In this morning's report on personal income and spending, word came that the savings rate (after-tax income less spending) rose from 0.8 percent in August to 1.3 percent in September.
On my way to lunch recently, I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama; I need the money." I laughed. In a restaurant my server had on an "Obama 08" tie. Again I laughed. Just imagine the coincidence. When the bill came, I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Barack-Obama-redistribution-of-wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need—the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight. I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.—A. Hart, Forest Park
An impatient White House served notice Tuesday on banks and other financial companies receiving billions of dollars in federal help to quit hoarding the money and start making more loans."What we're trying to do is get banks to do what they are supposed to do, which is support the system that we have in America. And banks exist to lend money," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.Though there are limits on how much Washington can pressure banks, she noted that banks are regulated by the federal government.
Senior Liberation Act
Why you can't get Social Security if you refuse Medicare.
For all of America's cherished belief in choice and freedom, it remains an astonishing fact that the U.S. government forces citizens over the age of 65 into a subpar health plan of its choosing. And so it is with some hope that we greet a new federal lawsuit that aims to allow senior citizens to flee Medicare.
The suit comes courtesy of Kent Masterson Brown, a lawyer who has previously tangled with the government over Medicare benefits. Mr. Brown represents three plaintiffs who are suing the federal government to be allowed to opt out of Medicare without losing their Social Security benefits.
Amazingly, this is not currently allowed. While the Social Security law does not require participants to accept Medicare, and the Medicare law does not require participants to accept Social Security, the Clinton Administration in 1993 tied the programs together. Under that policy, any senior who withdraws from Medicare also loses Social Security benefits.
Mr. Brown's plaintiffs are three men who do not want to be in Medicare, even though they paid Medicare taxes throughout their income-earning years and though they are not asking for that money back. The three instead saved privately to cover their health care expenses. They now prefer to contract with private doctors and health facilities that they believe are superior to those offered by Medicare.
They don't want to be rationed by a government program facing budget constraints. And they desire, for reasons of privacy, not to have their medical claims in the hands of a federal bureaucracy. One of the plaintiffs, Brian Hall, is a retired federal worker who contributed throughout his career to a health savings account. If required to take Medicare, he will no longer be allowed to make deposits for his medical expenses.
Meanwhile, the three plaintiffs also have contributed considerable sums to the Social Security trust fund. All three understandably want to be paid the monthly retirement benefits that they have duly earned. Yet to do that, they must agree to enroll in Medicare.
The Clinton Administration tied Medicare and Social Security together for the same reason Congress in the 1990s barred Medicare enrollees from supplementing their government care: They don't want a "two-tier" health system. Equity trumps freedom, even if it means poorer care. The Bush Administration has stuck with this misguided policy, despite a need to relieve pressure on runaway entitlement programs. If even 1% of Medicare-eligible retirees voluntarily opted out, Medicare expenditures would decrease by about $1.5 billion a year, and by some $3.5 billion a year by 2017.
The suit itself has strong legal merit. Not only have two Administrations implemented policy that has no root in the applicable laws, their "rules" are no rules at all. Neither Administration bothered to put its extraordinary policies through an official rule-making in which they would have been required to notify the public and invite comments.
Mr. Brown fears the feds will argue they have "administrative remedies" for these situations (say, allowing certain individuals to opt out) and that the suit should therefore be dismissed. No judge should buy it. Mr. Brown has included information from another individual who attempted to disenroll from Medicare by petitioning the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency refused to address his case.
D.C. Circuit Judge Rosemary Collyer should invalidate these policies and ask Congress to clarify the matter. Will Members really argue that prudent Americans shouldn't be allowed to pay for their own medical care or even make their own health-care choices?
In short, the true crux of deflation is that it does not hide the redistribution going hand in hand with changes in the quantity of money. It entails visible misery for many people, to the benefit of equally visible winners. This starkly contrasts with inflation, which creates anonymous winners at the expense of anonymous losers. Both deflation and inflation are, from the point of view we have so far espoused, zero-sum games. But inflation is a secret rip-off and thus the perfect vehicle for the exploitation of a population through its (false) elites, whereas deflation means open redistribution through bankruptcy according to the law.
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Political Rhetoric: An Obama campaign ad says: “Today women work to help support their families but are paid just 77 cents for every $1 a man makes. It’s just one more thing John McCain doesn’t get about our economy.”
Factual Evidence:1. Obama pays his own female Senate staffers, on average, only 78% of what he pays male staffers (see top chart above), and females make up 53% of Obama's staff.
2. McCain pays female staffers 101% of what he pays men (see bottom chart above), and females made 62% of McCain's staff.
3. Women occupy seven of the top 10 highest-paid positions on McCain’s staff, and five of the top 10 highest-paid positions on Obama’s staff.
4. Women on McCain’s staff earn 24% more on average than women on Obama’s Senate staff.
A source of mild entertainment amid the financial carnage has been watching libertarians scurrying to explain how the global financial crisis is the result of too much government intervention rather than too little. One line of argument casts as villain the Community Reinvestment Act, which prevents banks from "redlining" minority neighborhoods as not creditworthy. Another theory blames Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for causing the trouble by subsidizing and securitizing mortgages with an implicit government guarantee. An alternative thesis is that past bailouts encouraged investors to behave recklessly in anticipation of a taxpayer rescue.
Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California's Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel -- the "mack" in prison lingo -- was the standard currency."It's the coin of the realm," says Mark Bailey, who paid Mr. Levine in fish. Mr. Bailey was serving a two-year tax-fraud sentence in connection with a chain of strip clubs he owned. Mr. Levine was serving a nine-year term for drug dealing. Mr. Levine says he used his macks to get his beard trimmed, his clothes pressed and his shoes shined by other prisoners. "A haircut is two macks," he says, as an expected tip for inmates who work in the prison barber shop.There's been a mackerel economy in federal prisons since about 2004, former inmates and some prison consultants say. That's when federal prisons prohibited smoking and, by default, the cigarette pack, which was the earlier gold standard.Prisoners need a proxy for the dollar because they're not allowed to possess cash. Money they get from prison jobs (which pay a maximum of 40 cents an hour, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons) or family members goes into commissary accounts that let them buy things such as food and toiletries. After the smokes disappeared, inmates turned to other items on the commissary menu to use as currency.
