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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (346538)	8/13/2007 2:13:40 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574854

An experienced secretary in the UAE makes $1,000 per month, with minimal health care coverage. $43,264 would be a fortune, not a "living wage". Maybe you can list the criterion used to determine what constitutes a "living wage" in Washington, and how many flat screen TVs, DSL connections, 3G Verizon phones and the level of accomodation necessary for "living"?

To: tejek who wrote (346538)	8/13/2007 7:23:21 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

It’s All About Them By PAUL KRUGMAN Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your father’s political campaign. Last week, at one of Mitt Romney’s “Ask Mitt” forums, a woman in the audience asked Mr. Romney whether any of his five sons are serving in the military and, if not, when they plan to enlist. The candidate replied with a rambling attempt to change the subject, but near the end he let his real feelings slip. “It’s remarkable how we can show our support for our nation,” he said, “and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president.” Wow. The important point isn’t the fact that Mr. Romney’s sons aren’t in uniform — although it is striking just how few of those who claim to believe that we’re engaged in a struggle for our very existence think that they themselves should be called on to make any sacrifices. The point is, instead, that Mr. Romney apparently considers helping him get elected an act of service comparable to putting your life on the line in Iraq. Yet the week’s prize for most self-centered remark by a serious presidential contender goes not to Mr. Romney, but to his principal rival for the G.O.P. nomination. Rudy Giuliani has lately been getting some long-overdue criticism for his missteps both before and after 9/11. For example, The Village Voice reports that he insisted that the city’s emergency command center — which included a personal suite with its own elevator that he visited “often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced” — be within walking distance of City Hall. This led to the disastrous decision to locate the center in the World Trade Center, an obvious potential terrorist target. At the same time, Mr. Giuliani is being attacked for his failure to take adequate precautions to protect those who worked on the cleanup at ground zero from the hazards at the site. Many workers have since been sickened by the dust and toxic materials. For a politician whose entire campaign is based on the myth of his leadership that fateful day — as The Onion put it, Mr. Giuliani is running for “president of 9/11” — anything that challenges his personal legend is a big problem. So here’s what Mr. Giuliani said last week in response: “I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. ... I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.” Real ground zero workers, who were digging through the toxic rubble while Mr. Giuliani held photo ops, were understandably outraged. So the next day Mr. Giuliani tried to recover, claiming that “what I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them because I feel like I have that same risk.” But thanks to the wonders of YouTube, we can all watch Mr. Giuliani’s actual demeanor as he delivered the original remarks. Empathy had nothing to do with it. What’s striking about these unintentional moments of self-revelation is how much Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani sound like the current occupant of the White House. It has long been clear that President Bush doesn’t feel other people’s pain. His self-centeredness shines through whenever he makes off-the-cuff, unscripted remarks, from his jocular obliviousness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the joke he made last year in San Antonio when visiting the Brooke Army Medical Center, which treats the severely wounded: “As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch.” What’s now clear is that the two men most likely to end up as the G.O.P. presidential nominee are cut from the same cloth. This probably isn’t a coincidence. Arguably, the current state of the Republican Party is such that only extreme narcissists have a chance of getting nominated. To be a serious presidential contender, after all, you have to be a fairly smart guy — and nobody has accused either Mr. Romney or Mr. Giuliani of being stupid. To appeal to the G.O.P. base, however, you have to say very stupid things, like Mr. Romney’s declaration that we should “double Guantánamo,” or Mr. Giuliani’s dismissal of the idea that raising taxes is sometimes necessary to pay for things like repairing bridges as a “Democratic, liberal assumption.” So the G.O.P. field is dominated by smart men willing to play dumb to further their personal ambitions. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to learn that these men are monstrously self-centered. All of which leaves us with a political question. Most voters are thoroughly fed up with the current narcissist in chief. Are they really ready to elect another?

To: tejek who wrote (346538)	8/15/2007 9:08:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

Note that the biggest category of jobs added in both time periods, substantially increased the average wage ($23,562, to $31,459) As for recent job openings being mostly for low paying jobs, that's not a surprise and its not new. Low paying jobs tend to have more turnover so you get more openings. As for the majority of jobs paying less thatn $43,264 a year, that's also not new, not a surprise, and not something horrible. Esp. if they are talking about new job openings (which tend to pay less for the reason mentioned in the last paragraph) $43k a year isn't lousy. Also many people who are earning it either don't have kids, or have additional source of family income.

To: tejek who wrote (346538)	8/15/2007 9:11:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

Tax Burden Don Boudreaux My George Mason University colleague, law professor Todd Zywicki, has a wonderful op-ed appearing in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal. (Unfortunately, a paid subscription to the WSJ is required to access this article.) In this essay, Todd reports that the data show that the category of expenditure that has risen most, in both percentage terms and in absolute dollar terms, for the average American household over the past 30 years is taxes. Here are the concluding paragraphs from Todd's not-to-be-missed op-ed: Although income only rose 75%, and expenditures for the mortgage, car and health insurance rose by even less than that, the tax bill increased by $13,086 -- a whopping 140% increase. The percentage of family income dedicated to health insurance, mortgage and automobiles actually declined between the two periods. During this period, the figures used by Ms. Warren and Ms. Tyagi [in their book The Two Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke] indicate that annual mortgage obligations increased by $3,690, automobile obligations by $2,860 and health insurance payments by $620 (a total increase of $7,170). Those increases are not trivial -- but they are swamped by the increase in tax obligations. To put this in perspective, the increase in tax obligations is over three times as large as the increase in the mortgage payments and almost double the increase in the mortgage and automobile payments combined. Even the new expenditure on child care is about a quarter less than the increase in taxes. Overall, the typical family in the 2000s pays substantially more in taxes than the combined expenses of their mortgage, automobile and health insurance. And the change in the tax obligation between the two periods is substantially greater than the change in mortgage, automobile expenses and health-insurance costs combined. This suggests that the most important change in the balance sheets of middle-class households over the past three decades is a dramatically higher tax burden caused by the progressive nature of the American tax system. In turn it follows that the most effective way of alleviating the household budget crunch would be to adopt lower and flatter tax rates that would reduce the government's take. Another possibility, advocated by Prof. Edward J. McCaffery of the University of Southern California Law School, would eliminate the "secondary earner bias" in the tax system, which causes all of the wife's income to effectively be taxed at a much higher marginal tax rate than the husband's. Any of these reforms seem sensible. Lower and flatter marginal tax rates generally are not advocated by those who dominate the American legal academy today. But for those who want to consider serious strategies for preventing bankruptcies, less money in Uncle Sam's pockets may mean more money in ours. cafehayek.typepad.com