Showing posts with label occupants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label occupants. Show all posts
Sunday, August 12, 2012
The Local Media Spin The Occupants' Attack On Obama Headquarters
It's a pretty simple story. Barbarians on the loose and they don't care who or what they destroy. "..just a few people... " Yeah. Right.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
The Slumdog Millionaire Next Door
One of the reasons humanity has so many problems is that deception can be beneficial for the deceiver. This is nothing new. Mark Twain is attributed with, "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." That was before high speed internet connections. Halfway around the world? Twain was so dial up.
Let me call your attention to the map provided by a leftist group. It's very power to the people. It is also highly deceptive. It deceives the viewer because it does not factor in government benefits as income or property. The Occupants might be repulsed at the sight of button down accountants, but they are not repulsed by their trickery. They lovingly embrace the staid profession's methodology.
If you receive $3,333/month in government benefits, you are a virtual millionaire. Applying the 4% rule of thumb of withdrawals, it would take ONE MILLION DOLLARS of capital for a working person to duplicate this feat. Your position is actually better than most fools who try to duplicate your life of leisure using old fashioned methods.
Why is your position better?
1. You don't have to worry about fluctuations in the stock market (or anything else for that matter.)
2. You don't have to research or manage your portfolio. That can be a part-time job in and of itself. More time for you to savor "Springer" or "Judge Judy" or "Law and Order."
3. Every bennie you receive is tax free. This cannot be underemphasized.
4. There is such a thing as present value of money. Simply put, money received today is worth more than money received tomorrow, EVEN WITHOUT INFLATION.
5. Your enjoy the benefits of wealth without many of its pitfalls. If you are so unfortunate to be sued, your bennies are off the table. You can run up tabs all over town and never pay a dime. You enjoy institutional privilege that working people can only dream of
.
6. Oh, and let us not forget that your life of leisure is vastly superior to your friends in the workforce. Your commute is also probably less hectic.
So how many Americans are virtual millionaires by virtue of government benefits? I can't do the research right now but I think it's safe to say that there are millions of them. Millions. Refer to the map above. If we calculate the virtual wealth of welfare millionaires, the map gets skewed. That little red dot might morph into the Alaska and Hawaii missing from the Occupants' map. This is like guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. The area assigned to our slumdog millionaires might actually be the size of Mexico or even Canada!
A quick review of how easy it is to become a virtual millionaire. http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ Here we see that Social Security pays 8.7 million people a monthly income of $1111.17 for disability benefits. STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I don't begrudge a dime to people who are legitimately disabled and are unable to work. But every day I see people who are gaming the system. This is the easiest way to scam the government and ultimately it will hurt people who really need help.
What is the value of lifelong free health insurance?
The Kaiser Family Foundation puts out some good data on employer-based coverage. According to them, the average cost of employer-based health insurance for a single person in 2011 was $5,429 per year, of which the employee paid only $921 and the employer paid the rest. Divide that out by twelve if you want a monthly premium amount. http://blog.ehealthinsurance.com/2011/12/what%E2%80%99s-the-average-cost-of-health-insurance-consumer-qa/
The above covers individual health insurance. The cost for a family plan is substantially more.
YORK (CNNMoney) -- Health care costs for a family of four rose again in 2011, with employees paying a much larger share of the rising expenses, according to a new industry report Wednesday.
American families who are insured through their jobs average health care costs of $19,393 this year, up 7.3%, or $1,319 from last year, according to independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc.
More significantly, employers are making workers shoulder an even bigger share of total health care expenses.
Of the $1,319 annual increase, workers' out-of-pocket costs this year rose 9.2%. That was more than the 6.6% increase the prior year.
Payroll deductions for insurance coverage rose 9.3% this year, also more than the year before.
However, employers' share of workers' health care costs fell 6% in 2010, compared to 8% the year prior.
Of the $19,393 overall annual cost, employees' share is inching closer to 50%, said Lorraine Mayne, principal and consulting actuary with Milliman.
"Employees are paying $8,000 of the $19,000. That's a decent amount much larger than other areas of consumer spending," said Mayne.
