How does US Health Care Compare to other Nations?

An "Investor's Business Daily" article a few years ago (prior to Obamacare) provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization.
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million:
U.S. 71%
England 14%
Canada 18%
Not sure why percentages were used. The latest comparison to all nations can be found in thhe following link - https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/ Note that England and Canada are so low that they are not listed in the top 15.
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health:
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%
And now for the last health statistic:
National Health Insurance:
U.S. NO (this comparison was done prior to Obamacare).
England YES
Canada YES

The Importance of Perseverance

If I was asked to describe in one word, what is needed for success, that word would be “Perseverance”. Those who persevere in all aspects of life (education, work, personal finance, relationships, etc.) are likely to succeed; those who don't persevere are likely to fail and be less happy in life. Success requires constant effort throughout life. The road to success especially in achieving educational goals, satisfying careers, well paid jobs, desired promotions, nice homes, furniture, cars, and vacations plus saving and investing money for today's needs, future family needs, and future retirement needs is a long and sometimes difficult road. It takes a lot of daily effort year after year for several decades to first achieve the educational goals needed for success and then to achieve the career goals of job and income needs and satisfaction.

The road to success necessarily makes you weary at times. At those times, you will likely ask yourself – when will this struggle end? Is there an easier way? Can I really take two more difficult years of college to graduate or work every day for another 20 years until I reach retirement age? Or you may stop making efforts toward your goals, falsely promising yourself that this is only a temporary break and you will renew the struggle (for example, to continue your education), when in reality, stopping the struggle and enjoying the break from that struggle just makes the thought of renewing the effort to pursue your goals seem even more difficult in the future.

We literally get through life one day at a time. We don't have to accomplish years of effort and goals in one day, whether it be to continue our education or employment or saving money, etc. When you are struggling to persevere to the goals that you have previously set for yourself, remember that. Just get through today. Don't put the weight of all the years left that is needed to achieve your goals in the future on your shoulders today. Perhaps, promise yourself a reward for today's seemingly extra tough struggle, be it a dessert, or a nap, or a short drive to somewhere nice, etc. to help you get through today. Do what it takes, but just get through today. There will be other difficult days in the future, but there will also be many good days and/or good moments in the future too.

Why persevere to pursue this struggle at all? Very simple answer – history shows that the odds are very high that your life will be infinitely happier and more satisfying for the next several decades that it (hopefully) takes for you to reach the end of your life, than if you make the decision (or let inertia make the decision for you) to just give up.

It was certainly the truth for me (both for school and for work) as it was also the truth for my father. Perseverance toward our goals, very difficult, tiring, and exasperating at times, made our goals happen, and life is and was very good due to it.

Causes of the Great Depression and the Great Recession

If you only know when things happened and not why, then you are economically ignorant and therefore part of the problem. FDR, by raising taxes to balance the budget whose revenues had dropped because so many people were out of work and not paying taxes thus reducing disposable income which in turn lowered demand for products and services, plus by enacting trade barriers to imports which other nations retaliated, causing entire industries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to collapse, throwing many more people out of work is the reason why it took 10 years and a World War to get out of the economic mess of the Great Depression. The recession of 2008 was the result of high defaults on home mortgages. The high default rate occurred because in the 1990s, Bill Clinton put Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act, which put pressure on banks and mortgage lenders to lower borrowing standards "so that the poor can buy homes" on steroids. Not surprisingly, these loans had high default rates. It took years for the percentage of these type of loans to total loans to all borrowers to become large enough to have a meaningful impact on the economy, To his credit, Bush recognized the problem early on in his first term in office and tried to change the law 18 different times. However, the Democrats, led by Congressman Barney Frank screaming "don't fix what isn't broken" blocked passage of the bill. When the inevitable happened and too many loans defaulted sinking the economy, Democrats lied and blamed "greedy banks" for the problem. Gullible people bought it. The Democrats passed all sorts of new regulations after Obama got elected, but none of them fixed the real problem - the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to give loans to unqualified buyers. Therefore, history is likely to repeat itself in the future and the economically ignorant will not have a clue as to the cause. 

Student Loans

The very ease of getting a student loan plus the financial ignorance of the students have been exploited by colleges to raise tuition, plus room and board, much faster than inflation and also to expand their Administrative staffs to bloated levels while paying ridiculous salaries to "star" professors. Given that over half of college students never graduate, no student should get a college loan for the first two years. Let them go to cheap Community colleges instead (and work part time if they need to). If they don't drop out after qualifying for their junior year, then consider college loans, but put a cap on it of no more than $15,000 a year. Also, no loan unless the college the student plans to transfer to, accepts all the student's college earned credits to be transferred (otherwise, expensive colleges will deliberately reject many of the credits forcing the financially naive student to spend more time and money at the college he/she transferred to). Some Community colleges have expanded from two years to four years. Encourage more to do so. That way, many more students could graduate inexpensive colleges without the need for student loans. Now, with less demand for their services, the expensive colleges will be forced to compete for students by lowering costs to reasonable levels and also utilizing alumni donations to help students instead of constructing new buildings and monuments to themselves. Everyone benefits.

How NOT to Unintentionally Disinherit Your Children

If you have re-married or do so sometime in the future, you need to be aware of how you could unintentionally disinherit your children. In a second (third, fourth, etc.) marriage, even if the current spouse is not listed on any of your IRA beneficiary forms, by Federal law, the current spouse, if she/her survives you, gets all the money in the account, and the other beneficiaries (for example, your children) get nothing. There is one exception to this law. If you have a signed waiver where the current spouse gives up her/his rights to the money, then your IRA(s) will be distributed to the beneficiaries in the manner that you designated. That is why our own Trust mandates a premarital agreement at least 30 days before any future marriage in which the prospective bride and groom are each represented by different legal counsel. Should you be in similar circumstances, you need to be aware of this law and how to ensure that your inheritance wishes are followed. 

If I ran for President

If I ran for President, I would be a lot more specific on my plans concerning jobs, wealth, debt, and unfunded government liabilities. First, I would end all 2200+ Federal government subsidies totaling over one trillion dollars a year. Next, I would require all healthy welfare recipients who are not working to work, creating menial public works jobs if necessary. That takes care of annual deficits and produces a surplus. I would stop being the only major nation who taxes companies from bringing their overseas profits to invest in America creating new jobs in the process.

I would revise income taxes to be taken at the gross income level without deductions in a progressive manner, but at a lower tax rate so that the impact is tax neutral on individuals and as with Social Security, there would be no tax forms to fill out.

I would add a Social Security option, based on life expectancy tables, to fully collect the highest SS check when one spouse dies (just like today), but with the option on the second lower SS check to collect some, all or none of it when the first spouse dies by taking a little bit less of the second lower check when both spouses are alive (similar to what most pensions do today).

Also on SS, I would fund it differently. SS consists of a pension, disability, and child welfare for widows. I would fund SS by having one SS tax for pensions designed so that people get back what they put in thus limiting as today the amount of income taxed, and a second welfare tax for the other two programs which taxes all income (at a tiny 1-2% which is about all that is needed).

I would eliminate overtime pay in the calculation of government pensions to eliminate the fraud of working massive overtime in the last year of work to boost pensions from 50% of income to 100% at taxpayer expense.

I would repeal the Community Investment Act and similar laws that force banks to make mortgage loans to unqualified buyers "so that the poor can buy homes" which later they default on their mortgages because they couldn't afford it in the first place (the real cause of the 2008 Recession courtesy of Bill Clinton who expanded the original Jimmy Carter program and which Democrats wouldn't let Bush fix).

I would fix health care costs by first allowing insurance policies to cross State lines and compete. Most importantly, since up to 50% of medical costs are spent on terminal patients in their last six months of life, I would have two types of insurance policies. One type for those who just want to be kept comfortable when near death and one who want every effort expended (driving up costs exponentially) to keep them alive for a few more weeks (though even with that, I would have some reasonable government limitations). Those that choose the comfort option would pay a lot less in insurance than those who don't. No family member can override the option chosen by the patient when they bought their insurance.

I would also have third party insurance companies administer all government health care programs as they have less than 1% medical fraud while the government medical fraud rate is estimated at 10 to 25%, costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

I would get rid of the asylum loophole at the border by requiring foreign asylum seekers to get approval and documentation of approval from an American embassy to show at a legal point of entry. Without it, or even with it if they cross anywhere but a legal point of entry, they are immediately deported without a trial.

