Monday, April 15, 2024

April, 2024, By The Numbers, Part 2: Biden's Failed Economic Policies and Record Inflation and New York Is About To Tax Itself Out of Existence

 On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American politician tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.


Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.


1)As we have  discussed so many times in this blog, Biden’s economic expertise and programs  have been an inflation disaster for every American. Nowhere does that reality hit home than in your local supermarket:


  • According to a Wall Street Journal analysis, grocery prices are almost 40% higher today than in 2019.

  • The actual  increase was a weighted average of 36.5% across all food categories.

  • Eggs cost 63% more than 2019 and sports drinks cost 80% more on average.

  • The vast majority of the five year inflation came from the past few years, i.e. the Biden years, with inflation jumping a whopping 10.2% from February, 2023 to February, 2024.


The cost of existing, i.e. taking nourishment, is getting more and more expensive and  difficult, thanks to Biden and the  economic idiots in Washington.


2)Getting away from food inflation, the overall inflation rate for everything continues to march upwards:


  • Consumer prices went up 3.5% in March, higher than expected.

  • A lot of the price increase was driven by higher costs of energy and shelter with the cost of shelter on average up a whopping 5.7% on a year over year basis.

  • Other drivers of the overall increase in inflation were gas, clothing, car repairs, and groceries.

  • Not unexpectedly, Biden refused to take responsibility for this insulting inflation, actually  blaming Republicans and business leaders’ greed, anyone but himself.


Keep in mind that inflation was well  under control when Trump was President and yet Biden blames everyone but himself. Insanity.


3)Let’s keep the inflation wagon rolling:


  • Gas prices across the country recently hit a six month high reaching an average cost of $3.60 a gallon.

  • This is more than a 50% increase since Biden took office.

  • The average price for gas when Biden took office was $2.38 a gallon.

  • The average price is up $.20 per gallon in the past month.

  • And even worse, Goldman Sachs thinks gas could hit $4.00 a gallon by May and some other “experts” claiming that $5.00 a gallon could be in our near term future.

  • Fortunately, most of us do not live in California where the average price is already a whopping $5.50 a gallon.


More expensive to travel, more expensive to eat,  more expensive to live, welcome to Biden’s economic dystopia.


4)We have often made the assertion that a state government or two will likely go bankrupt in the not too distant future. They have raised taxes so high that residents and businesses have started to  migrate out of these states, taking their tax  revenue with them, to find less onerous tax burdens for themselves, their families, and businesses. 


A number from a recent Wall Street Journal article shows why we think New York might be that state government to go bankrupt: “One reason why New York resorted to congestion pricing is it had squeezed the tax turnip dry. All in - federal, state, city, payroll tax surcharges - New York City’s top marginal rate exceeds 50%.


Think about it: in certain situations, a resident of New York could be sending over half of their income to some level of government. If that number does not disgust a freedom loving American then they do not know they are no longer free since personal freedom is impossible if one does not have economic freedom. And giving government bureaucrats and politicians half of your earnings is not economic freedom.


That will do it for today: Biden’s failed economic policies and the resultant inflation impacts all of us and  New York’s taxation fetish is out of control and will  eventually lead to the collapse of the state government's finances.


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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


Monday, April 8, 2024

April, 2024, By The Numbers: Taxing The Rich Is Still Stupid, High Taxes Mean Higher Unemployment, and Biden Kills The American Dream of Home Ownership

 On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American politician tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.


Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the third and final post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 


1)While  our country may be able to survive bad Presidents, bad Congress people, and a biased and corrupted free press, one thing that it may not survive is the mountains of debt that American politicians have piled up at all levels of government. At some point, the $34,000,000,000,000 worth of Federal government  national debt, a number that grows every second of every day, will crash our economy and our freedoms.


But those in Washington only occasionally pay attention to this ticking time bomb number and never do anything about it. Consider a set of numbers that shows how out of control the debt burden is and how stupid ideas like “taxing the rich” are just that, stupid ideas:


  • According to the latest analysis by Forbes, the combined wealth of every billionaire in the world is about $14.2 trillion.

