Category: Village of Ridgewood

Photo by Boyd Loving

If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t even bother
By Jay Bhatti — January 15, 2013

Jay Bhatti is an investor and advisor to startups in New York City. Previously, he was the co-founder of the people search engine Spock.com. He also worked as a product manager for Microsoft. In 2002, he received his MBA from the Wharton School.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article questioning the value of an MBA but I could have already told you that. As a graduate of the 2002 Wharton MBA program and a member of the Wharton Admissions Committee as a student, I get a lot of aspiring MBA candidates asking me the following question: “What do I need to do on my application to get into an MBA program?”

However,  before candidates can even ask me that question, I ask them:  “Why do you want an MBA and what schools are you applying to?”

The sad reality is that an MBA is not as valuable today as it was 30 years ago. Stanford University published data stating that from 2005 to 2008, over 94% of graduates had jobs by graduation. However, since then, only about 75% of graduates had jobs lined up at graduation. Stanford is a top MBA program, so you can imagine it being worse at other schools. In fact, 21 schools that are ranked by US News & World Report said that for the past few years, nearly 50% of their graduates did not have jobs at graduation.

https://qz.com/42233/if-you-cant-get-into-a-top-five-mba-program-dont-even-bother/

Photo by Robin Gottesman

West Side Presbyterian Church hosts photography exhibit
Friday, January 18, 2013
BY  EILEEN LA FORGIA
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News

“I view sports photography as a sport in itself because you have to anticipate what is going to happen – stay focused on the event and you have to be aware of everything that is going on around the field or court,” said Robin Gottesman.

Her exhibit at the West Side Presbyterian Church Gallery, “For the love of sport, a labor of love,” consists of 40 sports photographs she has taken during the last few years; they were chosen to display the many facets of sport. The subjects photographed are of all ages. Only one is a professional athlete – the winner of an Ironman competition. Many of the athletes are from local schools.

Gottesman calls sports photography her passion.

https://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/art/187412381_West_Side_Presbyterian_Church_hosts_photography_exhibit.html

https://www.robingottesmansports.com/

 

Reader I guess the BOE has not heard of the  “New Normal”

I guess the BOE has not heard of the  “New Normal”. None of us get the raises we used to get or for that matter get payed as much as we used to .

The fact is taxes are raising and going to continue to raise ,while salaries shrink and Ridgewood will just have to do without an over priced superintendent .

The district’s potential ability to pay a salary up to 15% over the capped salary level, which is $170,000. In this day and age that more than adequate.

According to some readers its not about about an “increase” or “raise” and it’s not in reference to Dr. Fishbein’s current $220,000 salary.Its about the state interfering with the BOE’s ability to do its legislated job, which is to make decisions that the locally-elected officials feel will provide the best possible education for the town’s children. The fallout from this arbitrary cap will negatively affect the state’s schools through extremely high turnover among superintendents and a shrinking pool of experienced educators, yea right ,do it for the children.

Interesting that the BOE only complains about state intervention when it comes to pay raises for staff but never with it asks for state aid? The state is always a handy excuse while the board pisses away money and fails to prepare children for the future . Sorry folks sending a kid to Bergen Community  is not worth $90 million a year.

Ridgewood’s School rank has dropped in recent years and and we have fared poorly on state standardized tests people need to be held accountable .

Readers takes a different view of School Safety debate

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that bricking up the windows at each school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that solid steel doors with bank quality time release locks at each school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that arming student at each school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that a moat around each school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that forcing all students to disperse and home school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that a double enclosure of electrified and barbed wire fences at each school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that requiring each student to wear a bullet proof vest and full Kevlar suit with full face mask at each school would provide some additional protection.

We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that bulldozing all of the schools and providing a virtual classroom experience for students at each school would provide some additional protection.

You’re Correct … ther eis no need for debate

Photo by Boyd Loving

Readers Says Police officer in School is the answer to School Safety

Unfortunately, from what I am hearing, Ridgewood’s Superintendent, Dr. Fishbein, and the slight majority of the village council, are not interested in measures like this that would actually protect our children. Apparently, they want to rely on more video cameras as a solution.

If the government offers funds and Ridgewood’s elected (and unelected officials) say “no thank you” our town’s schools and children will be even more of a likely target for crazy people. The town should take immediate steps to protect the children NOW. We can all debate about what other measures would help, but there is no question that an officer at each school would provide some additional protection.

NJ anti-big brother bill makes its way through state Legislature
Rebecca Forand/South Jersey Times updated January 11, 2013 at 8:16 PM

As technology continues to advance and schools are embracing it for their students, new legislation is making its way through the state Assembly that guarantees parents are made aware of any tracking or monitoring software included in that technology.

Assembly bill A-2932, and its companion Senate bill, S-2057, dubbed the “anti-big brother act,” come in response to a Pennsylvania case where at least one student was monitored at home through a webcam that had been remotely activated by school officials.

“Everyone hopes that what occurred in the Pennsylvania school district was a one-time occurrence that you will never see happen anywhere else,” said Mike Yaple, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. “This legislation says if you do have any kind of tracking software, you just have to tell the parents and the kids.”