I also would change the definition of citizen. Those born of American citizen parents anywhere in the world are citizens. Those born in America of legal permanent residents are ctizens. All others are not citizens even if born in America. They are foreign nationals born on American soil.

Finally, I would take some of the new budget surplus I created to increase the size of our Army which is now too small to defend ourselves in a conventional war and is the cause of so many repetitive deployments overseas by our current troops. 

Political Correctness - the Hallmark of all Dictatorships

Political correctness is an abusive political tool to say that one side is always right and the other side is always wrong. To those who believe in political correctness, I say who determined what is politically correct? You don't know and therefore cannot tell me, can you? More importantly to validate politically correct issues and answers, first show me a complete list of all the politically correct issues and the politically correct answers. Next show me the dates when a national vote was taken on these issues along with the vote counts for and against. If you cannot do that, then you are just making it up as you go. That makes all my issues and all my answers as politically correct as yours. The entire concept of political correctness, I repeat, has absolutely no place in a freedom loving democracy. Political correctness is the hallmark of all dictatorships. If you are not politically correct in a dictatorship, then you are jailed or tortured or killed or all three.

Black Killings - The Real Problem

A lot of protests and media press has been given lately to a handful of cop killings of blacks as if there is a huge national conspiracy by cops to kill blacks. Yet, very few blacks are killed by cops and those that were killed were engaging in criminal and violent activities plus resisting arrest and deserved what they received. The media has even supported the frequently seen protest lie concerning Michael Brown of "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" when all the witnesses who were actually there and testified under oath in court, including Black witnesses, that it never happened that way. Instead the 300 pounder put his head down and charged like a football player engaging in tackling violently toward the officer.
Of course, all the so called Black Civil Rights leaders have promoted the myth of cops killing blacks simply because they are black. More Whites are killed by cops than Blacks, but that fact is ignored. Also ignored is the fact that thousands of Blacks are murdered each year - 93% of them are murdered by other Blacks. In 35 years, over a quarter million blacks have been murdered by other Blacks. That's more than double the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined.
If "Black lives Matter" as the protesters and Civil Rights leaders love to shout at cops, then why don't all those hundreds of thousands murdered Black lives by other Blacks matter? Why are they not trying to address and fix the real threat to Black lives instead of the miniscule handful of Blacks killed, normally for excellent reasons, by cops? If you are a Black person, you have a lot more to fear from other Black people than you do from cops. Imagine how many more Blacks would be murdered if it weren't for cops?

Immigration Reform

If you want meaningful immigration reform, then just do what Mexico does to stop illegal immigration from Central American nations who consider Mexico to be "rich". Mexico does not allow them to get jobs, nor go to school, nor receive government benefits, nor rent an apartment. If caught, Mexico takes all their assets and money, then deports them. Problem solved. For good measure, make it impossible for those caught to ever become US citizens or to become legal Permanent Residents, or to even visit the U.S. again.

Social Security Unfair Taxation

Since 1993, retired couples have been taxed on their Social Security benefits despite the original promise by FDR that Social Security benefits would never be taxed. Passage of the Senior Citizens Tax Elimination Act HR 3894 would fulfill the promise made to seniors on Social Security by eliminating Social Security benefits in the calculation of federal income taxes.
For a retired couple with a total income (including SS) of $65,343 or more, their Social Security is taxed at a 28.2% rate. A non-retired couple has to earn $146,400 to pay taxes at a 28.2% rate. This is unreasonable and unfair!  

Unions Should Be Banned

Do you believe in monopolies? If the answer is no and it should be no, then you should be against all unions. Logically, for employers, a union is a labor "monopoly". Like any monopoly, unions wield incredible power over the "price" of labor (wages, benefits, work rules), just as business monopolies exercised incredible power over the price of labor, goods and services. Business monopolies were banned in 1890. All the monopolists then, just as the union members today, thought they had a "right" to exist. However, their total control over 'price' prevented free market competition from determining fair prices and consumers and laborers were unfairly hurt. The same is true today for unions. Union members earn wages and benefits beyond what is normal elsewhere for their labor based on education, skills, and outside competition. That hurts profit margins, stockholders plus raises the price needed to make a profit and stay in business. This in turn hurts consumers and other laborers as the reduction in discretionary income reduces spending which in turn reduces jobs as less people are needed to produce less goods and services being bought.

Decisions that the Unemployed Should Quickly Make

Whether the unemployed are earnestly looking for work or enjoying a government paid vacation, extending unemployment benefits is a bad idea. For the roughly 25% enjoying a government paid vacation, taxpayers don't need to pay for that. For the rest earnestly looking/wanting employment, it postpones the inevitable and makes it even worse. Essentially for many unemployed people, from day one, there's a major decision to be made - Do I preserve my standard of living or do I preserve my wealth?

To preserve your standard of living, you normally need to deplete your wealth even while collecting unemployment benefits. Stay unemployed long enough and you will lose both your standard of living and all of your wealth. Odds are good, especially if you are 40 or over, that you will never recover them. The unemployed person who quickly decides to substantially reduce their lifestyle and standard of living (move to cheaper housing, sell expensive cars, etc.), has a good shot of preserving their wealth. If they do get a good job again, they will be able to go back to their former standard of living if they wish, plus have all or most of their wealth intact. If they never get that good job, by having quickly reduced their standard of living, they can at least keep all or most of their wealth. That's a lot better place to be at then the person who tried to the bitter end to preserve their standard of living and lost everything.

How to Fix Government Pensions

Many government public pensions are way more generous than private pensions. They are designed in a manner that truly rips off the taxpayer. The situation is so bad, that the unfunded pension liabilities are going to bankrupt cities and states. This is not only bad for those cities and states, but bad for the government employees who may collect much less pension than they were expecting. There is a need to correct these problems in a manner that is fair to both the government employees and the taxpayers.

How did this happen in the first place? There is a very serious, obvious conflict of interest between public unions ( a legal labor monopoly that should not exist at all because it has all the adverse impacts of banned business monopolies) and the politicians, who get elected with union support (time, money, and votes), that negotiate wages, pensions, and benefits with the people who got them their jobs.

Here are my recommendations:

Fund all public pension liabilities that exist and new ones that are created. You can't use government bonds to fund them; you must use taxes that are invested by qualified, non-interested commissions subject to rules and review. However, if that funding requires a tax increase greater than inflation or a tax increase two contracts in a row, then publicly state how much in total and by average taxpayer, and hold an election in which voters can accept or reject the contract.

Eliminate the conflict of interest between public unions and politicians. The simplest, most effective way would be to ban public unions. Other less effective solutions may work such as point 1. Arbitration of union contracts by non-politicians who are not interested parties could be another solution.

3. Overtime pay may not be utilized to calculate income in pension determinations. Furthermore, management and professions, just as in private industry, can not be paid overtime, but are expected to work overtime as required to fulfill the duties of their jobs.

4. To avoid the spiking of pensions through either massive overtime or phony promotions in the years just before retirement, annual income for pension calculations will be the highest consecutive 5 year average of the last ten years and again can not use overtime pay. No pension amount can exceed 55% of this five year average annual pay. You get 1.5% credit for each full time year worked, not to exceed 55% in total. Part time years get partial credits in proportion to a 40 hour week.

5. Full pensions cannot begin until age 65 and partial pensions until age 55. For each year of retirement before age 65, the pension amount will be reduced 4% from the full pension amount.

6. Government workers must also contribute to and receive Social Security. Calculated pension amounts will be further reduced by half the projected Social Security benefit.

7. Government workers who are married at the time of retirement may choose to allow their spouses to collect their pension after they die. However, the amount of pension collected will be further reduced based on life expectancy tables of the husband and wife.

8. No cost of living raises will be allowed on government pensions.

9. Should there ever be a default of a government pension so that only partial benefits can be paid, those collecting pensions that were calculated utilizing overtime pay, would have their pensions reduced first to what their pensions would have been without overtime pay. Then all pensions, if still needing to be reduced, will be reduced by the same percentage.

10. In the future, eliminate government pensions and just contribute to 401K plans (no more than 5% a year). 80% of taxpayers have no pensions and should not be on the hook to fund extravagant government pensions.

What I have proposed is essentially the way private pensions work. Federal pensions should not exceed the private pensions of those taxpayers who get them.

