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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.
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I have written numerous times in the past few months of the fiscal distress in Puerto Rico. I have discussed how Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is the result of years of government mismanagement, and a major key to getting Puerto Rico back on track is to reduce the size and scope of government.
Now, President Obama is calling on Congress to directly aid Puerto Rico, with a plan that is very near a bailout. I’m reprinting the NYTimes article in full below, so to keep the details about the plan intact. I will write my analysis in a separate article.
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“Looking for a way to help debt-ridden Puerto Rico, administration officials on Wednesday proposed an ambitious — if politically perilous — plan that stops short of a direct federal bailout but that its backers hope is sweeping enough to keep the island from becoming America’s Greece.
The plan would create a new territorial bankruptcy regime and impose new fiscal oversight on Puerto Rico, which is mired in the depths of a decade-long recession, running out of cash and struggling to make payments on $72 billion of debt. It represents an urgent bid by President Obama to offer a way forward. But it requires cooperation from a Republican-led Congress bent on imposing spending restraint.
In describing the package on Wednesday, administration officials emphasized that they had exhausted the limits of their own authority to help Puerto Rico, and needed quick action by Congress to avoid a catastrophe.
“Administrative actions cannot solve the crisis,” Jacob J. Lew, the Treasury secretary, said in a joint statement with Jeffrey D. Zients, the National Economic Council director, and Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the health and human services secretary.
“Only Congress has the authority to provide Puerto Rico with the necessary tools to address its near-term challenges and promote long-term growth,” the statement said.
The situation in Puerto Rico “risks turning into a humanitarian crisis as early as this winter,” one senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. Antonio Weiss, Mr. Lew’s counselor, will explain the administration’s plan in Capitol Hill testimony on Thursday.
The Puerto Rican government has already “done a lot” to restore fiscal order, the official added, but “Puerto Rico cannot do it on its own, and the United States government has a responsibility to 3.5 million Americans living in Puerto Rico” to step in with additional help.
The plan was shared late Wednesday with The New York Times and Agencia EFE, a news organization in Puerto Rico. On the same day, the island’s Government Development Bank said it had ended weeks of fruitless negotiations with certain creditors, aimed at persuading them to voluntarily accept lower bond payments. The bank has a bond payment of about $300 million coming due on Dec. 1.
Virtually all of the administration’s proposed plan would have to be refined and approved by Congress. It would create a special territorial bankruptcy regime — something that does not now exist — to give Puerto Rico a place to restructure all of its $72 billion in debt, which it says it cannot hope to repay.
The new regime could ultimately be a new chapter of the bankruptcy code, available only to Puerto Rico and other American territories. A senior administration official said the specifics would be left up to Congress.
In a nod to Republicans in Congress, who have resisted even limited bankruptcy access for Puerto Rico, the administration also proposes to establish an independent body to monitor the island’s fiscal affairs. Its role would be to improve Puerto Rico’s credibility by policing the imposition of structural economic reforms; it would also demand better financial disclosures.
Officials said the oversight body might resemble one that Congress established for the District of Columbia in the 1990s.
At the same time, the package would seek to bring Puerto Rico, where unemployment tops 12 percent and 46 percent of citizens qualify for Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, into parity with the federal health programs and tax credits available in the states.
The proposal calls for a Medicaid overhaul in Puerto Rico that would expand coverage and access to important services in the short term, and eventually remove a cap that currently applies to the island’s Medicaid program. The effect would be more federal dollars for the Medicaid program in Puerto Rico. Administration officials also said they believed Puerto Rico’s health care facilities needed to be brought up to standards on the mainland.
The administration is also proposing to extend the earned-income tax credit, a refundable credit for the working poor that is payable even to people who earn too little to owe income tax. It is not currently available in Puerto Rico.
Officials said that extending that type of tax credit would help increase the labor participation rate on the island, now a paltry 40 percent, the lowest in the United States and its territories. A fact sheet compiled by the administration said it would provide an “added incentive for formal participation in Puerto Rico’s economy.”
