Take three seconds and figure out your favorite athlete. Could be contemporary or could be someone who is long since retired. For that matter it could be anyone in between.
No think about the most important statistics in their particular sport and tell me within a couple digits what their era, scoring average, qbr, or goals per game was?
My guess is you can get pretty close.
Now a second question. Name two of your local state and US representatives or Senators.
If you got to two see if you can name for me their party affiliation and their two most important platforms in their most recent campaign.
Now let me make an important confession. I'm far more likely to tell you Pedro Martinez' career era or Larry Bird's lifetime scoring, rebounding and assists average than I am to get anywhere close to the people representing me in government.
As we get ready to see a Presidential race that will play out over the course of 15 months I began to wonder what is troubling our country. I can still remember being a little kid and hearing of the first million dollar contract. It may have been Reggie Jackson but I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that the average Major League Baseball player will earn more than 4 million dollars in 2015. Lest we complain let's remember that the number is only a reflection of the record number of people and corporations buying tickets or tuning in to tv broadcasts of said athletes.
The simple act of buying a brand name pair of sneakers is helping athletes like Kevin Durant and Lebron James get nine figure contracts with major brands.
Next time you think about complaining about Obama or Congress or your States Governor ask yourself first if you've taken the little bit of time it takes to inform yourself enough to make your own vote count!
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Assertion that taxing millionaires will solve the economic troubles of our government!
Read a piece today where President Obama asserted that Trickle Down Economics is not a realistic economic model. That instead wealth has regularly trickled up. I would love to see how that works. When's the last time anything trickled "up". If you are going to try and assert that wealth has somehow ever trickled up then find a different analogy. Enough of that. It got me thinking about his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthiest and I wanted to do a little research to see if the numbers actually make any sense at all.
In June of 2011 the Wall Street Journal ran a piece (http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/22/u-s-has-record-number-of-millionaires/) sighting a record number of millionaires in the US. It put the number at 3.1 million using a study by Merril Lynch and Capgemini.
An excerpt http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html from "The Millionaire Next Door" has some suprising assertions about America's Wealthiest 3.1 million. 1 in 5 of them is actually retired. Thus not earning any income. Of the other 4 they average slightly over 200,000 in income per year. Taxable income is about half that. Only 13 percent of those millionaires actually make more than 500,000 per year, with 5% topping the million dollar in annual income mark and skewing that 200,000 average. Those people average right now a taxable income of slightly over 100,000. Let's for the sake of argument say an even 100,000 just to make mathematics easier. Most of those people would not even fall into the highest tax bracket currently in the 2012 code, earning more than $388,350. In fact the average falls into the fourth highest tax bracket at 25%. That means each year our government is collecting from eighty percent of our country's millionaires (the other 20% are retired and not working) an average of $25,000 per year. That works out to roughly 62 billion dollars in taxes. If the current administration were to enact a policy whereby the richest 1% of Americans were no longer able to exempt roughly half their income as they do now, and instead of taxing at a rate of 25 percent doubled that to 50%, you would then multiply that number by four. I am going to round up slightly and take the average millionaires income at $250,000 per year. Taxed at 50% you are now going to come up with a tax of $125,000. Multiply that by 2.5 million, the number of American's still working. That number comes out to slightly north of 300 billion dollars in taxes. An increase of roughly 250 billion dollars. This number at first sight seems great. But then realize that a huge percentage of that money is not going to be actually realized. One need only look to European countries like Spain and Germany that have huge tax burdens, but see their wealthiest citizens (most notably athletes) flee to tax havens like Monaco as their country of residence. For the sake of argument we will assert that every single Millionaire in our country will be Patriotic and stay a US Citizen, not taking jobs and income overseas to avoid losing three times more of their income to taxes, in an effort to do their part to pay down our 15 trillion dollar debt. The extra 250 billion dollars collected from increasing the taxes on America's wealthiest citizens would not only fail to pay down the current US debt, it would hardly make a dent in the interest payments that debt is accruing every year. For the year 2011 the debt alone on the US Deficit was north of 450 billion dollars. http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm That means an increase in tax burden to America's wealthiest 1% would barely cover half the cost of the current interest payments on the deficit.