School and other Bond Referendums - Information Black Hole

Voters just approved a 312 million dollar bond referendum for schools in my county. No information other than how much it would cost was given on the ballot. How is someone supposed to make an intelligent decision to approve or disapprove? Prior to the elections, there was precious little information in local papers other than how many schools were to be built and what they each would cost. One school is estimated at 145 million dollars plus land costs. You could build a palace for that price! There should be a law forcing government to give pertinent facts on all bond votes such as:

Cost per square foot and cost per classroom. (for roads, cost per mile, etc.)

Cost of the school building and cost of the athletic fields/stadiums separately.

Average cost per household of the bond total.

Costs in total and costs per household of all other outstanding bonds.

Projected repayment costs of principal plus interest as an annual dollar total and percentage of tax revenues.

Is this an interest only bond with a principal balloon payment at the end (probably necessitating a refinancing to pay off the principal)?

It seems that if you just put the word "school" in front of a bond referendum that it is likely to pass without any serious review by voters. That is fiscal insanity!

A State with No Republicans

Very interesting...Note this. A US State with zero Republicans in office -
The State of Illinois. Think about this.
Some interesting data on the 'state' of Illinois... There are more people on welfare in Illinois than there are people working. Chicago pays the highest wages to teachers than anywhere else in the U.S. averaging $110,000/year. Their pensions average 80-90% of their income. Wow, are Illinois and Chicago great or what? Be sure to read till the end. I've never heard it explained better. Perhaps the U.S.should pull out of Chicago? Body count: In the last six months, 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago. 221 killed in Iraq; AND Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws in the entire US.
Here's the Chicago chain of command: President: Barack Obama .
Senator: Dick Durbin . House Representative: Jesse Jackson Jr. .
Governor: Pat Quinn . House leader: Mike Madigan . Atty. Gen.: Lisa Madigan (daughter of Mike) . Mayor: Rohm Emanuel . The leadership in Illinois - all Democrats. . Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago.
Of course, they're all blaming each other. Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any! .
Chicago school system rated one of the worst in the country. Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any!
State pension fund $78 Billion in debt, worst in country. Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any!
Cook County (Chicago) sales tax 10.25% highest in country. Can't blame Republicans; there aren't any!
This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois. And he is going to 'fix' Washington politics for us?
George Ryan is no longer Governor, he is in the prison.
He was replaced by Rob Blajegovitch who is that's right, also in the prison.
And Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned a couple of weeks ago, because he is fighting to not be sent to...that's right, prison.
The Land of Lincoln, where our governors make our license plates.
But you know what?
As long as they keep providing entitlements to the population of Chicago, nothing is going to change, except the state will go broke before the country does.
"Anybody who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian."
Don't forget Detroit another good example.
Some of you might find these data interesting. ALL SHOULD. There are actually two messages here. The first is very interesting, but the second is absolutely astounding -- and explains a lot!
A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization.
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI and CT scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health:
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%
And now for the last health statistic:
National Health Insurance:
U.S. NO
England YES
Canada YES
And check this last set of statistics!!
The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet....
You know what the private business sector is. A real-life business, not a Government job. Here are the percentages.
T.Roosevelt................... 38%
Taft...........................40%
Wilson ....................... 52%
Harding....................... 49%
Coolidge.......................48%
Hoover ........................42%
F. Roosevelt...................50%
Truman.........................50%
Eisenhower.................... 57%
Kennedy........................30%
Johnson........................47%
Nixon..........................53%
Ford...........................42%
Carter.........................32%
Reagan.........................56%
GH Bush........................55%
Clinton .................. ...39%
GW Bush........................55%
Obama.......................... 8%
This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in private business!
That's right! Only eight percent -- the least, by far, of the last 19 presidents! And these people are trying to tell our big Corporations how to run their business?
How can the president of a major nation and society, the one with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk about business when he's never worked for one? Or about jobs when he has never really had one? And when it's the same for 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers?
They've spent most of their time in academia, Government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers." They should have been in an employment line.
Pass this on because we'll NEVER see these facts in the mainstream media.
"One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." - Plato

Why Raising the Minimum Wage Never Works

Economic lesson - why raising the minimum wage never works as intended. There are calls today to more than double the minimum wage to a "livable wage" of $15 an hour. First, based on history, raising the minimum wage prices many of our inexperienced, unskilled youth out of the job market, raising their already sky high unemployment rates. Not a good thing. Those inexperienced youth who get a first job usually join the middle class within 15 years. Those that don't get that first job when they are young, stay government dependent for the rest of their lives. Most importantly, the experienced and skilled workers logically expect to earn more money than inexperienced, unskilled workers. Many were once inexperienced and unskilled. They worked hard for years to achieve their current skills and income level. They will demand and receive substantially more than inexperienced workers. So if $15 an hour became the minimum wage, the experienced workers will receive proportionally more money than they receive today and therefore continue to receive more money than inexperienced and unskilled workers. If that didn't happen, experienced workers would actually suffer a reduction in their standard of living because in all of this, the volume of goods and services (GDP or Gross Domestic Product) is unchanged. Now we have more income chasing the same amount of goods and services. The result is inflation (goods and services cost more) and the people making the minimum wage still have proportionally less money than others to buy the same amount of goods and services available. Nobody can buy any more goods and services than they could before the minimum wage was increased because nationally there are no more total goods and services available to be bought. minimum wage increases only increase paper money, not goods and services produced. In order to increase your buying power, you must increase your contribution to the production of goods and services so that the total of these rises. In other words, you must increase your skill and/or education levels so that the value of your work makes a greater contribution to the total goods and services produced. That will get you paid more than the minimum wage. The silver lining for those people crying out for a "livable wage" is that 98% of the workers earning a minimum wage are students or youth still being supported by parents or the second member of a household with someone else earning a living wage or combined earning a living wage. Only 2% of minimum wage earners are truly head of household and the only worker in a family. They often get additional help from government. So the 'living wage' issue is really a false, minor issue. Bottom line, raising the minimum wage hurts the inexperienced, first time job seeker and also hurts savers (as their accumulated lifetime savings loses significant purchasing power due to inflation.

Better Social Security Benefits at No Expense to Government

Give upfront options to married couples on the lower SS check for collecting SS in the future when a spouse dies. Currently, the spousal survivor loses the second check. That represents a 33-50% loss of SS income. Too many people can't survive financially with such a loss because their bills (rent, mortgage, car payments, property taxes, home insurance, etc.) do not go down 33-50% when a spouse dies (they don't go down at all!).

At the time that the second spouse applies for SS, based on life expectancy tables so that there is no extra cost to SS, offer 4 options on the lower check. Collect at 100% and forfeit that check on the death of the first spouse (that is the same as today), or collect the second check at 50% or 75% or 100% when the second spouse dies by taking correspondingly less money on the second check from the time both people are on SS. How much less depends on their ages and life expectancy tables.

That's the option I had with my corporate pension. The company did not care what option was chosen because, based on life expectancy tables and factored over thousands of retirees, the overall total cost to the company is the same. If the government adopts these extra options, there would be no increase in costs to the government, but a substantial increase in security for married couples on Social Security. That's a win-win solution.

Fixing Medicare Fraud

Depending on what article you read, Medicare fraud varies from 10% to 25%. Compare that result with private insurance companies. Private Insurance companies experience less than 1% fraud.

Therefore, the best approach would be to maintain the government program as is, but hire insurance companies, not federal government workers, to manage the program as "third party providers". The US military forces already do this for many job activities. Just as with military combat operations, this is not "privatizing" Medicare. It will still be government insurance run by government overseers. Just the administrative workers will be different.

Secondly, roughly half of all Medicare expenses go to people in their last year of life. Many of these recipients are too sick to make medical decisions. So other family members, or government, or medical providers make these decisions for them. The result is often extending the dying process, not the living process, for the benefit of the medical providers.

For example, "have cancer and only have 6 months to live, we need to do quadruple bypass surgery now so you can make it to six months." That benefits the medical providers financially in a very substantial way, but what does it do for the patient except extend his/her suffering?

The solution is for the Medicare recipients at the time they sign up for Medicare, to fill out a medical will that all medical providers have access to and must follow unless the patient changes his/her mind when the time comes. That takes it out of government's hand, out of medical provider's hands, and out of family members hands who may not know the patient's wishes in such a situation and the patient is unable to respond to questions clearly and/or intelligently.

