Chicago’s Mayor Rham Emmanuel wants to require city high school students to submit a plan for future life backed by official documents (like college acceptance or promise for a job) — or they cannot graduate!
Given that 100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 Chicago minority, gang-age males are in street gangs — because they wont commit to a long life of $10 an hour wage slavery in an economy where the same jobs could pay $20-$25 an hour — but where there is no hope of wage betterment without a restoration of healthy union density that is nowhere in sight …
Thought just occurring to me:
If the bottom 45% of earners now take 10% of overall income instead of 20% like in 1968 — and — that is half of twice as much overall income, then, the bottom 45% are right back where they started from in absolute terms (on average of course: less at the bottom/more at the top).
If the next 54% up now take the same 70% of overall income as they did 50 years ago — but– that is of double the overall income, then, they have twice what they started with in absolute terms (on average of course: less at the bottom/more at the top).
If collective bargaining by the 45% can raise prices on the 54% so they give up 10% of overall share — which means losing 14% of their share — they will still end up with 172% of what they started with in 1968 in absolute terms.
To get that absolute 28% back from the top 1% …
… who now take 20% of overall income instead of 10% like before — which means double the share of doubling per capita income — which means 400% of what the top 1% took in 1968 in absolute terms (on average of course: less at the bottom/more at the top) …
the 54% cannot do so by raising the price of burgers. More direct means will be necessary — more like the tax ax — like the death tax to use one currently operating example.
When I was a kid in the 50s, the top federal income tax rate was (theoretically at least) 92% on incomes over one million dollars (today’s money — close enough I think). The president of the United States was a five star general Republican who was not in too huge a hurry to do anything about American Apartheid. IOW, should be nothing too alien (if that scares) about confiscatory taxes in today’s culture.
CEOs and quarterbacks now take home 10X more than is needed to get them to show up and work productively. When enough union density is built up tax axing this should not be a problem. In the 60s the top paid NFLer Joe Namath made $600,000 in today’s money. Double that for doubled productivity (or what have you) and you still get only one-tenth of what Chicago Bears’ Jay Cutler gets.
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[cut-and-paste]
Not to mention other ways — multiple efficiencies — to get multiple-10%s back:
squeezing out financialization;
sniffing out things like for-profit edus (unions providing the personnel quantity necessary to keep up with society’s many schemers;
snuffing out $100,000 Hep C treatments that cost $150 to make (unions supplying the necessary volume of lobbying and political financing;
less (mostly gone) poverty = mostly gone crime and its criminal justice expenses.
IOW, labor unions = a normal country.
PS. I’m quite sure that the mayor’s idea qualifies as a clear Fourth Amendment privacy violation: government insisting on knowing your personal plans (documented — not just some high school essay) or suffer severe penalty.
Coberly, there is one line I find hard to swallow in The Empire of the Fund, “IRA contributions are restricted largely to after-tax earnings.” (Chapter 10, under the heading Individual Retirement Accounts. I don’t have a page number, since I got the Kindle version.)
The run-of-the-mill IRA contribution is tax-deductible, while the Roth IRA contributions are not. So I find his statement quite unexpected.
One definite error in that section is his assertion that, at the current max contribution, an employee will contribute $720,000 over 40 years, then he applies 2.5% inflation to the resulting savings. Maximum contributions are themselves subject to inflation, and there is a catch-up over the age of 50, which he does not consider and which is also subject to inflation.
Assuming those years are ages 22 through 62, the earliest one can take Social Security, then 12 years are spent with catch-up contributions in effect. That makes the total contributions $1.33M, not $720k.
(It’s still a bad idea to leave all your contributions in cash equivalents, which is his point, but still….)
i don’t see angry bear every day. i would be glad to read and think about your comments on Funds if you want to write directly to me at peak.
that’s an org.
thing is you know more about funds than i do and i am trying to learn.
so far nothing has changed my mind about the need for ss, and the fact that an extra dollar per week per worker per year over the next 20 years can make it work forever at a cost no one would even notice and by far most people would need more than they think they will.
re IRA’s etc. I don’t have the book in front of me, and i know nothing about IRA’s. but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was in error. i thought i saw a few mistakes (based on what i think i know) but mistakes are common and usually not material so i often don’t take the time to study them unless i need to. but i will be very glad to learn from you.
re maximum contribution… same answer from me. but again, i need to study this and am glad to have these things pointed out. i’ll get the book out again and try to read closer.
Coberly — “Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs”!! Love it!!
Chicago’s Mayor Rham Emmanuel wants to require city high school students to submit a plan for future life backed by official documents (like college acceptance or promise for a job) — or they cannot graduate!
