Economics 101: #Portland #BlindSquirrel Finds A Nut

We on the Right have discussed all the Democrat actions and their negative economic effects for years now. The First Street Journal has many such articles. We know that raising taxes causes products to be more expensive and thus, less affordable. We know that raising the minimum wage causes products to be more expensive and thus, less affordable. That causes businesses to increase their prices and down-size. But the Left never understands that.

But Portland, Oregon, is a blind squirrel and has found a nut. In an effort to make people want to give up their parking spaces so other people can park there, Portland has decided to increase the cost of parking meters 25 percent. Instead of paying a buck sixty per hour to park at the meter, it will now cost 2 dollars. And the businesses and customers are in agreement. The increase will cause people to not want to park in that spot all day, thus opening the spot for customers to park and make purchases.

By making multiple-hour parking less affordable, the city hopes to have fewer people doing the multiple-hour parking. This goes with economic common sense. It’s a fill-in-the-blank piece of economic common sense. “By making _______________ less affordable, fewer people will do __________.” By making widgets less affordable, people will buy fewer widgets. See how that works? The Left doesn’t see that. But Portland, Oregon, has stumbled onto that concept in its efforts to make their limited number of parking spaces more available to more people.

Remember All Those Who Voted For ObamaCare?

Notice how many of them are no longer in Congress? And We the People still hate it, more now than before it was passed. It’s time for Republicans and those Democrats who like their cushy perks of Office to abort ObamaCare.

I Finally Physically Met Someone I Met While Blogging

And it took traveling to the Philippines to do it. I met Climate Destruction DENIER from Twitchy here in the Philippines. He, his wife, and his Philippine family were very gracious hosts, providing far more food than could be eaten in 3 sittings. And that was only the lunch. We also went sight-seeing so I could better understand circumstances as they relate to my own business ideas for the Philippines. Climate Destruction DENIER likes my ideas, and has started the process of information gathering in an effort to implement my ideas — with his alterations — here on Luzon.

But the important thing is I have found a family in Luzon that I can really talk business plans and culture differences with. I hesitate to call him an ex-pat because there are negative connotations with that term among some people. He’s a US citizen with a lovely Pinay wife, living on Luzon.

I hope to learn a lot more from him, and to further develop our acquaintance relationship into a solid friendship. He’s very clearly good people, despite some of our disagreements. Actually… I like the fact we have disagreements. Two of me in the same room for any length of time would result in one of me in that room.

I definitely have business plans aiming more than one direction for the Philippines. I also have business plans, aiming basically only one direction in the US, and I am actively working to make the US plans work, despite some setbacks. The destruction of my credit history, which started in November 2008, is a major stumbling block, at least for my US LLC. If I can get these multiple plans working, I can be officially retired at a younger age than most Americans, while continuing to do some heavy work while retired.

It is much less expensive to live in the Philippines, and the people, for the most part, are much friendlier than what you’ll find in the US. And now that I’ve met Climate Destruction DENIER and his family in person, I also have an anchor of sorts in the Philippines. Things are looking up, with multiple hurdles to … hurdle, but looking up, nonetheless.

In case you wondered what left-fascism actually looked like.

A reminder that big business and the free market are not the same thing, as we see the Lords of Crony Capitalism collaborate with Welfare State Diktat, and declare it “Good”.

“Insurers and the government have developed a symbiotic relationship, nurtured by tens of billions of dollars that flow from the federal Treasury to insurers each year,” said Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

So much so, in fact, that insurers may soon be on a collision course with the Republican majority in the new Congress. Insurers, often aligned with Republicans in the past, have built their business plans around the law and will strenuously resist Republican efforts to dismantle it. Since Mr. Obama signed the law, share prices for four of the major insurance companies — Aetna, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth — have more than doubled, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has increased about 70 percent.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/us/politics/health-law-turns-obama-and-insurers-into-allies.html

 

We Could Annex The Northern Half Of It

Back when we had control of the northern half of it, we should’ve annexed it then. But we didn’t, and we’ve been suffering for it since. And what is “it”, you ask? “It” is this.

And I know certain empty heads will esplode because I wrote this.

Let’s #Compromise!

Now that Republicans have won, the Democrats are no longer saying “we won” but have switched to that all-familiar refrain of theirs when they lose: let’s compromise! I agree. Let’s compromise. To compromise, both sides need to give up something they want to get something else they want.

Let’s start the compromising by forcing the Democrats to finally live up to their past agreements.