The bill, which was introduced in May and amended last month, requires any school district that furnishes a student with a laptop computer, a cellphone of other electronic device, to provide notice if that device can record or collect information, or if it includes a camera or global positioning system that can be remotely accessed.

https://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/index.ssf/2013/01/big_brother_bill_makes_its_way.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Ohio Town tries novel Approach to School Security : Arming Janitors
Armed-janitor plan draws mixed reaction from Montpelier parents
BY MARK REITER
BLADE STAFF WRITER

MONTPELIER, Ohio — As the mother of three children in Montpelier Exempted Village Schools, Teresa Hickman calls the district’s plan to arm the custodial staff with guns an effective way to prevent incidents like the shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Shannon Siler, the mother of two girls, says she is leery about Mont-pelier’s plan despite the training that she knows will be involved. She said gun control starts at home, with making sure weapons are kept locked up. Shannon Siler, the mother of two girls, says she is leery about Mont-pelier’s plan despite the training that she knows will be involved. She said gun control starts at home, with making sure weapons are kept locked up. THE BLADE/LORI KING Enlarge | Buy This Photo

“I don’t have a problem with it. With all the shootings going on in these little schools this will make me feel more at peace,” said Mrs. Hickman as she waited Friday in her minivan for her two sons and daughter to be dismissed.
CTY montpelier11p 01/11/2013 The Blade/Lori King Montpelier Exempted Village School District superintendent Dr. Jamison Grime talks about guns in Montpelier schools. CTY montpelier11p 01/11/2013 The Blade/Lori King Montpelier Exempted Village School District superintendent Dr. Jamison Grime talks about guns in Montpelier schools. THE BLADE/LORI KING Enlarge | Buy This Photo

Montpelier schools may be the first in Ohio to ramp up security by authorizing employees to carry weapons.

The district has about 1,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and 75 teachers in one building in this Williams County village of 4,000.

https://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2013/01/12/Armed-janitor-plan-draws-mixed-reaction-from-Montpelier-parents.html

NJ Touts Educational Reforms But Earns ‘D’ on One Nationwide Report Card
StudentsFirst rankings raise eyebrows for judgment of Christie’s record — and who’s doing judging
By John Mooney, January 8, 2013 in Education |2 Comments

Two years ago, school-reform crusader Michelle Rhee was sitting in the first row during Gov. Chris Christie’s State of the State address, in which he laid out much of his education agenda.

As Christie prepares to make his State of the State for 2013 today, education is expected to figure less prominently, but his administration still got a reminder yesterday that the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor-turned-national education advocate isn’t letting up.

In the first state-by-state report card issued by Rhee’s new organization, StudentsFirst, New Jersey earned a D for its progress – or lack of progress– in meeting Rhee’s core reform principles, which center on teacher quality, school choice and what she deems to be effective spending and oversight.

“Parents and teachers are working hard every day to make sure every child in New Jersey gets a great education, and while recent tenure reform represents meaningful progress, more reforms are necessary for our students to achieve the results we want for them,” said Craig Wallace, StudentsFirst’s state director for New Jersey.

https://tinyurl.com/aaff89g

THE U.S. TAX SYSTEM: Who Really Pays?
Stephen Moore, Senior Economics Writer, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ir_22.htm

Stephen Moore is the author of the forthcoming book Who’s the fairest of them all? from Encounter Books.

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today, and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the tax rates…. [A]n economy constrained by high tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance the budget, just as it will never create enough jobs or enough profits.” —John F. Kennedy, 1963[1]

Even if most policymakers and members of the public instinctively understand the wisdom of President Kennedy’s words, tax rates are set to go way up, not down, next year because of the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the beginning of 2013. The Obamacare law also raises tax rates on wealthy individuals by an additional 3.8 percentage points next year. President Obama and others in Congress argue that these higher tax rates are justified because of the growing consensus that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Unless we do something to spread the burden more equitably, the argument goes, American society will become more unfair and the economy more unsustainable with each passing year.

At first glance, the tax rate issue seems inseparable from the tax fairness issue, since higher taxes are expected to shift society’s wealth from the private sector to the public sector, where, broadly speaking, it is redistributed to lower-wage earners and the needy. In reality, the people at the bottom of the scale have benefited directly and indirectly from every tax rate reduction dating back to Kennedy’s rate reductions in the early 1960s and through the tax cuts adopted early in the administration of George W. Bush. If those lower rates, along with the Alternative Minimum Tax fix, are allowed to expire, the poor will be burdened even more than the wealthy because the whole economic pie will shrink.

If tax cuts work to expand the economy, the income pie gets larger for everyone. For example, tax rate reductions on businesses may mean more money after-tax for hiring more workers, paying them more, or purchasing more plant and equipment and computers that make workers more productive and efficient. Tax rate reductions on investment expand investment and mean more funds available for new businesses to get off the ground and for existing businesses to expand. Lower estate taxes may mean that family-owned businesses don’t have to be sold at auction at the time of the owner’s death. Everyone benefits.

At stake in the current tax debate in Washington are not only marginal income-tax rates but the tax on capital gains and dividends. Federal taxes are already scheduled to rise by about $700 billion over the next ten years to finance the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In short, Americans face the largest cumulative tax increase since the end of World War II, which could be a mighty blow to an economy already on the verge of double-dip recession.

The truth is that higher taxes starve the very sectors of the economy that create jobs for everyone. They can, for a little while, reduce the incomes of our top-earning citizens—until these people’s top-notch accountants are able to redirect their investments away from the most efficient, effective uses of their money and into sleepier investments such as government debt, instead of providing the capital that some high-tech company, for example, needs to develop its next tablet.