  • To show you how out of control our national debt is, if we could somehow liquidate every asset of every billionaire in the world and magically apply the proceeds to our national debt, we would only be able to pay off about 41% of the Federal government’s debt.

  • But they would not give up their wealth freely so let’s say we only took 10% a year as a tax on wealth.

  • Then we would only pay off about 4% of our national debt.

  • But that number includes every billionaire and I doubt that billionaires in China and  England and elsewhere would hand over their billions of dollars in wealth to help pay down our national debt so that 41% number is way too high.

  • About 40% of the world’s billionaires, according to Forbes, live in this country so that 41% number would really be about 16% of the national  debt if all of America’s billionaires had all of their assets confiscated and applied to Washington's debt.

  • And we only took 10% then you are looking at paying down only about 1.6% of the  national debt.

  • In fact the  richest billionaire in the world is not an American, but Frenchman, Bernard Arnault, whose family conglomerate is worth $233 billion, or about .7% of our national debt.

  • Elon Musk is worth about $193 billion so confiscating his entire fortune would pay off less than the .7% that Arnault and his family would pay off.

  • Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos is worth about the same as Musk so taking all of his wealth would also pay off less than 1% of the national debt.


You get the idea: Washington politicians have  piled up so  much debt that even if you confiscated every asset of the billionaires living in the world, or in this country, you would not come close to paying off the debt. And thus, the reason why taxing the rich continues to be a stupid saying and strategy. 


The reality is that Americans are not taxed too lightly: politicians simply spend and waste too much.


2)Speaking of high taxes, it has always been our position that the higher the tax burden any government places on their citizens, the worse off the economy is of that government entity. Politicians and government bureaucrats never spend wealth more efficiently or more effectively than private citizens and companies.


Consider more proof our theory:


  • The latest state level unemployment rates are out.

  • We have often pointed out that some of the highest taxed states include California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey, states that we believe are likely to be the most likely states to declare bankruptcy in the relatively near future.

  • And it turns out that these states have some of the highest state unemployment rates in the country with California (50th ranked worst unemployment rate), New Jersey (48th), Illinois (47th), and New York (43rd) following close behind with unemployment rates at their state level  being 4.4% or higher.

  • These are the same states that continue to lose population year over year as their citizens flee to other areas and states where the tax burden is not so onerous.


Bottom line: have high taxes, have high unemployment, have high taxes, lose citizens.


3)It is a fact that the cost of living has skyrocketed under the Biden Presidency. His economic policies have allowed inflation to run rampant, causing prices to rise on  just about everything we buy for our lives including eggs, gasoline, clothing, etc. And somehow his economic policies have been so bad that the following numbers are just mind blowing that he could screw up an aspect of our economy this badly  in such a short time:


  • When Biden took office in 2021, in six states a family needed over $100,000  a year in income to afford a middle class, median priced home.

  •  Just three years later, Biden’s failed economic policies have driven that number up to 22 states where a family needs an annual of over $100,000 to afford a middle class home.

  • This is an almost four fold increase in just over three years.

  • This analysis by Bankrate starts in January 2020, and takes it to January 2024.

  • And while their analysis time frame covers the last year of the Trump administration, most of the increase is no doubt occurring as a result of the Biden administration.

  • Their analysis estimated that a family needed to earn an annual  income of $110,871 to afford that median priced house today, up a whopping 46% since 2020.

  • When Biden took office in January, 2021, the average interest rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage was 2.5%.

  • As of March, 2024, Bankrate estimates that the average interest for that same type of mortgages was 7.07%, an almost threefold increase.


Biden has proposed some window dressing programs to address this situation but providing a two year, $5,000 tax credit to home buyers and other such token moves will do nothing when the mortgage rate has increased almost threefold under his Presidency.  His proposed tax credit programs show, again, that he and Washington have no idea on how to fix what they broke in three short years.