For the Reagan 100 billion dollar tax hike, the Democrats must now provide the 300 billion dollars of non-defense budget cuts (in 1986 value dollars).

For the George Herbert Walker Bush tax hike, the Democrats must now provide the agreed upon non-defense budget cuts (in 1990 value dollars).

For the Reagan amnesty, the Democrats must now secure the southern border.

Once the above 3 compromises are finally met, we can talk… about other compromises the Democrats have not yet followed through on. There should be no further offers of compromise until the Democrats actually follow through on old promises they made and, to this point, welched on.

Taking Their Chains Off

HT OLLPOH

Surely they have been called Uncle Toms, Race Traitors, Oreos, House Ni**ers, Tokens, etc by the Left already.

Senators Who Voted To Cut Military Veterans’ Pensions

From Facebook comes this gem. See how many squish Republicans are there. I saw a couple of very noteworthy Republicans in that list. And people wonder why the grass-roots are up in arms against Republicans, too.

The DEMOCRAT John McCain is on that list, as is the other Flake from Arizona and the sore loser from Alaska who needed K-Street to win as a write-in against the Republican in the race, as the Democrats jumped ship from their loser candidate to vote for her over the grass-roots Republican (who went on to snub the one person who had the king-maker mantel who could help him win). And of course, there’s Orrin Hatch, who got all wee-weed up that the grass-roots didn’t like him. Ever wonder why the grass-roots didn’t like you, lifer Orrin? (Even though I post your very worthy Hanukkah song every year.)

American “Poor” vs Filipino Working Class

In the Philippines, it is easy to find people making 8000 PHP (Philippine Pesos) per month. Very easy. At the current rate of roughly 43.60 PHP per USD, that comes out to about 183.50 dollars per month. Let me repeat that. It is easy to find a Pinoy or a Pinay (not derogatory at all) who makes less than 200 US Dollars per month. At 50 pesos per day, or roughly 1.20 dollars per day, a Pinoy phone can be unli. That’s unlimited. So, that’s 1500 pesos per month, or 18.75 percent of their monthly pay. More than 5 and a half days a month working, just for an entire month of unlimited cell phone service. So, they do not unli their phones every day. Only when necessary. Does anyone work more than 5.5 days a month just to pay for their cell phone in the US? No? Then sit down and shut up.

A brand new cell phone costs 2400 PHP, and it doesn’t even have a motion sensor to turn the image sideways when you turn your phone. That’s nearly 1/3 of a month of pay. Did you pay more than an entire week’s worth of wages for your even better phone? No? Then sit down and shut up.

Going to the cinema, it costs 150 PHP for a 2-D movie, or more than half a day’s pay (less than 4 bucks), based on working 30 days a month. Half a day’s pay. Does anyone working at McDonalds have to work an entire day in order to make enough money to buy two tickets to the movie theater? No? Then shut up about being poor. I mean, seriously.

I saw a report about a proposed new, lower graduated income tax law for the Philippines. If I remember correctly, 500k was where the absolute top rate kicked in. 500,000 Philippine Pesos. 11,468 US Dollars. For a top rate of close to 1/3 of your pay. Do you pay close to 1/3 of your pay in income taxes if you make 12,000 USD? No? Then sit the fornicate down and shut the sheol up.

America’s “poor” are not poor. I have no respect for and no empathy for fast food workers who think they can commit crimes in order to do anything their Socialist puppeteers want. Period.

Immoral Businesses Shutting Down

FOX News is about to report on “three Atlantic City Casinos closing for good.” Good. Would that all casinos closed for good. On one side, you have immoral people preying on immoral lemmings. On the other side, you have immoral lemmings having less money than they used to. And the outcome is, they both lose. What’s not to like?

What do casinos produce? Nothing. They offer the most expensive places in the world to sit down. I suppose the entertainment value of pulling a lever and watching wheels spin can be attractive to some fools. But seriously, what uplifting value do casinos have? What societal benefit do they provide? They produce nothing. They add nothing to the growth of a community. They only take what that community provides. But the Obama Recovery (which would be a long-term recession or even depression in any other administration) means Society doesn’t have enough for the casinos to siphon.

So, the blood-suckers are dying off because there isn’t enough blood for them to suck. The tapeworms are dying because their hosts are emaciated. The Crimea River is in Atlantic City, NJ.

