Informed . . .

(from http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/23/news/economy/ted-cruz-economy-6-talking-points/index.html?iid=SF_E_River)
". . . 1. Cruz: We have a 'job problem': Cruz claims the economic recovery has been lackluster, especially for jobs. "We should have been focusing on jobs and economic growth and opportunity," Cruz told Fox News after President Obama's State of the Union address in January.
BUT: America just had its best year of job growth since 1999. Hiring so far in 2015 has well exceeded expectations. Economic growth last year hit its highest point since 2010.
While Europe stagnates and China slows, many economists say the U.S. economy is the bright spot on the global stage. Even the unemployment rate is down to 5.5% -- its lowest point since May 2008.

2. Americans are dropping out of the workforce: "The reason the unemployment rate keeps falling is millions of people keep dropping out of the work force altogether," Cruz told Fox.
Cruz is correct that the percent of Americans in the workforce today is at its lowest point in the past three decades, but he's muddling that statistic with unemployment.
BUT: Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age. There are about 77 million Baby Boomers -- people born between 1946 and 1964 -- in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. That's almost a quarter of the U.S. population. The percent of Americans at work was going to drop no matter who was president right now and the trend is likely to carry over to the next president. U.S. unemployment is falling for two major reasons: Baby Boomers are retiring and millions of jobs have been added over the past few years.

3. Implement a flat tax and 'abolish the IRS': Cruz wants a flat tax system -- where all taxpayers pay the same income tax rate. He also wants to get rid of the IRS.
"Imagine a simple flat tax. ... Imagine abolishing the IRS," Cruz said Monday when he announced his candidacy at Liberty University. Many of his Republican predecessors have called for a flat tax system in past elections without any success. His plans aren't detailed enough yet to really assess what their impact would be on the economy or government revenues.
BUT: While Cruz talks about wanting to help America's most needy, there are concerns that a flat tax could hurt the poor the most. Under the current tax system, many low-income Americans don't pay much, if anything, in federal income taxes. Moving to a flat tax could mean their income taxes would rise. As for the IRS, it's unclear how Cruz would collect taxes without the agency.

4. Inequality is rising: "We're facing right now a divided America when it comes to the economy," Cruz told Fox recently. Cruz hammers home valid points about rising inequality and stagnating wages. By some calculations, inequality is at its worst point since the 1920s. The wealthy have benefited from a six-year rise in the stock market, while the working class has barely seen any increase in household income since 1995. Wages grew only 2% in February, well below the Federal Reserve's 3.5% goal. As costs rise, that 2% wage growth leaves people barely any better off, if at all.
BUT: Big box employers led by Walmart (WMT) are raising wages while other CEOs say they're competing to retain workers. There's a widely-held expectation that wage growth could pick up in 2015, since wages are usually the last thing to rebound in a recovery. Of course, even wage growth may not be enough to bridge the inequality gap. That's been expanding for decades and no president has reversed its course.

5. Build an energy economy: In perhaps his most concrete proposal at this stage, Cruz wants Congress to approve the building of the Keystone XL pipeline and allow more drilling offshore. He says that will offer Americans jobs and improve infrastructure. "A Republican Congress should immediately help Americans get more jobs by embracing America's energy renaissance," Cruz wrote in the op-ed last year.
BUT: Cruz's main plan to spur the economy and jobs right now is energy centric -- a tough strategy to pursue when energy companies are actually laying off workers. The price of oil has fallen dramatically from over $100 last summer to under $50 today. Energy companies are hurting right now. That makes it harder to justify the Keystone XL pipeline, since the world currently has too much oil.

6. Time to 'Audit the Fed': Cruz and other Republicans believe the central bank isn't transparent enough and he wants it to be audited."Enough is enough, the Federal Reserve needs to open its books -- Americans deserve a sound and stable dollar," Cruz wrote in an Op-Ed in USA Today late last year.
BUT: The Fed is already audited twice a year. The Republicans' "Audit the Fed" call is viewed by many as an attempt to meddle with monetary policy. It's unclear what a third audit would achieve.
Currencies are known to be unpredictable, but the dollar is having a pretty good ride. It has rallied for the past year against the euro and the world's other major currencies. In fact, it's at its highest level in over a decade and some people now worry dollar is actually too valuable. . ."

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Dream . . .

This is the kind of bull-pucky that our 'friends' in the media provide daily; a recent article about 'The American Dream', chock full of what they produce best - NOTHING!!!

This little gem begins by reminding us that we too can achieve success.  Then they promptly tell us the definition of success,  "The big home in the suburbs, the luxury cars in the garage, the kids off to a good college and the retirement in a sunny locale."  Funny how Merriam-Webster views success in  more spiritual, less-tawdry and materialistic terms as "favorable or desired outcome; also : the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence". 