"What we've observed in the past few years is employers have increasingly been offering health plans with higher deductibles and co-insurance, co-payment limits," she said.
http://blog.ehealthinsurance.com/2011/12/what%E2%80%99s-the-average-cost-of-health-insurance-consumer-qa/
$19,393 + $13334.04 ($1111.17 x 12) = 32,727.04. (Actually, the disability benefits would probably be greater for a family of four.) We need a nest egg of just over $800,000 to make this happen on an annual basis. And we just figured two benefits. I don't want to get too tangential here. Let's not figure both family of four and individual. For brevity, let's concentrate on the individual.
So, $13,334 + $5,429 = $18,763. Let's add food stamps. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1269
We can skip over niceties like free or reduced utilities, free or reduced transportation, and free cell phones. How much money would it take to replicate the lifestyles of our fellow Americans? The independent variable is housing. But if an individual wanted to construct a financial plan whereby he was able to receive a monthly stipend of $1111, a monthly payment that covered his health insurance expenses ($452.41/month using the numbers above) and $200/month in groceries, he would need to set aside at least $528,900 and hope his preferred financial vehicle met with rising tides.Throw in rent subsidies and we are close to one million dollars. In some parts of the country, the individual would need to exceed that amount.
Remember, these figures are for individuals. The proverbial family of four can easily collect annual benefits of $40,000, not including rent subsidies. That is, the prudent investor would need to accumulate $1 million in assets to provide for his family as well as the benefited family is provided for. And he would need another chunk of cash to pay his family's rent every month.
This is a hasty, armchair analysis of the true nature of wealth and poverty. But the snapshot captures the essence. Despite the facile propaganda of the Occupants, America is teeming with people who live like millionaires. They would be the economically elite in most countries. What do we call them? We call them poor people.
If you receive $3,333/month in government benefits, you are a virtual millionaire. Applying the 4% rule of thumb of withdrawals, it would take ONE MILLION DOLLARS of capital for a working person to duplicate this feat. Your position is actually better than most fools who try to duplicate your life of leisure using old fashioned methods.
Why is your position better?
1. You don't have to worry about fluctuations in the stock market (or anything else for that matter.)
2. You don't have to research or manage your portfolio. That can be a part-time job in and of itself. More time for you to savor "Springer" or "Judge Judy" or "Law and Order."
3. Every bennie you receive is tax free. This cannot be underemphasized.
4. There is such a thing as present value of money. Simply put, money received today is worth more than money received tomorrow, EVEN WITHOUT INFLATION.
5. Your enjoy the benefits of wealth without many of its pitfalls. If you are so unfortunate to be sued, your bennies are off the table. You can run up tabs all over town and never pay a dime. You enjoy institutional privilege that working people can only dream of
.
6. Oh, and let us not forget that your life of leisure is vastly superior to your friends in the workforce. Your commute is also probably less hectic.
So how many Americans are virtual millionaires by virtue of government benefits? I can't do the research right now but I think it's safe to say that there are millions of them. Millions. Refer to the map above. If we calculate the virtual wealth of welfare millionaires, the map gets skewed. That little red dot might morph into the Alaska and Hawaii missing from the Occupants' map. This is like guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. The area assigned to our slumdog millionaires might actually be the size of Mexico or even Canada!
A quick review of how easy it is to become a virtual millionaire. http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ Here we see that Social Security pays 8.7 million people a monthly income of $1111.17 for disability benefits. STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I don't begrudge a dime to people who are legitimately disabled and are unable to work. But every day I see people who are gaming the system. This is the easiest way to scam the government and ultimately it will hurt people who really need help.
What is the value of lifelong free health insurance?
The Kaiser Family Foundation puts out some good data on employer-based coverage. According to them, the average cost of employer-based health insurance for a single person in 2011 was $5,429 per year, of which the employee paid only $921 and the employer paid the rest. Divide that out by twelve if you want a monthly premium amount. http://blog.ehealthinsurance.com/2011/12/what%E2%80%99s-the-average-cost-of-health-insurance-consumer-qa/
The above covers individual health insurance. The cost for a family plan is substantially more.
