"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Losing WIN, and Feeding the Poor:
Ford, Carter & Reagan have important lessons to teach us.
Remember Gerald Ford, and his WIN — “Whip Inflation Now” — campaign?
It was a failure.
The two premises of that effort — encouraging increased individual savings, and reducing personal spending — were not merely ineffectual, they were also justifiably ridiculed because they did absolutely nothing to lower prices.
In a TRULY free market economy, not only is government allowed to compete, but prices, as others and I have continually said, are controlled by the seller, NOT the buyer. The SELLER is the one setting prices.
For example, if Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Marathon, Valero, and Phillips 66 (in the TOP 10 largest oil companies globally by revenue) were to reduce by 25% their consumer prices of gasoline & diesel fuel (and, they could), that would significantly change, at least on some level, the volume of sales/consumption.
Yet the study of economics also tells us that merely lowering prices will not always increase consumption to a certain price level. Consider bananas; if more folks ate more bananas, their prices ~might~ decline, but only modestly, and certainly not by 25%.
Though agricultural production has some similarities to industrial production, it fundamentally relies upon a renewable resource to satisfy demand (including an often-fickle, and increasingly angry and uncooperative Mother Nature), where as oil does not, because petroleum is a finite resource.
And THAT is PRECISELY WHY others and I maintain that establishing a windfall profits tax (WPT) could be used to help consumers -and- companies that rely upon petroleum for their existence, because it would return TO THE PEOPLE a ~fraction~ of the excessive portion of the rapacious profit made by Big Oil companies which are paid to their executives, overlords, and Wall Street wheeler-dealer shareholders.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 5, 2022
You know, the irony of the Opioid Epidemic is that folks are seeking relief from pain… pain which is psycho-social, emotional, not related to disease, injury, or surgery. But pain, nonetheless.
And what might the cause of that pain be?
Joblessness, homelessness, hopelessness.
Why don’t they have a job?
Ask Congress.
They were the ones who sent their jobs overseas in the misguided notion that it’d help our nation’s economy.
Yeah.
Right.
And there’s a Santa Claus, too — and an Easter Bunny, and a Tooth Fairy.
The Sackler family and other pharmaceutical makers were only capitalizing upon human tragedy by peddling pain relief.
And oddly, that’s what was needed… in addition to a job.
But you can’t sue Congress.
However… you CAN vote the bastards out of office — and should.
Every goddamn one of ’em.
ALL Republicans, ALL Democrats, ALL Independents.
ALL OF THEM.
And then, establish Term Limits for Congress; 20 years combined elected Federal service ought to be enough for anyone. That’d be 10, 2-year terms in the House, or 3, 6-year terms in the Senate (18) plus 1, 2-year term in the House, or any combination thereof. Remember when Newt Gingrich promised that with his “Contract on America”? Promises, promises. He also cheated on his wife, and asked her to sign divorce papers while she was on her near-death bed following cancer surgery. She survived. He remarried. Divorced his 2nd wife. He’s now on the 3rd one. Funny thing, too… Gingrich led the cavalry against then-POTUS CLINTON when he was accused of getting a blow job from Monica Lewinsky in the oral… er, Oval Office.
This report is the first to calculate how much taxpayers have been subsidizing executive bonuses at the nation’s largest banks.
The study focuses on a 1993 Clinton administration reform that was intended to rein in runaway CEO pay by capping the tax deductibility of executive compensation at $1 million. But the new rule included a huge loophole for stock options and other “performance” pay. As a result, the more corporations hand out in executive bonuses, the lower their tax bill. This perverse incentive for excessive compensation has been a major factor in the explosion of CEO pay.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, November 23, 2012
The high cost of low living…
“Walmart’s employees receive $2.66 billion in government help every year, or about $420,000 per store.
They are also the top recipients of Medicaid in numerous states.
Why does this occur?
Walmart fails to provide a livable wage and decent healthcare benefits, costing U.S. taxpayers an annual average of $1.02 billion in healthcare costs.
This direct public subsidy is being given to offset the failures of an international corporate giant who shouldn’t be shifting part of its labor costs onto the American taxpayers.”