Below are a series of statements reflecting popular conceptions and misconceptions about the impact of tax rates on economic productivity and fairness. We’ll address these statements (and debunk attendant myths) one at a time.

1. To become fairer, the tax code needs to tax the rich more heavily.

President Obama certainly thinks so. His latest budget proposal raises $1,700 billion in taxes over the next decade by increasing tax rates for the wealthiest Americans as well as for the middle class. He wants a top tax rate of almost 42 percent[2] (up from 35 percent today) on anyone with more than $250,000 in income from salaries, small-business income, and dividends. After paying state and local taxes, some Americans will face tax rates of nearly 50 percent—because for businesspeople and other active participants in the economy, many other types of tax are applied to almost every stage of transactions. As a result, much of those people’s wealth, which might otherwise go toward creating jobs, would end up sitting in unproductive tax shelters.

For this and other reasons, high tax rates are the worst way to redistribute income to the poor and the middle class. In 1972, when the highest tax rate on the rich was 70 percent and the top capital-gains tax rate was 35 percent, the richest 1 percent of Americans assumed 18 percent of the income-tax burden. Today, with a top income-tax rate of 35 percent and a capital-gains rate of 15 percent, their share is 39 percent, more than twice as much. This is true because, faced with high tax rates, the rich of 40 years ago put more of their income into tax shelters or foreign countries. They invested less, and they worked less. And the rest of us suffered during the years of stagflation—as we will again, if rates are raised.

Even though taxes are 10 to 20 percent lower in the United States than they are in most other industrialized nations, the U.S. government is more dependent on rich people for taxes than are many of the more socialized economies of Europe. According to the Tax Foundation, the U.S. gets 45 percent of its total federal taxes from the top 10 percent of tax filers, whereas the average for industrialized nations is 32 percent. America’s well-off bear a larger share of the tax burden than do the rich in Belgium (25 percent), Germany (31 percent), France (28 percent), and Sweden (27 percent).

2. The rich are paying less in income taxes than they have in the past 50 years.

False. In 2007, the richest 3 percent of Americans contributed a larger share of tax revenues than they have in any year since 1960. For more than half its income, the federal government relies on what it takes from just that 3 percent.

Every year, the Treasury Department examines the distribution of federal taxes by income group. The data for all recent years yield the same conclusion: people at the top not only make a disproportionate contribution to the nation’s wealth; they also pay a higher proportion of their collective income than those at the bottom. Let us examine the data for 2007, when the richest 1 percent of Americans made 22 percent of all earned national personal income but contributed 40 percent of all personal income-tax revenue. The top 10 percent contributed 71 percent of all personal income-tax revenue. The bottom 50 percent earned 12 percent but contributed just 3 percent of the tax revenues so obtained.

3. When all the other taxes are counted, the rich get off easy.

It’s true that the Social Security tax is somewhat “regressive,” in comparison with the income tax. But the payroll tax makes much less difference than people might think. Payroll taxes of just under 15 percent (combined total of employee’s and employer’s share) are charged on the first dollar of income earned by a worker, and the tax is capped at an income of about $110,100 in 2012. The Tax Policy Center, which is run by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, recently studied payroll and income taxes paid by every income group. It found that the highest-income 1 percent of Americans still pay a combined (income plus payroll) average rate of 26.[1] percent, while the poorest fifth of Americans receive a refund of 0.9 percent, largely through the Earned Income Tax Credit. As Figure 3 illustrates, even when the regressive effects of the payroll tax are counted, the rich contribute a greater fraction of their income, and make a greater contribution to federal tax revenues, than other income groups.

4. Tax cuts are just Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich.

Since we have just shown that the rich pay more in taxes than the poor, it might appear that tax cuts disproportionately benefit the rich. But the economy is not a static, limited resource in which winners gain at the expense of everyone else. Tax rates can change the size of the pie, since they affect how people act in the economy.

Imagine that a 90 percent or even 100 percent tax on income over $100,000 were imposed. What would that mean for the economy? A lot of people would stop going to work, or seeking promotions, or working second jobs, or running their businesses. And who would want to start or expand a business under such a punitive tax regime? The higher the tax rate, the lower the incentive to lift a finger, propose new ideas, or create a single new job.

Low rates might be beneficial for the private sector, but we cannot pretend that we don’t have a government or that it doesn’t need funding. So in balancing the interests of the private sector and the claims of government, we need to focus on yield—how to raise the necessary revenue to fund government without shrinking the private economy. We must discover the optimal tax rate, which is the lowest possible rate that will produce sufficient revenues to pay for government’s services.

How can we tell when taxes are too high? The most common side effect of excessive tax rates is an economic downturn or, in the worst case, a recession, such as we suffered repeatedly through the 1970s. The near-doubling of tax rates on the rich in the 1930s under Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt played an important role in extending the length of, and the suffering from, the Great Depression. In recessions, the rich do a little less well, but the poor suffer terribly. Recoveries, like the 25-year boom launched by Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, lift all boats—especially those of the people most vulnerable to economic ups and downs.

5. Lower tax rates can make the tax burden fairer.

True. In the early 1960s, the highest income-tax rate was 91 percent. That rate was slashed to 70 percent during the Kennedy administration and remained there until 1981. President Reagan slashed the top tax rate to 50 percent, then to 28 percent in 1986. Even though the tax rate fell by more than half, total tax receipts in the 1980s increased, from $517 billion in 1981 to $1,030 billion in 1990, reflecting strong growth of the economy. In view of the results, taxes also appear to have become fairer: since the late 1970s, even as tax rates fell by half, the amount of taxes paid by the wealthy, and their percentage of total income taxes paid, increased vastly.

