Your Daily Affirmation that we’re all screwed
Exhibit A, today’s jobs report:
Private-sector employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, a private employment service said on Wednesday in a report that was far worse than expected and pointed to more ugly news from the government’s jobs data due later this week.
The drop, much bigger than the revised 476,000 private sector jobs lost in November, is consistent with about a 670,000 fall in December non-farm payrolls, said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, which jointly develops the private sector employment report with ADP Employer Services.
Exhibit B, outsourcing accounting fraud:
Satyam Computer Services, a leading Indian outsourcing company that serves more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies, significantly inflated its earnings and assets for years, the chairman and co-founder said Wednesday, roiling Indian stock markets and throwing the industry into turmoil.
The chairman, Ramalinga Raju, resigned after revealing that he had systematically falsified accounts as the company expanded from a handful of employees into a back office giant with a work force of 53,000 and operations in 66 countries.
I still say that as long as we remember that the recession’s all in our heads, that it was all caused by deadbeat minority homeowners, and that FDR’s New Deal policies were an abysmal failure, we’re going to ride out the Obama Depression just fine.
Update: @Punchy (from Lew Rockwell):
If you keep up with LRC, you probably already know that a major role of the FDIC is to give the public a false sense of confidence. Typically the FDIC keeps a little over fifty billion dollars in its Deposit Insurance Fund to cover the deposits of account holders in the event of bank failure. According to the data published on September 30, 2008, there is just under $8.8 trillion deposited in US banks. The fact that the FDIC has squat for cash to cover bank failures isn’t really news. So long as there are only three or four bank failures each year, the FDIC is able to cover the losses, and life goes on.
In 2008, however, there were more than three or four bank failures. There were twenty-five in total. As a result, the Deposit Insurance Fund has been drawn down to about $35 billion, of which approximately $20 billion is liquid. That’s still okay so long as there aren’t many more bank failures, but each quarter the numbers are looking more and more dreadful. Last we heard from the FDIC, there were 117 banks on its secret “troubled” list, which matches pretty well with my list of banks with incredibly high Texas ratios. If we add up the deposits for those troubled banks, we get a value of $76 billion. So, the FDIC has $20 billion to cover 76 billion dollars of deposits in banks that are on the brink of collapse. Things are looking pretty bleak for the FDIC.
Take things from Rockwell with a grain of salt but I’ve heard the same rumors elsewhere.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Freedom is messy.
DougJ
Stuff happens.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
When I see news like this, I visualize C3PO turning to R2D2 and saying "we’re doomed" like he always did in the (good) Star Wars movies.
Just another example of the Anti-Midas President’s shitacular touch.
And 30 years of Republican Gilded Age policies.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Why don’t we ever hear the good news about the Bush Administration? Not a single incident of fellatio occurred in the White House during his entire eight years in office. I doubt that Obama will be able to maintain this stellar track record on heterosexual sodomy.
Reverend Dennis
It’s clear to me that this sorry situation can only be reversed by further tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, abolishing the Capital Gains and Inheritance taxes and removing the heavy hand of government regulation from the markets.
/Ducks, runs out of the room.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Reverend Dennis:
Tax cuts will help. But to really fix the problem, we’ve got to bring back the gold standard.
On the plus side, this will then give us an excuse to launch Viking-style raids on the hated French, burning their coastal villages and plundering their jewelry to augment our treasury.
The Other Steve
Hmm, not worked with Satyam. Have worked with Tata(tcs).
My experience suggests that anybody talented or motivated in India has gone off on their own. These outsourcing companies primarily are n00bs out of college or people who have no skills but are told they can make a buttload of money.
Zifnab
Wait, what’s all this "by DougJ" crap? I call spoof!
Reverend Dennis
Not so fast. Bush essentially made all presidential documents unobtainable by the public because a FOIA request for the results of his annual medical exams would reveal that the doctors found widely spaced longitudinal lacerations on the Penis President’s Presidential Penis in every exam.
The Other Steve
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Thank you, Ron Paul.
DougJ
It’s strange that companies feel they have to look overseas to find such people.
Laura W
It is what it is.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@The Other Steve:
Let’s further that, and tone down the crazy:
The last Great Depression resulted in an end to Prohibition. This time, let’s legalize marijuana and tax the ever-loving shit out of it. Are you telling me potheads won’t pay $20 for a hard-pack of Camel joints?
The Other Steve
This is an Industry Best Practice.
This was the reason given for outsourcing by the CIO of [insert name of large company that was just bailed out after becoming a bank holding company] when a question was asked pointing out that our experience thus far with outsourcing had yielded unimpressive results.
Tymannosourus
When this happens, I will be on the lookout for IPOs from microwavable burrito companites. That’s the way back to prosperity, friends!
The Other Steve
Seems to me you ought to be able to sell a pack of joints for $100.
El Cid
Why do we have to outsource accounting fraud? Hell, I bet many Americans could do accounting fraud even cheaper than those Indians!
bayville
DougJ bringing a heaping helping of pessimism.
Love it.
DougJ
A friend of mine at an investment bank was told he had to taken on some workers who lived in Singapore. After arguing back and forth (he didn’t want to supervise anyone he never had face-to-face contact with), he relented and said "But these guys are going to be fresh in the morning, right? They’re not going to be up all night making sneakers for Nike?"
DougJ
This time, let’s legalize marijuana and
tax the ever-loving shit out of itgive big tax breaks to the companies that grow it.Fixed.
cynique71
Yeah, my job got "shed" yesterday. I’m nostalgic for the days when a college degree was the garlic that held off the unemployment vampire.