All Multi-Nationals Should Invert Away From US

If you are a multi-national corporation headquartered in X country, you pay that country’s corporate tax for the business you do there and you pay the corporate tax in each other country for the business you do there with the exception of one industrialized country. If you are headquartered in the industrialized world’s highest corporate tax country, not only do you pay that country’s highest in the industrialized world for the business you do there but you also pay that country’s highest in the industrialized world for business you do anywhere else. You do get a tax credit for paying taxes elsewhere, but you also still pay taxes in that country for business you do in other countries.

Now, why would any fiscally responsible corporation spend more than double its by-nation required corporate taxes if it could just as easily cut it down to the actual rate of said country? If Canada has a 15 percent corporate tax rate (it does), then why would a corporation pay the offending country’s 35 percent corporate tax on business done in Canada, just because the business is headquartered in that offending country? It makes no fiscal sense whatsoever. Especially when it is possible to work the laws to divest yourself of insane tax requirements for doing business elsewhere in the world.

That’s exactly what Burger King (owned in a very large part by a Brazilian) did. (And I have a major issue with Burger King’s rainbow whoppers, but that’s beside the point here.)

Meanwhile, Forbes reported three days ago on the prospective merger and said:

Burger King’s majority owner, the Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital, would hold the majority of shares in the combined company, their statement said.

These Brazilians need to get patriotic and pay their absurdly high American tax rates.

See, Burger King’s majority owner, a Brazilian company, did what it took to get out of the outrageously high taxes the US put on it. That’s right. The United States has the industrialized world’s highest corporate tax, and is also the only nation in the industrialized world to force its outrageous taxes on business done in other countries.

Never mind Michelle Obama will never allow Burger King to sell its product in American schools, and would rather Burger King ceased to exist, the Loony Left are all up in arms about a business deciding it’s not a good idea to overpay their taxes.

Good News And Bad News

The good news is for TBD’s readers. The bad news is for me.

The good news is I’ve been able to write more involved articles to the benefit of the readers here. It’s something that I actually desire to do and enjoy doing, but it’s because of the bad news that this good news has occurred.

The past Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I was in Salt Lake City, spending over 3000 dollars fixing and maintaining my truck. When I only had a 2100 dollar maintenance account (fed continually from revenue from each of my trips).

Then my student and I went to Idaho to pick up a load, travelled to a suburban area of Chicago, then off toward the Los Angeles megaplex. But on the way there, the truck died in Frisco, CO. Coolant decided to go into a white steam-smoke and also into the oil. The cost of that? Besides spending Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning in a hotel in Denver, where hotels are booked (vacation plus legal marijuana) at about 100 dollars a night, there’s the 8000 dollar repair bill. While my maintenance account is completely depleted.

I suspect it will take about 6 months to recover. It would be faster, but from 15 August to 10 September, I’ll be vacationing overseas (travel and lodging already paid for), so my revenue will be seriously affected.

Again, good news in that my readers get more than the “reblog” type articles. Bad news in that in a period of 1 week, I have incurred over 11,000 dollars in maintenance costs plus lodging costs, with next to no revenue to show for it. And if my truck sits still for 1 week, I still have 800 dollars in expenses.

The Vast Majority Of America’s Poor … Aren’t

I want you to go to work 9 hours each day, 6 days each week, for 10 months. In this 10-month experience, you will pay no taxes, no rent, no utilities, no insurance; you will buy no food, no gasoline, no bus fare, no clothing, no toiletries, no nothing. You will instead save every penny you earned working those 43 54-hour weeks, at the end of which, you will take all the money -every last cent- to the electronics store and buy a middle of the road laptop computer with Linux installed (not Mac or Windows) and a decent printer. You will pay the cashier every penny you have, and leave none in reserve. After which, ladies, you will spend the next 9 9-hour workdays saving every last penny you earn so you can purchase a black one-piece swimsuit.

Because that’s what those three items cost a particular working woman in the Philippines. 9 hours a day for 198 Philippine Pesos. 22 PHP per hour. 50 US cents per hour. 54 hours a week. And she’s not running around looking for handouts. She’s looking to work to get ahead, by her own merits.

The vast majority of America’s “poor” just flat-out aren’t.

Should I Move From California To Plano, Texas?

That is a question someone used in a web search to find an article I wrote some time back: Moving From California To Texas? The person doing the search is likely a Toyota employee. The First Street Journal covered this breaking news quite well, and included multiple links to multiple articles written concerning the ongoing fiscal insanity that is everpresent and effervescent in Leftist state governments, contrasting with the growth-minded nature of Texas.

