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Today the Republicans will get up for their first show.. I well remember the last one in 2012’s race, actually held in 2011. What a joke… As was mentioned on Allan Loudell’s noon hour show, the only thing anyone, even those of us who are political aficionado’s from any of those debates was then Governor Perry’s “oops” moment… 13 seconds out of 48 individual 2 hour debates…
89% of America can’t even remember the “oops” moment… So for the most part it is a waste of time…
However, listening for the party’s messaging makes it all worthwhile… If the message is consistent between all the debaters and if they quibble among themselves over only how much they are allowed to quibble, you get an idea down which track the election will run regardless of how wins the nomination….
My guess is they will be groveling to the one percent. Their problems will be rich people’s problems; their solutions will be rich people’s solutions… Make workers take less; make workers pay more for their benefits; increase competition among low rates and drive down wages; rule out unions so employees can be intimidated with firing if they request more money…
Sadly the same will hold true in the upcoming Democratic debates: groveling to the one percent. It’s required since the legality of Citizen’s United.
So unless something surprises us all, nothing will change; the one percent has everything sewed up… Just look at our problems where their is trouble… it’s the one percent creating the issue.
Anti- Global Warming… funded by the 1%
Anti-Planned Parenthood… funded by the 1%
Anti Tax…. funded by the 1%
Keystone II…. funded by the 1%.
TDC…… funded by the 1%
Common Core…. funded by the 1%
Smarter Balanced Assessment…. funded by the 1%
Charter Schools …. funded by the 1%
School Vouchers….. funded by the 1%
Blatant re segregation (Don’t want those blacks mixing with OUR kids) … funded by the 1%
Pro Israel lobby…. funded by the 1%
ISIS… funded by the 1%
Anti Iran…. funded by the 1%
50 Year Cuban Embargo… funded by the 1%
Priority Schools Closing…. funded by the 1%
SB 51…. funded by the 1%
HB 165… funded by the 1%
Rampant gun violence…. funded by the 1%
Shoot to kill laws… funded by the 1%
Police Brutality… funded by the 1%
Unarmed Black Men and Women Gunned Down… funded by the 1%
NRA… funded by the 1%
Abortion Repeal… funded by the 1%
Anti Obamacare movement… funded by the 1%
Global Depression of 2008… funded by the 1%
TPP…. funded by the 1%
Government Shutdowns…. funded by the 1%
Banghazi… funded by the 1%
Fake IRS Crises… funded by the 1%
Death to Women Movement… funde by the 1%….
If you haven’t figured out, just about every single one of your problems comes from the money being funded to change policy against what the majority wants. The 1% is to blame…
Trust no one richer than the 99% of the rest of us….
If you want politics to mirror your lives and not the 1%, you need to vote for candidates who appeal to the 99% and not those employed to funnel more of your money into the pockets of the 1%….
Vote for the poorest candidate…. whoever that may be….
This headline explains a lot.
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to Acquire Scholastic Ed-Tech Businesses for $575M
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So what does that mean.
- It means with consolidation that many (almost half) high paying jobs will be lost.
- It means that whereas two independent entities were previously competing on innovative educational techniques, now there will be only one, meaning less innovation.
- It means that $545 million (5 Delaware Race To The Top Grants) will not now be spent on education because it was just spent on this.
- And it means that from society’s overall point of view, that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was overpaid $575 million. We could have gotten our goods cheaper….
But whenever a larger company buys up a smaller company, all of society loses. Any efficiency you gain, is sucked up right out of daily economic activity. it goes straight into a vault of the profiteers, never to be used in active economic activity again. And educational companies like everything else have simply gotten too big….
