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Over the past 15 years, France’s tax on the wealthy has resulted in a capital flight of 35 billion euros ($41 billion). 10,000 wealthy have left the country over it, which currently applies to personal assets of more than 1.3 million euros. Noting the substantial loss, France will amend their budget so that the tax will be levied only on real estate, thereby exempting “other forms of wealth such as shareholdings in companies” in the coming year.
I wrote about this phenomenon as it was happening in 2014. It bears repeating once again: high taxes drive away citizens who wish not to hand over to the government the money they have saved and earned — just to see it misspent and frittered away.
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Forbes has published a continuation of John Mauldin’s essay from September 16. He reiterates that “the coming pension and unfunded government liabilities storm is so big that many of us simply can’t get out of the way, at least not without great difficulty. This holds true not just for the U.S. but for almost all of the developed world.” Read his essay below:
Getting back to the topic, we’re all trapped on small, vulnerable islands. Multiple storms are coming, and evacuation is not an option. All we can do is prepare and then ride them out.
And we all have some very important choices to make.
It Will Be Every Man for Himself
Although I’m known far and wide as “the Muddle Through Guy,” the state and local pension crisis is one that we can’t just muddle through. It’s a solid wall that we’re going to run smack into.
Police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public workers who expect to receive the promised retirement benefits will be bitterly turned down. And the taxpayers will complain vigorously if their taxes are raised beyond all reason.
Pleasing both those groups is not going to be possible in this universe.
So what will happen?
It’s impossible to say, just as we don’t know in advance where a hurricane will make landfall: We just know enough to say the storm will be bad for whoever is caught in its path. But here’s the twist: This financial storm won’t just strike those who live on the economic margins; all of us supposedly well-protected “inland” folk are vulnerable, too.
The damage won’t be random, but neither will it be orderly or logical or just. It will be a mess.
Some who made terrible decisions will come out fine. Others who did everything right will sustain severe hits. The people we ought to blame will be long out of office. Lacking scapegoats, people will invent some.
Worse, it will be a local mess.
Imagine local elections that pit police officers and teachers against once-wealthy homeowners whose property values are plummeting. All will want maximum protection for themselves, at minimum risk and cost.
They can’t all win. Compromises will be the only solution—but reaching those unhappy compromises will be unbelievably ugly. In the next few paragraphs I will illustrate the enormity of the situation with a few more details, some of which were supplied this week by readers.
The Problem Is Reaching a Critical Point
Let’s look at a few more hard facts. Pension costs already consume more than 15% of some big-city budgets, and they will be a much larger percentage in the future. That liability crowds out development and infrastructure improvement, not to mention basic services. It forces city leaders to raise taxes and impose “fees.” Let me quote from the always informative 13d letter (their emphasis):
Consider the City of Los Angeles, which Paul Hatfield, writing for City Watch L.A., recently characterized as being in a state of “virtual bankruptcy.” After a period of stability going back to 2010, violent crime grew 38% over the two-year period ending in December 2016. Citywide robberies have increased 14% since 2015. One possible reason for this uptick: the city’s population has grown while its police department has shrunk. As Hatfield explains:
The LAPD ranks have fallen below the 10,000 achieved in 2013. But the city requires a force of 12,500 to perform effectively… A key factor which limits how much can be budgeted for police services is the city’s share of pensions costs. They consume 20% of the general fund budget, up from 5% in 2002… It is difficult to increase the level of service while lugging that much baggage.
What about subway service in New York City? The system is fraying under record ridership, and trains are breaking down more frequently. There are now more than 70,000 delays every month, up from about 28,000 per month five years ago. The city’s soaring pension costs are a big factor here as well. According to a Manhattan Institute report by E.J. McMahon and Josh McGee issued in July, the city is spending over 11% of its budget on pensions. This means that since 2014, New York City has spent more on pensions that it has building and repairing schools, parks, bridges and subways, combined.
There are many large, older cities where there are more police and teachers on the pension payroll than are now working for the city. That problem is compounding, as those workers will live longer, and the pensioners typically have inflation and other escalation clauses to keep their benefits going up.
Further, most cities do not account for increases in healthcare costs (unfunded liabilities) that they will face in addition to the pensions. Candidly, this is just another “a trillion here, a trillion there” problem. Except for the fact that the trillion dollars must be dug out of state and local budgets that total only $2.5 trillion in aggregate.
Now, add in the near certainty of a recession within the next five years (and I really think sooner) and the ongoing gridlock in national politics, plus the assorted other challenges and crises we face. I won’t run down the full list—you know it well.
I just have to wonder, what are we going to do?
