I am not making ANY assumption here, but I have been told that though coverage is much better in these countries, other countries such as Canada have rediculously high taxes, often as much as 50% of an individual’s income to cover the cost of their universal healthcare system. Now let’s just say for example you had a job and you boss paid you, you used that money to buy something, the person you bought it from bought something, and that person just randomly bought something from your boss, then your boss later used that money to pay you again at another time. On the surface it would look like you had received more/different money than before, but in actuality it is the same money that has just been circulated again, and unless wealth to account for that money then there has been no increase/change. It is the same with taxes. A country could call itself raising taxes to "pay for" a program, but raising taxes will not make there just be more money money in the country’s infastructure or increas it’s net worth. This is what leads to the type of inflation that has been plaguing the United States for decades.
questions:
1) Do other countries actually have higher taxes to cover the cost of their universal system, if not how is the cost covered, and if so how do they evade inflation while raising taxes? Or do they?
2) Obama has stated that he wants to institute a universal healthcare system, but he won’t change the current system because some Americans who are covered currently don’t want to give up their coverage. With that said, is the United States at as great a risk if any of having taxes as high as those other countries (if they are really that high) due to out-of control spending and other cost-related issues?

These other countries do not have better health care. Where did you get that Idea? didn’t your family teach you that there is no free lunch?

When in the history did congress cut the cost of anything? Their idea of cutting is slowing the growth of the cost. they have yet to fulfill that promise.

Individuals with high net worth assets or community property, community income and business or rental property should consult a Texas divorce attorney whose practice focuses on clients with businesses. A divorce with complex community property issues will typically require a thorough valuation of the Texas community estate so as to divide community property in a just and right division. Spouses whose marriage are at least 10 years or more, also have legal rights to Texas spousal support. Contact a Texas divorce lawyer today statewide at 1-877-414-9817 or 1-866-646-7240 or in Austin (512) 338-0529 or visit us on the web at www.AustinDivorceLawAttorney.com

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August 30, 2005: 12:24 PM EDT
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money senior writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – If sky-high executive pay at publicly traded companies gives you vertigo, you might want to read this sitting down.
In 2004, the ratio of average CEO pay to the average pay of a production (i.e., non-management) worker was 431-to-1, up from 301-to-1 in 2003, according to "Executive Excess," an annual report released Tuesday by the liberal research groups United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies.

That’s not the highest ever. In 2001, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay hit a peak of 525-to-1.

Still, it’s quite a leap year over year, and it ranks on the high end historically. In 1990, for instance, CEOs made about 107 times more than the average worker, while in 1982, the average CEO made only 42 times more.
The cumulative pay of the top 10 highest paid CEOs in the past 15 years totaled $11.7 billion.
And though the specific individuals in each of those annual top 10 lists changed year to year, many bosses did pretty well throughout the entire period. Citigroup’s Sandy Weill, for example, has made $1.1 billion since 1990.
"Pay" in this instance refers to total compensation – including salary, bonuses, restricted stock awards, payouts on long-term incentives and the value of options exercised during the year.
The report also compares the growth in average CEO pay – which was $11.8 million in 2004 – to the growth in the minimum wage. Had the minimum wage risen as fast as CEO compensation since 1990, the researchers calculated, it would now be $23.03 an hour instead of just $5.15. And the average production worker would be making $110,126 a year instead of $27,460

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/26/news/economy/ceo_pay/

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Most people will have read the recent reports of how Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has had his personal net worth soar over 100 billion dollars and then drop down to 55 billion. He certainly knows how to make (and lose) money.

(Note: This article was written in 1998, Bill’s Fortunes have dropped a touch since then.)

Consider that he made this money in the 25 years or so since Microsoft was founded in 1975. If you presume that he has worked 14 hours a day on every business day of the year since then, that means he’s been making money at a staggering million dollars per hour, around $300 per second.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/billg.html

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About one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. Current population estimates suggest that about 154,000 veterans (male and female) are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year. Many other veterans are considered near homeless or at risk because of their poverty, lack of support from family and friends, and dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing.

http://www1.va.gov/homeless/page.cfm?pg=1

1. What is The Carlyle Group?

The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm with $91.5 billion of assets under management committed to 66 funds as of September 30, 2008. Carlyle invests in buyouts, growth capital, real estate and leveraged finance in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America focusing on aerospace & defense, automotive & transportation, consumer & retail, energy & power, financial services, healthcare, industrial, infrastructure, technology & business services and telecommunications & media. Since 1987, the firm has invested $52.7 billion of equity in 866 transactions for a total purchase price of approximately $225 billion. The Carlyle Group employs more than 1000 people in 21 countries. In the aggregate, Carlyle portfolio companies have more than $109 billion in revenue and employ more than 415,000 people around the world.

http://www.carlyle.com/Company/item1678.html

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By Bob Willis
Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits last week rose more than forecast, signaling companies stepped up the pace of firings at the start of the year.

