Republican Plan Eliminates Employment Problem

WASHINGTON–At and early morning news conference on the steps of the U.S. Treasury, standing next to James Earle Fraser’s bronze sculpture of Alexander Hamilton, Speaker of the House John Boehner explained the latest Republican plan to slash the unemployment rate.

Serfdom, American Style

The worst thing about the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the minimum wage is that it is not definitive. Raising the minimum wage will neither decimate jobs as its opponents contend, nor will it be the panacea for poverty that its supporters had hoped, leaving plenty for both sides to argue about. If the minimum wage was raised to $10.10 and indexed to inflation, it would likely lift 900,000 workers above the poverty threshold while eliminating about 500,000 jobs. An alternative proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9.00 without indexing would have a smaller impact. The key effects of the alternative proposals are summarized below.

How Poor Is Poor?

By Joe Cereola

A family living at the poverty level faces considerable challenges. All income is consumed by necessities, leaving little, if anything, to spend on even the small things that make life more enjoyable. But poverty is not about forgoing movies and popcorn; poverty is a life on the precipice of financial ruin. Without health insurance, a serious illness is catastrophic; a car repair, a broken refrigerator, or a traffic ticket becomes a crisis. Money for a rainy-day fund is nonexistent, and saving for retirement is an unaffordable luxury. Poverty means having to survive one's golden years on Social Security and Medicaid. 

Welfare, Ignorance, And Bigotry

By Joe Cereola
The memes captured by the images on the left are typical of many found on Facebook; they are ill-informed, devoid of compassion, and implicitly racist. There's an entire Facebook page devoted to this ignorance and bigotry. The implied message is clear: those receiving government assistance are lazy, unemployed, and don't deserve our help. Too bad we don't see as many images lambasting the many wealthy corporations receiving billions in subsidies and tax breaks.

Margin Debt Hits All-Time High

By Joe Cereola

This isn't an investing blog so I won't get into any sort of analysis or recommendations about what, if anything, you should do now that the amount of borrowed money invested in the stock market has hit an all-time high. You can draw your own conclusions from the chart below.

Click chart to enlarge

Of course, there is no way of knowing if margin debt has peaked yet, especially if the Fed keeps the party going with cheap credit, but when it turns downward – beware! 
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Chart spreadsheet: download 

The Bottom Half Of The World's Population Has the Same Wealth As Richest 85 People

By Joe Cereola

Last month, just days before the World Economic Forum began its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam International released a report titled, "Working For The Few," that delivered some stunning statistics on global inequality.

John Podhoretz: An Exercise In Deception

By Joe Cereola
You can always count on Facebook for reliable links to misinformation. That's how I found John Podhoretz and his shockingly misleading opinion piece in today’s New York Post. Podhoretz doesn't like the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and he's been busy misinterpreting the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report in an attempt to condemn the ACA. Saying that he misinterpreted the CBO report implies he attempted to be fair in his analysis, when in fact he quoted sections of the report out of context and neglected to mentions portions of the report that contradicted his opinion.

Inequality Eventually Ends

“Every growing civilization is a scene of multiplying inequalities; the natural differences of human endowment unite with differences of opportunity produce artificial differences of wealth and power; and where no laws or despots suppress these artificial inequalities they reach at last a bursting point where the poor have nothing to lose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution….Periodically the land gets itself redistributed, legally or not…periodically wealth is redistributed, whether by the violent confiscation of property, or by confiscatory taxation of income and bequest. Then the race for wealth, goods and power begins again, and the pyramid of ability takes form once more; under whatever laws may be enacted the abler man manages somehow to get the richer soil, the better place, the lion’s share; soon he is strong enough to dominate the state and rewrite or interpret the laws; and in time the inequality is as great as before.”  – Will Durant

Don't Like The Minimum Wage?

By Joe Cereola

Social media gives everyone with something say a to a place to say it. But some ideas are not worth sharing, especially when they are untrue and their sole purpose is to obfuscate. I stumbled across the image below on Facebook. I refrained from commenting because the dialog that often follows such unsupported statements is often irrational and uncivil, and those who advance unfounded claims are frequently immune to the logic and facts that prove their beliefs false.