 

Other material that can be found on Truth Before Dishonor include:

Dying California Cannibalizes Itself

Maryland Follows California And Illinois Down The Toilet

Flee California Now!

California’s Green Energy Mandate

California Introduces New Internet Sales Tax Law

California And The Great Egress

 

There is more information to be had on this subject matter on this site, if one looks through all the economics-related articles. But to answer the question the internet searcher asked:

If you’re a Leftist voter, loving yourself some Leftism, stay in that shithole state you helped create. Don’t move to Texas, because you’ll only work to turn a successful state into the shithole state you fled. If you’re a Conservative voter, by all means, move to Texas and flee that shithole state the Leftist parasites created.

 

70,000 a year income will let you live a better life than 100,000 a year in the People’s Republic of Kalifornia. Texas’ Castle Doctrine will keep you safer. Jobs are more plentiful. But be ready for culture shock. Texans don’t like Big Brother/Nanny State.

Cumulonimbus + AgI = ?? (revisited)

I’m reprinting an article I wrote 13 months ago. An article I wrote 13 months ago, I’m reprinting. An article that doesn’t even get into the most recent huge schadenfreudig spreading through the sane world. But an article I find especially prescient, given the Obama administration’s desperate efforts to prevent ObamaCare’s huge pains from actually hitting just yet…
___________________________________________

A dark cloud follows him wherever he goes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Farmers obviously need rain for their crops, so there are some who resort to cloud seeding, adding silver iodide to the clouds to try to force rain out of them. But it’s a bad idea to seed a thunderstorm cloud. Cumulonimbus clouds can produce nasty things like hail storms, massive lightning storms, micro-bursts, tornadoes.

And of course, there are those who always bring bad luck with them, like Bad Luck Schleprock, our current President.

 
So, today I am telling you about the seeding of a 3,000 mile wide thunderstorm cloud hanging over the US — and the silver lining that comes with it. It’s painfully schadenfreudig. Painfully schadenfreudig, indeed. (Multiple stacked redundancy intentional.) Barack Obama and the Democrats, very cynically aware that their grand scheme to shove the US headlong into Socialism could cause them to fall out of power, set up a series of Laws and programs that would save most of the very bad results until after the 2012 election. After having blamed Bush for all the Democrat-and-Socialist caused travails, they would have a way of avoiding responsibility for the looming mega-disaster. It works like this:

• Set up a Socialist system with all the false positives front-loaded and all the negatives back-loaded.
• Get possibly voted out of office before the negatives hit, so the Socialist-caused negatives would hit when Conservatives were in office.
• Blame the Conservatives in office for the economic disaster the Socialists caused.
• Get the Socialists re-elected to complete the evil transformation of the Free Market US into a Socialist state, with the Conservatives forever blemished by the results of Socialist actions.

But a strange thing happened along the way. The Socialists got re-elected by a completely ignorant, envious, slothful, free hand-out seeking crowd. And all the back-loaded disasters will hit while the Socialists are in power. (By the way, did you know that tornadoes are also backloaded? They are on the back end of cumulonimbus clouds, and not up front.)

ObamaCare is one such program. As most of it is set to kick in now that the election is over, total disaster is on the horizon. Businesses, who cannot pay the cost of ObamaCare and stay afloat at the same time, will be laying off massive numbers of workers nationwide. Other businesses will be cutting their low-level employees (the working poor) to under 30 hours a week so those businesses can stay in business. Very little expansion will be happening, if any at all. It’ll be full-on contraction.

A nice little poisonberry in ObamaCare — that “make health care cheaper for all” lie — is a 2.3 percent excise tax on all medical devices, such as crutches, wheelchairs, heart stents, etc, etc. And an excise tax is far worse than a profit tax or income tax. It hits the gross revenue and not the after-expenses cost. For example, suppose it costs a business 5,000 dollars for the raw materials to make a single product. Add in the labor costs, the health insurance costs, the retirement costs, the social security tax, the medicare tax, the property tax for the building itself, the electricity cost, the property insurance cost, the transportation cost, the bookkeeping cost, and all other costs associated with getting the already developed product to market and the final cost to the business is 6,800 dollars. The business sells the product for 7,000 dollars because that’s what the market will bear. The business gets a profit of 200 dollars per sale.