You can regulate companies, but that is a nightmare of arguing and documentation… There is an easier way… Tax them Tax away the money they are wasting on petty purchases… Tax them fairly, and thoroughly. IF HMH’s money had been taxed fairly and thoroughly prior to this company’s purchase, or if much of that had been put toward research, capital investment, or raising employees salaries just to avoid taxes, all would be better off…
As it is now, there was no benefit to anyone other then those purchasing. If we were talking about quarters for gumball gum, we could probably live with it… But we are not… We are talking about 5 Delaware Race To The Top Grants, now completely wasted for 99.999999999% of the population…..
This big money is why you are never heard… If you want your country back, you have better vote on those who promise to raise tax rates on the top 1%…. In truth, we really don’t need more taxes. We need more real investment and every chart the US Treasury and Federal Reserve can procure, show that real investment was a lot higher when any money leftover was taxed before going to the shareholders. I hope you too can through this one example exactly how the Bush Tax Cuts have changed our country from the land of bustling opportunity we had up to 2000…. to today….
The object lesson is that we should have no deficit by always paying our bills and those with most of the money, should be the ones paying them….
Representative Jacques: French for “Joke”
If you live in anywhere on the western border in this state between the Canal and Pencader Industrial Park, you are part of the problem… YOU elected a real “doofus” for your representative…
One cannot blame the Markell administration for butting off John Kowalko and putting this doofus in his place on the House Education Committee… It makes perfect and very good sense to do so if you want to further an agenda that is extremely harmful to every single Delawarean man, woman, and child, and instead push through your agenda which will make you extremely wealthy….
Those putting Doofus in power were not dumb… Those electing Doofus may not of have been dumb originally… Granted they are a lot smarter now…
If you live under a stone, you are probably wondering…. Gee, why is the great honorable kavips calling out this fellow human being of his to be a doofus…..
The answer is this statement….
“That one little test” in reference to the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Here is his full statement…. “That one little test would not be a big deal added to what we would barely have. I think (the opt out bill) is just a quick reaction to an issue that really, we’re not sure there is an issue.” -Delaware State Rep. Earl Jaques
Now here is the killer…. His particular use of phrasing, “that one little test” belies his complete understanding of how dangerous and deadly this test is to young children… If he was truly ignorant as I pretended above, he would have called it out by name, as what every normal human being ever existing on this planet would have done. Something along these lines: “The Smarter Balanced Assessment” or “This new test” or “This test foisted upon us by RTTT and Rodel and my buddy, ole pal, Jack Markell and his deputy, Mark Murphy”…. well….. you get the idea….
But the very fact that he dimunized it with the words…. “That one little test”… shows he is all too aware of the damage it will cause ….
Therefore instead of being a doofus, someone like this….
We got someone who knows the harm he is doing and knows it very well… someone who also knows he has to lie through his teeth since what he is proposing is something so despicable that no one will ever let him accomplish what he wanted willingly. Therefore he has no choice but use deceit…. Someone like this….
At 20 million people, the above still stands as the most horrid of human beings… Today, there are up to 130,000 Delawarean children forced to take the Smarter Balanced Assessment who will lose their entire future if allowed to go forward. That is a fair start upon the 20 million figure.
What we have here is a conniving, hateful, horrid, insecure, manipulative, disgruntled, runt of a human being who was used by his manipulators to push forward “their” agenda. An agenda so horrid, so distasteful, so horrendous, even they could not, even in their bad manipulative conscious, undergo it themselves…. They needed a puppet, and that is what these voters in the 27th have given up….
It is they who need to jerk the rug from under this person’s feet… He is sending all children to purgatory, or hell depending upon your beliefs with this Smarter Balanced Assessment… And only his neighbors showing at his door (which btw is: 82 Cann Rd, Newark DE 19702) with shotguns, AR 47’s, rifles, pistols, crossbows, and Gatling guns, in order to persuade him the folly of his position, can stop this train from jumping off its tracks and blowing up every school in this state….
When you confront the demon, be polite…. assume he doesn’t know…. Treat him as a Goober, and not a pathological Stalin…. You know the truth, he knows the truth, and if the Smarter Balanced Assessment is derailed as every Delawarean parent who has taken the test well knows and certainly wishes, we can move on. But do show up with guns. 🙂 (It is why we all protect the 2nd Amendment so arduously, is it not?)