There are people with master’s degrees desperately competing for admin assistant jobs where I live.
WTF?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Reverend Dennis:
In this case, the Bushies would surely argue, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Matt
Ramalinga? Sweet. Too bad his last name isn’t Dingdong.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Tymannosourus:
The fundamentals of the weed-based economy are still sound.
srv
You’re Surgeon General disagrees.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@The Other Steve:
$20 tax on top of that, then.
What could we charge for marijuana brownies? They’d probably cost a pretty penny, too.
Laura W
We are a nation of weeders.
I suck. I need to get dressed and get the hell out for a brain-retooling walk.
Zifnab
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
How to turn potheads into Republicans.
Step 1: Legalize Ganja
Step 2: Tax the ever loving shit out of it
Step 3: Grover Norquist
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit
DougJ
Was that back when young people were respectful of their elders and everyone read serious novels?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@DougJ:
Unfortunately, we have to tax them before we can give them tax breaks.
Unless, of course, we want to just subsidize marijuana growers. Like we do with tobacco. Anything to revitalize the junk food and stupid television show industries!
srv
I am the most pessimistic person I know when it comes to economics. I make the Lew Rockwell types look like the Teletubbies (Greenspan and Milton were libertarians, after all). But now I’m discovering that even I was crazed optimist.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Zifnab:
Who cares what they think? The beauty part is, they won’t even remember to vote! ROFLMAO
comrade scott's agenda of rage
They may or may not but I sure as shit would.
Doesn’t a pack of good cigs cost that much these days? I wouldn’t know cuz I don’t smoke and all the bubbas and bubbetes here in Misery switched to the cheapest brands they could find after the prices went thru the roof.
DougJ
Now you’re talking.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@srv:
He hasn’t taken the job yet. It’s not too late to bring back Jocelyn Elders. She’s with me on this one, AND she’s an experienced Clinton Administration official. What could go wrong with that pick?
Punchy
Jesus fucking Christ.
Brick Oven Bill
The number was actually 745,000. I like how our government considers ‘Education and Health Services’ jobs to be private sector jobs. This is a great time to be in education and health services.
In the interim term, I recommend having a large garden. A few thousand square feet of good earth with potatoes can provide a year’s worth of calories for an adult. The longer term is a question mark but I remain optimistic.
There is light snow in our area and the schools are sending everybody home.
R-Jud
@Punchy:
Yeah I wondered when someone would mention that possibility. Sealy Posturepedic Savings and Loan, here I come!
Zifnab
You guys can be as optimistic as you want, but I still say we’re all screwed.
srv
@Punchy: You hadn’t seen that yet on the intertubes? Not that I’m worried about any short-term runs, but there’s no doubt the FDIC will need a few $100B here and there before this is over.
Like I said, I keep learning that I’m an optimist. Y’all should be very, very afraid.
Krista
Hell, I’ve often said the same thing. The government is stupid. They’re spending boatloads of money in trying to get rid of marijuana, and well…it’s not going anywhere. They’re emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. If they legalized it and regulated it just like they do booze, and taxed the hell out of it, it would be a very, very tidy little source of revenue. Apply the revenues towards universal healthcare, which allows businesses a bit more breathing room to lower (or eliminate) health insurance as an employee benefit, thereby saving them money, and allowing them to stay afloat. (Or in our case, where we already have universal healthcare, the funds could be put towards making it better and attracting more doctors to rural areas.) Not to mention the fact that creating the regulatory body for marijuana’s safety, distribution and quality control would create quite a few well-paying government jobs.
It’s so obvious it just makes me want to shake someone.
Bootlegger
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: I’d pay $50 if it was skunky.
And Sean Vannity was on the air from Conservatives in Exile to argue quite forcefully yesterday that its all in our heads, the economy is great, and Obama was about to make it worse. Pretty much just as DougJ called it.
The Other Steve
I don’t really take anything from lewrockwell seriously.
gypsy howell
I think we need to hold off on that judgment until we hear the whole What-was-Jeff-Gannon-doing-in-the-White-House story.
Oh wait. You said HETEROSEXUAL sodomy. Nevermind.
Bootlegger
@srv: I, for one, drive better stoned.
bayville
srv
Yes it seems like it was only yesterday that Greenspan was dubbed "The Maestro", Paulson was considered a great, serious money man, Bush was the first MBA President and Rubin (aka Mr. Goldman Sachs, Citi Corpse) was considered a lock to be Obama’s first Sec of Treasury.
However, judging from all of the available financial data today -and being the tepid optimist that I am – I can objectively state that our economy is doomed!
gex
@The Other Steve:
Nah, ending the black market and making it legit will bring prices down to the merely outrageous.
gopher2b
And the federal gov’t has the ability to print money so what’s the point, exactly? With everything going on right now the solvency of the FDIC isn’t up there.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
We’re optimistic cuz we’re stoned.
Evinfuilt
Give credit to Bush for one thing, consistency. As an actual CEO he fucked up every company he ran, I’m glad he held the country up to the same standards.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
I think capitalism is dead. But in the event that it’s not maybe someone can tell me what the United States can produce that some other country can’t produce more cheaply. This way I can invest in the business and get rich from being wrong.
Thanks.
Punchy
Took me an uncomfortable amount of time to actually get this. Thought at first you were riffing the old "Everyone’s a bank holding company!". Then I realized you may be playing the angle that in these times, only mattress companies survive. Finally I realized the intended spoofific bank shot you meant.
Good comedy.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Krista:
Yep, that’s always the way I’ve felt about it, too. And I haven’t smoked the stuff in almost 10 years.