The tax credit, invented by conservative economists, already enjoys some degree of bipartisan backing. Administration officials who detailed the proposal offered no estimate of the cost of extending it to Puerto Rico, nor did they have a cost projection for the Medicaid expansion.
The legislative proposal will be presented on Thursday to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which has jurisdiction over all of America’s territories. It is led by Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, which was itself a territory until 1959, when it became the 49th state.
Puerto Rico is now barred from seeking any form of relief under Chapter 9, the type of bankruptcy that municipal governments use. The administration’s proposal for a territorial bankruptcy regime represents a bolder approach than the bankruptcy bills that Congress has considered since the island’s debt crisis began.
Federal law allows for cities, counties, special districts and the like to seek bankruptcy protection if their states agree, but the states themselves are excluded. There are concerns that if Puerto Rico gains access to bankruptcy, fiscally troubled states like Illinois might try to follow suit.
Puerto Rico’s creditors have been arguing that the island’s government has been portraying its financial situation as beyond repair, hoping to force the administration and Congress to give it access to Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The recent bankruptcies of distressed cities like Detroit showed them that bondholders can emerge with just pennies on the dollar, and they believe the same thing will happen if Puerto Rico is allowed to declare bankruptcy.
The legislation introduced so far would make bankruptcy relief available only to Puerto Rico’s municipalities and its government enterprises, not to the government itself. Even those limited bills have failed to gain support from Republican lawmakers.
There is some willingness, particularly among top Senate Republicans, to work out a compromise on the bankruptcy issue, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about it. But the Republican leadership appears willing only to grant Puerto Rico limited access to the bankruptcy courts and only with strings attached, like a federal “control board” to oversee the island’s finances.
Control boards have been used in cases of severe municipal distress to take the power to spend public money out of the hands of elected officials. They do not generally have the powers that bankruptcy judges do to abrogate contracts, such as labor contracts and promises to repay debt.
Both Democrats and Republicans are under pressure to respond to the Puerto Rico crisis. Largely because of the island’s economic problems, Puerto Ricans are flooding the mainland United States, particularly central Florida, and are becoming an increasingly important voting bloc in the 2016 presidential race.
In the hearing, Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, will offer his first congressional testimony since his announcement in June that Puerto Rico’s debt had become “unpayable” and he would seek a “negotiated moratorium” with its creditors. His most recent appearance was in 2013, when he accused advocates of statehood of skewing a 2011 plebiscite to make it appear that a majority wanted Puerto Rico to become a state.
“That is a great example of how you can lie with numbers,” he told the same Senate panel at the time.
Another scheduled witness is Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member of Congress and the statehood advocate who designed the 2011 voting process that the governor disputed. Mr. Pierluisi introduced the House bill to to give very limited bankruptcy access to Puerto Rico. In September, he testified before the Senate Finance Committee, challenging the governor’s handling of the debt crisis and saying that general-obligation bonds “must be paid — period.” The third witness is to be Mr. Weiss, the special adviser to the Treasury Secretary.”
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The next open enrollment period for Obamacare begins in a few weeks. “Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced Thursday that an expected 10 million Americans will be covered by late 2016 by health plans they bought on the federal and state insurance exchanges created under the law.”
This is a far cry from the CBO projections when Obamacare was passed. Last year, we saw lower revisions for enrollment from 13 million to a hopeful 9.1 million. Obamacare may have barely hit THAT target; the Washington Post reports that the number looks to be around “9.1 million Americans the administration believes will have ACA health plans by the end of this year.”
This is stunning news. To say that 10 million will be covered by 2016 means that the Obama Administration predicts a mere 1 MILLION enrollees this year. As the Washington Post reminds us, 10 million is “just half the most recent forecast by congressional budget analysts, who have long expected 2016 to usher in the biggest surge in enrollment.”
