Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Wall Street Journal article headline says “Rich Get Richer as Billionaires Increase in Number” (hidden behind its pay-wall, must subscribe to read).
Headline implies world-wide economy is booming, but other possibilities include:
The world-wide economy is failing and the remaining wealth is consolidating in fewer hands as the middle class loses upward mobility; or
The world-wide money supply is increasing as governments print money to prop up welfare programs, and the resulting inflation makes “billionaires” out of people who previously would have been “millionaires;” or,
The statistics are lies.
Hard to tell which factor – or combination of factors – is correct.
Joe Doakes
As with most things economic, I say “both”.
One thing for certain, global economy sucks. Big time. So JD’s both assertions are true.
However, I do disagree on his comment about statistics. Statistics (numbers) do not lie. Data is data. It is the people who interpret, twist, cherry pick and misrepresent the data are liars. Sorta like guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Maybe, just maybe, all those subsidies for favored businesses are a bad idea? There are a lot of “hooks” in the law, like the unequal treatment of employer paid health insurance vs. personally paid, that contribute to this as well. How many plumbers are working for someone else because of this inherent multi-thousand dollar penalty for going out on your own, for example? Sorry, that contributes to class immobility, as does the estate tax. Can’t build on what your dad did, sorry–half of it is in a foundation outside your control now.
employer paid health insurance vs. personally paid
Employers pay a lot more in total absolute dollars in premiums than an individual. It is about the size of the pond and actually makes perfect actuarial sense. Now, the laws should be changed and individuals should be allowed to join pools of similar-minded independents to drive up subscription numbers to lower their premiums – for plans they really want. But that would defeat the progressive desire to destroy personal choice.
JPA, when I say the statistics are lies, I mean that the people who produced the numbers used in the report have intentionally inserted numbers which lead to a sunny result rather than the sad truth. This typically is done by redefining terms or by “adjusting” actual results.
The people who take the numbers in the report at face value can cherry pick, sure, but when the numbers themselves are lies, that’s a secondary problem.
JPA, what I’m getting at isn’t about total dollars in premiums. It’s that when your company pays, that income is except from federal and state income taxes, and even FICA. When you pay it yourself, you can only deduct 40% from federal and state income taxes, and that only after you’ve paid 7% of your income in medical bills.
If you want a huge incentive to stay in a corporate environment and keep the Rockefellers rich, there you go.
The elephant graph:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/08/the-elephant-in-the-room
July job numbers for the People’s Republic of Minnesota are out and our rate jumped a full percentage point to 4.9%, in Democrat math. We also lost 24,,383 jobs, but supposedly gained 11,300 seasonally adjusted jobs. This is code for landscape, resort and fast food workers that will be let go after Labor Day.