Dork
What is it with Canadians and their playful penchant for the punchy? Does the cut-glass-nippleage cold up there all engender the funny while bored hanging in the ‘rents igloo?
ppcli
I dunno. I’ll hazard that you could have found a young accountant in Bangalore who would have been happy to do Bernie Madoff’s job for a mere $5 billion.
Dreggas
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
No felatio in 8 years? You call that good news?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian:
Weed.
R-Jud
@Krista:
Yep, agreed, and I’ve never smoked the stuff and don’t really care to. Also, think of the money and law enforcement hours saved on investigating, convicting, and incarcerating weed users.
@ Dork:
What is it with Canadians and their playful penchant for the punchy? Does the cut-glass-nippleage cold up there all engender the funny while bored hanging in the ‘rents igloo?
Canada has great weed.
Montysano
Here at the small company where I’ve worked for many years (50-ish employees), we are this week laying off 20% of the staff, sending 10 newly-minted Tom Joads out into the street. Me? My job is secure. My income? Not so much.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Dreggas:
Considering whom we’re talking about, Hell yes! (Although, as gypsy howell pointed out above, only heterosexual sodomy is really included.)
Krista
Glad you think I’m funny, but that’s a really, really common expression. Check with teh Google if you don’t believe me.
Although I do have a penchant for Punchy—he’s a sweetie. ;)
Sebastien
Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Indeed. Since G.W. has butt-fucked about 99,9% of Americans, an equally impressive proportion of Iraqis and people from about all the world, he has set records in this discipline and its male counterpart that won’t be beaten soon.
In any case, we’re feeling the pinch here in similar ways than you do (yes, our disastrous socialist economy STILL have productive people, of which I feel increasingly lucky to be part of): automakers are imposing production stops, and of course every associated industries are forced to follow suit.
The Moar You Know
Not to worry, the government is just as concerned about the welfare of the little guy as they are about the big money institutions. Right? RIGHT???
Zifnab
"Some other country" produces goods more cheaply than the US by not paying their employees a living wage. That’s not the most sustainable business model.
And capitalism – ie, using privately held "capital" investments to produce income through the sale of goods and services – isn’t going anywhere. There’s not a country on earth that doesn’t have a healthy amount of capitalism going on. Communism was always a delusion, an attempt to foster the idea that large numbers of people could own something all at once. That’s bullshit. There’s only room for one driver in the driver’s seat and he runs things.
That said, the US has done an excellent job in the agriculture, petrochemical, and software fields over the last twenty years. If you can eat it, burn it, or run it from an OS Prompt, it was probably made by a US Company.
AkaDad
Freedom isn’t free.
Krista
No small factor. I’ve talked to more than one retired RCMP officer who is absolutely frustrated by the time and money spent on chasing weed, when there are so many people being absolutely destroyed by meth and other hard drugs.
Yes, weed can be abused. As can booze. As can food. As can sex. However, for me, what distingushes the aforementioned from the "hard" drugs is that weed, booze, food and sex are all things that the vast majority of users can control quite easily. It is very, very common for people to just have a drink or two upon occasion. It is very, very common for people to just have a joint or two upon occasion. But you do not have people using meth, or heroin, or oxycontin on a casual, recreational basis.
So when people lump in weed along with other drugs, as opposed to lumping it in with booze, it frustrates me, as IMHO, weed has MUCH more in common with booze than it does with meth or crack.
Bootlegger
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Word.
Shinobi
Y’know, Hemp would be a very easy crop to grow in the US and it can be used to make any number of products. It can be used to create Biodiesel without diminishing the livestock food source. And I understand it is pretty easy to grow. So that would be another upside of legalizing MaryJane (but of course the Lumber industry would not be pleased. What do you mean we can make paper from PLANTS that grow back in under a year, crazy talk.)
Too bad the kids may try to smoke it.
/sigh
Bootlegger
@AkaDad:
It isn’t? I thought that was the whole point.
Brick Oven Bill
Oil shale at $25/bbl. Lift the ban.
Juan del Llano
The playful weed jabber is soothing. Thank you all. I need a break from reading things like how the banks are already planning for ANOTHER trip to the Treasury…
Obama is going to have to break with the establishment or go down with them. If we don’t get real change soon, the universal anger will be overwhelming. It’s funny, though: I thought this would happen under Bush, not a smart Democrat. I am a very silly man.
Bootlegger
@Shinobi: Easy to grow as in it requires few fertilizers and pesticides and loves poor soil. You can make textiles, paper and fuel out of it. If Obama would just tell his DOJ to interpret the marijuana laws to NOT include hemp and invest a little money in getting the industry started we’d be talking about some pretty fat stimuli.
Bootlegger
@Brick Oven Bill: Extraction and processing has ENORMOUSLY expensive externalities, i.e. environmental costs that someone will have to pay down the line.
Just Say No to fossil fuels and food fuels.
jibeaux
News like this makes me happy I’ve stuck with my credit union. It has unimpressive rates and won’t give me more than a $1,000 limit on my credit card (even in times when dogs, infants, and inanimate objects could get $25,000 elsewhere) but there’s no funny business. Everything just stays in house, taking money out or putting it in. I’m no economics genius, but it seems to me that if you keep your lending decisions conservative and charge more to loan money than you pay for the use of that money, that it would be tough to fail.
Of course, if the world worked like this, I guess all diet books would be titled "Expend More Calories Than You Take In" and would be blank…
Interrobang
Also, think of the money and law enforcement hours saved on investigating, convicting, and incarcerating weed users.