CBO forecasts had predicted 21 million enrollees in 2016, and 32 million by 2019. As expected, there are a litany of excuses for the abysmal numbers:
Still, substantive forces are at work behind the calculation. According to HHS estimates, about 10.5 million uninsured people are eligible to buy a health plan on the exchange, and they are proving more difficult to reach than those who bought coverage early on.
In addition, federal health officials point out that the dynamics of insurance coverage have not been playing out as analysts expected. Fewer employers have dropped health benefits for their workers, and fewer consumers have switched from older policies they purchased on their own. Both factors, HHS officials say, play into their projection of how many people are likely to gravitate to the exchanges.
HHS contended on Thursday that exchange enrollment, originally pegged to reach 24 million within several years, is not plateauing but is instead on “a much longer path towards equilibrium,” as a senior official said.”
What’s even less clear is how how this affects the budget projections and funding of Obamacare. An article last month in the Washington Times outlined how the enrollees for 2016 needed to double to stay solvent. On top of that, the penalty for not having insurance increases begins to increase sharply. The penalty during the first year was $95 or 1 percent of income above the filing threshold — a relatively minor bite. For tax year 2015, the penalty will be $325 or 2 percent of income, and for 2016 it will be $695 or 2.5 percent of income. Per person.
Remember when we were told that Obamacare would help millions to have insurance and also save Americans $2500/family? Me too.
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For minimum wage advocates, their position is clear: more money in the hands of the worker is better for the worker — a tangible result. Though their hearts may be in the right place, they lack the basic understanding of the invisible effects of minimum wage policies, especially when it pertains to the business side of the equation. What does the business grapple with? Here are three typical responses to a minimum wage hike.
1) By raising minimum wage, many people, especially the poorest among us, will either lose their job or not be able to get jobs at all moving forward. The cost of raising the minimum wage is just like the cost of raising a commodity. For instance, consider the scenario where the price of apples — a basic pantry item for most everybody — goes from $1.50/pound to $2.50/pound. Fewer people will buy the apples, or buy less of them overall. So it is also with a higher minimum wage; with more money going to basic business costs, fewer businesses will hire, or they will hire fewer people overall. An added effect is that the economy will likely contract because of the loss of jobs resulting from a wage hike.
2) Businesses earn less money. Employees are the number one cost for businesses. If even more of the earnings must go to the capital cost, the business earns less profit overall. For some minimum wage advocates, perhaps that is the actual goal — to keep businesses from earning too much at the top. But in reality, the loss of business capital (from both large corporations to small mom and pops) means there is less money for future business endeavors. Whether it is reinvested directly back into the business with equipment upgrades or growing the business through expansion, whatever the case may be, earning less money for the company creates a ripple effect. The less a company can earn, the less it can help grow the economy. Impeding its ability to do so, through the imposition of mandated wage increases, is harmful.
3) In order to offset the increased wage cost, a business can also choose to raise its prices. This will attempt to ensure that the company earns the same amount as before. But the effect of the price increase is negative. As prices increase, people are wont to adjust their purchasing habits and will end up buy less of the product. When consumption decreases, the health of the economy worsens.
Every one of these responses — cutting jobs, loss of business capital, and raising prices — are either bad for the employees or the economy as a whole. Though the minimum wage hikes sound good in theory, in reality, economies don’t exist in a vacuum. These types of policies hurt more than help.
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The only reason why I am mentioning this plan is the sheer ridiculousness of its foundation. In his editorial in the Wall Street Journal today, Santorum announces that he will pay for his tax plan by “repealing ObamaCare and all of its associated taxes.” That is patently absurd. No matter how much I may dislike Obamacare, the likelihood that it will be entirely repealed is slim to none. To stake an entire tax plan (flat tax at that) on something likely to be unattainable, is a bit foolish and naive.
You can read the plan below in its entirety:
Since 2007, 15,000 American factories have shut down and more than two million manufacturing jobs have been lost. Wages have flatlined; American families are struggling.