For people already on Medicare, each year they must make new choices for part D prescription programs. At that time, for any who have not submitted a medical will, have them do so. Either fill out a government form or if they have a medical will already, give government a copy.

False Claims that Blacks are Trapped in Poverty

With the 50th anniversary of the 1963 MLK March and "I have a dream" speech, numerous articles are appearing that the job isn't finished, blacks are trapped in poverty, and more help is needed to raise the standard of living for black people. What utter nonsense! Blacks are NOT trapped into poverty! Blacks have every opportunity to succeed today and for the last 20-30 years but too many blacks throw those opportunities away. It starts with the disintegration of black families (3 out of 4 black children are born to single parent households). That's a choice, not a trap! Too many blacks fail to get a good free public education by either dropping out or not trying to learn much if they stay in school despite the fact that we pay up to $20,000 per year per student in black urban areas on education or double the national average. Again that's a choice, and also a failure of family parenting, not a trap. Black crime rates are up to 8 times higher than the national average. Again that is a choice, plus a result of the first two points I made, not a trap. Blacks live in a free nation where they are free to make bad decisions. Way too many blacks make bad decisions. The ones that don't, that is the ones that actually try, who study hard, get an education, and work hard, generally succeed. The blacks (and whites) who don't try to earn their way out of poverty generally live in poverty. Again, that was their choice. Don't falsely blame anyone else, nor unfounded 'universal' racial discrimination claims, nor history for that outcome. Take personal responsibility, study and work hard, and change your life for the better! Otherwise, stop complaining because no one will nor should listen!

Conducting Fair Presidential Primaries

Iowa, a small farm state, and New Hampshire, a tiny, liberal state have deliberately positioned their Presidential primaries to be the first in the nation for the sole purpose of having an enormous influence on who is nominated. Conservatives and anti-subsidy candidates are at a distinct disadvantage. Major Presidential candidates have been knocked out of contention by these first primary states as their failure to conform to liberal policies resulted in a poor showing and unfair drop in polls which seems to have a huge impact on voters. This forces all serious candidates to cater to the political wishes of two tiny states, not representative of the rest of America, and handicaps candidates who are for the real changes needed to fix our government spending problems. Other states and their political interests are consequently at a distinct disadvantage as Presidential candidates spend enormous amounts of time and money campaigning in these two tiny states, and have much less time to spend in other States. The winners in these tiny states have enormous advantages in ultimately winning their party's nomination for President.
This is totally, unfair, un-American, not in our best interests as a nation, and contributes to the out of control spending policies of the United States. I am sure that if our Founding Fathers, noted for their wisdom in setting up our Democracy, were alive and asked to design Presidential primaries today, it would be much different than what we have now. I believe there should be 5 primary election dates, one a month, from February through June, in which 10 states vote in each. These 10 states should be taken geographically from North, South, East, West, and middle. There should be a balance of red-blue states, conservative-liberal states. Then every four years, the order of voting of these same 10 states should be moved with the first group of 10 states becoming the second group of 10, the second becoming the third, etc. with the last group of 10 from the last primary becoming the first group of 10 states in the current primary. No individual state should have a significant advantage in shaping the candidates or US policy.

Ending the Welfare Mess

The current welfare and food stamp programs are set up in a manner that incents people to have as many babies as you can, without supporting fathers, in order to gain more government benefits and "retire" without ever having worked. It is an axiom that whatever you incent people to do, that's what they likely will do. So in the future, let's incent them to work. End or at least substantially reduce welfare and food stamps and replace that program with a child care services program so that the mother is free to work and must work to earn the money necessary to support her family housing and food needs. At the same time require that fathers of all children be identified (with severe criminal penalties for lying, plus free DNA tests) so that they can be forced to support their children. If the fathers don't work, subtract child support payments from any government benefits that they receive to incent them to work. By incenting people to work, more people will work. Less babies will be created for the sole purpose of increasing government benefits of the parents. The disintegration of families (3 out of every 4 black children are born to single parent homes) will begin to reverse which will lead to less crime, less government costs, more children staying in school and actually learning, and most importantly better lives for more Americans.

Social Security Inequity toward Working Spouses

This is best illustrated by example. Two couples A and B are the same age. The husbands make the same salaries during their work life, started working on the same day and retired on the same day 45 years later. Couple A has a working wife who made half the income as her husband and also worked for 45 years. Couple B has a wife the same age a couple A's wife who never worked.

Therefore Couple A has paid 50% more into Social Security through SS taxes over a lifetime (and so have their employers who must match their employees' SS contributions) than Couple B. So, when retired, which couple collects the higher Social Security income? Answer – neither couple – they both collect exactly the same amount of SS income even though Couple A contributed 50% more in SS taxes! That's because couple B's wife who never put anything into SS still collects half the amount that her husband gets which is exactly the same amount that Couple A's wife will collect. Now is that fair?

How to Cut Government Spending

How to Cut Government Spending

We need a real and huge spending cut program. Start with the government subsidies (there are over 2200 of them) - eliminate all of them (that equates to about one trillion dollars a year). Subsidies, which always interfere with the free marketplace, are essentially a "slice" of Communism - the most failed Economic system ever. Next reduce government workers' salaries to be more comparable to the private sector for the same type of work, eliminate pensions and instead put them on Social Security plus contribute 5% of income monthly to a 401K to get in line with voters' retirement benefits in the private sector. No overtime pay for management employees. Go to automatic federal income tax deductions similar to Social Security – no tax forms to fill out - enabling us to eliminate most of the IRS. Abolish the ridiculously expensive, debt ridden and job killing Obamacare. Government regulators get a new job - instead of endlessly creating more job killing regulations, they start of with a clean piece of paper, make a minimum of needed regulations and eliminate the millions of regulations on the books now. Consolidate government agencies as has been recommended in the past. For instance, we don't need separate departments for Medicare, Medicaid, and Senior prescription drugs - one organization should be able to handle all of it. 535 Congressman and senators don't need their individual huge staffs repeating the work of each member 535 times. They get small staffs and a small pool of workers for each political party to share their work results with all their party members. We sell the 14,000 government buildings not being used. We don't give income tax refunds to those who don't work. We don't give government housing to anyone but limited military. Fathers whether wed or unwed must support their children. Unwed, welfare mothers get no government support unless they truthfully identify the fathers (who then must provide child support). Illegal aliens get no government assistance, no jobs, no free education, no place to live and we have a tough, mandatory system with employers, schools, and apartment/housing rentals, and the IRS to ensure that all gets done. If caught, then before immediate deportation, we take all their assets - houses, furniture, cash including bank and brokerage accounts, from them and send them home with just the clothes on their backs. We toughen Social Security Disability requirements, especially for reasons of “stress”. Children must legitimately pass their school subjects to be promoted. If they get left back twice, a social worker investigates the family to see if it is in the best interests of the child to be taken away from their family. All public unions are outlawed as they should be as a corrupt conflict of interest (supporting the election of politicians, then negotiating with these same politicians for wages and benefits). Government agencies that are responsible for social security or any form of welfare/subsidy must operate within administrative costs of no more than 5% of their total budget (same as a good charity). Since Medicare fraud is estimated to range from 10-25% (or hundreds of billions of dollars per year), while private insurance fraud is less than 1%, fire the government workers and instead hire insurance companies as third party providers to administer Medicare and Medicaid.

Climate Change Facts

First, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Life could not exist without carbon dioxide. Second, the last 15 years have not warmed at all. That's a scientific fact. Third, the recent tiny increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is attributed to deforestation (farmers burning down forests to plant crops). Fourth, China is putting two new, large electrical coal plants on line every week. Nothing we do can change that. Plus China has less controls on coal emissions than we do. India is also building coal plants and their population will soon exceed China's. Fifth, the number of hurricanes per year is nowhere near record levels. Sixth, the mandatory ethanol blends for gasoline add to pollution and don't save any oil imports, but they do increase the price of food and have killed thousands through starvation. Seventh, climate change models, the basis of climate change policies, have failed to accurately predict the weather of the past 30 years when put to the test. Conclusion - we don't have a climate change problem, nor a carbon problem. So why the fuss - liberals want to use climate change as a basis for taxing rich nations and sending the money to poor nations. It's always about the money!