Initial jobless claims jumped by 54,000 to 524,000 in the week that ended Jan. 10, from a revised 470,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The total number of people collecting benefits decreased from a 26-year high.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aWEkoFNXb3.E&refer=us

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The estimated population of the United States is 305,466,894
so each citizen’s share of this debt is $34,768.32.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

It is believed President-elect Obama’s inauguration will be the costliest in history — around $50 million — despite the recession. President Bush has declared a state of emergency to free up federal funds to help the district cop

Wow. Just wow.

Tiburon CEO Summit Keynote Presentation Chip Roame Presenting High Net Worth Individual data

Duration : 0:1:49

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On capitalism, people will talk about individual producing goods with $0.5 and selling it for $1, for example, thus earning a profit of $0.5 (some sort of wealth creation, or is it really?) and we all start assuming everyone is a winner.

If that’s the general understanding, then let me give an example. Suppose India suddenly becomes so effective and efficient that it becomes a net producer, that 1 billion of the population each spend $0.5 and produce $1 worth of goods. Suppose the Indians spent $0.5 billion ($0.5 x 1 billion Indians) on Country A’s human labor to produce the goods. Suppose the people of Country A, feeling grateful for the employment, spend all of their $0.5 billion worth of salary/wages on the Indians’ finished goods of $1 billion. Now that the people of Country A only has $0.5 billion, so where should the other $0.5 billion comes from to buy the other half of the Indians’ finished goods? Assume there’s no other buyer from other countries other than the people of Country A, then the Indian economy will have 0% (zero) growth. Now we all know that the more money is introduce into the market, the higher will be the inflation rate. Since the global economy recorded net growth every year, where in the world does the extra surplus of $0.5 billion, in this case, comes from?

Note:
1. Assuming this extra $0.5 billion is net wealth after taking into consideration the inflation.
2. We all know in reality no country can be as effective and efficient as India in this simplified story-telling example, so the equation will be far more complex.
3. This country of India and Country A can be substituted with individuals, small companies, big corporates, government, etc.
The actual equation will also involve human labor being substituted with automated machineries (to save costs and increase shareholders’ value) and consumer credit that officially make the credit card holder a debtor.

Let’s simplify it a bit more:

two people India and X live on an island.

India pays x $1 to bake bread which he plans to sell for $2.

Question why can’t X bake it himself and be the one to sell it to India for $2? India must have something X doesn’t have. What about an oven? O.K. and the ingredients also.

Finished product Bread, $2. X can only pay $1. Does he buy it? No. He can’t. Next day X realizes how stupid he is and stops working for India. (Grateful my a**!) He looks for other sources of production. He hunts and finds a herd of goats. He herds them and get their milk. Then he sells the excess milk to India. India pays for it using the bread he now bakes himself since X left him.

Now both have produced more than they originally did, because each one was free to do what is best for his self interest. That’s capitalism. They don’t simply do things for being grateful for the other. That would be the start of communism.

Your question seems to have neglected the human factor of innovation and self-interest which are the moving forces of civilization. Capitalism will not succeed if people do not keep coming up of new ways of doing things that will give them the best benefits.

WASHINGTON – Someone has finally fixed an approximate taxpayer cost of between 12 million and 15 million illegal aliens residing in the U.S.

A new study by the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector found a household headed by an individual without a high school education, including about two-thirds of illegal aliens, costs U.S. taxpayers more than $32,000 in federal, state and local benefits. That same family contributes an average of $9,000 a year in taxes, resulting in a net tax burden of $22,449 each year.

Over the course of the household’s lifetime that tax burden translates to $1.1 million.

ain’t liberalism grand? ~

I have made a list of the benefits that illegal immigrants bring to our country as well as a list of reasons why we should deport them.

first, the benefits:

1. Cheap Labor for a small percentage of industries that need unskilled serfs.

Now the negatives, and reasons for deportation:

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year.

