by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, NEW YORK, POLITICS, TAXES
De Blasio recently announced the implementation of the NYC Commuter Benefits Law, which goes into effect on January 1, 2016. This law “requires for-profit and nonprofit employers with 20 or more full-time employees in New York City to offer commuter benefits. Employers can save by reducing payroll taxes and employees can lower their monthly expenses by using pre-tax income to pay for their commute.”
What De Blasio’s press release doesn’t say is that companies face costs associated with this new tax scheme. It doesn’t discuss the cost of implementation and the use of administrative resources. It doesn’t mention the constant upkeep, such as W2 adjustments or employee changes on and off the plan. All this adds more burden to small businesses.
This NY Commuter Benefits Law encapsulates De Blasio’s continued effort to destroy New York City growth and employment; it worsens the cost of being in business in New York. There is likely no net benefit to the employer for his forced participation.
It continues a longstanding situation where New York City mayors do what they think *is* good, but their schemes are really destructive. For instance, one of the most laughable programs in the world requires landlords in New York City to set up bank accounts for everyone who has a security account with their landlord; there are easily hundreds of thousands of such accounts in the city; virtually every New York City resident loses money, because the tax treatment of this at the state and federal level, so that it is a loss for everyone. It’s utterly ridiculous. For this particular law, however, I’ll give De Blasio the benefit of the doubt that he is just severely incompetent and economically clueless.
The continued assault on small businesses within the city make it harder for the economy to grow. The city needs less, not more, regulations for businesses to prosper.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
As previously noted, the government debt skyrocketed $339 billion the first day after the debt ceiling was lifted via the spending deal. Now, after 10 days (Nov 12), the total new debt has reached $462 billion.
The initial spike was the result of replenishing the funds that have been total new debt”>”frozen”. “The government began bumping up against the debt limit in March and was borrowing from other funds — using “extraordinary measures” — to keep from breaching the $18.1 trillion level. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was able to stretch that borrowing through the end of October.”
The $339 one-day splurge was the greatest Treasury jump ever recorded, but still comparable to actions in recent years. In August 2011, after a negotiation was reached, the Treasury debt increased $238 billion on one day; likewise, in 2013 in a similar scenario, the debt rose $328 billion on one day.
Of what does the $339 consist? “About $199 billion is public debt, which is money borrowed from outside sources, and $140 billion is borrowing from within government accounts. As of Monday, the gross total debt stood at $18.6 trillion, with $13.4 trillion of that public debt borrowed from the outside.”
By the end of Obama’s presidency, government debt is projected to be about $20 trillion — nearly double that which existed when Obama became President ($10.6 trillion). Already, the government is running a deficit. 1 month in to the fiscal year (beginning October 1), spending exceeded revenues by $136 billion. “up 12 percent compared with the previous October, as spending ballooned and taxes remained nearly flat. It was the worst October since 2010, when the government was still spending on the stimulus and was on pace for a deficit of more than $1 trillion that year.”
The situation looks mighty bleak right now.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, SOCIAL SECURITY, TAXES
David Walker was a former head of the Government Accountability Office under Presidents Clinton and Bush. He recently spoke out about the crippling US debt, pointing out that the national debt is far greater than what is understood — more than three times the amount.
Walker told radio host John Catsimatidis, “If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion, and it’s growing automatically absent reforms,”
He further pointed out, “If you don’t keep your economy strong, and that means to be able to generate more jobs and opportunities, you’re not going to be strong internationally with regard to foreign policy, you’re not going to be able to invest what you need to invest in national defense and homeland security, and ultimately you’re not going to be able to provide the kind of social safety net that we need in this country.”
Walker also called for both sides to join together in order fix the problems and put aside partisan politics. Unfortunately, actions like proposed recent SSDI bailout only worsen the situation. It reallocates $150 billion over the next three years comes from the Social Security Trust Fund in order to rescue the nearly bankrupt SSDI Trust Fund. This obfuscates the reality of unfunded liabilities and kicks the can down the road.
Walker’s call to make hard choices and severely reform the burgeoning entitlement debt crisis is the only way to truly fix the future. It is refreshing to hear someone speak candidly about the problems everyone is afraid to face.
by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, SOCIAL SECURITY, TAXES
The Social Security Administration had record spending in fiscal year 2015, totaling $944,143,000,000. This total includes Social Security payments, disability payments, Supplemental Security Income payments, and the costs to administer these programs.
From CNSNews:
“As of September, there were 59,737,817 beneficiaries getting Social Security or disability benefits, according to the SSA. At the same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 148,800,000 people who had either a full- or part-time job in the United States. That means there were only 2.49 people with jobs for each of the 59,737,817 Social Security and disability beneficiaries.
At the same time, there were only 121,839,000 people with full-time jobs in the United States in September, according to BLS. Those 121,839,000 full-time job holders equaled about 2.04 for each of the 59,737,817 people getting Social Security or disability benefits.