This trend continued into George W. Bush’s presidency: by 2007, the top 5 percent paid a larger share of individual federal taxes than the bottom 95 percent—for the first time since the Great Depression.

Along with fairness came opportunity, growth, and jobs because the money freed up for consumption and investment had a multiplier effect. Lower tax rates affect every economic decision. Just as consumers might forgo a vacation if they do not expect a tax refund, investors will take fewer risks if they expect their profits to be taxed away. Indeed, lower tax rates encourage investing in America (rather than China), where investors and entrepreneurs will start or expand businesses and create jobs. High taxes, by contrast, nudge people toward safe, sleepy investments or offshore tax shelters.

When President Kennedy was promoting tax rate reductions in 1963, he stated that the best way to promote economic growth “is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system—and this administration is pledged to an across-the-board reduction in personal and corporate income tax rates.”[3]

Even though the truth of Kennedy’s words has been confirmed, this country now faces the absurd prospect of a huge, automatic rise in tax rates in January 2013, when the Bush tax cuts expire. Many Democrats want to raise taxes for those earning more than $250,000—the bulk of America’s investors and entrepreneurs—while most Republicans want to keep all the lower tax rates in place. The Bush tax cuts passed Congress in May 2003. The major changes were as follows:

The tax on dividends was cut from 39.6 percent to 15 percent.
The tax on long-term capital gains was cut from 20 percent to 15 percent.
The highest marginal personal-income tax bracket fell from 39.6 percent to 35 percent. The lowest tax bracket fell from 15 percent to 10 percent.
The tax on business investment in plant, machinery, and equipment was lowered.

Of course, wealthier Americans saved more in taxes than poorer Americans, since they had more money at stake. But the non-wealthy benefited significantly—and not just in their take-home pay. They saw more hiring by businesses, a stronger stock market, and other favorable reactions to the lower tax rates in 2003–07. At the same time, tax revenues rose more after the Bush tax cuts than they did after the Clinton tax increases. And the economy grew faster.

Moreover, after the 2003 tax cuts, payments by the rich increased faster than anyone else’s. Total taxes paid by households earning $1 million or more in a given year more than doubled in 2003–07, even as the tax rate was lowered.

Figure 7 shows what happened to the number of Americans who declared more than $1 million in income on their tax returns through 2007. In just three years, the number earning at least $1 million more than doubled. The best way to get more money from taxpayers is to create more rich people.

Not only did the dollar payments of the rich rise, but the percentage of the total tax burden that the rich paid also increased. The rich are now paying more than they would have paid had the Bush tax cuts not gone through.

The rich also paid a larger share of total personal income taxes paid following the 2003 tax cuts, partly because those tax cuts provided a big cut in middle-class taxes and took a big percentage of Americans off the tax rolls completely.

All these wealth-creating policies would be reversed if the 2003 cuts are allowed to expire in January 2013. Not only would those with high incomes be affected: the Alternative Minimum Tax would return, and because it has not been indexed to account for income inflation, it would affect 30.1 million Americans, swelling the tax bills of people making less than $100,000 a year by $2,000–$3,000.

Here is what will happen if nothing is done about extending the Bush era tax cuts and abolishing Obamacare taxes:

If those tax rates go up, many economists believe that it will push the stock market lower, contract the real economy, and possibly contribute to a double-dip recession like the one that Americans suffered under President Jimmy Carter. Our current recovery is too fragile—we are still 4 million jobs short of where we were in 2007—to withstand such a blow. Except in the face of a conflict like World War II, it’s almost never a good idea to raise taxes, but it’s especially foolish when the economy is still struggling.

6. All those tax cuts created deficits that have mortgaged our children’s future.

False. The lower tax rates brought in more money because they helped the economy to grow and created more jobs and more wealth. Reagan’s tax cuts caused federal tax receipts almost to double, from $517 billion to $1,032 billion. As The New York Times stated on December 8, 1992: “One popular misconception is that the Republican tax cuts caused the crippling federal budget deficit now approaching $300 billion a year. The fact is, the large deficit resulted because the government vastly expanded what it spent each year.”[5]

A growth spurt similar to the one following Reagan’s tax cuts came in response to Bush’s. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that in the first four years of the Bush tax cuts, federal revenues increased by $786 billion—the largest real increase in history. From 1981 to 2007, every time tax rates were reduced, tax payments by the rich climbed:

At a top rate of 70 percent in 1980, the top 1 percent paid $47 billion in federal taxes. Today, at a 35 percent rate, they paid more than $400 billion. Even adjusting for inflation, that is a nearly 300 percent increase in tax payments by the rich.
After the Reagan income-tax cuts in 1981, the highest-earning 1 percent more than doubled their collective income-tax payments, from $50 billion in 1981 to $114 billion in 1988.
After the 1986 tax reform act, income-tax payments by the rich rose from $70 billion to $146 billion in 1993.
After the 2003 tax cuts, payments by the rich increased from $256 billion in 2003 to $451 billion in 2007. Some of those revenue gains were inflated by the housing bubble, but there was certainly no revenue loss.

What matters most in collecting the taxes needed to run the government is how fast the economy grows and how many jobs are created. Raising tax rates on the prosperous—especially small-business owners, who would be exposed to higher taxes if the 2003 tax cuts expire—can be counted on to shrink the economy and stifle job creation.