Yeah… If pot had been legal during the time Julian Fantino was police chief in my town, he woulda had to have done a real job—there really weren’t that many gays here he could have harassed into leaving town by publicly insinuating they were pedophiles. He would have got through that right quick, and then he would have had to find something else to do. Maybe he would have actually gotten around to doing something about the nasty Hell’s Angel infestation we developed here while he was preoccupied with ruining the lives of gays and potsmokers.
Naaah, that would have involved doing actual law enforcement, instead of just giving oooh scarey pedophiles and grow-ops press conferences every week…
R-Jud
@Juan del Llano:
Hang on—who’s the President?
@ Interrobang:
It’d be nice if they could plow some of the money saved on the federal level back into investigating fraud and other financial crimes. Because there seems to be a lot of that going around lately.
jibeaux
You know, I think I’m pretty well with you guys on marijuana legal reform and Krista, you make excellent, logical, and pragmatic points that I would be hard pressed to argue with.
At the same time it is part of the peculiar charm of the lefty blogosphere that on the topic of the complete national financial and economic meltdown the response is "Dude! WEED! Weed is the answer!"
Original Lee
Adding to the shitpile:
Last night on Fox, the talking heads were making much of the fact that 40% of all Americans don’t pay any federal income tax, after they get done taking all of their exemptions and deductions. I thought this number sounded kinda high, so I went here to see if I could verify that number.
In typical Fox News fashion, the number is correct, but the context is that 40% of Americans had an adjusted gross income of $20,000 or less. Given the new unemployment numbers and so on, I surmise that whether or not Obama puts new tax cuts into place, the percentage of Americans with an AGI of $20,000 or less is going up.
Dork
Headline on MSNBC: "Obama announces new waste czar". I cannot even begin to express how overused that noun has become. Basically, "czar" is the new "-gate" controversy suffix.
And journalists have the creative writing skills of sea cucumbers.
Neue Internetprasenz
Lew Rockwell was always one of my least favorite Muppets.
Shinobi
Dude, Where’s my economic stimulus package?
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Krista:
The USA has 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of the global prison population. Locking people up is big business.
@Brick Oven Bill: Did you go read those articles at the Oil Drum about the poor quality of oil shale? Yeah, I didn’t think so. It has about 10% of the embedded energy of light sweet crude. It’s a scam.
@Juan del Llano:
It DID happen under Bush, and his timing is perfect, leaving Obama with the biggest, freshest pile of shit possible.
John Cole
You know, form a medical standpoint, I don’t disagree with anything that Guptay has said about marijuana in that op-ed, and I don’t see anything unreasonable in what he has written. In fact, you could say pretty much the same things only far worse about the use of alcohol.
Which is precisely the point. It makes no sense to me to have alcohol, which is just as destructive or worse than marijuana when abused and which may have as many or more positive healthful benefits as marijuana when used moderately, remain completely legal, regulated, and celebrated, while we have an entire prison-industrial complex based around keeping marijuana illegal.
AkaDad
What he said.
demimondian
@Arbeit Macht Frei Oven Bill: Actually, the ban has been lifted—or, rather, it wasn’t ever imposed.
Go away, Nazi boy.
Bootlegger
@John Cole: Of course Guptay is medically correct. Smoke in the lungs is bad and doing too many drugs of any kind will leave you weird (what? who said that? who’s out there?). It doesn’t follow, however, that it should be illegal.
Then there’s hemp, which an infant couldn’t catch a buzz on and is low cost/high value commodity but we can’t grow it because it looks like pot.
Peculiar or not, the answer to financial Doomsday or not, somebody’s gotta have the political cajones to do something about this.
jibeaux
I’ve been trying to dissect this "as bad or worse but also at least as good as" sentence for a few minutes now and haven’t gotten any better at it.
Anyway, not sure that marijuana for the general public has any positive healthful benefits as would, say, red wine. I know that it is positive for the appetite and helpful for chemo patients, helpful for pain relief and glaucoma, etc., but I am not sure that for baseline healthy people there is a medical use per se, and it’s harmful to the lungs. Which is not to say that it should be criminalized. I also see it in the alcohol + tobacco continuum rather than the hard drugs continuum, but I guess for most people I view it more like tobacco. Tobacco that makes everything really groovy.
jibeaux
Well, more precisely, because it puts a giant hole in enforcement. Not a bad thing if you disagree with enforcement, but if enforcement is a priority then it’s logical.
demimondian
@jibeaux: It’s a great headache treatment for people with certain classes of headaches.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@jibeaux:
Well, the discussion did sort of evolve as a joke.
What do you want us to say, "Suicide is the answer"?
djork
You’d be surprised.
I would argue that booze has more in common than meth and crack on a damage to body / addictiveness scale. Weed is far more benign than booze.
demimondian
@Krista:
Ummm….yeah. No.
You actually do see people who can play with fire and not get burned. They’re very rare, and I’m certainly not one of them, but…yes, there are people who can use one or more of the "hard drugs" without being consumed by the resulting physical dependency.
Krista
On a long-term basis? I would be surprised if I heard of a substantial number of people who have taken a little meth on a Saturday night and have been able to continue that pattern for years without things escalating.
Of course, I’m too damn lazy to back up my assertions, but from my own very unscientific observations, it appears that percentage-wise, a lot more people can use booze or weed without it becoming a destructive force in their lives, whereas that percentage appears to be a hell of a lot smaller when it comes to the other drugs I mentioned.
I could very well be wrong, but it would shock the living hell out of me if I was wrong on this.