The $944,143,000,000 spent by the Social Security Administration in fiscal 2015 equaled about $6,345 for each of the 148,800,000 persons in the country with a job as of September. It equaled about $7,749 for each of the 121,839,000 people with a full-time job.
The $944,143,000,000 that the Social Security Administration spent in fiscal 2015 was also $381,637,000,000 (or about 68 percent) more than the $562,506,000,000 that the Treasury says the government spent on the Department of Defense and military programs during the year.”
The spending items include:
— $733,716,000,000 in benefits payments from the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund
— $3,505,000,000 in payments to cover administrative expenses for that fund
— $4,258,000,000 in payments to the Railroad Retirement Account
— $143,009,000,000 in disability benefit payments
— $2,881,000,000 in payments for administrative expenses for the disability trust fund
— $419,000,000 in additional payments to the Railroad Retirement Account.
— $58,901,000,000 for the Supplemental Security Income Program.
This was an increase of $33 Billion from fiscal year 2014. A quick analysis of the beneficiaries for the month of October included: “39,968,311 retired workers, 2,330,148 spouses of retired workers, 641,654 children of retired workers, 6,077,209 survivors of deceased workers, 8,922,858 disabled workers, 143,164 spouses of disabled workers, and 1,749,236 children of disabled workers.”
by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, ECONOMY, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest monthly report today. The October numbers women’s employment retreated just slightly from the record it set in September: 56,540,000 women over the age of 15 were unemployed.
Overall, 94,513,000 people in America were out of work during the month of October. This is the lowest it has been in 38 years; only 62.4% of Americans age 16 and above were either looking for work or working.
The Obama Administration still continues to tout the unemployment rate as being low — this month it was tabulated to be 5%. But the only reason it is low is because so many people HAVE given up working or even looking for work, which is accurately reflected in the labor participation rate. With fewer people being counted as “working,” the unemployment numbers calculated among a smaller pool of people makes the rate sound smaller.
But everyday Americans are not fooled by statistics.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
Rich Lowry over at National Review pointed out some hard realities of Obamacare as we enter in a new enrollment season.
“Yes, ObamaCare has covered more people and has especially benefited those with pre-existing conditions (to be credible, Republican replacement plans have to do these things, as well), but the program is so poorly designed that, surely, even a new Democratic president will want to revisit it to try to make it more workable.
Enrollment is falling short. The Obama administration projects that it will have roughly 10 million people on the state and federal exchanges by the end of next year, a staggering climb-down from prior expectations. The Congressional Budget Office had predicted that there would be roughly 20 million enrollees. If the administration is to be believed, enrollment will only increase about another million next year from its current 9 million and only sign up about a quarter of the eligible uninsured.
Premiums are rising. Not everywhere, but steeply in some states. Indiana is down 12 percent, but Minnesota is up 50 percent. Health care expert Robert Laszewski points out that it’s the insurers with the highest enrollment and therefore the best information about actual enrollees that have tended to request the biggest increases — a sign that they don’t like what they’re seeing in their data.
Relatedly, the economics are shaky. According to a McKinsey Co. analysis, last year health insurers lost $2.5 billion in the individual market that ObamaCare remade. ObamaCare co-ops that were supposed to enhance choice and lower costs have been failing and almost all of them are losing money, a victim of the absurd rules (no industry executives on their boards, no raising capital in public markets, etc.) imposed on them by the law.
The problem with ObamaCare in a nutshell is that on one hand, by imposing motley regulations and mandates, it increases the price of health insurance, and on the other hand, by providing subsidies, it tries to hide the cost — but not enough.
According to an analysis by the health consultancy Avalere, the poor or near-poor have been signing up, but enrollment steeply drops off further up the income scale as the subsidies fall away. It found that three-fourths of uninsured people earning less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level got coverage through Medicaid or the exchanges, while almost none of uninsured making more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level have enrolled.
For them, it’s just not a good deal. A study of the ObamaCare exchanges by researchers at the Wharton School found that “even under the most optimistic assumptions, close to half of the formerly uninsured (especially those with higher incomes) experience both higher financial burden and lower estimated welfare.”
Even the success that ObamaCare has had enrolling people should come with an asterisk. The Department of Health and Human Services announced earlier this year that nearly 11 million people have signed up for public health insurance — Medicaid or the children’s health program, CHIP — since 2013. If Medicaid is better than nothing (although this is harder to prove than you might think), it is substandard coverage that locks the poor into second-class care with limited access to doctors.
If the goal was to expand this deeply flawed program, it could have been achieved without the expense, disruption and economic irrationality of the rest of ObamaCare.
(emphasis added).
As Laszewski points out, on the individual market, ObamaCare is a monopoly. It gives money to people to buy its product and through the individual mandate punishes those who don’t. And yet it’s still having trouble making the sale.”