All this talk about tax increases is really a political diversion from the real problem in Washington: overspending. The federal budget is now $3.8 trillion, compared with roughly $2 trillion in 2000. Reagan used to cast aside calls for higher taxes with a simple retort: “Never give a big spender a bigger allowance.” The spending disease is what really threatens to paralyze our economic future.

7. Ordinary Americans pay more than their fair share of taxes.

Every year, fewer Americans pay any income tax at all. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that in 2009, nearly 42 percent of Americans who file tax returns end up paying no tax. In 2008, that percentage was around 36 percent.[6] Many of these Americans actually received a check from the IRS because of the tax credits that they claimed.

8. The 15 percent tax on investment income, which is well below the income-tax rate that most salaried workers pay, is a gift to the wealthy.

If it is, it’s one that a majority of Americans benefit from. The latest polls show that 54 percent of Americans own stock and benefit directly from lower capital-gains and dividend taxes. But that is probably the smaller part of how ordinary taxpayers benefit. Capital gains are what is left over when an investment—in a stock whose price could have tanked, or a new business that could have gone bankrupt—succeeds. Investing is therefore different from drawing a paycheck, which is almost certain to clear. It makes sense to reward productive risk-taking with a lower tax rate.

Lower capital-gains rates also increase the amount of taxes paid. The 1997 capital-gains tax cut reduced the long-term rate from 28 percent to 20 percent. In the subsequent three years, the amount of taxable capital gains almost doubled. When President George W. Bush cut the rate again, to 15 percent, a 107 percent increase in revenues from 2002 (the year before the rate was reduced) to 2005 resulted.

One explanation is the effect of taxes on decision making. When tax rates are high, people postpone selling stock that they own and thus claiming a profit, even if it would be more rational, from a strictly economic standpoint, to do so right away. In short, the tax code, and not good business sense, is making economic decisions for them. By keeping investors from reallocating their capital to its highest, best use, high taxes promote economic inefficiency and damage productivity. They also shrink the volume of gains that can be taxed.

As John F. Kennedy said in 1962: “The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital …[,] the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.”[7]

9. A higher capital-gains rate would just level the playing field.

It’s true that many very rich people get their income from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a lower rate, but that lower rate is deceptive because it is a tax on top of the tax that corporations pay before they pay any of their profits to shareholders. In the U.S., the rate that corporations pay on their profits can be as high as 39.2 percent when including state taxes. (The compensation that they pay their employees is a tax-deductible business expense.) The real tax rate on corporate income paid to individuals through capital gains and dividends is not 15 percent but closer to 40 percent. A higher capital-gains rate would just compound the injustice. In 2007, middle-class families earning between $34,000 and $50,000 paid an effective 14.3 percent of their income to the federal government, according to the CBO. In 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available), those earning more than $2 million paid an average of 24.9 percent. That 15 percent rate cannot be said to tilt the tax system in rich people’s favor.

10. The “wealthy” are likely to be the people next door.

In a country of more than 300 million people, the number of fabulously rich people—the top entertainers, athletes, hedge-fund managers—is tiny. Most of the people in the top income-tax category are small-business owners and investors. Most small businesses are S corporations, meaning that they are taxed at their owner’s individual-income rates, according to the Senate Finance Committee. Thus, when tax rates go up on the rich, they go up on small businesses.

How the wealthy are doing, as well as how numerous they are, has a big effect on the revenues that the government can collect. Because the economy has done so poorly in recent years, tax payments by a dwindling number of the rich have plummeted. According to IRS data, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more for 2007. These people paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers, a decline of 39 percent, and the total taxes they paid declined to $178 billion, a drop of 42 percent.

Those with $10 million or more in reported income fell to 8,274, from 18,394 in 2007, a 55 percent drop. As a result, their tax payments plummeted by 51 percent.

These disappearing millionaires go a long way toward explaining why federal tax revenues have sunk to 15 percent of GDP in recent years. The loss of millionaires accounts for at least $130 billion of the increased federal budget deficit in 2009.

Today’s “tax fairness” activists are concerned mainly about income inequality. But raising taxes contributes to downturns and recessions, which may, unfortunately, be the only way to increase equality. And recessions fall inordinately on the less well-off. Are financial losses for all levels of income an acceptable price to pay for greater equality of income? The recession and weak recovery of the past four years have been income levelers. In 2007, those who made more than $200,000 earned about 35.2 percent of our nation’s total income; in 2009, that figure went down to 33 percent. In 2007, those with incomes above $1 million earned 17.3 percent of the nation’s income; by 2009, that figure was down to 12.9 percent. So we have created a more equal society—by making America poorer.

11. It is increasingly harder to climb the economic ladder, and changing the tax code will help.

Barack Obama seems to think so. Since the early 1980s, he says, the rungs of the economic ladder have been sawed off, making the upward climb increasingly futile. He also alleges that a child born into poverty in the years immediately after World War II had a better than 50–50 chance of moving into the middle class; and a child born into poverty in 1980 had a 40 percent chance of moving up; but a child born today will have only a 33 percent chance of “making it to the middle class.” The New York Times reports that other nations have much more income mobility from one generation to the next than does the United States. It cites research that finds that most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility. The Times reports that in the U.S., 42 percent of those born into the bottom fifth of income stay there as adults. In many other industrial nations, only about 33 percent or 25 percent born into the bottom quintile are found there as adults.[8] Are these gloomy portrayals true? Not exactly.