In comes the 2.3 percent excise tax. Another 161 dollars off the top. The new profit for the 7,000 dollar item falls from 200 dollars to a whopping 39 dollars (an effective tax rate of 80.5 percent of the profit). Not enough to make the company a going concern. Kill the Research and Development department of the company — the life-blood of all businesses that want to survive, for if a business is not growing and moving forward it is necessarily dying.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, not at all. That same company also has to pay the new, higher costs involved in providing ObamaCare to all its employees (instead of the less expensive insurance plans which were optional, which fair portions of employees did not opt into). That 39 dollars per product, which used to be 200 dollars per product goes negative. It costs more to produce than it can be sold for.

But, again, it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s declaration that electricity costs must necessarily skyrocket and he’ll bankrupt coal-fired electric plants necessarily means the energy-intensive manufacturing industry will get hit hard with skyrocketing overhead costs. Costs that cannot be reduced merely by laying people off. So instead, the companies will shutter its doors and either go off-shore or cease to exist, providing a double-whammy of forcing the products to become far more expensive than they are now and far more difficult to obtain.

Small businesses will collapse. The middle class will become working poor. The working poor will become the unemployable destitute. Products the middle class used to be able to afford will become luxury items. Items that were luxuries for the working poor will become nothing but unreachable pipe-dreams. Inflation will go into hyper-drive. Interest rates will climb, making the cost of borrowing prohibitive. And deficit spending, which has been kept artificially low (yeah, I said it), will explode.

How is 1.2 trillion dollars (or more) in deficit spending “artificially low”? That’s a good question. And I have a good answer for that. Two words: “debt” and “service”. Debt service.

Historical view of the Prime Rate from Forecast Chart.com (8 percent line added).

Above is a chart showing the historic levels for the Prime Rate, from Forecast Chart.com. I added a red line at 8 percent for reference. Below is a chart showing the historic levels for the Discount Rate, from a 2009 article on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (data obtained from the Financial Forecast Center). I added a red line at 6 percent for reference.

US Discount Rate From 1950 as found on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (6 percent red line added).

From Apin Talisayon:

As I said, central banks had recently been dropping interest rates, and so we cannot use the abnormally low prevailing interest rates (0.5%). I plotted the historical data of discount rates set by the US Federal Reserve since January 1950 from the Financial Forecast Center[.]

As you can see in the above two charts, the Prime Rate and the Discount Rate differ in levels, but mirror each other. And they’re not only at historic lows; they’re far below historic norms. That means the future necessarily will provide much higher rates on borrowing than today. And the Federal Government’s debt service costs absolutely must skyrocket. Couple that with the US credit rating crumbling — and will continue to crumble — and the interest on the debt will become astronomical. Even a fairly normal rate of 6 percent with our current 16,000,000,000,000 dollar deficit means 960 BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments alone. By 2015, our national debt will be 20 TRILLION DOLLARS and the interest on that debt will be 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s before paying for roads, bridges, high speed trains to nowhere, free birth control pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free abortion pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free ObamaPhones, free health care, free foodstamps, free college tuition, free housing for the poor and forever pregnant single mothers, free Big Bird, free NPR propaganda, bailing out California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, free cowboy poetry, and oh yeah, paying for our national defense.

1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT TO PAY FOR ALREADY SPENT MONEY WE DIDN’T HAVE BEFORE PAYING FOR ANY CURRENT PROGRAMS AND EXPENSES!!!

The Socialist who ascended the throne in DC, along with the Socialists in the US Senate who have adamantly refused to produce a Federal Budget since April, 2009, in direct violation of Federal Law and the US Constitution, have successfully Cloward-Pivened the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The most prosperous nation this world has ever seen has been successfully brought to financial ruin by the Leftists in power who have no use for a document that is “over 100 years old”. The aim? Destroy the Free Market and implement Socialism worldwide.

The silver lining? Conservatives have not been responsible for any of it. Conservatives have not been in charge for any of it. I know, little solace for the loss of a once great and mighty and FREE nation. Will there be anything left to save by 2016? And will there be any conceivable way to save it and return to prosperity from the Abyss of Destitution Obama and the Socialist Democrats have created? Or will it already be too late? I, for one, am not looking forward to the disaster these next 10 years will provide us. (UPDATE: Nice Deb performed her Karnac impression and answered my questions before seeing them. Go to her site to read her answers.)

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Gee, why do you think the Obama administration waited until after November 6th to mail these letters?