Now that we’ve started growing our economy, it has become a persistent theme… “We need money for this”; “we need money for that”; “we need money for both and for other things too”. “We need money”, pure and simple.. Am I not right? Pick up any paper. Listen to any radio newscast; read any internet news source…. (did you notice I completely ignored television entirely? You should ignore them too if you don’t already ).
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but (and this is a theoretical question…): when you want something that you don’t have….a) do you go asking for it among people who don’t have any themselves, or b) among people who have lots of it to spare?
Hmmm. I wonder…. (finger on chin; one eye looking at the sky) Should I ask those who have, … or those who don’t have….
Which makes Markell’s asking our Seniors to forgo their credit on school taxes allegedly to balance the budget, nonsensical.. Especially when the top 1% of Delawareans by simply adding a few lines to the tax code. can cough up $70 million a year… (enough to roughly fund 3 years of casino shortfalls) and not experience any loss of spendable cash,
So why would someone ignore those who COULD give, and threaten those who have NOTHING to give? There are probably many reasons, but none meet the level of good straight forward reasoning… For if you truly want something, asking someone who doesn’t have it is absolutely pointless….
What Seniors don’t have, the 1% does have; (that is why they are in the one percent.)
So, being theoretical again, wouldn’t it make great sense to turn the tables on Markell and actually go forward and spitefully raise the taxes on HIS friends, those in the top one percent, oh… let us say…. about the same percent that his tax hike would have hit Seniors pinching pennies on limited incomes… to around the percentage of a 100% increase….
So it would come out that on incomes over let us say, $100 million dollars, instead of the 6% they are currently assessed, (the exact same percent as someone earning $60,000) we would hit them with a 100% increase (another 6%) and bump that owed amount to 12%… We could then graduate the layers from 6% to 9% over a range of income levels.. and except for the rates on the top echelons, the percentages would still be lower than neighboring New Jersey.
This gives us $70 million in new revenue. Each and every year… We can even blow it on the casino’s if we want….
We need the General Assembly to respond to Markell’s challenge with a tax increase of this nature. Now, the point is really not so much of whether it passes or not.. But the point is that by having a progressive coalition sponsor and at the very least, put it on the floor, (especially those who hail from districts where doing such would make them a cult hero for life, and cost them zero switched votes since no millionaire would ever vote for them anyway), it becomes a bone of contention, and a topic of conversation in letters-to-the-editor pages across this state; on Al Mascitti and Rick Jensen; on WDDE and other WGMD down south, and gets talked about on both sides…
Because there is a funny thing that always happens when good ideas get talked about in the open, and one can hear both sides. They start to get followers. And as more and more followers pile on, as more and more support for this bill becomes apparent.. as more people start supporting what appears to be a very common sensical means of pulling our society back together, of fixing the broken door jambs that have been stepped over too long, of repairing leaking cracks too long ignored across our aged infrastructure (in both physical and human capital), then Jack will rue the day he ever threatened Senior with tax hikes they could never pay…. while ignoring those who can easily pay 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 times the amounts we will be asking of them.
And the idea that we have to cut back now on very essential stuff in what is now a richly growing economy, all because we don’t have money when it is there, right in front of us, dangling for us to take it: is plain stupid. Really… Would YOU not cash in a winning Powerball ticket because you didn’t want Powerball LLC. to lose any money over you? Somethings are smart. Some things are really dumb… Not cashing in a winning Powerball, or not raising the tax rates on the top one percent, are both…. about as equally dumb.
The point of placing this bill on the table, is that if we generate significant conversation and make a run at passing a 12% top state tax rate, or even just get that conversation out there, and get 500,000 Delawarean voter’s hopes up that yes, this legislature might finally do something responsible, and still fail by being one or two votes short… the very fact we did so helps it become far easier to have the General Assembly slip in and vote on the last day of session, a bill that raises the wealthy’s rates by 1%, or 2%, or 3%, or 4%…. And that, would be a godsend to Seniors…..
Society across the board has simply outgrown all this “cut taxes to grow” hype. We tried it; it failed; now we remember the good years back when taxes were a tiny bit higher and we were all, everyone of us, far much happier, far better off, and all of us facing what looked to be a very, very bright future. …
Last Monday, i bought gas for $1.85… Today, that same place sold it to me at $2.15….. Holy Crappo!… I’m paying 20 cents more for gas than I did a week ago….
People were still driving.
No one was declaring bankruptcy.
No one lost their home.
No one took public transportation.
All the doomsday scenarios put forth by Ms. Longhurst when she adamantly refused to put a bill on the floor that would save Delawareans $1000 a year in wear in tear on each of their vehicles by keeping our roads free of potholes for just half, half, half, only half of what just occurred at the pump in Delaware last week…
For just half of that jump that didn’t end the world. Delawareans could be fixing roads. putting people to work, and saving big, big bucks by years end off of the non-existent wear and tear of their car… And still be saving $1.50 per gallon over what was being paid less than 6 months ago….
So instead of fixing our roads and saving $1.50 per gallon, we are paying the exact same amount we would have anyways, with oil companies keeping that ten cents instead of it going our highway system…
Sometimes people do stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid things… And when they do, they should get called out on it (ideally it keeps others from doing the same stupid thing next time)…. And not passing a measly 10 cent gas tax last session was as stupid as stupid comes….
Can we get it done now, please? Or is the world going to end tomorrow?
Stealing this from Steve Newton’s Whiskey. because a) it will be awesome, and b) it drives the message better than 5 of my paragraphs every could…
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“In Delaware, folks we have exactly the government we deserve and that the corporations paid for:
–An Insurance Commissioner gouging customers as a proxy for corporate interests …
–A Secretary of Education destroying our schools for corporate interests …
–DNREC committed to the continued gutting of the Coastal Zone Act for corporate interests …
–A Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety that spies on law-abiding citizens and shares the information with corporate interests …
If you’re beginning to see a pattern here, you’re correct.”
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Point Steve made whether he intended or not is that we don’t have a series of battles spread widely across the fields of opportunity. We have one enemy… And if both Delaware and America are ever to again have a hopeful future, it is this enemy we must capture, try, and hang… or behead… or open an airlock door into space…
Now if we can all unite against this enemy we can beat him… We did before, during the Great Depression. Basically we have to minimize the power this enemy has, and bring things back into balance… a balance that for the most part propels forward policies that benefit We, The People, our government, and our local business interests. ..
Here is all we have to do…
Raise taxes on the wealthy.
- 90% tax rate on incomes (both personal and corporate) over 400 billion.
- 80% tax rate on incomes (both) between 100 – 400 billion.
- 70% tax rate on incomes (both) between 50 – 100 billion.
- 60% tax rate on incomes (both) between 25 – 50 billion.
Stop there. The lower echelons are taxed adequately… Notice I said “billions”… What we attempt to do is penalize the accumulation of wealth in very few hands, and encourage the idea of paying less taxes by spreading money around… .. And even if no one ever pays that much in tax because they choose not to make that much money by spending as much as they earn… Everyone still wins. … …
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Secondly. Minimize the impact big money has on politicians… That can be done by returning America to the age-old notion that we force there to always be ties between money dumped and real human beings… If you want to give $100 million dollars to a candidate, you had better find 100,000 people who will donate it for you…. If you can’t, then probably the influence you are trying to impose, is not in the best interest of this nation….
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Third. Make it manditorily clear that anyone can form a union. That punishing anyone for union activity can result in fines and payments 5 times over what that individual would have made if they’d continued working.. Now bosses need to again make sure that their employees are happier without a union, than they would be if they had one. If they can’t do that simple thing, then a union most likely should have already been in place for decades….
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There are more, But none of them matter if the first and second issue are not addressed… Even the third is not critical.. But I want you, for just one moment, stop and imagine how nicer things would be if you were just making $10,000 more than you would be every single year of the rest of your working life.
Do steps one and two and it happens almost immediately. Now imagine how great a country this would be if everyone, everywhere was making $10,000 per year… This needs to be to where we steer…
Privatizing Schools. Gouging Health Insurance. Destroying the Environment. Increasing Domestic Spying. are like a cough, sneeze, runny nose, and scratchy throat… WE need an antibiotic to wipe out the sinus infection. Not cough drops, Nettie pots, Vapo-Rub, or walking around with a tissue stuffed up our nose.
There is one enemy… All parties must join and focus their death rays upon it…..
Came across an amazing chart from the Paris School of Economic’s database. It allows you to customize your search for any time or place over the world.
My area of expertise is within the US and here is what I wanted to see: the percentage of national income earned by the top 0.01%…. not just the top 1%, but the top-tip 0.01%.
This shows the past 100 years of national income percentage earned by the top 0.01%. There are some very striking facts noticed by those looking at this data for the first time.
1) The year 2012 was one of the record highest, beaten only by two years during WWI when the rest of the world was embroiled in war, and our top echelon were selling to both sides…. If one extracts that exception, then in 2012 we gave the top 0.01% (one hundredth of one percent) more of our national income than at any time previously recorded.
2) The Great Depression did little to affect the income percentages (1928-1932); Roosevelt however (1933-onward), did a lot.
3) During America’s most prosperous times ever, after WWII made us the sole global economy, the incomes of the top 0.01% stayed under 1% of national income across the next 43 years. (1943-1986)
4) The Reagan Tax Cut of 1986 caused a doubling of the top 1%’s income in just 2 years. from 1% in 1986 to 1.99% in 1988.
5) The percentage again dropped under 2% after Clinton’s tax hike in 1992 causing a robust expansion, but passed that 2% mark in 1997 never to return.
6) During the “w” Bush years, the percentage continuously climbed peaking in 2007 and would have peaked higher in 2008 but the recession clipped the last two months off that year. Despite that, 2008 was the 2nd highest grossing percentage up to that time (discounting the WWI anomaly) across almost 100 years of data.
7) The Great Recession (2008-9) as did the Great Depression (1929-32), had little effect on the top 0.01% percentage of national income. At no point did their yearly take dip below 3%, a mark first crossed in 2005 (if one continues disregarding the anomaly of the First World War).
8) The rebound ability of an economy at large is hampered when more money collects at the top and is not returned as investment to the bottom. Though small in percentage points, those difference of those 3 percentage points ( from under 1.0 to 4.0) translates to $500 billion that did not impact our economy because it went to less than 31,000 Americans. Considering our TARP was passed only for $800 billion, we only saw $300 billion net running through our economy. because $500 billion of the $800 billion was handed over to less than 31,000 people then quickly whisked away to foreign bank accounts beyond the reach of the IRS.
9) Although difficult to state through all the multiple influences that impact economies daily, the extensive overview shown by this chart makes it clear that were we to have another great recession, we should first use the incomes of our top 0.01% to first rebuild our national economy as did Roosevelt, and not assume that those wealthy will do so voluntarily as did our creators and negotiators behind this current rebound.
10) Data from 2013 will be most interesting. The Bush Tax Cuts for the top 0.05% were rescinded that year, and at that point, our economy took off ( at least when Republicans weren’t threatening to shut it all down). If it does indeed show a drop in the top 1%’s income, then we will know that in order to have robust recoveries, those at the top need to be taxed more, not less.
As for politics, this needs to be taken to heart. Anyone who argues for less taxes on the top 1%, be they Democrat or Republican, needs to be shown the door…. We now have sufficient data to know with certainty, and from it, we can see all evidence points that higher marginal tax rates do benefit the middle class and subsequently the economy at large…..
This historical chart rings that out, clear as a bell at the end of a day’s trading…..
Recently a study showing the damage the Bush Tax cuts did, emerged… It was offered to all major publications who refused to publish it. Hence is emerged through what has become one of the best news sources in America today… Al Jeezerah…
The author won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001… David Cay Johnston
The Bush tax cuts, touted as a harbinger of prosperity by the Republican Party, actually robbed each American taxpayer of $48,000 in pre-tax personal income during the twelve years of their existence, for a total of approximately $6.6 trillion dollars.
In other words, you do not have $48,000 you should have had… because of that party that does nothing… How much of a difference could that $48,000 have made to you? It would have been there too, but… sigh, well, you know, you can’t go back in time and give Al Gore the presidency….
“it would have been enough to pay off all the student loans in United States ($1.26 trillion), all the automobile loans ($892 billion) and all the credit card debt ($827 billion),” he noted. “After paying all that debt off and taking taxes into account, Americans still would have more than $2.4 trillion left in their pockets and bank accounts.” Per filer, that $2.4 trillion left would be a cool $17,454 dollars…!
What you CAN do is understand that as long as Republicans have enough people to block legislation anywhere, state, local, national, from changing this… It will continue. Republicans still, at this late date, only care about the top 1%…..(For example after fighting tooth and nail to keep $10 billion that was paid for from being used on our broken down bridges, the Republican House flipped and just passed a bill to add $267 billion dollars to the national debt in the form of a tax cut for the top 0.01% of taxpayers…. ) A $267 billion dollar tax cut for the elite of the top 1%, charged directly to the debt… Meaning your children for years will be paying back this debt for no other reason than make them even richer than they are now… But we can’t have our $10 billion to fix America’s worst bridges because that is too much debt…
These same people, Who, btw… received one whole third of all the accumulative wage increases from 2001 to 2012… a total of under 16,000 households…. roughly 16 city blocks in one city, somewhere in the entire expanse of America….
The rich got richer; the poor get poorer, and the Republicans get kookier…. So are you going to do something about it?
You can. Let everyone know you aren’t voting for anyone who still says we need to cut taxes… because it is your money they are taking.
Oh, can I borrow some of the $48,000, please?
What? You don’t have it?
The predominant face of the poor is white.
Economic insecurity among whites is said to be more common than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing over 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60..
Economic insecurity approaching 76%….. How does this end the middle class designation?
Let us review what is the middle class. It is the class in the middle… Start and stop points and change depending on who want to show what, but for the most part, the middle class would have a center point around the 50% margin… Hence: middle class….
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
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Sort of what you’d expect… the area above the poverty line and just below the rich……But based on current data now released from the Census Bureau, (and this is no secret to people in public schools) over 80% of America has been at or below poverty levels in its lifetime… It really doesn’t matter when. You could be financially stable through your whole life and then get termed at age 60. The effect is the same. You could face 50% age group unemployment right out of college and use odd jobs and part time jobs to stay alive. The effect is the same. The mark today is that 80% face economic insecurity. Can we just call that poor? Isn’t that the definition of poor? Someone who doesn’t have enough to be secure in today’s society?
Therefore if we take the middle of those from where the poor end at 80%, then we get a middle class graphic looking like this:
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% XXX
This is the official version of today’s America rendered by the US Census bureau…. Times have changed…
Compare that to where it was under Bill Clinton in 1999 before Republicans took over….
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
No offense to my Republican friends but this (which sad to say is exactly what I predicted in 2000), is what you get when you don’t tax progressively. We now have only 2 classes; The 1% and the 99%.
The fix? Is to tax the top 1% who can well afford even a purely theoretical 100% taxation without hardship, and use that money for jobs…. Just jobs. More government contracts. This is America’s quick answer… and it must be decided in this election 2014 that we will take it. Against all odds, we need both chambers in Democrats’ hands., not for Democrats, but for America. It’s the only way is to defeat Republicanism… We are not talking individual candidates. We are talking about a philosophy that stresses the lazy poor 80% must continue to suffer even more to pay for the one percent’s excesses, and not as it should be, … the other way around…
Take two examples….
Dr. Ringo and John Beatle are a dual income family well on their way to securing the American dream… Ringo graduated in 2008 and John graduated in 2009. They were married in 2011 and currently share a modest apartment. Ringo earns $79,000 as an new doctor in the Christina Health Center, and John went in to partner with an older doctor up near Naamans Road in Brandywine Hundred. He lists his income bertween 80 and 100 thousand, and we’ll average it out as $90,000 per year… Together their gross income this past year lines up at $169,000. Their net, after taxes averages $109,000 per year or $9,000 per month… not a shabby income.
But they pay loans.
John’s educational loan payment is $1340 per month, and Ringo’s is $960 each of the 12 months… Together they each write out checks $2300 per month… Their leftover income lies around $6400 per month…. Two cars take out $1,000, their city view apartment takes $1300. their utilities $500. Insurance $300, What’s left? $3,300 per month… That alone equals a family income close to $40,000 per year… still not shabby.. so what’s the point?
Now take Mick and Keith Stone, a married couple from moneyed families. They went though college and law school on parent’s money. No bills… Mick or Mickie as she is commonly called, works at Morris and James up on the 16th floor of the WSFS building in international investment law. She makes between $80 and $100 K per year. and so we will round that to $90,000… Her husband Keith, is an district attorney in Wilmington. He makes $79,000 per year. Together their income is $169, 000 and after tax their net is $109,000…. They have almost the same mandatory expenses as the Beatle family and after similar expenses, they have $5,600 per month…
The barristers Stones put $2,300 down each month into savings to buy a new house…. Over two years, they already have $55,200 saved up, and next year they seriously plan to house shop with a down payment of $82,800… So what’s the point?
This battle of elites illustrates one thing; how our economy is not living to its full potential due to massive amounts of college loan debt. These examples too rich for your blood? Then drop the incomes down to the levels of the average professional; cut each person by $40,000 or $3333 per months… The first couple is flat broke. The second couple still has $2200 left over to live on per month, but not enough to put into savings. Their checking account rises and falls with spontaneous purchases.
Here is the real problem: Track it over the 30 years length of the loans…. The Beatles have after 30 years, nothing. The Stones after 30 years, have extra wealth strictly left over from salary, of $828,000 assuming they put it in a mattress. More likely it has grown by 7% per year… or $2.7 million…
College loans aggravate the inequality gap. the only way to get rich in America is to come from rich parents… With everything exactly the same except for the payment of college loans, one couple has $2.7 million after 30 years… The other still living month to month… if one starts his professional career at age 25… one’s loan at 30 years termed, end when he is 55… Too late to start saving for retirement…
The fix….
Here are the ways to close the inequality gap.
- Forgive the loans
- Forgive the interest
- Tax the wealth
Options one and two are out. Remember that most pension plans (some are still left) insurance funds, and stock options are in the entities holding these loans.
Option 3, .. if that money was taxed on the last couple (The Stones)) but not on the first (The Beatles) then, over a period of time, there would be equality when the loan payments finally ended… One would not have an unfair advantage over the other.
Multiply this across the entire spectrum of students holding $1`trillion dollar in debt… a debt now too big to fail, and you get the picture of how our economy was mortgaged out to big banks long before young people could even afford traditional mortgages…
If we simply taxed the second couple an additional $2300 sort of as an equivalent of the loan payment they currently didn’t have to make, then playing field would even out. Only then, could the hope and promise of America then return. .
(Keep in mind these examples were from America’s best occupations. College loans currently keep large numbers of working Americans still below poverty levels..)
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kavips 