The story on income mobility across generations in the U.S. is admittedly mixed. The questions are whether a person born poor is likely to be poor when reaching adulthood and whether children who grow up in rich households are much more likely to be rich as adults. In other words, how much does it matter who your parents are, in terms of your own success? We would like to think that what matters most is individual initiative and hard work, not one’s genes or one’s head start in life.

One thing we do know for certain is that today’s workers are generally a lot wealthier than their parents were at the same age. A study by Ron Haskins, based on Pew Foundation data, found that about 66 percent Americans have higher incomes than their parents did at the same age. Even more impressive: when adjusting for family size, 81 percent have a higher income than their parents did. So it is not true that our parents were better off than we are.

But there does seem to be considerable controversy and some distressing news about the ability of low-income Americans to climb up from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Most studies now find that about 40 percent of low-income children in America have a low income as adults. If one’s probability of being poor were not related to one’s parents’ income, that figure would be close to 20 percent. Even more distressing is that less than 20 percent of Americans who grow up in a poor household move into the high-middle-income or high-income category. It is getting harder for a poor person to rise to the top income level, according to the analysis by The New York Times.

A new analysis by Scott Winship, an economic studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, has looked at the mobility data and is not so negative about the trends. Winship, an expert on economic mobility, points to at least six prominent studies on “intergenerational income mobility.” That is, research that compares the income status of parents with that of their children when they become adults finds “either no change or rising mobility” in recent decades. Winship also examined data from a national longitudinal survey of children born between 1962 and 1964 and children born between 1980 and 1982 and compared these cohorts’ income when they reached the age of 26 to 28 with their parents’ incomes, and found that upward mobility from poverty to the middle class rose from 51 percent to 57 percent over these two periods. He is reluctant to conclude definitively that mobility increased but is emphatic that “the data provides absolutely no evidence that economic mobility declined, whereas the president said it has fallen by 10 percentage points.”[9]

Even more confounding is President Obama’s assertion that only one in three kids born today will move out of poverty. That is not based on any data or any factual measurement but is pure conjecture by researchers. How does anyone know what the income 25 years from now will be of a child born today? More to the point, what is the value of such negative speculation? As Winship puts it, “all the president is doing is reinforcing any doubt among the poor that they can make it if they try.”[10] It is like trying to teach a six-year-old to ride a bike but telling her in advance all the reasons she will probably fall.

But Winship agrees that a more permanent underclass in America is emerging. “In particular, it’s American men who fare worse than their counterparts in other countries.”[11] Men in poor households have a hard time finding their way into higher income classes—but not primarily because of economic factors limiting mobility. Social factors—divorce, out-of-wedlock births, bad neighborhoods, and extremely dysfunctional schools that don’t train children to be highly functioning adults—are responsible. Most experts on the left and right agree that one of the most important steps to reduce income inequality and give every American a fair opportunity to succeed is school choice, so that parents can opt out of failing schools. Welfare reform that continues to promote work over the dole is also critical, as well as policies that promote intact families.

There is little doubt that government can redistribute wealth: taxing high-income individuals can and has increased equality. But there is little evidence to suggest that this results in increased economic mobility for the poor. A 2006 study by Chul-In Lee and Gary Solon finds that intergenerational income mobility has not changed significantly despite various changes in tax rates: “[O]ur results … suggest that intergenerational income mobility in the United States has not changed dramatically over the last two decades.”[12] That study makes it difficult to see how raising taxes on the wealthy will generate increased income mobility for the poor, and it underscores the point that equality is not synonymous with economic mobility.

ENDNOTES

Quoted in Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous, The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy—If We Let It Happen (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 56.
This figure includes the phase-out of deductions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Quoted in Laffer et al., p. 48.
This figure and the capital gains figure includes the 3.8 percent surtax imposed under the ACA.
David Rosenbaum, “The Push and Pull Over Taxes,” New York Times, December 8, 1992, p. D1.
Tax Foundation, “Federal Income Tax Returns With Zero or Negative Liability,” October 18, 2011. https://taxfoundation.org/article/federal-individual-income-tax-returns-zero-or-negative-tax-liability-1950-2009.
Quoted in Stephen Moore and John Silvia, “Policy Analysis: The ABCs of the Capital Gains Tax,” Cato Institute, October 4, 1995. https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/abcs-capital-gains-tax
Jason DeParle, “Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs,” New York Times, January 4, 2012, p. A1.
Scott Winship, “The President’s Suspect Statistics” National Review Online, January 2, 2012. https://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/286874
Ibid.
Scott Winship, “Mobility Impaired” Brookings Institution, November 9, 2011. https://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2011/11/09-economic-mobility-winship
Chul-In Lee and Gary Solon, Trends in Intergenerational Income Mobility, working paper no. 12007 (National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2006), p. 16, https://www.nber.org/papers/w12007.

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ir_22.htm

 

 

AP Photo

The giant, gaping hole in Sandy Hook reporting : psychiatric medications
David Kupelian says 1 piece of crucial information has yet to be disclosed

Since last month’s horrifying and heartbreaking school massacre in Newtown, Conn., politicians and the press have, as everyone knows, been totally obsessed with firearms.

Indeed, President Obama has vowed to impose strong new gun-control measures on the nation – very soon, with or without Congress.