Shinobi
@jibeauz
It’s also excellent for menstrual cramps. And there was some research a while back that indicated it may contain a cough suppressant. (Which my own "research" confirms.)
I would say it is not like tobacco, mostly because it is not produced by evil corporations trying to get you addicted to the stuff. It is also not like Alcohol, because you cannot become physically addicted to it. You can become mentally addicted to it, but there are no withdrawal symptoms like with tobacco and Alcohol. (Did you know that one of the possible withdrawal symptoms for Alcohol addiction is Death? Good times.)
jibeaux
Okay, Demi, but that would seem to be another item for the list of medical uses for folks with health issues, which I wouldn’t deny at all, rather than being a universal health benefit along the lines of antioxidants in red wine….
I gotta learn how to do that @ thing. I’m stuck in beta BJ, when we just blockquoted the shit outta things.
Well, fewer people = more jobs for survivors!
Krista
I should have amended that.
I meant to say that you do not see a substantial number of people doing this, instead of making the absolute statement that nobody does this. I tend to avoid absolute statements as a general rule, and we now know why: there are always exceptions, and there is always someone here willing to point that out. :)
djork
I would think that the majority of people who try the hard stuff don’t get hooked. For example, of the amount of cocaine users in the country, only a small percentage would be daily users / addicts. Most people keep that crap to the weekends.
If I wasn’t afraid of googling "percentage of cokeheads" or "percentages of heroin users /addicts" from work, I’d try to find the numbers.
Zifnab
@jibeaux:
Morphine: Good when used in a hospital to manage pain. Bad when used in a back alley out of a used needle to get high.
We’ve got an industry for all sorts of pain-management medications that are just as harmful as weed if used in excess or without warrant. That the ganja is singled out as "worse" than oxycotin or valium or asprin is the result of 60s era asshattery and doesn’t hold much footing in the reality based community.
Church Lady
@original lee:
Actually, you can still pay no federal income taxes on much higher income, depending on the circumstances. When the question of who pays taxes and who doesn’t came up in the election, I started fooling around with some different scenarios, just to see how much you could make and still not owe any federal income taxes, or even get money back from the treasury.
A single mother (or father), with two children, renting and making $36K, would not only owe no federal income tax, they would actually get back something to the tune of $1K or so. This was done by taking the standard deduction, exemptions for three, the child tax credit for the two kids and qualifying for the earned income tax credit, based on the 2007 tax rules.
While agreeing that trying to support a family of three on $36K per year (which is about $10K less than the median income of all Americans) would suck, I’m not sure how I feel about anyone not paying any income taxes at all. If we’re all in this together, some sort of nominal amount that everyone should pay, even if it was only $100, might make everyone feel like they have some sort of stake in our government and how it works. And no, I’m not including FICA taxes because they are not supposed to be used to fund the operations of our government, even though they probably do.
jibeaux
Surely someone understands my distinction between "medical use for a health concern" and "universal health benefit", or I am just being hopelessly pedantic? I believe you all that pot is an excellent remedy for restless leg syndrome and dry eyes and ingrown toenails, o.k.? I’m just trying to say that it has no health benefits for the baseline healthy person. It does not contain calcium or vitamin C or burn fat or fight cancer.
Tobacco corporations certainly have their evil qualities, but the addictive nature of tobacco is primarily due to its nicotine content (which undeniably has been manipulated by said corporations) rather than the moral shortcomings of its manufacturers. So, of course, people who smoke cigarettes generally smoke a lot more cigarettes than pot smokers smoke joints. But the marijuana smoke is worse for the lungs, so I’m not sure if there’s a winner there.
Zifnab
You’d still be wrong.
links!
jibeaux
@Zifnab:
My point was as to the syntax. I read it as "it makes no sense that X is legal when it is just as dangerous and healthy as Y". I may have read it wrong, I dunno. It made my head hurt after a few minutes. But I have read in a reliable publication that marijuana is an excellent headache remedy.
Shinobi
djork,
Coke is very very different from meth, or heroin, or oxycontin. Not the same drug, very different addictive qualities. Opiates are especially addictive, and meth is just all kinds of f-ed up.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
We tend to be correct about a lot of things. Therefore, we’re right about this. It’s no worse than booze. In fact, have you ever seen a belligerent stoner? I didn’t think so. Alas, I’ve been around more than my fair share of belligerent drunks, aka assholes.
crack
LRC completely butchers what the FDIC is. It’s not a group savings pool. The US Gov funds it if it’s out, and then it changes its premiums to remaining banks to eventually get itself back up. If all 8.8 trillion goes we are Fd in the A with a big rubber D, but that’s not because the FDIC can’t cover it.
jibeaux
Leave Krista alone, it’s completely self-evident that meth and coke and heroin are much more highly addictive than marijuana. She didn’t say boo about prescription meds.
Bootlegger
@Krista: I can tell you from personal experience that it is possible, but the carnage I’ve seen along the way is the surest sign that most people cannot do these things recreationally. Anecdotally, I’d say less than 2% of those I’ve seen use the stuff came out of it without some kind of major fuckup to their lives (relationships, health, addiction, crime, accidents, etc).
Pot is a little different and I know plenty of folks in my age group who still use it recreationally, but the failure rate for young ‘uns ain’t good.
djork
Oh, I agree.
And I realize that anecdotal evidence is not really evidence at all, but in my misspent youth in the 1990’s, I had numerous friends who dabbled with heroin and meth. Of those, maybe 5% ever got hooked and needed rehab. The rest had a period of weekend use that lasted through college, then most quit. I mean, if opiates are so quickly and completely addictive, the majority of those legitmately prescribed them would become addicts. I highly doubt this is the case.
