1. Most of the disparity of income in the US consists of people at different stages of their lives. The top and bottom income brackets are discussed as if they are different people, which is sometimes just a propaganda trick. 56% of all American households will be in the top 10% income bracket at some point in their lives - usually when they are older. The majority of people in the top 1% are only their for 1 year or less. Only 13% are there 2 years. 2. Per capita GDP of China is less than 1/4 than Japan. The Zaire river in Africa falls more than 1000 feet over 150 miles with 30 waterfalls. The Mississippi falls at a steady rate of 4 inches per mile. They are not the same river in terms of transporting goods back and forth. One river opens up an entire continent, and the other does no good for trade. 90% of all tornados occur in the U.S. Most of the geysers in the world exist in Yellowstone National Park. You dont have to look for a bogey man to explain why everyones not making the same amount of money. 3. Imperfections in the marketplace have lead many to believe that government interventions are necessary and beneficial. But no one weighs the imperfections of the marketplace against the imperfections of the government. When Babe Ruth struck out, they didnt send in a pinch hitter for his next at bat. 4. Dodd-Franks full title is: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end too big to fail, to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes. 5. Dodd and Frank were the 2 men who did the MOST to bring on the collapse in Housing from which this economy has still not recovered. The government never has to learn from its mistakes. The government forced private lenders to underwrite risky loans before the collapse - under threat of prosecution by Janet Reno, and now they enact this reform to penalize banks from taking on too much risk. The only difference is that there are regulators deciding what the risks actually are; the same regulators that failed to properly rate the securities in the first place. 6. The government is currently proposing support of a program to back home loans with only 3% down. Why dont they learn? They do learn. They learn that they gain the political benefits of doing something like that only after they have taken free open market choices away. When it blows up in their face - they can blame someone else, come back later and fix it for more political benefits. 7. Obamacare is just a con-game. At a sufficiently high deductible - I would be willing to set up an insurance company and insure you for $10 per month for everything imaginable. With a $1 million deductible, after youve had every illness imaginable and are $900,000 out, I still will not have laid out a penny. 8. By keeping insurance rates low, the federal reserve is depriving an entire generation of an incentive to save money at a decent rate of return. If a person is willing to pay 5% on a loan to start a business, and the government policy is that the rate should be 0%, then the investments will NOT go where they would have ordinarily gone in a free market. 9. Legislation was enacted to make the federal reserve responsible for acting to bring down the unemployment rate. The only mechanism they have is to keep interest rates at or near 0%. This kind of intervention is proven not to work if you just look at history. 10. When people say, The government has to do something! I say, Have you ever studied what happens when the government does something, compared to when the government doesnt do something? For 150 years, the government did NOTHING when there was a depression. No depression for 150 years was nearly as bad as the depression of the 1930s when the government did more than it had ever done before. In October 1929, stocks crashed. 2 months later, unemployment peaked at 9%, AND THEN IT STARTED DECLINING. By June 1930, it was down to 6.3% and then government intervention took place. It was in double digits 6 months later and stayed there for an entire decade. 11. When Warren Harding took office in 1921, unemployment was 12%. Harding did NOTHING but cut back spending to reflect less tax revenue. In 1922, the unemployment rate was 6%. The year after that it was at 4%.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 01:38:09 +0000