Income Tax Reform

Let's adopt a flat income tax that is simple and also "progressive" (to get liberals to pass it) so that the higher your income the greater the percentage of tax that you pay. Contradiction? No. Either exempt the first $20,000 of income from income taxes or better yet, tax it at a nominal rate like 5%. After $20,000, then tax at a reasonable flat rate with no deductions nor exemptions. The net tax rate is very progressive. For example, if the flat tax was 15% and the first $20,000 of income was exempted,, a person earning $30,000 would pay $1,500 in income taxes which is a 5% 'effective' tax rate. Another person earning $100,000 would pay $12,000 in income taxes which is a 12% 'effective' tax rate or more than double the tax rate the $30,000 income person paid. In both cases, no income tax forms are needed. For interest, dividends and capital gains, either no tax (probably not passable) or the flat tax rate taken out and paid automatically by the financial institutions holding your money. Do the same for companies and corporations, but based on profits (again with no deductions or exemptions).

Beyond Stupid – Laws and Policies of the US Government

Social Security Benefits are paid to immigrants who neither they or their spouses ever worked in America nor paid Social Security Taxes.

Global Companies who earned profits overseas and wish to invest those profits in America are taxed on those profits. Therefore, a global company can use their profits for free overseas to invest in their business, creating job opportunities there, but are penalized by new taxes (leaving less money available for investment) if they invest those profits in America to create American jobs. So why would they invest in America?

When the Federal Government sends out bids for work (for example to build a new highway), instead of accepting the lowest bid they can get, all bidders by law must price their bids as if they pay all their workers “union wages”. Therefore, the government never pays the cheapest price possible for the same work and quality.

Companies with union members cannot build factories or businesses in a different state without permission form a government board for fear that the out of state factory might become a non-union plant. A recent example was Boeing Corporation, headquartered in California, seeking to build another plant in North Carolina (while keeping their California plant) being turned down by that government board. Now if Boeing, having been stopped from expanding in the US, had decided to build that plant in Canada, it could do so without a problem.

America does not have an effective national system to stop voter fraud. A person with homes in two or more states can vote in all those states in the same election without a problem. Fraudulent voters (not registered, voting for someone else, not a citizen, using a dead person's identity, etc.) can cast ballots with little fear of being caught or stopped.

There is no system to catch a doctor who loses his medical license in one state, from moving to another state and practicing medicine.

There is no national, effective system to prevent illegal immigrants from working, collecting government benefits, sending their children to school, renting or buying housing, etc.. Therefore, there is no deterrent, and plenty of incentive, to illegal immigration.

Children born to American citizens out of the country are not automatically citizens, but children born to illegal immigrants in America are automatically citizens. It should be the reverse!

Though we have a shortage of scientists, mathematicians, and key technical experts in America, college graduated foreign exchange students, who can and want to fill those jobs plus have companies that wish to hire them, are quota bound denied the opportunity and sent back to their own nations. Meanwhile, low skilled illegal immigrants remain here with virtual impunity.

We have the highest corporate taxes in the world. Therefore, if you are a global company and can take your operations anywhere in the world, why would you choose America?

Government subsidizes some businesses such as 'green' companies, effectively and substantially lowering their taxes as compared to other business of the same size and profitability. This in effect is limited communism, a system that always failed miserably.
Government requires all gasoline to be at least 10% ethanol for the stated purpose of reducing oil imports. However, it takes more than a gallon of gasoline to make ethanol, so no oil imports are saved and more imports are actually needed. Also, it takes farming resources of land and water (6,000 gallons of precious, limited, fresh water for each gallon of ethanol) to produce ethanol. Ethanol delivers less power and efficiency than gasoline. It also results in less food products and animal feed, raising the costs of both to consumers and farmers. People are going hungry and some have died of hunger because we produce less food for human consumption around the world due to this policy.

While the government wisely requires all businesses who have pensions to adequately fund them, it has no such rules for itself. Consequently, government pensions for government workers are underfunded by tens of trillions of dollars.

Government pays pensions in a manner that would bankrupt a private company that offered the same plan. Full pensions are paid to workers in their 50s and sometimes in their 40s instead of 65. Pensions are padded by using the largest one year income that is often manipulated and padded by huge overtime pay deliberately condoned so that instead of collecting half their pay as pension, workers collect their entire annual salary or more as pension. In addition, cost of living raised are included for retirees. Plus they are excluded from paying Social Security taxes. Finally, overtime pay is given to managerial and professional workers by government they would not be given to such workers in a private company. Such people are paid by the job in private industry, not by the hour.

Subsidies for Agriculture. Another bit of communism at work. We pay farmers not to grow crops (to preserve the land which farmers would do anyway to protect their future). We set minimum prices for some crop prices which not only raises food prices to consumers, especially hurting the poor and middle class, but also produces unwanted surpluses that the government pays millions of dollars per year to store. The average farmer has a net worth of two million dollars, so why are we subsidizing multi-millionaires?

Minimum wage laws. The 'intent' sounds good – ensure payment of a 'livable wage' to workers, but what is the real 'impact' of this policy? Does it accomplish the intent? The answer is no. Studies show that these workers are often people in their first job. 10 years later, 98% of them are earning the average American salary which is much higher than the minimum wage. Studies also show that minimum wage workers are not usually head of household, but often teenagers and students being supported by someone else. Most importantly, people who can't find employment in their first job until later in life, often never join the middle class and are dependent on government welfare programs for most or their entire life. Since studies also show that unemployment among youth seeking their first job is much higher than the rest of the population and that the number of entry jobs substantially decreases (employers eliminate some jobs, reduces the number of other jobs by adding more responsibilities to the job) when minimum wage rates are raised, thus sending youth unemployment rates much higher, minimum wage laws are regressive/counter productive rather than progressive. This result shouldn't be a surprise as it is another example of government over-riding the free marketplace to institute a bit of communism (the management of businesses by the state). So why does government pursue this policy? The reason is that Democrats, by making the minimum wage increasingly higher, make it easier for unions to bargain for higher wages.

The huge spread of government subsidizing consumers who buy what the government wants them to buy such as 'green' cars. Basically, you have decided that a green car is too expensive to buy. Instead of letting the marketplace determine the winners and loses of the various green technologies being produced or researched, the government offers a substantial subsidy to you to buy this too expensive car that you wouldn't pay for with your own money. This is stupid in two ways. First, the government is reaching over to your back pocket, lifting your wallet, taking money out of it as taxes, then giving it back to you to buy this car. So you paid full price anyway. Secondly, the fact that it is too expensive to buy means that it is not market ready and most importantly may not be the right green technology that could ultimately be truly marketable. In fact, the subsidy to the wrong technology could delay or stop the right green technology from ever being developed. Same concept exists for government grants to universities and colleges to develop new technologies. Let business and the free marketplace, which is loaded with incentives to develop marketable products, handle it.

Blocking oil and gas drilling on public lands, especially in the places that energy companies most want to drill. I'm not talking about National Parks. Government owns plenty of land and ocean that will never be a National Park, but could produce needed oil and gas to make us energy independent and maybe even an energy exporter someday. Why is that good? Well besides protecting our economy from shortages and foreign nation oil boycotts such as happened in the 1970s, we could save the 700 billion dollars a year we pay for oil imports and invest that money to produce good jobs in America.

Declaring the polar bear as a threatened species. Really? There are 25,000 polar bears today compared to only 8,000 polar bears 50 years ago. So the polar bear population has tripled in just 50 years! This outrageously prejudiced decision was a government sponsored marketing event to promote false man-made global warming policies that liberals love and support because polar bears, almost universally liked by the general population, might help win more supporters to this global warming hoax.

Flood insurance by the federal government. Private industry won't handle it due to the cost. So again, government overrides the marketplace and installs another bit of communism. The result – the same homes are destroyed and rebuilt by the government multiple times at huge deficits to the premiums collected for all policies. At the very least, it should pay the damages, then confiscate the property so as never to build upon it again. Better yet, get out of the business (or at least publicly declare it will not accept new policies so that unoccupied flood prone properties are never built upon).

Labeling a reduction in future, “planned” spending as a “cut” to the deficit. This is a fairy tale embedded in a lie, designed to fool the general public. A true 'cut” means spending less than actual expenditures from the past, not the future. The current. nonsensical debate about cutting 4 trillion dollars from the deficit over the next 10 years is in actuality an 8 trillion dollar increase to the national debt, bringing it in 10 years from the current 16 trillion dollars to 24 trillion dollars.