Other possible factors – from violent video games to the “failure of our mental-health system” to the unintended consequences of making schools “gun-free zones” – have taken a back seat to guns. Within hours of the gruesome mega-crime, the media had provided extensive, round-the-clock coverage of precisely which firearms, manufacturers and calibers the perpetrator had used, how he had obtained them from his mother, where they were originally purchased, and so on.

But where, I’d like to ask my colleagues in the media, is the reporting about the psychiatric medications the perpetrator – who had been under treatment for mental-health problems – may have been taking? After all, Mark and Louise Tambascio, family friends of the shooter and his mother, were interviewed on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” during which Louise Tambascio told correspondent Scott Pelley: “I know he was on medication and everything, but she homeschooled him at home cause he couldn’t deal with the school classes sometimes, so she just homeschooled Adam at home. And that was her life.” And here, Tambascio tells ABC News, “I knew he was on medication, but that’s all I know.”

Read more at https://www.wnd.com/2013/01/the-giant-gaping-hole-in-sandy-hook-reporting/#IvtHhesVoaoLT1he.99

Are We Helping Poor Americans?
Jennifer Marshall
December 31, 2012 at 8:38 am

At the end of the year, many people take time to make charitable donations. But caring for those in need is a year-round responsibility—and when it comes to public policy, conservatives have an important opportunity to articulate an effective response to poverty and social breakdown in America.

A half-century into the War on Poverty, liberals can hardly declare victory. But they can claim the dominant anti-poverty narrative: Fight poverty by spending more, by starting another federal program.

Americans seldom look to conservatives for policy answers to the problems of poverty.

That’s not to say we don’t have answers. To the contrary, we’ve had important policy successes. The 1996 welfare reform rises to the top. School choice, which allows low-income parents to get their children out of failing and often violent public schools, is another a vital example of a policy that can help lift those in poverty and give them a chance at a different future.

But we’ve made precious few attempts to string these single notes of success together into something larger. We have yet to popularize a competitor to the prevailing tune about how to meet the needs of our neighbors.

It’s time to change that—first and foremost in the interest of our neighbors.

A single mother on welfare may reflexively accept liberal policies. But if we believe that long-term government dependency doesn’t do justice to her dignity, we ought to be able to explain that in a way that taps into her aspirations for a better future — particularly for her children. Anyone who thinks that’s not possible should consider how low-income parents have clamored for school choice.

In 2012, The Heritage Foundation hosted an anti-poverty conference to bring leaders together from around the country. About 90 policymakers, policy implementers, researchers and program evaluators, service providers and ministry leaders, representatives of philanthropy networks, and communicators gathered. Fourteen leaders of state welfare agencies participated.

Our objective is to help more Americans escape poverty by promoting work, marriage, civil society, and welfare-spending restraints.

The many disciplines represented at that conference on Capitol Hill reflect the complexities of the human needs we seek to meet. But because we work in different disciplines, we might not often think of ourselves as a cohesive anti-poverty movement. And if we don’t, that means the public certainly doesn’t.

But we share a commitment to principles deeply related to the flourishing of all Americans. Evidence and experience testify to it. Marriage reduces the probability of child poverty by 80 percent. Work-based welfare recognizes that personal responsibility is essential to human dignity. If these realities are not yet widely understood, we owe it to all our neighbors to make that message clearer, appealing to their best intentions and their best interests.

In advancing a conservative agenda to fight poverty, we’ve got five Big C’s to conquer:

Communication. We are being defeated by straw men in the poverty debate. If we don’t talk in our own terms about overcoming poverty, our opponents will caricature our position. Conservatives need to go on offense, explaining why the welfare state has not done justice to the poor and pointing the way to upward mobility. That means communicating facts and stories in every possible venue — from op-eds to congressional hearings and town halls to state agency press releases.

Content. Conservatives need to offer a concrete description of our near-term objectives: We want to build on the success of the welfare reform of 1996, which reformed just one of 80 federal means-tested programs that in total are now funded to the tune of $1 trillion annually. We seek to secure the safety net for those truly in need — and to ensure that it encourages work and marriage rather than long-term government dependency. And we look to civil society to transform lives and communities and restore the path to upward mobility.

Courage. Policymakers need conviction, coupled with the confidence that comes from being equipped with the facts and seeing firsthand the life-changing alternatives to the status quo. They need to meet the former addicts restored through Jubal Garcia’s work at Victory Fellowship in San Antonio, or the couples who have built healthy marriages thanks to Bishop Shirley Holloway’s House of Help/City of Hope in Washington, D.C.

Credibility. Showing up, learning, and listening are top priorities. When the Republican Study Committee launched an anti-poverty initiative this fall, their first order of business was to hold a summit where they listened as neighborhood leaders from across the country — Jubal and Shirley among them — told of challenges and successes in exercising effective compassion.

Critical mass. We need others to join in to begin to change this tune. At The Heritage Foundation, we’re committed to linking arms with a growing coalition of leaders to build a conservative anti-poverty movement.

Our challenge is to sound the notes that ring true to human need, to arrange them in a way that reminds listeners of what human dignity demands, and to make the music compelling enough for others to join in.

That’s one of our resolutions for 2013 and beyond. Will you join us?

