H/T BallotPedia.org
Robert Wenzel over at EconomicPolicyJournal.com posted two impressive charts which defy the reality of economics and shows the coming student loan debt bubble will be a hard crash when it happens. Biggest reason student debt is skyrocketing is because most student loans are financed by the federal government. Unfortunately the only ideas being floated is more government intervention.
First chart is the mega growth of student loans compared to other loans in the economy
Another chart he posted shows that only 29% of people paying off student debts and the principle is going down.
Washington Times and Stephen Moore put together a piece showing migration out of high tax states and migration into low tax states.
The least “regressive” tax states had average population growth from 2003 to 2013 that lagged below the national trend. The 10 most highly “regressive” tax states, including nine with no state income tax, had population growth on average 4 percent above the U.S. average. Why was that? Because states without income taxes have twice the job growth of states with high tax rates. Unlike the experts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, most Americans think that fairness means having a job.
Read the rest here.
With a so called “booming” stock market states pension systems are still getting worse. Decades of shady accounting practices and too many promises have made pensions almost broke.
In Pennsylvania there is talk of pension reform after one startling find recently. Here is more from IndianaGazette.com:
Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale warned Friday that the growing collective municipal pension debt in the commonwealth, if allowed to worsen, will become a problem for every Pennsylvanian.
“We found 46 percent of the municipal pension plans in Pennsylvania … are in some level of distress,” DePasquale said. “Certainly the bigger dollar amounts are in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. … Scranton is very bad.”
Lauren Cooley over at TurningPointUSA.net found a celebration on social media of people using food stamps i.e. EBT cards. Take a look at the story here. I’m only posting 4 photos but she posted a lot more for the public to see.
Angie’s List Inc.recently announced they put their Indianapolis project on hold due to the new RFRA law signed by Indiana Governor Mike Pence. This company has been bleeding money for quite some time and just went to the state begging for $18.5 million in public assistance. Here is snapshot I took this morning of how bad the stock has dropped in one year:
Overall Angie’s List announcement on this matter is more desperation than practical. Crony capitalist companies like Angie’s List use tactics like this to hedge their bets in order to get more money out lawmakers then standing up for some social issue.
Obamacare for all intensive purposes is a gateway to universal healthcare via medicaid. When the ACA passed in 2010 it set up a medicaid program where the feds matched dollar for dollar states medicaid expansion. Here is a detailed explanation from the Chicago Tribune of an example in Illinois where estimated costs have ballooned from $500 Million to $2 Billion:
Original projections anticipated that 199,000 residents would sign up in 2014, potentially rising to no more than 342,000. State officials estimated a monthly, per person cost of $454, and revised that number upward to $882 in the document sent to in June to federal officials.
But through December, 540,877 joined Medicaid’s ranks. State officials said thousands more likely signed up through January.
Nationally, medicaid has exploded via Obamacare (9.7 million new enrollees) which means long term federal costs for ALL taxpayers.
Indiana business owners get hammered with an aray of taxes that the public doesn’t take into consideration. One of them is unemployment taxes they have to pay. Indiana is still paying off the loan from federal government when the economy went south in 2008. Here is more from News-Sentinel.com:
Then the recession hit and the account’s black ink turned into a raging river of red, which resulted in officials from Indiana and at lest 25 states to seek more than $47 billion in federal loans to keep unemployment benefits flowing. Indiana was supposed to have repaid its loan five years ago but still owes about $900 million, Frank said — debt that will be repaid in part by the penalties Nowak, Black and no doubt countless other business owners consider so unwise and unfair.
Unemployment taxes show that it makes businesses think about or actually hire less with its regressive taxation formula:
American Morning News interviewed Kay Bell from BankRate.com explaining a survey they with 1,003 adults and how they will spend their tax refund. USA Today posted the survey and here is how it broke down:
34% say they’ll use it to pay down debt
33% say they’ll save or invest the money
26% say they spend the extra cash on necessities such as food and utility bills
3% want to use it to live it up and go on vacation or a shopping spree
Here is another snapshot of Americans thinking on income taxes/tax refunds that would make Dave Ramsey shake his head at:
Some people view having extra money withheld from their paychecks for income tax as a way to save, says Bankrate.com tax analyst Kay Bell. But she advises against it because “the bank of Uncle Sam” pays no interest.
The rest of the article is here and has some more good stats obtained by the survey.
Via CNSNEWS.COM –
Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.
The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.
The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”
“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.
Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts.
Read the rest here
Hoosier Econ 