That will do it for today’s Numbers: Biden broke the home ownership dreams of millions and millions of Americans, have high taxes get high unemployment, and taxing the rich still makes no sense as long as Washington politicians have no  restraint when it comes to overspending their tax revenue stream.


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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:


Monday, April 1, 2024

April, 2024, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Illegal Drugs Continue To Flow, NYC Plays Toll Fee Roulette, FBI and ATF Agents Were In The January 6th Crowd and Hail Is A Solar Energy Enemy

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of efficiently operating any level of government in this country. 


Even their best efforts are almost always ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.


1)One of the  major failures of the Biden administration is that he has allowed our borders to be extremely porous to illegal immigrants and tons and tons of illegal drugs. Well over 100,000 Americans  probably died from drug overdoses in 2023 (final numbers are not in yet) and there is no reason to think that never will go down any time soon since Biden has shown no desire or ability to lock down the border.


And a recent incident on the border indicates how bad the problem continues to be:


  • U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers recently checked out ONE  vehicle at the border and found it had about $1.1 million worth  of methamphetamine.

  • Meth is a major driver of overdose deaths in this country.

  • The $1.1 million worth of meth comes out to about 120 pounds of the drug.

  • This seizure follows on the heels of another bust in California where 3,000 pounds of meth was hidden in a shipment of carrots.

  • In the past six months the Customs agents have found 49,000  pounds of meth, more than 24 TONS.


The good news is that 49,000 pounds of illegal drugs never made it into the bodies of drug addicted Americans. The bad news is we have no  idea how many other tons of illegal drugs did not get intercepted as it came across Biden’s porous borders.

As we have said so many times, a very, very primary duty of any government entity is to protect the lives of the citizens it supposedly serves. In this case, Biden is a failure relative to this basic government tenet.


2)What really happened on January 6, 2021? Did Trump tell his followers to invade the Capitol Building? Or did the Swamp set Trump up as a fall guy? Your answer probably depends on what you think of Trump. But recent accusations appear to lean towards that the whole January 6 incident was a set up by the Deep State:


  • It appears that the FBI and ATF had at least 20 of their people embedded in the crowd in the Capital that day.

  • The Capital Police had at least three of their people embedded in the crowd.

  • At least one of these folks was the first to breach the Capitol Building.

  • According to the Epoch Times: “At least 20 FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “assets” were embedded around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a defense attorney claimed in a court filing on April 12. The allegation was made in a motion seeking to dismiss seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges against 10 Oath Keepers defendants in one of the most prominent Jan. 6 criminal cases.David W. Fischer, attorney for Thomas E. Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia, filed a 41-page motion to dismiss four counts on behalf of all Oath Keepers case defendants before U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington.”


So what really happened that day? We will probably never know.  But we now know that the FBI and ATF had agents in the crowd and may have been the instigators. We know that Black Lives Matter and Antifa had their own people inside the Capitol building that day. The corruption of the Washington political elite apparently knows no bounds including faking an ”insurrection.”


3)We once reported on how the political class at the Maryland state government level had raised the tax rate on millionaires living in the state. The faulty economic theory was that simply raising the tax on incomes that exceed a million dollars will get more tax money for the state government. A few short years later it turns out the total tax revenue coming from the state’s millionaires was actually lower than before the tax rate was raised.


So they raised the tax rate and got less taxes? Very simply,  millionaires have the resources to move to lower tax states which is what they did. Thus, the windfall the politicians anticipated from their faulty economic sense never materialized and, in fact, reduced their tax revenue.


Which is just one example which constantly shows how our politicians have very little knowledge or common sense when it comes to economics. And another example is likely beginning to unfold in New York City:


  • Many people commute into NYC for their jobs and for entertainment.

  • These folks have a lot of options to get into the city including their cars,  buses, and rail.

  • But the most convenient of these options is to travel by car since it gives the commuter the convenience of coming and going on their schedule and not relying on bus and train schedules.

  • And the political economic giants in the city want to take advantage of this convenience by imposing a new and additional $15 fee on anyone driving into the city in the southern half of Manhattan.