Please don't be fooled by campaign rhetoric. Raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans may be one tool in an effort to pay down the 15 trillion dollar deficit, but it is certainly not going to make an impact if it is the only tool. The cost of implementing Obamacare has recently been updated by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. It is earmarked at 1.7 trillion dollars over the next ten years (if it actually stays at that number it may be the first government run program to ever meet budget, but again for the sake of argument we will assert that it doesn't go over this amount). http://news.yahoo.com/cbo-obamacare-price-tag-shifts-940-billion-1-163500655.html
That means that 70 percent of a 400% tax increase on the wealthiest Americans will only offset the cost of the new healthcare spending The President has fought for. I ask a simple question. If you were the head of your household and you found an extra bit of money, but were currently in debt by three times your yearly income (the US deficit is north of 15 trillion while tax revenue in 2011 was 5 trillion), would you add a new expense to your list or would you pay down some of your debt? The idea that we are adding substantial tax burdens without any plan to cut current spending is simply not practical or fair to the people being asked to shoulder a higher tax burden. If I were paying at a 25% rate (which as an independent business owner I have been fortunate enough to have to do on two occasions) I would want to know that my taxes were at least doing something to ease the future debt burden that I would be responsible for as a taxpayer. Instead I am only seeing our government come up with ways to spend more.
As an independent business owner I can tell you very simply that trickle down economics absolutely works. When my business was running at it's highest levels before the recession I employed four people. I had another four people who worked for me part time in trade for the services I rendered. All four of my employees also received these services in addition to their salary. I had three people on healthcare (one of whom was my brother, a 30 year old with Downs Syndrome who up to that point received no state or federal assistance because the wealth of my business allowed me to support him). Fast forward to 2012. My business is still running. However, it has been a vastly different economic landscape. My four employees is now two, and the number of people working for me to receive my services has also cut in half. I simply cannot afford to be as generous. My brother now collects the state and federal benefits that he had a right to collect all along as my business is no longer able to provide those things for him.
If President Obama is successful in his second term in enacting legislation to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, do you think that this small story from my business would not be repeated 2.5 million times over. Would the tax benefit of raising the wealthiest Americans burden really be worth the increased number of people collecting unemployment or in the case of my brother becoming a recipient of federal and state aid that they had hitherto been able to avoid. I believe that our government has a moral obligation to look at this problem far differently. Somehow the current climate has created a changing of the American Dream. For the first time in the history of our country people are being vilified for achieving the success our country was based upon and for which billions of people around the world attempt every year to come here for. Somehow it is becoming the norm to think that somehow a person making a million dollars is not something for which to be proud, but instead something for which to be damned. Like somehow it doesn't take determination, effort and long hours of perspiration to earn this sort of income. It is scary to me that somehow these success stories are becoming villains in a political war. Whether you believe the wealthiest American's should be taxed higher or not, I can't understand how anyone can believe that our government should be able to enact such a tax hike without providing major spending cuts to justify such a move! Cut the budget to reflect the current debt burden we have and what our countries income is. Streamline government to provide the most essential services that Americans need, DEFENSE and INFRASTRUCTURE. Come to the realization that the US Government is not a BUSINESS, thus should not be in the business of providing any services to it's citizens. We need a new party of people. Not a tea party, not a conservative party, not a liberal party. I would call it the pragmatic party. People who see a problem and come up with a logical solution. Not relying on fire and brimstone to mobilize people based on emotion, but rather providing facts and reality to people in the face of a growing national crisis.
In June of 2011 the Wall Street Journal ran a piece (http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/22/u-s-has-record-number-of-millionaires/) sighting a record number of millionaires in the US. It put the number at 3.1 million using a study by Merril Lynch and Capgemini.
An excerpt http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html from "The Millionaire Next Door" has some suprising assertions about America's Wealthiest 3.1 million. 1 in 5 of them is actually retired. Thus not earning any income. Of the other 4 they average slightly over 200,000 in income per year. Taxable income is about half that. Only 13 percent of those millionaires actually make more than 500,000 per year, with 5% topping the million dollar in annual income mark and skewing that 200,000 average. Those people average right now a taxable income of slightly over 100,000. Let's for the sake of argument say an even 100,000 just to make mathematics easier. Most of those people would not even fall into the highest tax bracket currently in the 2012 code, earning more than $388,350. In fact the average falls into the fourth highest tax bracket at 25%. That means each year our government is collecting from eighty percent of our country's millionaires (the other 20% are retired and not working) an average of $25,000 per year. That works out to roughly 62 billion dollars in taxes. If the current administration were to enact a policy whereby the richest 1% of Americans were no longer able to exempt roughly half their income as they do now, and instead of taxing at a rate of 25 percent doubled that to 50%, you would then multiply that number by four. I am going to round up slightly and take the average millionaires income at $250,000 per year. Taxed at 50% you are now going to come up with a tax of $125,000. Multiply that by 2.5 million, the number of American's still working. That number comes out to slightly north of 300 billion dollars in taxes. An increase of roughly 250 billion dollars. This number at first sight seems great. But then realize that a huge percentage of that money is not going to be actually realized. One need only look to European countries like Spain and Germany that have huge tax burdens, but see their wealthiest citizens (most notably athletes) flee to tax havens like Monaco as their country of residence. For the sake of argument we will assert that every single Millionaire in our country will be Patriotic and stay a US Citizen, not taking jobs and income overseas to avoid losing three times more of their income to taxes, in an effort to do their part to pay down our 15 trillion dollar debt. The extra 250 billion dollars collected from increasing the taxes on America's wealthiest citizens would not only fail to pay down the current US debt, it would hardly make a dent in the interest payments that debt is accruing every year. For the year 2011 the debt alone on the US Deficit was north of 450 billion dollars. http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm That means an increase in tax burden to America's wealthiest 1% would barely cover half the cost of the current interest payments on the deficit.