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While reading the New York Times’ assessment of the upcoming tax cut bill, a sentence popped out at me: “Wary of any tax legislation that benefits the rich, Democrats have taken a firm stance against Republican policies that would add to the deficit and said they will not support a bill that does not pay for itself.” (“Senate Republicans Embrace Plan For $1.5 Trillion Tax Cut,” NYT: Sept 19, 2017).
This is laughable! Did the Democrats take a “firm stance” at any time during the Obama Administration against policies that added to the deficit? Of course not.
Indeed, most of the article was an attempt to paint the Republicans as hypocrites for trying to pass a tax cut plan that may or may not add to the federal debt after 10 years — while staying utterly silent about the fact that federal debt doubled during the Obama Administration, and each fiscal year ended in a deficit! The sudden interest in some sort of fiscal responsibility from the Democrats rings hollow.
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John Maudlin writes a compelling piece this week on what he coins “the bubble in government promises.” He claims it “is arguably the biggest bubble in human history. Elected officials at all levels have promised workers they will receive pension benefits without taking the hard steps necessary to deliver on those promises. This situation will end badly and hurt many people. Unfortunately, massive snafus like this rarely hurt the politicians who made those overly optimistic promises, often years ago.”
This is a theme I have been focusing on for years. His essay below is a must-read in its entirety:
This time is different are the four most dangerous words any economist or money manager can utter. We learn new things and invent new technologies. Players come and go. But in the big picture, this time is usually not fundamentally different, because fallible humans are still in charge. (Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an important book called This Time Is Different on the 260-odd times that governments have defaulted on their debts; and on each occasion, up until the moment of collapse, investors kept telling themselves “This time is different.” It never was.)
Nevertheless, I uttered those four words in last week’s letter. I stand by them, too. In the next 20 years, we’re going to see changes that humanity has never seen before, and in some cases never even imagined, and we’re going to have to change. I truly believe this. We have unleashed economic and technological forces we can observe but not entirely control.
I will defend this bold claim at greater length in my forthcoming book, The Age of Transformation.
Today we will zero in on one of those forces, which last week I called “the bubble in government promises,” which I think is arguably the biggest bubble in human history. Elected officials at all levels have promised workers they will receive pension benefits without taking the hard steps necessary to deliver on those promises. This situation will end badly and hurt many people. Unfortunately, massive snafus like this rarely hurt the politicians who made those overly optimistic promises, often years ago.
Earlier this year I called the pension mess “The Crisis We Can’t Muddle Through.” Reflecting since then, I think I was too optimistic. Simply waiting for the floodwaters to drop down to muddle-through depth won’t be enough. We face an entire new ocean, deeper and wider than we can ever cross unaided.
Storms from Nowhere?
This year marks the first time on record that two Category 4 hurricanes have struck the US mainland in the same year. Worse, Harvey and Irma landed directly on some of our most valuable and vulnerable coastal areas. So now, in addition to all the problems that existed a month ago, the US economy has to absorb cleanup and rebuilding costs for large parts of Texas and Florida, as well as our Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands territories.
Now then, people who live in coastal areas know full well that hurricanes happen – they know the risk, just not which hurricane season might launch a devastating storm in their direction. In a note to me about Harvey, fellow Rice University graduate Gary Haubold (1980) noted just how flawed the city’s assumptions actually were regarding what constitutes adequate preparedness. He cited this excerpt from a recent Los Angeles Times article:
The storm was unprecedented, but the city has been deceiving itself for decades about its vulnerability to flooding, said Robert Bea, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and UC Berkeley emeritus civil engineering professor who has studied hurricane risks along the Gulf Coast.
The city’s flood system is supposed to protect the public from a 100-year storm, but Bea calls that “a 100-year lie” because it is based on a rainfall total of 13 inches in 24 hours.
“That has happened more than eight times in the last 27 years,” Bea said. “It is wrong on two counts. It isn’t accurate about the past risk and it doesn’t reflect what will happen in the next 100 years.”
Anybody who lives in Houston can tell you that 13 inches in 24 hours is not all that unusual. But how do Robert Bea’s points apply to today’s topic, public pensions? Both pension plan shortfalls and hurricanes are known risks for which state and local governments must prepare. And in both instances, too much optimism and too little preparation ultimately have devastating results.
Admittedly, public pension liabilities don’t come out of nowhere the way hurricanes seem to – we know exactly where they will strike. In many cases, we know approximately when they’ll strike, too. Yet we still let our elected officials make impossible-to-fulfill promises on our behalf. The rest of us are not so different from those who built beach homes and didn’t buy hurricane or storm surge insurance. We just face a different kind of storm.