Given that 100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 Chicago minority, gang-age males are in street gangs — because they wont commit to a long life of $10 an hour wage slavery in an economy where the same jobs could pay $20-$25 an hour — but where there is no hope of wage betterment without a restoration of healthy union density that is nowhere in sight …
… I’d like to ask the mayor if under these dire labor market conditions, would street gang affiliation qualify? :-O
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
TO RESTORE US LABOR MARKET TO HEALTH:
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2017/04/neither-rust-belt-americans-nor-chicago.html
* * * * * *
Thought just occurring to me:
If the bottom 45% of earners now take 10% of overall income instead of 20% like in 1968 — and — that is half of twice as much overall income, then, the bottom 45% are right back where they started from in absolute terms (on average of course: less at the bottom/more at the top).
If the next 54% up now take the same 70% of overall income as they did 50 years ago — but– that is of double the overall income, then, they have twice what they started with in absolute terms (on average of course: less at the bottom/more at the top).
If collective bargaining by the 45% can raise prices on the 54% so they give up 10% of overall share — which means losing 14% of their share — they will still end up with 172% of what they started with in 1968 in absolute terms.
To get that absolute 28% back from the top 1% …
… who now take 20% of overall income instead of 10% like before — which means double the share of doubling per capita income — which means 400% of what the top 1% took in 1968 in absolute terms (on average of course: less at the bottom/more at the top) …
the 54% cannot do so by raising the price of burgers. More direct means will be necessary — more like the tax ax — like the death tax to use one currently operating example.
When I was a kid in the 50s, the top federal income tax rate was (theoretically at least) 92% on incomes over one million dollars (today’s money — close enough I think). The president of the United States was a five star general Republican who was not in too huge a hurry to do anything about American Apartheid. IOW, should be nothing too alien (if that scares) about confiscatory taxes in today’s culture.
CEOs and quarterbacks now take home 10X more than is needed to get them to show up and work productively. When enough union density is built up tax axing this should not be a problem. In the 60s the top paid NFLer Joe Namath made $600,000 in today’s money. Double that for doubled productivity (or what have you) and you still get only one-tenth of what Chicago Bears’ Jay Cutler gets.
* * * * * *
[cut-and-paste]
Not to mention other ways — multiple efficiencies — to get multiple-10%s back:
squeezing out financialization;
sniffing out things like for-profit edus (unions providing the personnel quantity necessary to keep up with society’s many schemers;
snuffing out $100,000 Hep C treatments that cost $150 to make (unions supplying the necessary volume of lobbying and political financing;
less (mostly gone) poverty = mostly gone crime and its criminal justice expenses.
IOW, labor unions = a normal country.
PS. I’m quite sure that the mayor’s idea qualifies as a clear Fourth Amendment privacy violation: government insisting on knowing your personal plans (documented — not just some high school essay) or suffer severe penalty.
Coberly, there is one line I find hard to swallow in The Empire of the Fund, “IRA contributions are restricted largely to after-tax earnings.” (Chapter 10, under the heading Individual Retirement Accounts. I don’t have a page number, since I got the Kindle version.)
The run-of-the-mill IRA contribution is tax-deductible, while the Roth IRA contributions are not. So I find his statement quite unexpected.
One definite error in that section is his assertion that, at the current max contribution, an employee will contribute $720,000 over 40 years, then he applies 2.5% inflation to the resulting savings. Maximum contributions are themselves subject to inflation, and there is a catch-up over the age of 50, which he does not consider and which is also subject to inflation.
Assuming those years are ages 22 through 62, the earliest one can take Social Security, then 12 years are spent with catch-up contributions in effect. That makes the total contributions $1.33M, not $720k.
(It’s still a bad idea to leave all your contributions in cash equivalents, which is his point, but still….)
Thanks, Coberly. Good book.
warren
i don’t see angry bear every day. i would be glad to read and think about your comments on Funds if you want to write directly to me at peak.
that’s an org.
thing is you know more about funds than i do and i am trying to learn.
so far nothing has changed my mind about the need for ss, and the fact that an extra dollar per week per worker per year over the next 20 years can make it work forever at a cost no one would even notice and by far most people would need more than they think they will.
warren
if you love chocolate frosted sugar bombs you will like Calvin and Hobbes. I recommend “Scientific Progress Goes ‘Boink'” to start with.
Warren
re IRA’s etc. I don’t have the book in front of me, and i know nothing about IRA’s. but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was in error. i thought i saw a few mistakes (based on what i think i know) but mistakes are common and usually not material so i often don’t take the time to study them unless i need to. but i will be very glad to learn from you.
re maximum contribution… same answer from me. but again, i need to study this and am glad to have these things pointed out. i’ll get the book out again and try to read closer.