In every recovery since 1960, real GDP grew by 4% a year, according to a report from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. The Obama-Biden policies have resulted in a paltry 2.3% annual growth since the recession ended in 2009. This growth gap has cost the country $5.4 trillion in lost economic output and 5.5 million fewer jobs than would have been expected during a normal recovery.
So what is Hillary Clinton’s vision to get the economy moving? She wants to slam investors with higher capital gains taxes. Bernie Sanders wants to raise the top personal-income tax rate to 90%.
Donald Trump’s plan to make America great again? He’s offering a complicated tax cut that the Tax Foundation reports will explode the deficit by more than $10 trillion over a decade. Are any Republicans offering serious, specific proposals to scrap the toxic tax code? Jeb Bush wants three rates. Marco Rubio wants two. Rand Paul has proposed a single rate and creating a European-style value-added tax.
America deserves better. That’s why, in my first 100 days as president, I will submit to Congress a comprehensive Economic Freedom Agenda that will abolish the existing tax code. Under “The 20/20 Flat Tax: A Clear Vision For America,” individuals will pay a simple, low 20% individual rate that will be applied to all streams of income. It eliminates the marriage penalty, death tax and alternative minimum tax. It will treat every American the same. No longer will savings and investment be penalized.
Individuals will receive a $2,750 credit, which will replace the standard deduction and personal exemption. The credit will be refundable and replace the Earned Income Tax Credit. The child tax credit will remain. For low- and middle-income workers, the provision will shield much of their basic wages from federal income taxes. They can keep more of what they earn.
In exchange for the refundable tax credit and low rate, itemized deductions will be eliminated, except for two. Charitable giving in any amount will be fully deductible, to affirm and encourage Americans’ generosity. Mortgage interest—up to $25,000 a year—will also be deductible, as a means of helping low- and middle-income workers buy and maintain their family home without subsidizing millionaires and billionaires.
Businesses too will benefit from a flat 20% tax rate. It will replace the current corporate income-tax rate of 39.1% that is only exceeded by Chad and the United Arab Emirates. An initial 0% tax rate on American manufacturers, phasing up to 20% over two years, will help make America the No. 1 manufacturer in the world again.
Companies will be allowed to deduct 100% of their capital costs in the first year. Full expensing will eliminate complicated depreciation schedules and encourage investment in new plants and equipment. To encourage American companies to bring revenues home and reinvest the $2.1 trillion in profits that have been parked overseas, my plan calls for a low 10% rate on business income that is repatriated.
I will eliminate the deductibility of interest and corporate welfare, including all carve-outs, loopholes and tax shelters. No more special deals and favors for the rich and powerful and their lawyers and lobbyists.
An analysis of my plan by the Tax Foundation found that GDP would rise by 10.2% above the Obama-Biden trajectory over 10 years. Capital investment would grow by almost 30% and wages would increase by 7.3%. More than 3.1 million additional jobs would be created beyond current projections.
I will pay for my plan by repealing ObamaCare and all of its associated taxes. My flat tax will reduce federal revenues by $1.1 trillion over 10 years, after accounting for increased GDP growth and job creation. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, repealing ObamaCare will reduce federal spending by $1.7 trillion over 10 years and increase economic growth by 0.7% annually.
Thus, the 20/20 Flat Tax will not increase the deficit. It will allow us to make needed reforms, such as the expansion of Health Savings Accounts, to give patients and doctors, not Washington bureaucrats, more freedom and control over their health care, and to expand coverage. The new tax code will also provide the resources needed to rebuild our military in an increasingly volatile world.
To maximize the country’s economic potential I will, on my first day in office, repeal each and every Obama-administration regulation that creates an economic burden of more than $100 million. The Keystone XL pipeline will be approved, and expanded production of domestic fuels will be encouraged, not hobbled by federal regulations.
As a U.S. senator I never voted for a tax increase, and the first two bills I co-sponsored were the Balanced Budget Amendment and the Line Item Veto. I always fought for bold tax cuts and government reform. My administration will be no different.
