Supply side economics and the one per cent.

The Gross National income of the US in 2014 is $17,601,119,000,000.

The gross national income (GNI) is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product (GDP) plus factor incomes earned by foreign residents, minus income earned in the domestic economy by nonresidents. (Wikipedia).

One does not have to a brain surgeon like Ben Carson to understand why supply side economics will never work in the United States. The top quintile or 20 per cent of Americans now earn half the income. The the top one per cent rake in 23 per cent of the GNI.

Admittedly the affluent live in better home and drive better cars, travel more and take international vacations, but most of their income is surplus. Indeed, the affluent can take some of this surplus income and convert it to capital by buying stock, bonds and mutual funds. However, the top 10 per cent of Americans own more than 80 per cent of this market already. The top one per cent own more than 38 per cent of he stock and bond market.

As the Motley Fool points out:

Wealthy people don't own stocks because they're wealthy; they're wealthy because they own stocks.

The size of the U.S. bond market is just under $37 trillion, finance professor Torben Anderson at the Kellogg School of Management says in “Volatile Assets” in July 2012. In comparison, the market capitalization of the U.S. stock market is about $21 trillion.

The top decile (10 per cent) of income has a direct participation rate of 47.5% and an indirect participation rate in the form of retirement accounts of 89.6% in the stock and bond market. In the top decile, mean value of all holdings fell from $982,000 to $969,300 in 2007

U.S. corporate bond sales swelled to an annual record as a late-year rush by borrowers to lock in low interest rates pushed offerings for 2014 past $1.5 trillion.

Data compiled by Bloomberg. Internet commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. which sold $8 billion in bonds in one month, helping push this year’s bond volume past the previous high of $1.494 trillion set in 2013.

In 2014 a lot of mutual funds were converted to bonds and bond sale outpaced stock sales. The point here is that many stock, bond and mutual fund sales are conversions rather than new purchases.

The top 1 per cent of Americans earned $76,526,604,347,826 in 2014. Even if the one per cent purchased $ 5 trillion in stocks, bonds and mutual funds, which represents most of the US securities market in 2014, such a capital investment would represent a trivial amount of the income the 1 per cent received that year.

This is why tax breaks for the 1 per cent or even the top 10 per cent are pointless. Such tax breaks will do little for the economy. These tax break would at best provide packet change to the one per cent. The per cent of annual income the affluent invest in the stock market is not large enough to be stimulative.

The Democratic party uses a more direct approach to stimulate the economy. Programs like unemployment compensation food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and school lunches for women, Infants and children (WIC) provide direct aid to the middle class and the working poor.

Any funds these program provide are usually quickly spent. The funds do not sit in US or foreign bank accounts as is the case for many upper income Americans.

The middle calls is the basis of the US economic engine, not the one per cent. As the AFL-CiO noted:

The middle class is the great engine of the American economy, but that engine is sputtering.

As one business man explained it, tax breaks at the end of the years are great, but it's customers that make or break a company. The middle class provides the customers to small and larger businesses that drives the US economy.

Supply side economics is blind to the middle class economic engine with its top down approach. Unfortunately America is hearing that same old supply side song from most the Republican candidates for president.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_income

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/11/17/who-owns-the-stock-market.aspx

http://finance.zacks.com/bond-market-size-vs-stock-market-size-5863.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Economy/10-Ways-to-Rebuild-the-Middle-Class

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA 
 

Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.

US poverty rate projected to hit highest level since ’60s

"The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent."


It should be apparent that poverty decreased when Bill Clinton was president and increased when GW Bush was at the helm.


This is why the Food Stamps or SNAP program as well as other social programs should not be cut. 


Poverty should become a big issue in Obama's second term. 

US poverty rate projected to hit highest level since ’60s

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA




Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.

Fox News doesn't get Food Stamp effectiveness

Fox News doesn't understand the effectiveness of Food Stamps. Rightardia has published the table that Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics produced that made it clear that food stamps were far more stimulative and had more bang for the buck than tax cuts.

Eric Bolling's view is common for conservatives who just "can't be fooled by the facts." Bolling is wrong about Food stamps and Vilsack is right on.

Recently the mayor of Las Vegas went on the Food Stamp or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) diet. You can lose a lot of weight if you only eat $4.06 worth of food every day.

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA  




Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.

Las Vegas Mayor Living On Food Stamps

`

Carolyn Goodman may be the only mayor in the United States on food stamps, but it’s only temporary. Goodman is taking part in a Las Vegas food bank’s challenge to live on $4.06 per day– the amount a single person who qualifies for food stamps...

There is also a certain fat ass Republican we would also like to see on this diet: Newt Gingrich.

Newt called Obama as the “food stamp” president.

President Obama's response to Diane Sawyer: 

First of all, I don’t put people on food stamps. People become eligible for food stamps. Second of all, the initial expansion of food-stamp eligibility happened under my Republican predecessor, not under me. Number three, when you have a disastrous economic crash that results in 8 million people losing their jobs, more people are going to need more support from government.