From the stock, bullshit 'American Dream' teaser and half-assed success definitions, this fine piece of writing moves on to another constantly and frequently misrepresented concept, the economy, and says that the weak job market is thwarting the best efforts of good honest folk (like you and me) to 'get ahead', by which I PRESUME they mean attain the aforementioned (theirs, not Merriam-Webster's) 'success'.  Now I'm not unrealistic or particularly cold-hearted about the job situation and the difficulties some people are currently experiencing with employment and lack thereof.  But somehow I think that our journalistic scribes are providing us with third-grade-level oversimplifications of the situation.

The particular tome that provoked my ire went on to, in short, states that although many present-day citizens truly believe that Americans all have an  equal ability to achieve success if they merely (and that's a BIG merely) work hard.  It does not venture (at least I did not detect it) into any possibility that there exist many additional factors in education, employment, the economy and geography that exert substantial influence in the seeking, achievement and  maintenance of something called success.

The best, and most intellectually substantial,  part of the article was a quote from the academic world that, in summary, stated possibly Americans need to rethink the definition of the American Dream, putting less focus on having a huge house and lots of cars and more focus on building successful communities. Whiles supporting our families is certainly important, “we need to scale back what the American Dream means to us.” 

And may I add, we must be more critical of what we read in the news and not be so childishly willing to accept everything in print as true and factual.

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Humor. . .

. . . and truth. . .
. . . from John Kenneth Galbraith

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
"

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."


"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought." 

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

as a form of employment for economists."

"The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself." 

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." 

"We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.
"  

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
"  

"Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative."    


"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."  


"More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
" 

"In economics, the majority is always wrong.
" 

"Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects."   


"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."  


"Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.
"  

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Floored. . .

. . . was I to learn. . .

. . . that the splendid job I was doing at my new place of employment merited no particular praise or attention but was simply the expected status quo.  Trouble was, I could clearly see that status quo was not accomplished equitably. Not only was the level of accomplishment in the execution of the tasks at hand not as high as my own, but there were various and multiple agenda of certain individuals being skillfully carried out in addition management uneducated and inept yet power-hungry and self-preserving.  Most of the above, as well, were carried out with the most scrupulous of hypocrisy.

My naive, childish perception of good humanity bubble had been burst.

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Many of the . . .

. . . Forces. . . 

(from http://economywatch.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/07/13728411-weak-jobs-growth-beyond-governments-control?lite By John W. Schoen, NBC News)

". . . No matter who ends up occupying the White House in January, many of the forces that have kept unemployment high and jobs growth slow will be beyond his control.

With employment growth stuck at a slower pace than in any recovery in the past half-century, the presidential campaign now turns on which candidate -- President Barack Obama or former Gov. Mitt Romney -- has the better plan to boost employment. The latest jobs data will do little to change the debate.

The economy added just 96,000 new jobs in August, well below the roughly 130,000 economists had been expecting. Gains in the prior two months were revised down by a combined 41,000. Manufacturers cut 15,000 jobs last month, while another 7,000 government jobs were lost. Temporary employment fell by almost 5,000 workers.

Other recent reports had painted a somewhat brighter picture. Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, and a private survey by payroll processor ADP found that companies created some 200,000 new jobs in August. Another private report showed that service sector companies, such as hotels, retailers, and financial services firms, expanded at a faster rate last month. . .

. . . That uncertainty – and reluctance to hire – will be stoked by a series of other forces holding back the four-year-old recovery:

    While subpar economic growth feels like a recession to many Americans, Europeans are coping with the real thing. The economic contraction that began in troubled economies of Greece and Spain is now spreading to Germany, the flywheel of Europe’s economy, the largest in the world. China, along with the developing economies that feed its massive manufacturing machine, is in an economic slowdown that Beijing has so far been unable to reverse.
  
 The budget impasse in the U.S. is due largely to huge, and rising, cost of providing health care and retirement income to an aging population. The dearth of private retirement savings will bring a slowdown in consumer spending as baby boomers continue to tighten their belts. Those trends are irreversible.
  
 With wage growth stagnant, growth in spending remains weak for consumers in every age group. The boom in borrowing during the 2000s helped offset sluggish wage growth. The resulting housing bust destroyed trillions of dollars in household wealth. Though the housing market is beginning to recover, it will take at least a decade for prices to recover to the 2006 peak.
  
 As private employers have slowed the pace of new hires, state and local governments are still shedding workers. The Obama administration’s massive federal stimulus program – now criticized by Republicans for failing to produce the number of jobs originally projected – helped blunt those layoffs. As those funds have dried up, local governments have been hit with lower sales and property tax receipts, cuts in state aid and, in some cases, mandated tax caps.

Even the Federal Reserve – the economic fire brigade of last resort – seems to have run out of tools to fight the fire. Friday's weak jobs report give the central bank more reason for another big money drop known as quantitative easing or QE. But after two rounds of more than $1 trillion in pump-priming, and short-term interest rates already at zero, most economists see diminishing returns from another effort to stimulate growth by pumping more money into the system.

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