Tag: Deficit

400 Richest Americans’ Worth $1.7 Trillion

The net worth of the richest Americans grew by 13 percent in the past year to $1.7 trillion, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday, and a familiar cast of characters once again populated the top of the magazine’s annual list of the U.S. uber-elite, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and the Koch brothers.

The average net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans rose to a record $4.2 billion, the magazine said.

via Chicago Tribune.

I love stories like this.  The Left will go on and on about how its unfair that these people earn this money; it’s terrible that anyone should be allowed to have this much money, and what-have-you.

So let’s just take.  Let’s just take all of it.  Let’s take these thieving bastards money and redistribute it so everyone benefits.

$1.7 T / 314,409,835 people = $5,406.96 per person.

That would be a one time payment by the way.  No one would ever get another nickel from these people ever again.  Hardly seems worth it to me.

Maybe we should use it to pay off our national debt.  After all every citizen owes the government over $51,000.  Surely we’d all be better off if we just paid down the debt.

$16T – 1.7T = $14,300,000,000,000

After that we all now owe about $46,000 to the government, each. … Huh?!   Still seems like we all owe a lot of money.

And this is the folly — we can Eat the Rich — but it would never be enough to save us from what we’ve already done to ourselves.

Inflation and austerity are coming.  Plan for it.

IL Pension Hole Analysis

I wrote this a few weeks ago as a comment on a retired teacher’s blog.  The post there was about how we need to “tax the rich” in order to fund the teachers’ pensions.  I was asked to comment on the post by a retired teacher I know.  Analysis follows:

There is no one sided solution to this problem. Perhaps if Springfield moved on this a decade ago it could be solved with “funding” but at this time both sides are going to have to give.

According to Crain’s Illinois’ unfunded pension liabilities are $86 billion. See: http://jamesbosco.com/2012/06/19/illinois-pensions-are-the-worst/

According to the Il Dept. of Revenue there were 36,682 returns filed in the state with over $500,000 in AGI. These returns paid $1,633,991,633. See: http://www.revenue.state.il.us/AboutIdor/TaxStats/2010/IIT-NetIncome-2010-Preliminary.pdf

If we (a/k/a Illinois) doubled the tax on these folks with AGI over $500k we could bring in an extra $1.63B assuming no one flees the state (which would happen.) So doubling the tax on “the rich” would cover 1.9% of the current pension liabilities.

If we quadrupled the tax that would cover less than 7.6% of the current pension liabilities. So it would take over 13 years of quadruple taxation on those making over $500k per year just to get current pension liabilities square. This would not cover the additional debt.

Union members can sit around pointing fingers but it’s not going to solve the problem. Illinois is broke. Everyone’s going to have to give more than they want. Of course, the “rich” can always move to Indiana or Wisconsin. Then they contribute nothing; that doesn’t help retired teachers one bit. So I recommend that you be careful what you wish for.

– – –

We cannot solve our problem by eating the rich.  We must grow the size of the pie. … Well, growth and inflation.

Eat the Rich vs. Obama

I was reading this story:

President Barack Obama will officially launch the battle over the impending fiscal cliff this morning, announcing a plan to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for people earning under $250,000, while letting the rest of the tax cuts expire.

via Business Insider.

This got me thinking about how much money will really flow into the Treasury from “the rich”?  I remember this from awhile back.

If you have not seen… it’s just plain excellent.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ?rel=0]

IL Legislators Should Give-up Pensions

Illinois lawmakers ought to give up their state pensions.

Legislators are part-time employees, but they make nearly $70,000 a year and in some cases can qualify for a pension after as little as four years in office at age 62. If they were elected before 2011, they can retire at 55 and collect a pension after eight years of service.

Those pensions (like all pensions in Illinois) are not subject to the state income tax, and lawmakers also get health insurance benefits after they retire.

With the state facing roughly $80 billion in unpaid pension liabilities and on the verge of financial collapse, the elected officials who created this crisis ought to be ashamed to accept such largesse from taxpayers.

via Southtown Star.

Agreed.

I can’t remember where exactly but I once wrote about this at length.  Elected folks should earn a salary based on their more recent private sector salary.  And when they’re done with their “service” they should not receive a nickel from the taxpayer.

This change alone would solve many many of our problems.

Countries Move to Isolate the U.S.

Are other countries planning for a U.S. demise?

“I was in Australia earlier this month and there, as elsewhere on my recent travels, the consensus among the politicians I met (at least in private) was that Washington lacked the will for meaningful course correction, and that, therefore, the trick was to ensure that, when the behemoth goes over the cliff, you’re not dragged down with it. It is faintly surreal to be sitting in paneled offices lined by formal portraits listening to eminent persons who assume the collapse of the dominant global power is a fait accompli. . . . Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of treasury bonds every month — or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India — every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College-debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy — tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.”

Same page there’s this:

I’m a Canadian, and you might be interested to know that the Harper government are working very hard (in the background) along the same lines as the Aussies. They are doing everything possible to diversify Canada’s export markets away from the US as fast as possible, for example the pipeline to move Alberta and Saskatchewan oil to world markets via the sea, not to the US. Ditto aeroplanes, rail cars, fibre-optic electronics, robotics, lumber, and a wide range of other products.

The quiet back-room planning is driven by the alarming extent to which the Obama administration has already deeply damaged the US economy (compared to Canada) with its policies, actions, and insane deficits. The Harper government are now moving to shut down US environmentalist activity in Canada — “We’re not going to be your National Park.” says the PM — and are already developping scenarios for maximum-possible disconnect from the States in the event Obama and his crew are returned to power in the coming elections.

via Instapundit.

Hummm… not good.  Not good.