Worse, we let our government officials use predictions about future returns that are every bit as unrealistic as calling a 13-inch rain in Houston a 100-year event. And while some of us have called pension officials out, they just keep telling lies – and probably will until we reach the breaking point.
Puerto Rico is a good example. The Commonwealth was already in deep debt before Irma blew in – $123 billion worth of it. There’s simply no way the island can repay such a massive debt. Creditors can fight in the courts, but in the end you can’t squeeze money out of plantains or pineapples. Not enough money, anyway. Now add Irma damages, and the creditors have even less hope of recovering their principal, let alone interest.
Puerto Rico is presently in a new form of bankruptcy that Congress authorized last year. Court proceedings will probably drag on for years, but the final outcome isn’t in doubt. Creditors will get some scraps – at best perhaps $0.30 on the dollar, my sources say – and then move on. We’re going to find out how strong those credit insurance guarantees really are.
“That’s just Puerto Rico,” you may say if you’re a US citizen in one of the 50 states. Be very careful. Your state is probably not so much better off. In 10 years, your state may well be in the same place where Puerto Rico is now. I’d say the odds are better than even.
Are your elected leaders doing anything about this huge issue, or even talking about it? Probably not.
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On the heels of the tragic Houston floods, the mayor has added insult to injury and proposed at 9% property tax increase to “help pay for Harvey costs.” The mayor stresses that the tax increase would only be temporary — but when have we ever seen a tax not become permanent?
The Houston City Council has approved a recommendation from the Director of Finance to do that. The city will now hold three public hearings before being able to vote on the increase. Those hearings are planned for Monday, Sept. 25 at 6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 2 at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Oct 11 at 9 a.m.
So besides having to rebuild homes and lives, residents have to worry about incurring additional personal costs instead of the city tapping the rainy day fund.
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The Trump Administration has continued the same path of deficit spending as its predecessors.
(CNSNews.com) – The federal government collected record total tax revenues through the first eleven months of fiscal 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 through the end of August), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Through August, the federal government collected approximately $2,966,172,000,000 in total tax revenues.
That was $8,450,680,000 more (in constant 2017 dollars) than the previous record of $2,957,721,320,000 in total tax revenues (in 2017 dollars) that the federal government collected in the first eleven months of fiscal 2016.
At the same time that the federal government was collecting a record $2,966,172,000,000 in tax revenues, it was spending $3,639,882,000,000—and, thus, running a deficit of $673,711,000,000.
Individual income taxes have provided the largest share (47.9 percent) of federal revenues so far this fiscal year. From Oct. 1 through the end of August, the Treasury collected $1,421,997,000,000 in individual income taxes.
Payroll taxes provided the second largest share (35.9 percent), with the Treasury collecting $1,065,751,000,000 in these taxes.
The $233,631 in corporate income taxes collected in the first eleven months of fiscal 2017 equaled only 8.6 percent of total tax collections.
The $21,172,000,000 collected in estate and gift taxes equaled only 0.71 percent of total taxes collected this fiscal year.
(Tax revenues were adjusted to constant 2017 using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.)
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This past April, some Republicans approached Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look once again into the case of Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting scandal. Today, the Department of Justice released a statement that “reopening the criminal investigation would not be appropriate based on the available evidence.” Though the response was expected, it was still disappointing; Lois Lerner deserved to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for her conduct.
Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt groups. An inspector general’s report in 2013 found that the IRS had singled out conservative and tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. Many had their applications delayed for months and years. Some were asked improper questions about their donors and even their religious practices. Yet, Obama’s Department of Justice concluded in 2015 that they had “found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.” By then, Lerner and others embroiled in the scandal had resigned or retired.
It is a national tragedy that the woman who harassed taxpayer groups, interfered with evidence, and colluded with government entities to suppress thought remains absolved from her transgressions.
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There have been recent articles about the SPLC and their “millions in offshore accounts.” But as a tax accountant, there doesn’t appear to be anything illegal or suspicious in the way they invest their funds — much in the same way that Mitt Romney’s items were completely fine. Non-profits have restrictions on the way they can and cannot invest, so what the SPLC has done or is doing in this regard appears to be rather ordinary.
But if I were the SPLC, I would like nothing better than to have people jumping up and down about my “foreign bank account” so that they’ll completely ignore the fact that the IRS should investigate and reconsider the tax status of the SPLC.
The SPLC intentionally and willfully becomes political by going after various groups, people, and ideologies –with whom they disagree –to denigrate them while lumping them in with true extremists (like the KKK). Then the SPLC issues press releases and maps for the media to pick up the stories. Their running count of “hate” is 917, and their total amount of “monitoring of hate” is 1,600+ — how is this not political?