Using discrimination policies to end discrimination policies. Contradictory in its concept, Affirmative Action policies and laws discriminate by using the color of one's skin to gain jobs, promotions, and acceptance into colleges over more qualified people with a different skin color. No amount of “dancing” around this issue can mask the fact that Affirmative Action is unfair and real discrimination. This certainly isn't the policy that Martin Luther King campaigned for. He campaigned for the end of all discrimination!

Random Thoughts - Questions without Good Answers

1. Heaven is supposed to be Paradise. Yet, every person in hell has a mother and a father. Some also have a spouse and children of their own. How can a person in heaven really be infinitely happy if a loved parent, child, or spouse of theirs is in hell? Could they really be themselves if they don't care of feel deep sadness? And if they do, can they really be in Paradise?

2. Some people who are kind to other people and even animals, who wouldn't think of inflicting pain or suffering on man or beast, take joy at the thought that "bad people" will go to hell and get their 'due'. Worse,they imagine hell as an eternal, unrelenting punishment of fire and brimstone. You wouldn't, as punishment, force a person's hand to remain on a hot stove for five minutes or worse be burned to a stake which would end suffering in a few minutes. Too awful and inhumane! Yet the hell you imagine forces an afterlife body to be consumed by fire for eternity. Have you ever considered the enormity of this? Imagine being forced for five minutes in a giant hot stove. Imagine one hour, then a day, then a week, then a year, then a hundred years. Now for a thousand years. How long would it seem for a million years. A thousand times repeated for a billion years. A thousand times repeated again for a trillion years. Now 100 trillion years. Not enough? Multiply that 100 trillion times. Eternally speaking that is less than a second in a thousand years. Can anyone really do anything so awful as to deserve this kind of punishment? You wouldn't condone anything like it on Earth. Why does it change after death in terms of justification in your mind? Maybe hell is an invention of people who wanted to exercise control of other people? Let's hope so.

3. Space is infinite. How could it not be? If you reached the end of space, then what's to stop you from going to the edge and sticking a ten foot pole past the edge? God is all knowing. If space is truly infinite, then how can God know all that is in infinite space? If he did, then space would no longer be infinite.

4. Time is eternal. There is no beginning, nor is there an end to time. If there was, then what happened an hour before the beginning of time or an hour after the end of time? Yet the universe and all of us exist. Therefore at some point in time, we were created. How much time from the beginning of time were we created? Since there is no beginning of time, it took an infinite amount of time before the Universe and us were created. But infinity can never be reached. That implys that we and the Universe could never have been created.

5. Apply the analogy in point 4 to God. God always existed is pretty much a universal religious belief. Then it would take infinity to reach this point in time. Infinity can never happen. If I could ask God a question, my question would be what was your very first thought and when did it happen? After receiving the answer, my follow up question would be, then for an infinite amount of time before your first thought, you did not think at all. How can that be?

6. Science has an answer for this next thought, but though I have heard it several times, it makes no logical sense to me. I am talking about traveling at the speed of light and its effect on time. In theory, if a person could travel at the speed of light, he would age much slower and return to Earth hundreds of years later. something to do with the 'bending' of space and time - the theory of relativity by Einstein. Here's my problem. Scientists agree that the nearest star to Earth besides the Sun is four light years away. A light year is roughly six trillion miles in length. So the star is 24 trillion miles away from Earth. Light from that star takes four years to travel that 24 trillion miles. If we allowed it to hit a mirror, it would take another 4 years to travel back to that star. So 8 years for a round trip and 48 trillion ymiles traveled. I have no problem with that. Now put a man in a rocked that travels at the speed of light to that star and back. logically, the return should happen in 8 years. However, scientists say that it would be hundreds of years before he returned to Earth? How could it be qany different than the light beam? If it took more than 8 years to complete the round trip to and back from the star, then the space ship had to be going much slower than the speed of light. If it wasn't, then it must have traveled much further than 48 trillion miles.

7. The speed of light is defined as the "cosmic" speed light. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light per scientists. We currently have satellites in space about 200 miles up that are "stationary" to Earth and thus spin with Earth. Earth spins roughly 24,000 miles (the circumference of the Earth) in a 24 hour day. These satellites also circle in 24 hours, but since they have a 200 mile longer diameter to the center of the earth, they cover about 25,800 miles in the same time period (200 iles more time "pi" which is roughly 3.14. Now put an imaginary stationary satellite one light year from earth (or an imaginary pole attached to earth one light year long). It would travel 3.14 light years in one revolution which is only one day. That's 1,146 light years traveled in an Earth year (365 days times 3.14). That's way faster than the speed of light.

Being Better Prepared for Natural Disasters

The super storm Sandy has taught us once again that we need to be better prepared for natural disasters. I don't think it either difficult nor hard to be much better prepared. Electric generators are essentially combustion engines that can restore electricity to a home or business when electric power is down for extended periods of time. Car engines are also combustion engines and nearly every home owner or business owns one or more cars or pickup trucks. It cannot be very difficult nor expensive to give car engines of the future an electric generator capacity. Nor could it be that difficult to design a conversion kit to turn current car engines into electric generators. Take the problem of gas stations without electricity. The station owner could use his own car engine to provide electricity to his station. He can get all the gas he needs to keep it going from his own gas station. Other solutions would be to equip FEMA with 10,000 electric generators. A tiny cost in government terms of about two million dollars should pay for that. Long term, require electric companies to convert their pole carrying electric cables servicing homes and small businesses to underground cables. Give them ten years to do it so that they don't have to pay out all those costs in one year.

The Ticking Time Bomb - Unfunded Government Liabilities

Here's the problem boys and girls - we currently have 121 trillion dollars of unfunded government liabilities. That amounts to $340,000 each for every man, woman, and child in America (or $1,360,000 for a family of four). That doesn't even count the current actual debt of 16 trillion dollars. The current, annual deficits of roughly one trillion dollars a year, would balloon to five trillion dollars a year if the government was forced to put money aside for those unfunded liabilities. The government requires corporations to put such money aside for their future liabilities, but hypocritically never regulates itself to do the same. The problem won't fix itself, will burst someday taking down all entitlements programs with it, and it needs to be addressed now, not then if we are ever to avoid collective financial doom. However, every time a politician finally mounts the courage to even talk about the issue, you liberal Democrats start screaming bloody murder, but you never attempt to enact a solution.

The Hidden Costs To You of Taxes, Government Loans, and Subsidies

Government needs taxes to pay for the military that protects us plus provide beneficial services (e.g. roads, social security, etc.) and unfortunately in some cases, wasteful services (e.g. outrageous pensions for government workers, lifetime welfare for people not handicapped, etc.). Whether or not a new tax directly imposes an additional tax burden for you to pay, it is like a hidden tax increase on everyone. A new tax on only the wealthy – you will pay a hidden tax for it too. A new tax only on corporations - you will pay a hidden tax on it too. Not paying any taxes before or after the new tax - you will pay a hidden tax on it too. How?

Whether some or all people or businesses actually pay the new tax, the impact is the same. They will have less money left to spend for other purposes and also less money to save. Less money to purchase goods or services. That depresses demand for goods and services which in turn means that less people are needed to provide those goods and services. The hidden cost of that to you is:

1. People will either be laid off and/or receive smaller or no raises
OR
2. New people that would otherwise have been hired will not be hired
OR
3. Prices will be raised to cover lost income which, if they stick, means that people will have less disposable income to buy other goods and services further accelerating and repeating this downward cycle.

Therefore, in reality, you've paid for the new tax too.

Suppose the extra tax only decreases savings and doesn't impact spending. Though an unlikely result of new taxes, it still is like a hidden tax on you. Less savings means less capital available to borrow start businesses, buy homes, or otherwise use credit to purchase goods or services. Less capital to borrow also has the impact of raising interest rates which makes loans more expensive to pay back and therefore reduces the amount of money left over to spend and/or invest. Therefore, the same three adverse results previously listed occur again.

What about the impact of government loans? More money loaned to government means less money available to loan to people and businesses. In addition to higher interest rates and therefore payback costs for loans, less loans will be granted to people and businesses. Less jobs created and pay raises occur. Also, the impact of higher payback loan costs reduces the amount of money people have to spend and invest. Therefore, the same three original, adverse results listed occur.