Brick Oven Bill
Oil shale ban extension, September ’08. Please link to update indicating lift to ban. Externalities can be overcome in a clean manner. The reason oil shale has 1/10th the energy density of crude is because it contains shale. We have been through this before.
I like Central Americans in general better than North Americans. They have a saying down there ‘you cannot eat the sand’. This is why I am optimistic for long term North America. I fear that some history will be required, however. Thus the potatoes.
NonyNony
@John Cole:
I think it makes perfect sense, when you keep in mind the jobs that would disappear almost overnight if pot were legalized and regulated. Especially among prison staff. And legalizing pot isn’t going to create that many jobs short term or long term – especially not the number needed to employ all those prison cooks, guards, and other folks who get downsized because of the smaller prison population.
Yeah it’s backwards thinking. But a lot of what we do in this country ends up being backwards thinking. One of the perils of living under a government system where popularity of a politician is an important factor in keeping your job.
Bootlegger
@Church Lady: Keep in mind this only refers to federal income taxes and doesn’t include all the sales taxes, taxes on utilities and property, import dues and fees added to the price you pay at Walmart, and so on. Everyone pays taxes.
The Grand Panjandrum
Legalizing all drugs and removing the prescription requirements from others is something I can get behind. Drug treatment and burial costs are less expensive than throwing people in jail. Besides, thinning the herd ever once in a while is good for the planet.
Bootlegger
@Brick Oven Bill:
Tell that to the good people in Tennessee. And "clean" does not equal "free" so it has to be added to the cost of the oil.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
I haven’t smoked dope for a very long time but I don’t recall ever hearing about anyone doing a 7-11 at 3am with a sawed-off 12 gauge in order to get money to buy it.
So we can grow weed cheaper than, say, Thailand? What about India? In Kashmir you could walk naked through a field of chares plants, scrape the stuff off you and stay high till the snow came.
Americans pay too much for everything.
rawshark
At the same time it is part of the peculiar charm of the lefty blogosphere that on the topic of the complete national financial and economic meltdown the response is "Dude! WEED! Weed is the answer!"
Funny but not so true. Hippies aren’t the only smokers. Almost everyone I’ve met in Arizona smokes and this ain’t lefty country.
Krista
@ Zifnab:
I don’t at all doubt the possibility that I am wrong.
I’m not really sure how what you quoted disproves my theory that weed and booze are much more likely to be able to be used on long-term casual basis, and that harder drugs have a much lower percentage of casual, occasional users. To me, it seems rather obvious, and perhaps I just wasn’t expressing myself clearly in my earlier assertions.
Basically, I’m talking about addiction rates.
Krista
Actually, I did mention Oxycontin. Mea culpa. Mostly because there was a big epidemic of Oxycontin addiction here in N.S, so it was at the forefront of my mind.
And djork, I do confess to being surprised that only about 5% of your friends who "dabbled" in meth or heroin went on to have real problems with it. Especially meth—from what I’ve read, it’s a hellishly addictive drug and incredibly destructive.
Brick Oven Bill
The SL-1 guys probably didn’t think too highly of nuclear power either Bootlegger. That does not mean that nuclear power-2009 is unsafe.
Bootlegger
@Brick Oven Bill: Who said anything about safety? You started off by quoting the price of the stuff. I pointed out that it is more expensive than you cite because the externalities. How am I wrong?
Bootlegger
@Krista: Meth is powerfully addictive, but despite what they’re scaring my kids with in school you don’t become addicted on one snort, or two, or three. I did a lot of the stuff back in my college daze and new some real addicts, mainliners and smokers, but it never hooked me in that way. I loved to party on it, I could drink a case of beer and never pass out, but the next day was hell and that was enough to deter me from using it every day.
jibeaux
@rawshark:
Yeah, I’m just saying this thread is probably not being duplicated on the WSJ blog… it was just a joke, though, more about the off-the-wall-edness of the lefty blogosphere than the political inclinations of potheads.
It is also part of the charm of the lefty blogosphere that it can invent the term "magical unity pony" and I can go many, many posts defending said term from racism.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian:
Well, when you factor in importation costs, tariffs lobbied for by the new, mighty American Weed lobby, and FDA concerns about foreign imports being laced with opium, I’m going to have to say, yes. Cheaper domestically.
djork
My point is that most people who try drugs do not get addicted. It’s a drug warrior myth that any drug hooks you instantly. There are a lot more factors, such as genetics, mental stability, environment, etc that determine who becomes an addict and who is just a dabbler.
I certainly agree with you that weed has less of a risk for addiction (I hate using that word in regards to weed) when used over long periods.
HyperIon
@jibeaux:
oh, yeah? where’s the linky?
here’s what the AMA said in June 2001 (bolding by me):
they provide no citation to support their allegations.
from what i’ve read, tobacco smoke is much worse than marijuana for the lungs if you are talking about cancer.
see this and this
TenguPhule
My primary objection to weed growers is where the big gangs grow it. I.e. National Parks and Forests. Ruining said places in the process.
Legalize it, execute the gangs, then ban smoking it from workplaces. :P
Original Lee
@Church Lady:
Sure, you can make more than $36K and not pay any federal income taxes. That’s why I was using adjusted gross income (the taxable part after you take all of your deductions) in my comment.
I still think it’s pretty awful that 40% of individual filers have an AGI of less than $20K.
Brick Oven Bill
You are wrong Bootlegger, because computers in the 1960s were very big. Just lift the ban.