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such
as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school
education for children here illegally.

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the
American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare &
social services by the American taxpayers.

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused
by the illegal aliens.

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that’s two
and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their
children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the
United States.

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens
that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens
from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth,
heroine and marijuana, crossed into the U. S. from the Southern border.
Homeland Security Report:

12. The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total cost of
mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average
cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to
their countries of origin.

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes
Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States".

15. Every day 12 Americans are murdered by an illegal alien.
Another 13 Americans are killed by uninsured drunk illegal aliens and
Eight American Children are victims of a sex crime committed by an
illegal alien each day! (Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.)

16. Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in
Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal
prison inmates. These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of
the federal prison population.
Incarceration of criminal aliens cost an estimated $624 million to state
prisons (1999) and $891 million to federal prisons (2002), according to
the most recent available figure from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

17. "Illegal Aliens and American Medicine". "Many illegal aliens harbor
fatal diseases that American Medicine fought and vanquished long ago,
such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio,
dengue and Chagas disease." The Journal of American Physicians and
Surgeons

18. In 2002, HIV/AIDS was the third leading cause of death among
Hispanic men aged 35 to 44 and the fourth leading cause of death among
Hispanic women in the same age group. Most Hispanic men were exposed to
HIV through sexual contact with other men. Source (CDC):

19. If enacted the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S. 2611)
would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years,
allowing an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the
U.S. over the next 20 years -fully one-third of the current population
of the United States.

20. U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) today unveiled an impact analysis
that shows the Senate immigration bill -should it become law – would
permit up to 217.1 million new legal immigrants into the United States
over the next 20 years, a number equal to 66 percent of the total
current population.

21. The number of illegal immigrants in the United States may be as high
as 20 million people, more than double the official 9 million people
estimated by the Census Bureau. 1/3/05

22. Cases of Leprosy on The Rise In The U.S., The New York Times. "While
there were some 900 recorded cases in the United States 40 years ago,
today more than 7,000 people have leprosy.." Leprosy is an airbourne
virus, it can also be spread by touching and coughing.

23. Organizations Protesting Immigration Reform, State by State.
Won’t you join in? (ask for link)

24. America Welcomes Illegal’s Contagious Disease.

25. Mexico is the 4th Richest Oil Nation in the World.

Dang…now that’s a tough choice now ain’t it…?

(Sarcasm)

Peter Kraus, co-head of investment management at Goldman Sachs, will retire at the end of this month, according to an internal memo from Lloyd Blankfein, CEO. Also, Phil Duff has launched a firm to help institutions such as pension funds, insurers and endowments meet long-term funding obligations. Meanwhile, beleaguered Canadian stock markets began to bounce back as investors pumped an estimated 6 point 2 billion Canadian dollars into mutual funds in February. Finally, more than high-net-worth individuals and day traders will be hit by the Indian government?s budget proposal to scrap the I-T-rebate on the securities transaction tax.

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If the Democrats agree to enact some free-market reforms, it might be worth supporting a modest expansion of S-CHIP. Otherwise, President Bush should make good on his veto threat.

Ten years ago, Congress enacted the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, to cover kids whose parents were doing too well to qualify for Medicaid assistance but not well enough to buy their own insurance. Now the program is up for re-authorization, and congressional Democrats want to expand it as a down payment on national health care.

The program has already expanded beyond its original mission. New York is planning to cover families that make four times the federal poverty line. Almost 700,000 adults get their coverage through the program. The design of the program abets its growth: When states expand benefits, the federal government picks up most of the tab.

The program’s expansion has come at the expense of private health-care coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Democrats’ proposal would get insurance to 2.3 million additional children but simply replace private insurance for another 1.7 million. (It does not report on how many adults would also lose their private coverage.) Liberals are untroubled by this prospect. The replacement effect “hardly matters as long as the net effect is an expansion of insurance,” says The New Republic. But it means that taxpayers are not getting much bang for their bucks.

S-CHIP also creates a trap for low-wage workers. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute notes that, in combination with other welfare programs, S-CHIP levies a very high effective marginal tax rate on many such workers. If they work hard to make more money, that is, the resulting loss of benefits can put them behind where they started.