YORK (CNNMoney) -- Health care costs for a family of four rose again in 2011, with employees paying a much larger share of the rising expenses, according to a new industry report Wednesday.
American families who are insured through their jobs average health care costs of $19,393 this year, up 7.3%, or $1,319 from last year, according to independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc.
Of the $1,319 annual increase, workers' out-of-pocket costs this year rose 9.2%. That was more than the 6.6% increase the prior year.
Payroll deductions for insurance coverage rose 9.3% this year, also more than the year before.
However, employers' share of workers' health care costs fell 6% in 2010, compared to 8% the year prior.
Of the $19,393 overall annual cost, employees' share is inching closer to 50%, said Lorraine Mayne, principal and consulting actuary with Milliman.
"Employees are paying $8,000 of the $19,000. That's a decent amount much larger than other areas of consumer spending," said Mayne.
"What we've observed in the past few years is employers have increasingly been offering health plans with higher deductibles and co-insurance, co-payment limits," she said.
http://blog.ehealthinsurance.com/2011/12/what%E2%80%99s-the-average-cost-of-health-insurance-consumer-qa/
$19,393 + $13334.04 ($1111.17 x 12) = 32,727.04. (Actually, the disability benefits would probably be greater for a family of four.) We need a nest egg of just over $800,000 to make this happen on an annual basis. And we just figured two benefits. I don't want to get too tangential here. Let's not figure both family of four and individual. For brevity, let's concentrate on the individual.
So, $13,334 + $5,429 = $18,763. Let's add food stamps. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1269
| The individual is now entitled to $200/month or $2400/year. A family of four can collect $668/month or roughly $8,000/year. The family of four has now crossed the $40,000/year mark that would require a one million dollar nest egg. The individual is halfway there. Let's turn our attention to housing. | |||||
| How much one pays for housing is largely dependent on geography. It is hard to uniformly apply the value of a housing subsidy. But if one lives in Boston or New York and receives housing assistance, one probably receives at least $1000/month in assistance. At these rates, the individual now receives about $33,000 in annual benefits. | |||||
Remember, these figures are for individuals. The proverbial family of four can easily collect annual benefits of $40,000, not including rent subsidies. That is, the prudent investor would need to accumulate $1 million in assets to provide for his family as well as the benefited family is provided for. And he would need another chunk of cash to pay his family's rent every month.
This is a hasty, armchair analysis of the true nature of wealth and poverty. But the snapshot captures the essence. Despite the facile propaganda of the Occupants, America is teeming with people who live like millionaires. They would be the economically elite in most countries. What do we call them? We call them poor people.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Occupy Blogstreet:The Lotion Man Returneth
AND WE'RE MISSING OUT
LOTION MAN MEETS WITH THE STARS
THE FLOURISHING OF THE AMERICAN AUTUMN
LOTION MAN MEETS WITH THE STARS
THE FLOURISHING OF THE AMERICAN AUTUMN
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Reaping What We Sow or The Revenge Of The Inarticulate
For decades our public schools have declined in merit. It should have set off alarms when high schools started cranking out illiterates. It should have set off shock waves when colleges started sending illiterates out into the world. America should have been shaken to the core when New Jersey teachers sent hate mail to their governor that was loaded with grammatical errors and misspelled words in every sentence.
Actually, the New Jersey slush pile is old news. There had been teacher uprisings all over the country that yielded similar results. Widespread literary deficiencies amongst public school teachers goes back at least to the 80's. By the time Chris Christie rolled around, this standing headline no longer had much shock value. We have accepted incremental ruin.
The occupants have been on the scene for over two weeks and we are still awaiting a coherent mission statement. I don't see one forthcoming. Society is in turmoil, perhaps even in ruin, because large numbers of people cannot articulate their opinions, their values and their objectives.
It is not coincidence the 2008 presidential election was won by a candidate
who was all style and no substance. It is no coincidence that the candidates' supporters were so vastly divided by demographics, specifically age demographics. The Obama Campaign did not articulate much of anything. They did not have to. They were all about iconography, photoshopped halos, Greek columns, empty slogans, teleprompters and celebrity endorsements. Facts are immaterial. Facts are boring. Hope and change.
