extent. Not only is it overwhelmingly in the form of means of production but those means of production are employed in the production of goods and services that are sold in the market. Totally unlike the conditions of self-sufficient farm families, the physical beneficiaries of the capitalists’ means of production are all the members of the general consuming public who buy the capitalists’ products.
…the wealth of the so-called one percent is the foundation of the standard of living of the so-called ninety-nine percent … the “greed” of those who seek to become part of the one percent, or to enlarge their position within it, is what serves progressively to improve the standard of living of the ninety-nine percent.

To comprehend what Reisman wrote you’d have to, first, have a mind. And second, be in possession of moral fiber such that you were not jealous of those who have what it takes.

MORE.

UPDATED: The 5.4 Trillion Dollar Man (About Those 4.5 Million Jobs He Created)

Barack Obama, Debt, Democrats, Economy

Between January 20, 2009 and September 3, 2012, the national debt increased by $5.4 trillion.

A comment from a clueless reporter at the Weekly Standard:“This is the first time in American history debt has eclipsed the $16 trillion mark.”

That’s a redundancy. The debt, in general, has been going up continuously for decades, not up and down, although it might have dipped at some point in the past.

So when BHO claims that he cut a few thousand dollars off the tax bills of middle class “ingrates,” the latter should factor in the “unseen.” “The debt has increased by $45,848 per household—or about 50 percent per household,” under Obama.

$136,260 for every household in the country, that is if every household were held liable for government debt. It isn’t.

Just as it carried Bush, the minority that pays the lion share of the taxes will shoulder the burden of Barack.

UPDATE (Sept. 5): “CNN Fact Check: About those 4.5 million jobs …”:

“…overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession,” concede the ObamaHeads at CNN.

Anyone watching the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night heard the number 4.5 million several times.
“Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action, and now we’ve seen 4.5 million new jobs,” San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the party’s keynote speaker, said.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who followed Obama’s November rival Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts, both cited the same number.
It’s a big-sounding number, given the still-sputtering job market. So we’re giving it a close eyeballing.
The facts:
The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it’s not the whole picture.

MORE.

The Road To Ruin

Barack Obama, Economy, Government, Intelligence, The State

“This Thursday night I’ll offer you what I believe is a better path forward,” Obama said today in Urbandale, Iowa, where the president began his “Road to Charlotte” tour. “A path that grows this economy, creates more good jobs, strengthens the middle class, and the good news is you get to choose which path we take.”

CNN failed to provide the full quote, which I watched. BHO went on to tout all the government workers he was responsible for hiring, thereby conflating the growth of government with job creation.

Au contraire.

This is yet more evidence that the man is as thick as a brick.

In a paper entitled “The Scope of Government and The Wealth of Nations,” economists James Gwartney, Randall Holcombe, and Robert Lawson demonstrate that “government growth as a share of GDP coincides with a decline in GDP growth. Governments in high-income developed economies have now been steadily accreting for decades. The decline in prosperity or in real growth rates in these nations has been concomitant: As government share of the GDP rises, so has GDP in the OECD nations been declining.”

“A 10 percent increase in government expenditure as a share of GDP results in a 1 percent point reduction in GDP growth.”

An increase in the number of jobs for federal employees invariably comes at the cost of real, sustainable, consumer-driven jobs in the private economy.

Obama’s trick is that the private jobs never created cannot be counted.

This US president is seriously dumb.

UPDATED: Cui Bono QE4? (The ‘Tools’ @ The Fed)

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank

The title roughly translated: For whose benefit, Quantitative Easing # 4?

Incessant babbler Erin Burnett, host of CNN’s “Outfront,” is as thick as a brick. She directs the conversation concerning Ben Bernanke’s easy money monetary policies to whether history will prove Big Ben right; to outcome-based morality; to pure utilitarianism.

Burnett begins with the assumption that “Ben Bernanke’s Fed has injected [a mere] $2.3 trillion into our economy.” Actually, “$7.77 Trillion: That’s the amount of money the central bank, chaired by Ben S. Bernanke, ‘parceled out’ during ‘the bailout to America’s ‘Big Six,’ which, surely, also served to inflate the money supply by “inflating” America’s fascistic banking system.

Babbles Burnett:

…that $2.3 trillion has worked and he said this is why. It has created two million private sector jobs. Those jobs created as a direct result of his easy money. Well, that’s pretty interesting because that’s an interesting link between jobs and how much he spent because that is not a cheap cost per job. In fact, it is more than a cool million dollars per job, $1.2 million to be exact. So let’s just repeat that because it did take a second to digest it. That’s $1.2 million per job. So for those who are keeping track, we are not counting the president’s extra two trillion or so dollars in stimulus in that money, just the Fed’s money divided by the number of jobs. … History, though, may prove Ben Bernanke is completely right.

All STEPHEN MOORE of the WAR STREET JOURNAL managed to muster in reply:

I’m not so sure that’s such a good bargain. I’m not so sure. I’m not as rosy as you are about his performance, Ben Bernanke and the Fed’s performance. …

Is that an argument?

UPDATE (9/1): THE TOOLS @ THE FED. From National Journal’s economics desk comes the same nonchalance about the “tools” at the Fed’s disposal. Like the blabbering Burnett, the correspondent has not been put on earth to question the ethicacy of interest-rate manipulation and quantitative easing. She does, at least, provide some useful definitions of … the TOOLS:

With short-term interest rates at or near zero, the Fed has turned to unconventional means, such as purchases of government debt securities known as “quantitative easing” or QE. Many economists think the Fed could well undertake a third round of bond buying—QE3—by the end of the year. Some see a possibility of action at the next Fed meeting, but other economists say the Fed might be more likely to wait.