Rick Taylor
There’s a good article on the crises and possible solutions in the NY times. It argues the problems are systemic, rather than the result of bad actors. The whole thing is worth reading.
Bootlegger
@HyperIon: Depends. Weed is usually smoked unfiltered, so that is one area where it is more toxic. On the other nicotine-stained hand cigarettes have all kinds of chemical additives and most smokers consume more cigarettes in one day than a heavy pot smoker and smoke in a week (assuming a pack a day for the tarhead and three joints/day for the pothead).
But inhaling smoke generally is bad. I know a fella who’s been selling his own smoked BBQ for about 10 years now is having some lung problems from it.
Bootlegger
@Brick Oven Bill: WTF are you babbling about? Nonsense is not an argument.
John Cole
You and I just are operating from different definitions of healthful. If someone has a stressful day, sits down, lights up a joint and mellows to the Allman brothers for a couple hours once every couple of weeks, I think that is as healthful as a hot bath, lying on the couch spooning your loved one, getting some exercise to clear your head, etc. Maybe that is just the DFH in me, though.
People are more than just a collection of cells that need resveratrol, as much as this will surprise Tim F.
binzinerator
@Krista:
Who would just have sex once or twice upon occasion if they could get a good hot and sweaty jungle fuck every other day?
Besides wives, of course.
Krista
You were braver (or more reckless) than I. Perhaps I watched too many after-school specials, or was traumatized from that Sweet Valley High book where Regina Morrow died of heart failure after trying cocaine (oh Bruce Patman, you jerk!), but I was always scared to try anything other than weed, hash and mushrooms.
jibeaux
Hyperlon, not a researcher and don’t really give a damn about whether or not there’s a double-blind study of tobacco v. marijuana smoke on every possible lung condition, if you just want some basic lazy googling on lung damage (which was what I said, rather than cancer) and marijuana this or this would probably do it. Still, it wasn’t really central to my point and I don’t find it a very productive debate, plus I’m on the DFH side here vis a vis legalization. It’s just fairly obvious that deeply inhaling any kind of smoke is not going to do your lungs any favors.
Chris Johnson
Yet! :D
The Other Steve
CEO pay needs to be dependent on long term results, not short term.
My impression was stock options would do this, but apparently that did not work out.
r€nato
dude, when pot is legalized, I’m buying all the shares I can afford in Big Lots, the discount store. Ever been in the food section? Holy crap, it’s a mecca for stoners with munchies and it’s all cheap, cheap, cheap.
r€nato
require them to hold the options until no less than 5 years after leaving the company.
Zifnab
@Krista:
Seems to me that if you’ve got more addicts, then you’ve got more casual users too. I guess you’re arguing that because the harder drugs are more addictive they’d be used less casually.
Still, I’d argue that a drug’s rate of casual use has more to do with how easy it is to get access to. Huffing paint, for instance, was a lot more common than smoking weed when I was in Middle School, because few people knew where to get the latter. By contrast, everyone knew a pot dealer in college, so you saw a lot more of the former.
When there’s a CVS or a Walgreens on every corner and very few doctors hesitant to write out powerful prescriptions to regular clie… er… patients, I’ve got no problem seeing a higher rate of casual behind-the-counter drug abuse just because its so much easier and so much less riskier to get.
jibeaux
@John Cole:
It doesn’t bother me in the slightest if people do that, but, no, I wouldn’t consider it healthful just because it may be relaxing, since it does involve inhaling smoke. The other things you mentioned would be relaxing without any negative health effects at all…
My bias in this is my asthmatic son and a family history of emphysema and lung cancer in nonsmokers. I really hate smoke.
Bootlegger
@Krista: Reckless, probably. Today its for relaxation or entertainment and I don’t do the uppers (coke, meth, xtc) any more (too hard on the heart they say). I did steer clear of PCP though. But shrooms, oh those majical mushrooms….
r€nato
on the one hand, we know that you’re not smoking just tobacco if you smoke just about any major-brand cigarette. All kinds of nasty poisons in there; if cigarettes had to pass FDA standards like any other food or drug, they’d fail miserably.
on the other hand, you have NO idea what’s in the pot you smoke unless you grow your own or know something about where it came from and how it was grown.
on the third hand, I’m much more willing to bet the weed I buy, is just weed without nasty poisons added.
also, typical pot smokers don’t smoke anywhere near as much weed in a day as cigarette smokers smoke tobacco in a day.
this is why it’s hard to believe any of the science out there with regards to health effects of smoking marijuana; there’s so much politics wrapped around any such studies, and forget about getting federal funds for anything like a ‘fair’ study which might possibly debunk the fear-based anti-weed propaganda.
Bootlegger
@jibeaux: Two of my colleagues use it regularly but won’t smoke it. They make brownies and have pretty much convinced me to go the same direction.
r€nato
jibeaux, there are several ways to consume marijuana without smoking it. For one there are vaporizers. You can also soak the weed in Everclear to leach out the resin, allow some or all of the alcohol to evaporate, then collect the remaining ‘slurry’ or sticky paste, dissolve it in a drink or cook with it.
R-Jud
@r€nato:
In the event of legalization I was thinking I’d go for Domino’s Pizza. Shares of the company, not the actual product. Blech.
jibeaux
It sounds so delicious when you pitch it that way….
I’m a fan of opening a beer, myself, but also of "to each his own."
AkaDad
If pot becomes legal, I’m going to open up a shop that caters to the needs of the weed connoisseur, and I’ll have the finest weed gathered from all the lands.
Not that I’ve given it that much thought.