Please don't be fooled by campaign rhetoric. Raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans may be one tool in an effort to pay down the 15 trillion dollar deficit, but it is certainly not going to make an impact if it is the only tool. The cost of implementing Obamacare has recently been updated by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. It is earmarked at 1.7 trillion dollars over the next ten years (if it actually stays at that number it may be the first government run program to ever meet budget, but again for the sake of argument we will assert that it doesn't go over this amount). http://news.yahoo.com/cbo-obamacare-price-tag-shifts-940-billion-1-163500655.html
That means that 70 percent of a 400% tax increase on the wealthiest Americans will only offset the cost of the new healthcare spending The President has fought for. I ask a simple question. If you were the head of your household and you found an extra bit of money, but were currently in debt by three times your yearly income (the US deficit is north of 15 trillion while tax revenue in 2011 was 5 trillion), would you add a new expense to your list or would you pay down some of your debt? The idea that we are adding substantial tax burdens without any plan to cut current spending is simply not practical or fair to the people being asked to shoulder a higher tax burden. If I were paying at a 25% rate (which as an independent business owner I have been fortunate enough to have to do on two occasions) I would want to know that my taxes were at least doing something to ease the future debt burden that I would be responsible for as a taxpayer. Instead I am only seeing our government come up with ways to spend more.
As an independent business owner I can tell you very simply that trickle down economics absolutely works. When my business was running at it's highest levels before the recession I employed four people. I had another four people who worked for me part time in trade for the services I rendered. All four of my employees also received these services in addition to their salary. I had three people on healthcare (one of whom was my brother, a 30 year old with Downs Syndrome who up to that point received no state or federal assistance because the wealth of my business allowed me to support him). Fast forward to 2012. My business is still running. However, it has been a vastly different economic landscape. My four employees is now two, and the number of people working for me to receive my services has also cut in half. I simply cannot afford to be as generous. My brother now collects the state and federal benefits that he had a right to collect all along as my business is no longer able to provide those things for him.
If President Obama is successful in his second term in enacting legislation to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, do you think that this small story from my business would not be repeated 2.5 million times over. Would the tax benefit of raising the wealthiest Americans burden really be worth the increased number of people collecting unemployment or in the case of my brother becoming a recipient of federal and state aid that they had hitherto been able to avoid. I believe that our government has a moral obligation to look at this problem far differently. Somehow the current climate has created a changing of the American Dream. For the first time in the history of our country people are being vilified for achieving the success our country was based upon and for which billions of people around the world attempt every year to come here for. Somehow it is becoming the norm to think that somehow a person making a million dollars is not something for which to be proud, but instead something for which to be damned. Like somehow it doesn't take determination, effort and long hours of perspiration to earn this sort of income. It is scary to me that somehow these success stories are becoming villains in a political war. Whether you believe the wealthiest American's should be taxed higher or not, I can't understand how anyone can believe that our government should be able to enact such a tax hike without providing major spending cuts to justify such a move! Cut the budget to reflect the current debt burden we have and what our countries income is. Streamline government to provide the most essential services that Americans need, DEFENSE and INFRASTRUCTURE. Come to the realization that the US Government is not a BUSINESS, thus should not be in the business of providing any services to it's citizens. We need a new party of people. Not a tea party, not a conservative party, not a liberal party. I would call it the pragmatic party. People who see a problem and come up with a logical solution. Not relying on fire and brimstone to mobilize people based on emotion, but rather providing facts and reality to people in the face of a growing national crisis.
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