What about government subsidies? To pay for government subsidies, government has to tax you more and/or borrow more. We already listed the adverse impacts of that. All a government subsidy does is literally take the money out of your wallet to pay for something for you that you previously were unwilling to voluntarily pay for at its original price. The net effect is that you paid the original price anyway.

Famous Quotes by our Founding Fathers

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” -Benjamin Franklin

"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt." - John Adams

"The Constitution is NOT an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government-- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." - Patrick Henry

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

"Anyone who would trade their freedom for safety deserves neither freedom or safety." - Benjamin Franklin

“The government that governs best ...governs least” - Thomas Jefferson

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship” - Alexander Tytler 1787

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms .... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson
Freedom is lost gradually from an uninterested, uninformed, and uninvolved people. ...
Thomas Jefferson

The power to tax is the power to destroy. – John Marshall

Democrats' Unfair Income Tax Cuts Complaints – Its Logical Conclusion

Democrats constantly complain that the Bush tax cuts unfairly favored the rich because they received the largest dollar tax cuts. If you follow their argument to its logical conclusion, then it becomes apparent that the only fair tax cut that Democrats could support is a zero tax cut. Allow me to explain by example.

Taxpayers 1, 2, 3, and 4 (respectively rich, middle class, lower middle class, and poor incomes) currently pay $100,000, $10,000, $1,000, and zero in annual income taxes. An across the board tax cut proposal for 10% is introduced into Congress. That means the four taxpayers would see their taxes cut 10% each for $10,000, $1,000, $100, and Zero respectively in income taxes saved. The Democratic Senator says wait, we can't give the rich taxpayer #1 a $10,000 tax cut when the middle class taxpayer #2, only gets $1,000. Nor can we afford to give all taxpayers a $10,000 tax cut or we will have huge deficits we cannot afford. So they agree to 'compromise' and limit the dollar tax cut maximum to $1,000 for everyone. So now, Taxpayer 1 only receives a 1% tax cut ($1,000) which for him is hardly anything at all.

Then the Democratic Senator from California speaks up and says, hey we can't give the middle class Taxpayer #2 $1,000 or ten times the dollar amount given to the lower middle class Taxpayer # 3. So a compromise is reached to make $100 the maximum tax cut for everyone. Now, Taxpayer #1 receives a $100 tax cut or just one tenth of 1% in tax cuts. Taxpayer # 2 also receives $100 in tax cuts or just a 1% tax cut. Taxpayer #3 receives the full 10% tax cut.

However, the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts chimes in and says this isn't right because Taxpayer #4, who paid no income taxes at all, isn't receiving a tax break. So the Democrats put their heads together and work out a compromise. A zero percent tax break yields the same tax percentage break to all (nothing) and the same dollar amounts to all (again nothing). All the Democrats agree and are happy. They finally came up with a 'fair' tax bill (that is no tax bill at all). But, are you as a taxpayer, happy?

Taken to its logical conclusion, the only tax cut that could satisfy Democrats quest for a fair tax cut to taxpayers is zero tax cuts. Any significant tax cut above zero will always produce different dollar amounts by income level and therefore by Democratic definition would be “unfair”.

Federal Debt -Urgent To Unsustainable To Insane

From an IBD editorial - http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/091012-625210-federal-debt-urgent-to-unsustainable-to-insane.htm?nav=EditorialsLatest&p=2
By HOWARD RICH

News of the national debt eclipsing the $16 trillion mark has prompted another round of hand-wringing and finger-pointing from the two political parties responsible for its escalating accumulation.
In fact, one of those parties — in an effort to pick up some election year traction — installed a debt clock inside of its 2012 convention hall to track the skyrocketing tab.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said the purpose of the GOP's debt clock was to "draw your attention to the unprecedented fiscal recklessness of the Obama administration."
OK, but what about the then-unprecedented fiscal recklessness of the Republican Party prior to Obama taking office? And what about the inexcusable accommodation of GOP leaders on spending and deficit issues over the last 3-1/2 years?
If Republicans were serious about limiting government, how did their promises of $100 billion in savings last year turn into $130 billion in new spending? And how did we get saddled with $2.1 trillion in additional deficit spending in exchange for modest cuts that may not even materialize?
The unfortunate truth is that both Republican and Democratic leaders have proved incapable of restraining Washington's appetite for bigger promises, bigger budgets and bigger deficits — even as Americans are confronted with fewer jobs, smaller paychecks and a devalued dollar.
Also this problem goes much deeper than just the national debt. At last count the federal government's total unfunded liability tab — i.e., the cost of future promises that lack a dedicated source of financing — stood at a scarcely fathomable $120 trillion.
How much money are we talking about? Consider this: America's combined debt and unfunded liabilities are now nearly twice the size of the $70 trillion gross world product — which is the market value of all goods and services produced in a given year on the entire planet.
And while the $140,100 in debt owed by each taxpaying American citizen is indeed a frightening statistic, the unfunded liability obligation is far worse — just over $1 million per taxpayer at last count.
How long will it take us to pay back these astronomical sums? Well assuming you're repaying at a rate of $1 per second it would take you 31,688 years — and that's just to pay back the first trillion dollars of this growing mountain of obligation. Without interest!
Of course our country isn't paying down its debt or limiting its future liability — it is dramatically expanding both. After once describing our soaring debt as "shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," Obama increased it by $5.4 trillion during his first 3-1/2 years in office. Meanwhile ObamaCare — the president's new health care entitlement — will add another $17 trillion to our already soaring unfunded liability tab, according to data from the Senate Budget Committee.
We are no longer looking at an exercise in unsustainability — what we are witnessing is pure insanity.
"Future spending on these programs will skyrocket far beyond current revenues," writes Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute, noting that our nation will soon face Europe's fate "if government policy is left on autopilot."
In fact, this is already happening. In the most recent fiscal year Medicare paid out $564 billion in benefits — but only took in $274 billion in taxes and premiums. That's a shortfall of $290 billion.
Social Security is also currently paying out more than it is taking in — with its annual deficit projected to reach $623 billion over the next two decades. Driving this escalation is the fact that the program's ratio of workers-to-beneficiaries is set to drop from 2.8 to 1.9 by 2035 as the number of Americans collecting checks soars from 56 million to 91 million.
"It is time for Congress to take on the task of retooling Social Security for the long haul," SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue said earlier this year.
Wrong. Government's entitlement programs don't need to be "retooled," they need to be either privatized (like Medicare and Social Security) or eliminated altogether (like ObamaCare and the 2003 prescription drug benefit). And these reforms don't need to happen this year — our entitlement mess should have been addressed decades ago.
"Urgent doesn't begin to describe it," Social Security Trustee Chuck Blahous said recently. "We're somewhere between critical and too late to deal with it."
Indeed. Which is why continuing to delay the inevitable — i.e. the "bipartisan solution" — only adds additional destructive force to the fiscal reckoning that's coming.
• Rich is chairman of Americans for Limited Government.

Can Anyone Explain why Blacks and Hispanics overwhelmingly support Democrats?

Let's see, Republicans freed the slaves while Democrats fought against it. Southern Democrats imposed discrimination for 100 years after the slaves were freed, with many of them members of the Ku Klux Klan. 85% of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights laws while less than 65% of Democrats did, yet Democrats get credit for it. Republicans are fighting for better education through vouchers to private schools while Democrats are fighting for teachers unions against the interest of students. Most Republicans, blacks and Hispanics are against gay marriage while Democrats are for it. Can anyone from the Black and Hispanic communities explain logically why the majority are such staunch supporters of the Democratic Party?

The Ice Is Right

The Ice Is Right

Environment: Hillary Clinton made a well publicized trip last week (May 2012)to the Arctic to see for herself the impact of global warming. Less well known, however, are two reports that contradict the climate-change alarmists.

Upon her return from Saturday’s tour of the Norwegian coastline, the secretary of state announced that “many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data.” But she omitted a couple of important points:

First, polar ice is now the heaviest “in more than a decade,” reports the Los Angeles Times. It is, in fact, so plentiful it could postpone Shell’s “start of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean until the beginning of August.”

The Times says the National Weather Service explains it in these terms: “A high pressure zone over the coast of Alaska, cold winter temperatures and certain ocean currents have combined to bring unusually large amounts of ice not only along Alaska’s northern coast, but farther south in the Bering Sea as well.”