Rightardia has pointed out before that Food Stamps or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the most effective of government programs according to Moody's Analytics. For every dollar spend, SNAP has a multiplier of $1.73 that benefits the economy.

As a historian, Newt should also know that food riots caused the French Revolution and the communist revolution in China. The Arab Spring started with food riots in Tunisia and Algeria.

Map Of Recent Food Riots And Price Hikes

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/26/2011 20:00 -0400

source: Las Vegas Mayor Living On Food Stamps

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA

Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.

One in eigth Americans now on food stamps

MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

The situation is worse than 2008 the map portrays 

It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.

Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.

While the numbers have soared during the recession, the path was cleared in better times when the Bush administration led a campaign to erase the program’s stigma, calling food stamps “nutritional aid” instead of welfare, and made it easier to apply.

That bipartisan effort capped an extraordinary reversal from the 1990s, when some conservatives tried to abolish the program, Congress enacted large cuts and bureaucratic hurdles chased many needy people away.

From the ailing resorts of the Florida Keys to Alaskan villages along the Bering Sea, the program is now expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day.
There are 239 counties in the United States where at least a quarter of the population receives food stamps, according to an analysis of local data collected by The New York Times.

The counties are as big as the Bronx and Philadelphia and as small as Owsley County in Kentucky, a patch of Appalachian distress where half of the 4,600 residents receive food stamps.

In more than 750 counties, the program helps feed one in three blacks. In more than 800 counties, it helps feed one in three children. In the Mississippi River cities of St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, half of the children or more receive food stamps. Even in Peoria, Ill. — Everytown, U.S.A. — nearly 40 percent of children receive aid.

Nationwide, food stamps reach about two-thirds of those eligible, with rates ranging from an estimated 50 percent in California to 98 percent in Missouri. Mr. Concannon urged lagging states to do more to enroll the needy, citing a recent government report that found a sharp rise in Americans with inconsistent access to adequate food.

“This is the most urgent time for our feeding programs in our lifetime, with the exception of the Depression,” he said. “It’s time for us to face up to the fact that in this country of plenty, there are hungry people.”

The program’s growing reach can be seen in a corner of southwestern Ohio where red state politics reign and blue-collar workers have often called food stamps a sign of laziness. But unemployment has soared, and food stamp use in a six-county area outside Cincinnati has risen more than 50 percent.

By contrast, in the federal cash welfare program, states until recently bore the entire cost of caseload growth, and nationally the rolls have stayed virtually flat. Unemployment insurance, despite rapid growth, reaches about only half the jobless (and replaces about half their income), making food stamps the only aid many people can get — the safety net’s safety net.

Support for the food stamp program reached a nadir in the mid-1990s when critics, likening the benefit to cash welfare, won significant restrictions and sought even more. But after use plunged for several years, President Bill Clinton began promoting the program, in part as a way to help the working poor. President George W. Bush expanded that effort, a strategy Mr. Obama has embraced.

The revival was crowned last year with an upbeat change of name. What most people still call food stamps is technically the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Now nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid — 28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130 a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and child care costs.

See the complete article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu

Netcraft rank: 5023 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com

Snap or Jelly bracelets are driving the fundies crazy

Christian right wing groups claim that girls are wearing snap bracelets that indicate how far they will go. Is this 'spin the bottle' on steroids?

In Snap, if a boy breaks a jelly bracelet off a girl's wrist, he gets the particular sexual reward indicated by the color of that bracelet.

Christian fundamentalist are having a cow over these bracelets.


Email excerpt contributed by Sharon P., 4 Dec. 2003:

Subject: Colored Bracelets and our Children! A MUST READ!
For any of you that have children... please read! Well there was a story on KMOV and the link is at the bottom. I would have never thought this but the times are definitely changing! Read the story..
*****************************************************
To all of my Concerned Christian Crew (CCC):
Please take time to read. Just another reason why the Bible directs us to ALWAYS pray.
Have you heard about the bracelets that have been banned in the middle school in O'Fallon. 

I did a show on it last night because 75% of our kids go to Fulton Middle School and their school was featured on Channel 4 Wednesday night for the principal banning them. The young girls have been wearing colored jelly bracelets. Each color indicates the sexual favors they will perform. I had no idea this was going on...so last night...after confirming all of the facts with KMOV Channel 4 television station....I did a show on it. 

After researching the story....I found out that this began in Florida and is now spreading nationwide. The kids confirmed that they knew about the bracelets and even educated me what each color means.

The Blue is Oral
The red is no condom
Black is with a condom
Red & Black is a 69 position
Pink is.....licking butt
Green is..upper body only

Can you believe these are our 11-13 year olds.

The colors vary widely by region as you can see in this 'Official Snap Chart.' 

source: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_jelly_bracelets.htm and http://www.thespeciousreport.com/2003_snap.html


Get 30 days of free traffic analysis simply by going to Web-Stat: http://www.web-stat.com/?id=2955

Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu

Netcraft rank: 10118 http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://rightardia.blogspot.com