The stakes for America are too high for the GOP to nominate untested newcomers, first-term senators, or governors without proven national results. I offer Americans a clear conservative vision, serious plans for reform and the experience to get the job done.
Mr. Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, is a Republican candidate for president.
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This is an point that I have been writing about for years: workers in the public sector makes more than their private sector counterparts, especially when benefits are factors into the compensation package.
Now, a new study by CATO affirms my supposition. CATO analyzed data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and found that “that federal government workers earned an average of $84,153 in 2014, compared to the private sector’s average of $56,350.”
Even more incredibly, “when adding in benefits pay for federal workers, the difference becomes more dramatic. Federal employees made $119,934 in total compensation last year, while private sector workers earned $67,246, a difference of over $52,000, or 78 percent.”
Government wage increases vastly outpaced the public sector, and the number of government jobs have soared. For the federal government alone, there are 2.1 million workers, “costing over $260 billion in wages and benefits this year.”
It is interesting to ponder the secondary effects of this phenomenon. First, as the amount of government jobs increases, the amount of voters with government jobs increases. What voter is going to seriously vote to cut the size and scope of government when he is the direct beneficiary. Likewise as pay continues to grow, it becomes less likely that someone will vote to cut his or her own pay.
At some point, the number of voters with government pay and benefits will outnumber those without. When that happens, we’ve reached the tipping point with trying to reign in government spending.
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From the AP:
A sagging global economy has finally caught up with the United States.
Nervous employers pulled back on hiring in August and September as China’s economy slowed, global markets sank and foreigners bought fewer U.S. goods. Friday’s monthly jobs report from the government suggested that the U.S. economy, which has been outshining others around the world, may be weakening.
Lackluster growth overseas has reduced exports of U.S. factory goods and cut into the overseas profits of large companies. Canada, the largest U.S. trading partner, is in recession. China, the second-largest economy after the United States, is growing far more slowly. And emerging economies, from Brazil to Turkey, are straining to grow at all.
A result is that economists now expect the Federal Reserve to delay a long-awaited increase in interest rates, possibly until next year.
Employers added just 142,000 jobs in September, and the government sharply lowered its estimate of gains in July and August by a combined 59,000. Monthly job growth averaged a mediocre 167,000 in the July-September quarter, down from 231,000 in the April-June period.
The unemployment rate remained a low 5.1 percent, but only because many Americans have stopped looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed. The proportion of adults who either have a job or are looking for one is at a 38-year low.
U.S. stock prices have tumbled as fears of a global slowdown have intensified. Volatile financial markets can make businesses too anxious to expand and hire.
“We’re back to a period of what I call corporate caution,” says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS. “It’s wait and see. If things stabilize, we could see hiring come back.”
On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell about 200 points soon after the jobs report was issued before recovering to close up 200. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dipped below 2 percent, a sign that investors anticipate sluggish growth and low inflation.
Over the past year, the dollar has risen about 15 percent against overseas currencies, making U.S. goods costlier overseas and imports cheaper. Declining exports have led many analysts to slash their growth estimates for the July-September quarter to a subpar 1.5 percent annual rate or less.
Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar has said it will cut up to 5,000 jobs by year’s end. Lower oil prices have hurt its sales of drilling equipment, and overseas sales of its construction machines have fallen.
Hershey has said it will shed 300 positions in the U.S. this year after sales in China plunged.
A host of other companies have announced layoffs in recent weeks, including Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer; ConAgra Foods, which makes Chef Boyardee and Slim Jims; and Chesapeake Energy, which has been hurt by lower oil prices.
The tepid pace of hiring clouds the picture for the Fed, which is considering whether to raise rates from record lows. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said that the job market is nearly healed. But she’s also said she wants to see further hiring and pay growth for reassurance that inflation is edging toward the Fed’s 2 percent target. Average hourly wages are up just 2.2 percent in the past year – far below the 3.5 percent or 4 percent considered healthy.