Second, photos taken in the 1930s by Danish explorers “show glaciers in Greenland retreating faster than they are today, according to researchers,” tech publication The Register reported.

“It now appears that the glaciers were retreating even faster 80 years ago” when man’s carbon output was far less than today’s, “but nobody worried about it, and the ice subsequently came back again.”

We can understand a U.S. secretary of state visiting a region that’s material to American interests. In this case, there is sea bed mining, oil and natural gas production and vital shipping routes to be considered.

But why throw in a political global warming jab?

Oh, that’s right: Clinton is a Democrat working in a Democrat’s administration that’s used global warming alarmism to push its (failed) green energy agenda. Of course. Mixing the practical — and often forgetting the practical altogether — with the frivolous to make political points is the way Democrats roll.

We prefer to deal in facts, which continue to refute the prophets of global warming, who are always dragging up some point they say indisputably proves their claim. But for every argument they throw out, there’s always at least one fact that wrecks the credibility of their story that man is causing the planet to warm to intolerable levels.

CBS Ignores Climate-Change Truth

CBS Ignores Climate-Change Truth (IBD Editorial)

Climate: While CBS touts a “groundbreaking” government report linking extreme weather and climate change, German researchers find 2,000 years of cooling and warmer temps in medieval times and the Roman era.

This summer’s heat wave has given the global warmongers new hope in conning the hot and the restless into believing the whole thing is due to that SUV parked in your driveway and that coalfired plant down the street.

Not so fast, say German researchers who documented a two millennia cooling trend. Both the Roman legions and Crusaders marched in warmer climes.
On Wednesday’s CBS This Morning, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews breathlessly intoned that a recent study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA  ) had established “the first-ever statistical connection between extreme weather and man-made climate change” and that the study “found that man-made heat made the Texas drought roughly 20 times more likely.”

Well, you know the adage about lies, damned lies and statistic. We have documented how researchers at Britain’s Climate Research Unit manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures that other data, such as from satellite observations, had indicated.

The U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relied on anecdotes from suspect sources to produce carefully edited reports warning about such things as the Himalayan glaciers soon disappearing.
Wyatt’s report featured Tom Karl, chief of the climate office at NOAA, talking about shifts in the La Nina and El Nino ocean currents, which have contributed to our hot summer. But they are naturally occurring phenomena predating the Industrial Revolution.

Wyatt’s conclusion was that “NOAA scientists, meanwhile, are not saying that climate change causes any one specific drought, like the one in Illinois. They are saying the science is good enough now, they can lay odds on the connection.”

Laying odds? The science is “good enough”?
Facts, as Ronald Reagan said, are stubborn things. German researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees in Finnish Lapland to answer how the Romans were able to grow grapes in northern England.

Unlike the manipulated Siberian tree ring data used by researcher Michael Mann at the University of Pennsylvania to support his case for global warming, the German researchers found the Finnish tree data, which let them reconstruct global climate back to 138 BC, showed something quite different, such as a slight cooling trend that has lasted 2,000 years.

In general the scientists found a slow cooling of 0.6 degrees centigrade over 2,000 years, which they attributed to changes in the Earth’s orbit — not CO2.
Lead author Professor Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said: “We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low.”

The study showed Britain 2,000 years ago had a lengthy period of hotter summers than today, including 21 AD to 50 AD, when temps were one degree centigrade warmer than today. That might explain the togas.

“This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant, however it is not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1 degree centigrade,” Esper said.

He also noted that their “findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today’s climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.”

We hope so. A Congressional Research Service ( CRS  ) report that showed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to fight the phantom known as anthropogenic global warming ( AGW  ) or man-induced climate change.

In its name, the war on fossil fuels has decimated our economy, stunting growth and increasing joblessness.

So next time you hear earth is doomed, just think of toga-clad Romans eating grapes in Northern England.

Your Share of the National Debt

Here's the bottom line - there are 312 million Americans today. Each of the 312 million men, woman, and children's share of the national 18 trillion dollar debt is $57,000. That's $228,000 for a family of four. In 10 years, at current spending plans, each of our share of the debt will be $85,000 or $340,000 for a family of four. That doesn't even count the tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded government liabilities for social welfare programs which would triple those numbers at the least. Now, if you took all the wealth from millionaires and billionaires and made them homeless paupers, we could reduce the debt 5 trillion dollars, still leaving 13 trillion in debt plus all those tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities. The math is clear that we cannot tax ourselves out of this problem. The only solution is a huge and permanent reduction in spending.

Sooner or later, the credit to finance the debt will disappear causing interest rates will jump dramatically, and quickly doubling or tripling the interest paid on the debt. the economy will collapse, the entitlement programs will go bankrupt, and there will be no way to be saved from financial disaster because we are too big an economy (unlike Greece which is tiny) for others to even consider saving us.

Put another way that might be easier to understand, imagine a person making only $30,000 a year with a debt of $180,000. Keep in mind that the general rule for long term debt such as mortgages is a maximum of 1 1/2 to two times income. Imagine this person going to a bank to borrow money to finance the $180,000 he already owes. The banker asks him how he is going to pay it back. he says that he doesn't intend to pay it back, but will be borrowing another $5,000 to $10,000 each year from now on, and will only pay interest on the debt - the money for such interest to come from his borrowings. After the banker stops laughing, he escorts the borrower out of his bank without giving him a loan. Now add 8 zeroes to each of those numbers and you have the United States ($3 trillion in annual revenues, $4 trillion in annual spending, and $18 trillion in debt). Worse - that does not include the roughly 75 trillion dollars in unfunded future liabilities.

Cost of a Government Created Job

Compare a government created job that Democrats love to push for to a private business created job that Republicans love to push for. Say they both pay $50,000 a year and income taxes collected for each is $10,000. With medical and pension benefits, the total cost of the government job is $75,000. The net cost to the government and therefore to us taxpayers after income taxes are paid is $65,000 ($75,000 total expense - $10,000 paid in taxes). What's the cost to the government for the private job? Instead of a net expense loss of $65,000, the government receives $10,000 of income taxes plus another $7,000 in social security taxes (paid by the worker and the employer; government workers do not pay SS taxes) at no expense to the government. So a private job is a net gain in taxes received to the government of $17,000 while the government job is an initial net loss in expenses of $65,000. The difference between the numbers is a total net loss to the Federal government of $82,000 (-$65,000 plus -$17,000 = -$82,000) each and every year worked for just one job created by government instead of by private industry.

Better Spouse Survivor Options at No Cost for Social Security

After my wife's two sisters died last year within 13 days of each other, I learned something about Social Security benefits that I had never thought about. It eventually impacts all retired SS age married couples. Namely, when a spouse dies, the surviving spouse receives the higher of their two checks and loses the other check.

For example, if one spouse was collecting $1,500 a month from SS and the other spouse another $1,000 per month from SS for a total of $2,500 a month, the survivor then collects $1,500 a month or a 40% decrease in total SS income. When a spouse dies, your mortgage or rent does not go down by 40%. Neither does your car payment, electric and heating bills, insurance rates, gas for your car, cable TV, phone, and Internet service, etc. go down by 40%. Especially for couples whose retirement income is all or mostly SS (pretty common situation), it may be impossible to keep up their standard of living, including keeping their house if they own one.

It doesn't have to be that way. Without any additional SS expense, beneficiaries could be offered the same options prior to collecting SS, that people lucky enough to collect a pension from a private company are given. That is, to determine up front, if your spouse will collect 100% or 75% or 50% or zero percent of your pension when you die. Based on life expectancy tables and your ages, the pension amount received each month is highest at zero percent survivor benefits and lowest at 100% survivor benefits. No matter what decision you make, the lifetime cost to the company for your pension averages out to be the same. Social Security should offer the same options.

In the example I gave, maybe that couple would have chosen to receive a combined $2,200 a month SS benefits instead of $2,500 so that the survivor would continue to receive $2,200 after the first spouse passed away. That likely would have kept his or her standard of living maintainable for the rest of his or her life.

How much will your Social Security benefit go down when your spouse dies? Answer – it will go down 33 to 50 percent. Where two spouses are each collecting the same amount from SS, one spouse's death will result in a 50 percent decline in SS income to the survivor. When one spouse is collecting half of the higher spouse's SS (that is the least amount a spouse can collect), there will be a loss of 33% to SS income when one spouise dies. Everyone else is between the min-max of 33 to 50 percent.