I previously wrote of an Obama supporter with whom I conversed shortly before the 2008 general election. This guy was in his late twenties and was more or less a professional student. I thought the conversation was low key. In no way was I proselytizing. My point was that no one knew very much about Obama and no one seemed to care.
It did not matter what I said because this guy tuned me out right away. He ran off to his room and resurfaced wearing an Obama t-shirt. We are not in Kansas anymore. Arguably, we are not in America anymore.
There is a conspiracy of ignorance and I blame the American Left for the dummying down of America. Years ago, George Carlin did a bit about corporations advancing the cause of stupidity so that we would have ignorant consumers and a pool of workers who were content to perform mindless labor. Carlin could be funny even when you disagreed with him. There was seriousness behind Carlin's humor and while I enjoyed his performance I disagree with his premise.
We should always be wary of anyone who generalizes about the thousands of publicly traded corporations as well as the tens of thousands of private corporations. Exxon-Mobil does not equal Apple Computer does not equal Haliburton does not equal Google does not equal General Electric does not equal Joe's Garage does not equal Little Critters pet shop. To advance the idea of a common corporate agenda is absurd but it has become a staple of American verbiage.
Retail and food service and entertainment industries might prefer a stupid work force and an idiotic consumer base but our high tech companies want neither. They openly complain about the decline of American education. Intel used to sponsor a tech contest for school kids (maybe they still do.) They had trouble getting Americans to enter the competition but Chinese students treated the event like a Justin Bieber show. They were all over it.
The enemies of capitalism have to advance an agenda of engineered stupidiy. Marxism and its offshoots are the worst social institutions to ever inflict humanity. They bring technological decline, poverty and even famine. But socialism is fluffy. Fluffy minds and fluffy people will never resist Socialism's unique charms.
Capitalism brings prosperity every place it practiced. I know of no exception to that rule. Society will prosper to the degree that it promotes capitalism. Impede capitalism and you impede prosperity and you promote poverty. But for all of its wonders, capitalism has one enormous limitation. Capitalism cannot render itself fluffy.
Capitalism is hopelessly abrasive. What fluffmeister of good standing would promote a system that guaranteed the existence of losers? How can one call oneself fluffy if outcomes are not predetermined? How can one be true to fluffy principles if uncool people can prosper through thirft and cunning and long hours at the job? Better that we all share in collective misery.
The Left needs to destroy inquiry to advance a fluffy agenda. Illiteracy is a good start but unfortunately for our social engineers, it is not enough. Economics, if it is taught at all, cannot be treated as a science. Verifiability is prohibited. Economic policies are mere preferences. Some people like Japanese food. Others prefer Mexican cuisine. Some people actually like the ideas of that haggard Ayn Rand while other folks are attracted to the ideas of that dashing, handsome and ever-stylish Che Guevara.
Between the engineering of illiteracy and the occlusion of economics, there is much more the fluffy have done to advance their agenda. Remember that old thesis/antithesis/synthesis thingy? Good thing you can remember it because it is a vanished species. The idea of logically promoting an idea based on empirical evidence--premise, fact, fact, fact, conclusion--has sadly fallen by the wayside. That brings us back to the occupants.
Rational discourse is not part of the standard educational regimen. It spawns conflict and conflict is a bummer. Better to feel our opinions than to discuss facts. Facts are a buzz kill.
We know the occupants are angry and their feelings are hurt. Vocal inflection and body language tell us much that apparently cannot be put into words. But what specifically bothers them and how specifically can their grievances be addressed? For better or worse, they probably won't be able to tell us.
Actually, the New Jersey slush pile is old news. There had been teacher uprisings all over the country that yielded similar results. Widespread literary deficiencies amongst public school teachers goes back at least to the 80's. By the time Chris Christie rolled around, this standing headline no longer had much shock value. We have accepted incremental ruin.