  • This new $15 fee would be in addition to the existing $15 toll that many commuters already pay.

  • The money from this new fee/tax would theoretically be used to  improve the city’s mass  transit system.

  • This was given the marketing name “congestion pricing” since it would be  imposed when traffic congestion is at its peak.

  • Larger vehicles would pay more than the $15 while  motorcycles and those coming into the city in off peak hours would pay less.

  •  While  other world cities have already implemented this process it is new to  this country.

  • Someone who commutes into the city for their job five days a week, this new fee will theoretically add over $3,500 in commuting costs to this person’s budget


This could get very interesting, given the current situation in NYC and New York state:


  • According to USA Today reporting, almost 550,000 New Yorkers left the state in 2022. 

  • In all likelihood, the high tax burden and high crime rates in the state and  NYC were probably the main drivers. 

  • And now the NYC politicians want to add to that tax burden with their new inbound car toll.


Given what happened in Maryland when they raised taxes, the following scenario has a very good chance of going down in NYC:


  • People who travel into NYC will likely try and  minimize this additional tax burden by not going into the city as often or will start using mass transit more often.

  • Thus, the city politicians probably will not have their revenue expectation met since people will start to curtail their inbound traffic and which may also cause the revenue from the current toll to drop.

  • People will not only curtail  their work travel into the city but will likely also curtail their pleasure travel into the city given that that travel toll wise has increased 100% to $30 and they will be more likely to stay local to get their dining out and entertainment experience.

  • This will reduce the business that in-city businesses receive, e.g. restaurant patrons, which will put a financial strain on city businesses and eventually city business tax revenue.

  • If enough commuter workers complain about the new toll burden, then in-city businesses will either give more permission to work at home, reducing toll revenue, or will move their businesses out of the city altogether, reducing all kinds of tax revenue to the city and state as businesses vacate their city offices.


Now, I could be wrong. Maybe those commuters going into NYC who currently pay $15 in toll will not mind paying twice that much. But given what happened in Maryland, I would bet that inbound commuters will find ways to stay and work at home more often and will  curtail their pleasure visits into the city, all of which is going to have a negative impact on all types of city taxes. 


Also keep in mind that this potential new toll revenue will go to make mass transit better for city residents. A worker coming into the city will be paying the toll and not really getting thinking back in return, all the more reason to avoid the new levy as much as possible.


4)People like Biden want us to rush headlong into solar and wind energy to replace carbon based fuels under the guise of “climate change.” We will not get into a discussion of whether or not climate change  is a man-made danger or not but rushing headlong into solar energy has a lot of downsides, downsides that Biden and others are not willing to discuss.


But consider a new downside that hit Texas a short time ago:


  • Parts of Texas are famous for ferocious hail storms.

  • Apparently a solar farm in Texas did not take this into account since when a giant hail storm came through recently it severely damaged a 3,000 acre Texas solar farm.

  • Apparently, some Texas hail storms have hailstones big enough to break  glass which is what this one did to the glass solar cell tops.

  • It resulted in the solar farm to operate at “reduced capacities.”

  • Not only has the glass been broken on hundreds of panels but there is a fear that there are potentially toxic chemicals from the broken panels leaking into the soil and groundwater.

  • The solar farm company denies that there are toxic chemicals leaking out of the broken panels.

  • Even if there are no chemical  leaks, we now see another danger to so-called clean energy, building solar panel farms where there are a lot of hail storms and tornadoes risks putting electric power availability at risk.

  • And  since China is the source of a lot of components of solar technology and actual solar panels, as tensions rise with that country relying too much on the availability of solar technology could be very dangerous.


Who would have thought hail storms could wipe out a good part of our energy grid? Obviously, Biden and others like him did not.

That will do it for today: solar has a new downsize, NYC plays tax roulette with a new toll tax, the FBI and ATF had dozens of agents embedded in the January 6th crowd, and illegal and deadly drugs continue to flood through Biden’s porous border.

**********************

If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:


https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom



**********************


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at: