Thursday, October 28, 2010

Quietly, Arizona Goes Through with Sale of Capitol

There was a lot of joking about this last year, because the Daily Show featured the idea as kooky.  But after the hype, one was left with the impression that the state wasn't actually going to go ahead with it.

A year later, one wonders.  Did they?  I hadn't heard anything in the news about it.  Well, that's because there wasn't any mention.  The Arizona Republic didn't mention the sale until 6 months after Brewer's office put out a press release on the sale on January 14, 2010.

January 14, 2010: http://www.azdoa.gov/news/011410release.pdf
June 11, 2010:  State-building sales net $300 mil for Arizona budget

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Workers Don't Have the Right Skills? That's BS

Read Krugman's "Workers Don't Have the Right Skills? That's BS"
"Structural” unemployment is a fake problem, which mainly serves as an excuse for not pursuing real solutions.

Tea Party Hates So Much They Don't Know When They've Been Given What They Want

They say "love is blind", but so is anger:

"My taxes have gone up!"  No, they've gone down.

The Obama stimulus bill cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, but few voters noticed, a troubling sign for Democrats.

Income Distribution 1979-2006



Working Group on Extreme Inequality » How Unequal Are We?

"· Percentage of U.S. total income in 1976 that went to the top 1% of American households: 8.9. · Percentage in 2007: 23.5. · Only other year since 1913 that the top 1 percent’s share was that high: 1928. · Combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007: $1.5 trillion. · Combined n...
    The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007.    "

Republicans Survival of the Fittest Law of Civilization Tea Party

Ayn Rand Conservatism at Work -- Firefighters Let Family's House Burn Down Because Owner Didn't Pay.

"Talk of limited government is appealing until you see what it actually means in practice: a society in which it's every man for himself."

Businessman tells it like it is, but Republicans are deaf

Let's be real folks..marginal tax cuts don't motivate

"I'm a venture capitalist and an entrepreneur. Over the past three decades, I've made both good and bad investments. I've created successful companies and ones that didn't do so well. Overall, I'm..."

Competition Among States: Race to the Bottom

Attention Arizona voters:

Cutting State Corporate Income Taxes Is Unlikely to Create Many Jobs

"Corporate income taxes are important sources of revenue that states use to fund public services, including services essential to long-term economic growth like education, infrastructure, health care, and public safety.
Nonetheless, a number of 2010 [ Republican ] gubernatorial candidates have made corporate tax cuts key planks of their campaign platforms. This continues a trend of the past couple of years, during which policymakers in several states have proposed cutting corporate income tax rates — or even eliminating the tax completely — as a strategy for stimulating economic growth and creating jobs. These proposals, however, offer false hope. Corporate income tax cuts are unlikely to have a positive impact on a state’s rate of economic growth or the pace at which it generates private-sector jobs. "

Creative Destruction not so creative

"This is important because Economists habitually downplay the difficulty of finding a new job, choosing to see shakeups as good for the economy and in the long run, for the employee, who'll no doubt just learn new skills in order to better compete in the new economy. Such consideration flies in the face of reality, as the IMF report shows. Of course, the IMF is a well-known Marxist organization, so I guess you have to take it with a grain of salt.    "  - Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein - Two graphs that should really scare us

Moody's, yes, the Wall Street friendly Moody's, says Republican Platform a Joke

Rich Americans Save Tax Cuts Instead of Spending, Moody's Says

"Give the wealthiest Americans a tax cut and history suggests they will save the money rather than spend it.
Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody’s Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell.

The findings may weaken arguments by Republicans..."

Unemployment: Boeing Lays Off Only Guy Who Knows How To Keep Wings On Plane

 A sign of the future that awaits us. The Onion has foretold actual business decisions before (witness the 4 bladed razor).    
CHICAGO—With the airline industry continuing to suffer under the ongoing recession, the Boeing Company was forced Monday to lay off Al Freedman, the only guy left at the corporation who knows how to keep wings from falling off planes.
   

Reich: The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits From Jobs

As I've noticed for a long time, corporations no longer are focusing on U.S. consumers as their primary target.  Not to sound provincial and xenophobic, but I think the signs were there when instructions for products not only started showing up in a gazillion languages, but English wasn't even prominent....you had to dig through to find it.  I'm not really whining about that (well, maybe I am), I'm just saying it was a SIGN.

From July 26, 2010:
"Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they're making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost.
So with all this money and profit, they'll start hiring again, right? Wrong - for three reasons.
First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that's where they're investing and expanding production."
the rest at HuffPost