The occupants have been on the scene for over two weeks and we are still awaiting a coherent mission statement. I don't see one forthcoming. Society is in turmoil, perhaps even in ruin, because large numbers of people cannot articulate their opinions, their values and their objectives.
It is not coincidence the 2008 presidential election was won by a candidate
who was all style and no substance. It is no coincidence that the candidates' supporters were so vastly divided by demographics, specifically age demographics. The Obama Campaign did not articulate much of anything. They did not have to. They were all about iconography, photoshopped halos, Greek columns, empty slogans, teleprompters and celebrity endorsements. Facts are immaterial. Facts are boring. Hope and change.
I previously wrote of an Obama supporter with whom I conversed shortly before the 2008 general election. This guy was in his late twenties and was more or less a professional student. I thought the conversation was low key. In no way was I proselytizing. My point was that no one knew very much about Obama and no one seemed to care.
It did not matter what I said because this guy tuned me out right away. He ran off to his room and resurfaced wearing an Obama t-shirt. We are not in Kansas anymore. Arguably, we are not in America anymore.
There is a conspiracy of ignorance and I blame the American Left for the dummying down of America. Years ago, George Carlin did a bit about corporations advancing the cause of stupidity so that we would have ignorant consumers and a pool of workers who were content to perform mindless labor. Carlin could be funny even when you disagreed with him. There was seriousness behind Carlin's humor and while I enjoyed his performance I disagree with his premise.
We should always be wary of anyone who generalizes about the thousands of publicly traded corporations as well as the tens of thousands of private corporations. Exxon-Mobil does not equal Apple Computer does not equal Haliburton does not equal Google does not equal General Electric does not equal Joe's Garage does not equal Little Critters pet shop. To advance the idea of a common corporate agenda is absurd but it has become a staple of American verbiage.
Retail and food service and entertainment industries might prefer a stupid work force and an idiotic consumer base but our high tech companies want neither. They openly complain about the decline of American education. Intel used to sponsor a tech contest for school kids (maybe they still do.) They had trouble getting Americans to enter the competition but Chinese students treated the event like a Justin Bieber show. They were all over it.
The enemies of capitalism have to advance an agenda of engineered stupidiy. Marxism and its offshoots are the worst social institutions to ever inflict humanity. They bring technological decline, poverty and even famine. But socialism is fluffy. Fluffy minds and fluffy people will never resist Socialism's unique charms.
Capitalism brings prosperity every place it practiced. I know of no exception to that rule. Society will prosper to the degree that it promotes capitalism. Impede capitalism and you impede prosperity and you promote poverty. But for all of its wonders, capitalism has one enormous limitation. Capitalism cannot render itself fluffy.
Capitalism is hopelessly abrasive. What fluffmeister of good standing would promote a system that guaranteed the existence of losers? How can one call oneself fluffy if outcomes are not predetermined? How can one be true to fluffy principles if uncool people can prosper through thirft and cunning and long hours at the job? Better that we all share in collective misery.
The Left needs to destroy inquiry to advance a fluffy agenda. Illiteracy is a good start but unfortunately for our social engineers, it is not enough. Economics, if it is taught at all, cannot be treated as a science. Verifiability is prohibited. Economic policies are mere preferences. Some people like Japanese food. Others prefer Mexican cuisine. Some people actually like the ideas of that haggard Ayn Rand while other folks are attracted to the ideas of that dashing, handsome and ever-stylish Che Guevara.
Between the engineering of illiteracy and the occlusion of economics, there is much more the fluffy have done to advance their agenda. Remember that old thesis/antithesis/synthesis thingy? Good thing you can remember it because it is a vanished species. The idea of logically promoting an idea based on empirical evidence--premise, fact, fact, fact, conclusion--has sadly fallen by the wayside. That brings us back to the occupants.
Rational discourse is not part of the standard educational regimen. It spawns conflict and conflict is a bummer. Better to feel our opinions than to discuss facts. Facts are a buzz kill.
We know the occupants are angry and their feelings are hurt. Vocal inflection and body language tell us much that apparently cannot be put into words. But what specifically bothers them and how specifically can their grievances be addressed? For better or worse, they probably won't be able to tell us.
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