Middle Class Dismissed

Obamacare Putting Millions Of Part-Time Workers At Risk Of Seeing Cut Hours

"Ken Jacobs, chair of the labor center at UC Berkeley, told the Huffington Post that employers are not likely to force all full-time employees into part-time work due to factors that include additional administrative costs and productivity decreases. Instead, those at highest risk are workers in predominately low-wage industries that are right on the cusp of what is considered full-time work under the law. The industries with the highest concentration of Jacobs’ at-risk workers are restaurants, accommodation and building services. The 3.6 million workers who report that their 'work hours vary' could have their hours jeopardized as well, according to the study." Continue reading →

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Bill Bonner: Americans pose a bigger threat to themselves

"With the numbers before us, you'd think we would at least stop wasting time and money protecting ourselves from terrorism and other bugaboos. The US 'security' budget, all in, is a fabulous sum -- about $1 trillion a year. It seems foolish. The return on investment is paltry. By comparison, suicide prevention - as near as we could make out - is barely a footnote in the federal budget, only about $56 million a year. This despite the fact that the risk to the typical reader posed by himself is about 1,000 times greater that the risk from 'terrorists.'" Continue reading →

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Internet Sales Tax Passes the Senate, 69 to 27

"Republicans in the U.S. Senate caved in. They voted to force businesses located in one state to serve as unpaid tax collectors for 45 other states. (Five states have no sales tax.) The RINO Party Line is that this is not a tax increase. It is a huge tax increase. Voters will pay it. Businesses will pay it. The nightmare of complying will kill tens of thousands of online businesses. This is a subsidy to Walmart, which pays sales taxes because it is physically located in all states. Amazon has also joined in — same reason. It has delivery centers in several states, and it plans to add lots more. These companies want small businesses to pay. They do not want competition." Continue reading →

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The Food-Truck Business Stinks

"In the ’80s, the city capped the number of carts and trucks at 3,000. Technically, a permit for a food cart or truck is not transferable, but vendors regularly pay permit holders something like $15,000 to $20,000 to lease their certificates for two years. I was reminded of corrupt countries that I’ve visited, like Iraq and Haiti, where illogical and arbitrarily enforced rules create the wrong set of incentives. Perhaps the biggest winner in our current system is an obscure type of business known as an authorized commissary. By city law, every food cart and truck must visit a licensed commissary each day, where a set of mandated cleaning services can be performed." Continue reading →

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Globalist Euro Disaster: Euro Founder Endorses Bust-Up

"Lafontaine like other Eurocrats knew full well what he was doing when he helped inflict this monstrous mess. The result has been of late bloodshed, massive unemployment, the ruin of whole families, the disruption of the hopes and dreams of literally hundreds of millions. Europe lies in ruins with no near-term hope of recovery and European cultures and prosperity are being flattened by this damnable Euro dreadnaught. Only one thing is 'up' in Europe these days it sometimes seems. And that is suicides. And Lafontaine is sorry. And he has changed his mind." Continue reading →

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North Carolina Senate blocks testing themselves when passing welfare drug testing bill

"Republicans in the North Carolina state Senate on Monday pushed through bill that would strip public benefits like food stamps and job training for people who fail a drug test. The bill requires those applying for benefits to pay for their own drug tests. Applicants who test negative would be eligible to have the costs of their tests reimbursed. The policy could cost the state more than $2.1 million. At the same time, senators rejected an amendment offered by Democratic state Sen. Gladys Robinson that would have drug tested lawmakers, the governor and cabinet secretaries." Continue reading →

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Food Stamp Nation: 20% of U.S. Households

"The economic recovery rolls on. The number of American households receiving food stamps has hit 23 million. This is 23 million out of 115 million households. That’s 20%. The government has a solution. Stop calling them food stamps. It has now issued cards that look just like credit cards. If the recovery is real, why are more Americans on food cards? Because the farm bloc wants its subsidies, and the welfare bloc does, too. It’s a matter of supply and demand. If demand stays high, farm prices stay high. There is nothing like free food to increase demand. Food cards offer free food. Rising demand proves there is rising need. Rising need proves that more food cards are necessary." Continue reading →

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A Modest Monetary Proposal

"We are not so interested in celebrating the demise of tax havens as we are in drawing the appropriate lessons from this event. The first lesson we can draw is that the world is a lot more coordinated than is ordinarily admitted. How is it possible that countries around the world have come up with the same legislation at the same time focused on destroying offshore banking once and for all? The idea of one coordinated world has long been scoffed at as a kind of conspiracy theory. But these days, conspiracy theory seems to be chasing actual facts. The facts – in fact – are not in doubt. Post-Cyprus is surely a different era." Continue reading →

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Spain: This Is What A Permanent Underclass Looks Like

"Spain is in a great depression, and it is one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. Five years after its housing boom turned to bust, Spanish unemployment hit a record high of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013. It's almost too horrible to comprehend, but 19.5 percent of the total workforce has not had a job in the past six months; 15.3 percent have not in the past year; and 9.2 percent have not in the past two years. You can see this 1930s-style catastrophe in the chart below from the National Statistics Institute." Continue reading →

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The Cyprus Depositor Haircut

"The manager told him not to worry, saying the deposit insurance was per account, not per person. She added: ‘We just put your name on the account so your wife wouldn’t take money out without your consent.’ Remembering that in the 1980s his British building society had played down the risks of taking out an endowment mortgage, Demetriou asked if they were 100 per cent sure. He was told they were. The advice was 100 per cent wrong. The deposit insurance is per person, not per account. Soon afterwards, the banks closed for more than a week, and when they reopened, he’d been stripped of 44 per cent of his savings." Continue reading →

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