Senate Democrats would finance the S-CHIP expansion by hiking cigarette taxes. These taxes fall most heavily on the poor; they cannot be hiked much further without stimulating black-market activity; and they will not raise the target amount of money unless a lot more people take up the newly expensive habit. (House Democrats would raise additional money by also kneecapping the private-sector component of Medicare.)

A lot of children are going without health insurance for the same reasons that a lot of adults are: Government policies have made health markets dysfunctional. Instead of giving up on those markets and having the federal government pick up the tab, we should fix those policies. We could start by taking two steps the Bush administration advocates. The first is to reform the tax code so that individuals who buy health insurance for themselves can get the same tax break that employer-provided health insurance gets. The second is to allow individuals to cross state lines, and thus jump over their own states’ onerous mandates, to buy insurance.

Cannon, the Cato Institute health-care expert, makes a strong case for a third step: treating S-CHIP and Medicaid the way we treat welfare. In 1996, we reformed welfare by block-granting it to the states. Similarly, Congress should give a set amount of money to the states to cover needy families. It should not reward the states for being more generous.

The Democrats are in no mood to do any of these things. “Health insurance for kids” is a popular slogan, of course, and much of the business community is with the Democrats. Health-care providers are happy to get new subsidies, and some of them are afraid that Congress will ding them if they don’t get on board.

If the Democrats agree to enact some free-market reforms, it might be worth supporting a modest expansion of S-CHIP. Otherwise, President Bush should make good on his veto threat.

typical Republican

Pineapple Ju-Ju, now a high net worth individual hits New York City! He has the Crumpler custom bag experience of a lifetime.

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When most of us look at income statistics, we are not just being numbers junkies. We want to find out something about actual flesh-and-blood human beings — specifically what their standard of living is like.

But you cannot always just take statistics at face value — or, worse yet, with the spin that politicians and the media put on them.

Income, for example, is not the same as earnings, and neither is the same as the economic resources on which people’s standard of living is based.

Since most of us get our income by earning it, it might seem that any difference between income and earnings would just be some technicality that only economists or accountants would bother with.

In reality, the difference can be huge, depending on the income bracket and the age of the individual.

Most of the income received by people 65 years old and up is not counted statistically as earnings. Only 24 percent of their incomes are earnings. Most of their incomes are from pensions or other sources known as “unearned income,” such as returns on investments.

It should hardly be surprising that people who have been around a long time would have accumulated more money in the bank and maybe have a little nest egg in a mutual fund, each of which provides a stream of income during their retirement years, even if that income does not get counted as earnings.

Despite a drumbeat of political rhetoric depicting the elderly as being in dire economic conditions, the actual incomes of the elderly are more than four times what their earnings statistics might suggest — or what politicians can claim, citing those statistics.

When it comes to wealth, the average net worth of people 65 years old and up is several times that of people under the age of 45. The highest average net worth in any age bracket belongs to households headed by people aged 70 to 74.

Although income is often confused with wealth, as when people currently in high income brackets are referred to as “rich,” the elderly average lower income than middle-aged people, but more wealth.

Since 80 percent of the people who are 65 and up are either homeowners or home buyers, their housing costs tend to be lower. Among those 80 percent, their median monthly housing costs in 2001 averaged just $339 a month.

That includes property taxes, utilities, maintenance costs, condominium, and association costs for people with such living arrangements, and mortgage payments for those who do not own their homes outright.

There are of course some elderly people who are poor, just as there are some poor people in every age bracket. But statistics cited by politicians, journalists, and others who inflate the number of the poor need both scrutiny and skepticism.

The elderly are not the only people whose standard of living is grossly understated by those who cite statistics on earnings or income.

Those statistics do not include income received by low-income people as transfer payments from the government, such as welfare checks, much less various in-kind transfers, such as subsidized housing and subsidized medical care.

As of 2001, about 78 percent of the economic resources used by people in the bottom 20 percent of income recipients were in the form of either cash transfers or in-kind transfers.

To judge the standard of living of low-income people by income statistics is to leave out more than three-quarters of the economic resources used by them.

It is understandable that those who have either a political or an ideological vested interest in exaggerating the numbers of “the poor” would use statistics that greatly understate the standard of living of low-income people, as well as that of the elderly.

But that is all the more reason for the rest of us to be aware of what statistics do and do not mean — and beware of those who want us to believe the worst, whether for their own political advantage or because that fits their ideological vision

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is hoping your kids don’t have a growth spurt.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she’ll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is a cough that doesn’t go away.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.