A version of this piece originally appeared in National Review Online.

https://tinyurl.com/a8bu6ek

Cruising down main street, meeting friends at the local car hop, doing the Lindy and the Jive to the jukebox, going to the drive-in and barely watching the movie…these are some of the images invoked by the retro and automotive pop-art-flavored paintings of Jen Bissu. Strong composition, unique points of view, and striking color and contrast are hallmarks of her work. Driven by a passion for an era before her time, Jen Bissu’s paintings take the viewer back to the excitement-charged days when Elvis was King and  a chrome-laden car was the coolest. “I can’t even explain what got me so interested in it,” Bissu says. “I just have this deep passion for the fifties embedded in me. There was a kind of magic to the era, a romance, that you can’t find anymore. Going to drive-ins in these gorgeous cars, sharing a Coke with two straws, going steady…it was so romantic! And the music of the era captures it perfectly. That’s what I strive for in my paintings, too…to capture the romance and excitement of the Fabulous Fifties.”

Born in a New Jersey town directly across the river from Manhattan, Jen Bissu had the art c
apital of America at arm’s reach during her formative years. Visiting museums and attending art classes in New York City schools added fuel to the creative fire burning inside her from her earliest days. By age six, Bissu could be found standing in the bustling corridors of NYC’s Chrysler Building, selling her drawings (both prints and originals). She began studying art formally by age nine, and knew right away it was to be her calling. She took art classes at several New York City schools including the United Nations International School, The Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and Pratt. Bissu went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude with a B.F.A. in Visual Communications/Illustration and M.A. in Fine Art Education from Kean University.

From childhood to now, Jen Bissu has delved into several art forms from drawing to watercolor to photography, and dabbled in several three-dimensional media as well. In a college Intro to Painting class, she discovered her medium of choice. Bissu immediately fell in love with the way the buttery acrylic and oil paints glide over the painting surface, and the rich colors they produce. Over the years, Bissu has flirted with many themes in painting: portraits, still life, landscape, even dilapidated buildings. But above all, her love for the roots of Rock’n’Roll and classic mid-century American culture has fostered a need to create art about classic cars, chrome, candy shoppe fountains, greasers, and pin-up cuties. Jen Bissu’s paintings embody the wholesomely sinful spirit of the 1950s and bring about a deliciously nostalgic feeling, even for those born too late to experience firsthand the magic of the Fabulous Fifties.

https://www.jenbissu.com/

Twitter @JenBissu

Jen@JenBissu.com

10 of Stupidest and Worst Regulations of 2012
James Gattuso and Diane Katz
December 28, 2012 at 8:36 am

It seems that no aspect of American life can escape government regulation. In the past year, regulators drafted rules that addressed everything from caloric intake to dishwasher efficiency.

Most of these rules increase the cost of living, others hinder job creation, and many erode freedom. Not all regulations are unwarranted, of course, but increasingly, the rules imposed by the government have less to do with health and safety and more to do with whether government or individuals get to make basic pocketbook and lifestyle decisions that affect them. And it is not just the regulators who are to blame. Congress writes laws that give unelected bureaucrats the broad powers they wield.

Today we bring you 10 of the worst regulations from 2012:

1. HHS’s Contraception Mandate

The Department of Health and Human Services on February 15 finalized its mandate that all health insurance plans include coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization procedures, and contraceptives. To date, 42 cases with more than 110 plaintiffs are challenging this restriction on religious liberty.

2. EPA Emissions Standards

The EPA in February finalized strict new emissions standards for coal- and oil-fired electric utilities. The benefits are highly questionable, with the vast majority being unrelated to the emissions targeted by the regulation. The costs, however, are certain: an estimated $9.6 billion annually.

3. Fuel Efficiency Standards

In August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in tandem with the Environmental Protection Agency, finalized fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks for model years 2017–2025. The rules require a whopping average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Sticker prices will jump by hundreds of dollars.

4. New York’s 16-Ounce Soda Limit

Not all regulations come from Washington. On September 13, at the behest of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the New York City Board of Health banned the sale of soda and other sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces.

5. Dishwasher Efficiency Standards

Regulators admit that these Department of Energy rules will do little to improve the environment. Rather, proponents claim they will save consumers money. But they will also increase the price of dishwashers, and only about one in six consumers will keep his or her dishwasher long enough to recoup the cost.

6. School Lunch Standards

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in January published stringent nutrition standards for school lunch and breakfast programs. More than 98,000 elementary and secondary schools are affected—at a cost exceeding $3.4 billion over the next four years.

7. Quickie Union Election Rule

In April, the National Labor Relations Board issued new rules that shorten the time allowed for union-organizing elections to between 10 and 21 days. This leaves little time for employees to make a fully informed choice on unionizing, threatening to leave workers and management alike under unwanted union regimes.

8. Essential Benefits Rule

Under Obamacare, insurers in the individual and small group markets will be forced to cover services that the government deems to be essential. Published on November 26, the HHS list of very broad benefits has created enormous uncertainty about the extent of essential treatment.

9. Electronic Data Recorder Mandate

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on December 13 issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to mandate installation of electronic data recorders, popularly known as “black boxes,” in most light vehicles starting in 2014. The government mandate understandably spooks privacy advocates.

10. “Simplified” Mortgage Disclosure and Servicing Rules

In July, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its proposal for a more “consumer friendly” mortgage process, with a stated goal of simplifying home loans. The rules run an astonishing 1,099 pages. Then, one month later, the bureau proposed more than 560 pages of rules for mortgage servicing.

No End in Sight

As busy as regulators were in 2012, do not look for them to slow down in the new year. We’ll continue to document the real-life impact with our ongoing Tales of the Red Tape series on The Foundry.

https://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/28/morning-bell-the-10-worst-regulations-of-2012/