Many economists now expect no rate hike until 2016, though some still think the Fed will begin raising rates in December – a step that would eventually send consumer and business borrowing rates up.
Some analysts, like Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital, say they remain confident in the economy’s resilience. Gapen notes that the threats from overseas resemble earlier periods in the economic recovery when anxiety about Europe’s financial crisis slowed hiring and roiled U.S. markets.
He says he thinks underlying drivers of the U.S. economy are healthier now and can power through overseas pressures.
“The consumer is in much better shape, and the housing sector is in better shape,” Gapen said. “This is something that is more of a soft patch,” rather than a “meaningful recession risk.”
Some Americans are still willing to splurge out on pricey goods: Auto sales surged to the highest level in a decade last month, and sales of new homes reached a seven-year high in August.
The disparity between overseas weakness and solid consumer spending was evident in the September jobs report: Manufacturers shed jobs for a second straight month while retailers, restaurants and hotels all added positions.
Central banks in China and Europe could take further steps this year to stimulate growth. And most expect growth in Germany to pick up next year. That could lessen the threat from overseas.
Still, the sluggish growth of the U.S. labor force – the number of people either working or looking for work – poses a headwind for job growth. The aging population means more baby boomers are retiring.
The decline in the proportion of Americans in the workforce also signals that many remain discouraged about their job prospects. Modest growth and steady, if unspectacular, hiring haven’t encouraged lots more people to look for work.
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It was refreshing to read an Op-Ed about overregulation in the Washington Examiner today. Presidential candidate Jeb Bush is absolutely correct that the explosive expansion of regulations during Obama’s Administration has been a major factor in the tepid economic recovery. I enjoyed seeing a candidate speak to this issue. Below are his remarks in full:
“President Obama has presided over a massive expansion of the federal government during his six and half years in office. He shepherded Obamacare into law — a $1.7 trillion spending bill that vastly increased Washington’s role in the healthcare industry. He has raised taxes by nearly $2 trillion, while adding $8 trillion to the national debt. The president has also imposed more than 2,500 new regulations on the American economy that carry a staggering price tag of $670 billion.
It should come as no surprise then that our economy has limped along during the Obama presidency. The anemic two percent rate of growth on his watch is one of the weakest recoveries in American history and it has resulted in labor force participation falling to a 38-year low. Middle class families’ incomes have fallen by $2,000 and there are six million more people living in poverty today than when Barack Obama took the oath of office.
Right now, federal regulations cost our economy $1.9 trillion a year. This works out to an average of $15,000 per household. We need to cut excessive federal red tape and unleash the entrepreneurial spirit in our nation.
Obama-era regulations such as those in Dodd-Frank, Obamacare, and his War on Coal are having a chilling effect on our economy. As president of the United States, I will conduct a spring cleaning of existing regulations to get rid of the ones that are too costly or not providing value to the American people. I will establish a regulatory budget that ensures that for every new dollar of regulations we impose on the American people we cut a dollar of existing regulations somewhere else. I will appoint judges to the judiciary who are committed to reining in regulatory excesses and preventing unelected regulators from exceeding the intent of Congress.
Finally, I will sign into law the REINS Act, which will provide another check on executive agency regulatory authority. The REINS Act would ensure that major rules and regulations are approved by Congress before they can take effect.
Regulations act as a hidden tax on the American people. Reining in their cost is just as important as reducing taxes. When coupled with my bold plan to reduce tax rates and simplify our tax code, my regulatory reform agenda will help drive America to four percent annual growth. Together, these policies will result in the average family seeing their income increase by $3,000 and their tax burden decline by $2,000. This is a significant boost in a middle class family’s budget that will make it easier for them to pay the mortgage, buy groceries, save for college and build a nest egg for retirement.
I know how to do this, because as governor of Florida, I cut taxes every year, by $19 billion total. I streamlined regulations and made my state the national leader in small business creation. During the final seven years of my governorship, Florida led the nation in job creation. Our unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent and we added 1.3 million new jobs. Over the course of my full two terms in office, Florida averaged 4.4 percent economic growth.