You’re the life of the party, everybody’s host
Still you need somewhere you can hide
All your good time friends
And your farewell to has-beens
Lord knows, just along for the ride
You think you’re a survivor
But boy, you better think twice
No one rides for nothin’
So, step up and pay the price
Dedicated to the GOP & other radical TEApublicans who worship the “almighty” dollar, tax cuts for the über wealthy, and their multinational corporate prophets.
Hidden Taxpayer Costs
Disclosures of Employers Whose Workers and Their Dependents are Using State Health InsurancePrograms
Updated January 18, 2012
Since the mid-20th Century, most Americans have obtained health insurance through workplace-based coverage. In recent years there has been a decline in such coverage caused by a rise in the number of jobs that do not provide coverage at all and growth in the number of workers who decline coverage because it is too expensive.
Faced with the unavailability or unaffordability of health coverage on the job, growing numbers of lower-income workers are turning to taxpayer-funded healthcare programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
This trend is putting an added burden on programs that are already under stress because of fiscal constraints caused by medical inflation and federal cutbacks. Many states are curtailing benefits and tightening eligibility requirements.
It also raises the issue of whether states are being put in a position of subsidizing the cost-cutting measures of private sector employers.
Across the country, policymakers and others concerned about the healthcare system are pressing for disclosure of information on those employers whose workers (and their dependents) end up in taxpayer-funded programs.
The following is a summary of the employer disclosure that has come to light so far. It includes two cases (Massachusetts and Missouri) in which the information was produced as a result of legislation. The other cases involved requests by legislators or reporters. The latter situations have sometimes resulted in data that are incomplete or imprecise, which suggests that only legislatively mandated, systematic disclosure will tell the whole story.
This compilation was originally produced by Good Jobs First as part of its preparation of testimony given before the Maryland legislature on an employer disclosure bill. A version of that testimony can be found here [1].
Alabama
In April 2005 the Mobile Register published an article citing data from the Alabama Medicaid Agency on companies in the state with employees whose children are participating in Medicaid. The newspaper obtained a list from the agency of 63 companies whose employees had 100 or more children in the program as of mid-March 2005. At the top of the list was Wal-Mart, whose employees had 4,700 children in the program. Following it were McDonald’s (1,931), Hardee’s (884) and Burger King (861). The data were similar to information obtained from the same agency by the Montgomery Advertiser two months earlier.
Sources: Sean Reilly, “Medicaid Providing Health Care for Kids of Working Families,” Mobile Register, April 17, 2005 and John Davis and Jannell McGrew, “Health Plans Not Family Friendly,” Montgomery Advertiser, February 22, 2005, p.B6.
Arizona
In July 2005 the state Department of Economic Security issued data on the largest private employers with workers receiving taxpayer-financed medical insurance through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. At the top of the list was Wal-Mart, with about 2,700 workers–or 9.6 percent of its Arizona workforce–participating in the program. It was followed by Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, September 10, 2012
If you want to know the political news, read the business pages.
It’s all about the money.
Sure, this is a subsidy, and for those who need it – which, increasingly are many (50/311 Million, or 16% of the American population) – it is a life saver. Eventually however, it is an indirect subsidy upon private enterprise. Again, not that it is bad, per se, but that without regulation to prevent abuse of smaller businesses by large, powerful multi-national corporations and their denizen hordes of attorneys, regulations must be enacted.
Part of the greater problem is – according to the CIA World Factbook – that
“Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. Since 1996, dividends and capital gains have grown faster than wages or any other category of after-tax income. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in deteriorating infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable current account and budget deficits – including significant budget shortages for state governments – energy shortages, and stagnation of wages for lower-income families.”
As Robert Reich and others observed,
“Corporate profits are up. Most companies don’t even know what to do with the profits they’re already making. Not incidentally, much of those profits have come from replacing jobs with computer software or outsourcing them abroad.
“Meanwhile, the wealthy don’t create jobs, and giving them additional tax cuts won’t bring unemployment down. America’s rich are already garnering a bigger share of American income than they have in eighty years. They’re using much of it to speculate in the stock market. All this has done is drive stock prices higher.”
So it seems that the bottom-line question is, and remains: How do we correct & rectify the problem of gross income inequity?
Warm Southern Breeze 