C
Even if the source is accurate this time, can we PLEASE not use Ron Paul’s racist ghostwriter for any numbers? (He handled Ron Paul’s survivalist screeds against blacks and hispanics.)
One accurate point doesn’t change lifetime of sleaze, and I wish as few people took Rockwell seriously as possible. With the weight of douchebaggery on him, even referencing him casts a taint.
r€nato
just sayin… there’s ways to consume marijuana without polluting your lungs. Despite what my other comments here might lead one to believe, I am only a very occasional user (once or twice a week). If I consumed any more often that that, I’d probably switch to vaporizer or eating/drinking it. I am old enough now and active enough now that I don’t really want to be endangering my respiratory health with more than an occasional use of smoked pot.
Bootlegger
@r€nato: I’d not thought of Everclear as the medium for extraction, we used diethyl ether back when I took organic chemistry and it worked great. Hard to find though. I may have to give the ‘Clear a shot.
demimondian
@wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian: Actually, yes—marijuana is indigenous to North America. It’s kind of like the fact that we can grow corn more cheaply.
But don’t let facts or history get in your way.
demimondian
@Bootlegger: Just about any non-polar solvent will work, if you think about it. (Yes, you can use water; it’s just that you then need to distill the solute back out, and, after all, stills are illegal in the US.)
Bootlegger
@demimondian: Hmmm, I thought THC was non-water soluble, that it is fat-soluble instead.
jibeaux
Maybe it’s because I’m already naturally kind of dull, love Doritos, and tend to giggle at stupid shit, but I just don’t see that pot has much to offer me. Still and all, to each his own.
Shinobi
Jibeaux,
Uhm. I don’t think Alchohol has much to offer me as I am already loud, angry and clumsy.
If you don’t want to consume it, fine, more for me. However I would like the freedom to do so without fear of prosecution and incarceration.
Glenn
700K lost in 1 month! It’s DEPRESSION time folks. The GOP and it’s minions in the BIG CORP. sector have finally gotten what they want a country returned to the Great Depression by a return to Market fundamentalism. Like all fundamentalisms the rigid belief in some fantasy or another take your pick.
demimondian
@Bootlegger: Hmm. Not exactly. I didn’t say how much you’d need—that answer being "One f*ck of a lot"; THC is saturated in water at 20°C at <50mg/l.
jcricket
The problem is the definition of "long" and "short" term. Both the outright crooks and those looking the other way gain so much in the short term, and the penalties (if there are any) are so small, that, in fact, they actually gain in the long-term. Even people like Milken, who go to jail, still make so much that they’re obscenely rich in the end.
Sure, less rich than if they were able to keep the ponzi scheme/scam going forever, but really really rich nonetheless.
I’d argue that these people act much like MSFT - who has figured out that you gain more business/economic advantage by doing whatever you want and paying the penalty than complying with the law.
Basically the "job loss" and loss of stature is just a "cost of doing business". Collateral damage to the rest of us doesn’t matter because you don’t ever have to work again. Or even if you do, you can get a job like Henry Blodget "commenting" on the sector you just scammed your way through.
I suppose 200% clawbacks for all income earned by these people. And the elimination of limited liability. Why are they protected when the rest of us are not? And the elimination of the hedge fund loophole and big tax increases on anyone in the top 1% of earners. If we can’t outright prevent them from hosing us, at least we can take some money and make sure our society functions during the recessions they cause.
Just Some Fuckhead
There’s always a book deal..
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
Ah…Does anyone remember back to the good old days? You know, back to whenever some big company laid off a whole shit-load of people it caused the Stock Market to jump like a frog with a fire-cracker up his ass.
Jon H
Regarding the FDIC, consider what was done with WaMu. WaMu had $307 Billion in assets, about $170 billion in deposits. FDIC stepped in before it failed, shut it down, and auctioned off the branches, accounts, secured debt, functional assets, etc to JP Morgan Chase for two shiny rocks and a turtle shell. (Or $1.9 Billion. Same thing.)
It cost the FDIC nothing. (Note: only WaMu Bank assets were sold to Chase. The WaMu holding company (which owned WaMu Bank) went bankrupt at the same time. Bank corporation structures are insane.)
The thing to keep in mind is that lots of banks and credit unions are okay. The ones that have been eated are the ones with big, crazy mortgage businesses.
I’m a bit worried about BofA and JP Morgan Chase, since they’ve been absorbing other sick companies like crazy (Countrywide and Merrill Lynch for BofA, WaMu and Bear Stearns for Chase). But it’s relatively easy for the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC to stay on top of them and, if necessary, do a Citibank-style rescue using non-FDIC funds.
wilfred the shoe throwing Norwegian
Ah, some of that famed Norwegian wit – the leaden delivery, nordic smirk and stink of dried codfish.
Hey, did you hear the one about the Palestinians that were driven to the UN School in Norwegian ambulances after being told to evacuate their homes?
The israelis blew it up!! Ha, Ha, Ha.
Hey ho, oy vey,
How many kids did you kill today?
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
That is also correct for Tax Year 2008. Without the credits, she would have a Taxable Income of $17,500, and a Tax of $2,056. That amount gets reduced by the Child Tax Credit ($1,000/child) down to $56. Then you check the Earned Income Credit Table and find a Head of Household in this scenario will receive $552 of EIC, wiping out the $56 and leaving her with an overpayment of $496. Since EIC is a refundable credit (which means if it produces and overpayment that amount is refundable) our hypothethical single mother of two is not actually paying any Federal income Tax for Tax Year 2008 and will get nearly $500 back from the IRS, even if she did not pay in any Federal withholding out of her paychecks during the Tax Year.