Secretary Hillary Clinton will double down on the massive expansion of taxes, debt and regulations we have seen under President Obama. I am offering the country a different vision that will empower entrepreneurs and American businesses to grow and provide better wages and benefits to the American people. I look forward to having the debate with Hillary Clinton and her allies on the defeatist Left about how best to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit in America and provide a boost to a middle class that hasn’t seen its wages rise in 15 years.”
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Kasich recently discussed the minimum wage while on the campaign trail Kasich was receptive to the possibility of raising the minimum wage 1) if the hike was “reasonable.” and 2) and when it made “sense” between management and labor.” Giving his answer in fairly broad terms allowed to Kasich to appear supportive of this policy at least in some circumstances, while also recognizing that such policy is not always beneficial, thereby satisfying potential voters on both sides of the aisle.
Kasich also went on to say that he favored state-level minimum wage policy over federal, because of the variation in economies and standards of living; his answer guarded him against outright supporting a blanket federal minimum wage rate hike — and it should. Even if Kasich were for state-level minimum wage increases, there is virtually no excuse for him to support a federal one. Anyone trying to argue that the minimum wage level should be the same in both New York and Arkansas is ludicrous. People may think that it helps, but when the minimum wage is way out of proportion for a jurisdiction in which it applies, the policy becomes especially harmful to businesses and workers.
Though Kasich’s answer was okay, he could have taken a better position. You can understand someone not wanting to take an absolute firm position on the minimum wage, considering that ⅔ of Americans favor it in some form or another. But it is also not honest to suggest that you are for it, without making it clear that your receptivity is merely to accommodate the will of the people, without trying to get the message out that the minimum wage, is in fact, a terrible thing.
What Kasich should say is that it is unfortunate that most people in the country do not understand that a minimum wage is a bad thing for the economy. It would have been preferable for him to explain that a minimum wage keeps people remaining in poverty — — but if that is what the people want, he won’t stand in the way. For his part, Kasich is not a full-throated advocate of a minimum wage, but he could have done a better job educating the voters on the pitfalls of such policy.
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Each month, CNSNews does a nice roundup of the monthly Treasury statements which show revenue and expenditures for the prior month. As has been the case for the last few months, the month of July has been another record setting month for revenues. Even with that, the government still continues to run a deficit for the year — their annual spending outpacing their receipts.
From CNSNews:
“The federal government raked in a record of approximately $2,672,414,000,000 in tax revenues through the first ten months of fiscal 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014 through the end of July), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
That equaled approximately $17,955 for every person in the country who had either a full-time or part-time job in July.
It is also up about $183,397,970,000 in constant 2015 dollars from the $2,489,016,030,000 in revenue (in inflation-adjusted 2015 dollars) that the Treasury raked in during the first ten months of fiscal 2014.
Despite the record tax revenues of $2,672,414,000,000 in the first ten months of this fiscal year, the government spent $3,137,953,000,000 in those ten months, and, thus, ran up a deficit of $465,539,000,000 during the period.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total seasonally adjusted employment in the United States in July (including both full and part-time workers) was 148,840,000. That means that the federal tax haul so far this fiscal year has equaled $17,954.94 for every person in the United States with a job.
In 2012, President Barack Obama struck a deal with Republicans in Congress to enact legislation that increased taxes. That included increasing the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, increasing the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent, and phasing out personal exemptions and deductions starting at an annual income level of $250,000.
An additional 3.8 percent tax on dividends, interests, capital gains and royalties–that was embedded in the Obamacare law–also took effect in 2013.
The largest share of this year’s record-setting October-through-July tax haul came from the individual income tax. That yielded the Treasury $1,276,630,000,000. Payroll taxes for “social insurance and retirement receipts” took in another $894,374,000,000. The corporate income tax brought in $266,068,000,000.”
