#recession incoming bc of tariffs

[inukag]

I need to start planning inukag week omg i'm so sorry life has been a little insane lately!!!

[moreyouread]

What you should know about politics but don’t

A non partisan take on issues

VOTING

- Hanging chad and how all machines are controversial voting systems

- Gerrymandering set after a census every 4 years

- Generally incumbents are voted in until they die? How again?

- Campaign funding is controlled by large organizations technically not associated but largely supported by the candidate

ECONOMY

- Great Recession bail out and why it was necessary, as well as the Dodd-Frank laws to constrain proprietary trading

- Taxes and how the rich are taxed at higher rates, while supply-side and trickle down Reaganomics believe tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy with investments from the rich (largely not true), and types of taxes like income, capital gain, death tax and sales tax, some of which is double taxation

- Deficit and why it’s especially unfair to young people, why we have to keep China, Japan, Brazil, and Britain happy, and why whoever in power says deficit is ok, how Germany lent to Greek and fell due to the banking crisis in the US, and how deficit means higher interest rates for everyone

- Oil and how selling oil in Euros spiked the price for Americans, and how Russia and Iran approach oil differently

FOREIGN POLICY

- Opinions of war policy range from passive to active: liberal internationalists (diplomacy first), paleocons (weak today but at the time willing to fight in strategic situations), realists, liberal hawks, and neocons (super aggressive)

- Difference in realist and neocons are their motivation for security vs ideology. Liberal hawks are somewhere in the middle

- Middle East is a mess with the US invading Iraq for preemptive reasons when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan and then Pakistan

- Iran also has power with nuclear power and is clearly anti American

- Arab Springs led to the downfall of many governments, including an especially gory revolution in Syria

- Russia: oil, India and China: economic powers, and North Korea: built nuclear bombs without US consent

MILITARY

- military contractors: are they a good thing or is it dangerous to give power to wealth, connect private companies with government? Needed bc military is made up of volunteers but bad given they answer to no one

- don’t ask don’t tell: should we have repealed or were we merely protecting gays?

- drones: are they ethical? Or do we risk violating rights and killing civilians?

HEALTHCARE

- Universal access

- Healthcare is too expensive

- HMOs

ENERGY

- Coal is big in the US and though it is dirty it powers most of our electricity — most politicians are ok with it

- Electricity prices are controversial, as the FERC does not cap wholesale prices, leading to the great heatwave in 2000 in CA

- Oil is controversial bc the suppliers are Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi. OPEC controls prices, and we are shifting towards Canada. Countries like Iraq have invaded Kuwait for oil, and some say the US Iraq war is for the same thing. The risk for the US all depends on when the Hubbert peak occurs

- Nuclear power is risky but most of France runs on it, due to what happens when it leaks

- Democrats want alternative energy and efficiency (CAFE sets average mpg rules for cars) and Republicans want more of what we have

ENVIRONMENT

- acid rain: spent billions to reduce acid rain being caused by coal burning

- ozone hole: easily reduced because had technology to replace it

- both Republicans and Democrats generally believe environment is a problem; started EPA with Republicans through Teddy

- aesthetics >> public health

- environmental moralists, utilitarians, deregulators

- Kyoto Accords cancelled eventually in 2009, but the US didn’t sign it; developing markets didn’t need to reduce

- Cap-and-trade market vs carbon dioxide tax, both strategies to reduce energy and adopted in the US in small ways

- renewable energy vs. Alaska for more oil: wind (disrupts nearby habitats), biofuel (needs a lot of land), solar panels (expensive and requires sun), hydrogen (need electricity to power)

CIVIL LIBERTIES

- philosophical inconsistencies between libertarians and executivists, along party lines

- free speech - Vietnam War and Occupy Wall Street led to questionable police behavior towards peaceful protestors, as well as obstruction of press

- gun violence - Brady Gun Law, urban and rural split

- Warrants and wiretapping - controversial during Bush era of PATRIOT ACT, but it helped prevent a lot of attacks, lenient post wiretapping approval

- Torture - rendition to other countries that will torture or move to offshore places helps get past US habeas corpus, which Obama didn’t really back down on, leaves the US in morale low ground

- Declaring war - similar lenient Congress support but presidents usually ignore this, saying only large world wars need congressional approval

- Capital punishment - is this cruel and unusual? Varies by state

CULTURE WARS

- Abortion: Rode vs Wade, not consistent by state

- Right to Die: Republicans support Terri’s Law to prevent state sanctioned murder, physician-assisted Suicide

- Stem cell research: not super political but Republicans don’t believe in it as much due to Bush’s restrictions that Obama incrementally lifted

- Gay marriage - prop 8 in California in 2008 legalizing gay marriage supported by Mormons

- Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments - allow people to not say it, not put it on public facilities

- Mostly people don’t care about culture wars any way these days, except for the Christian Right

SOCIOECONOMIC POLICY

- Immigration: while everyone agrees illegal immigrants should not be here and that immigration should be controlled in numbers for practical reasons, we cannot figure out ways to deal with illegal immigrants already in the US

— Allowing drivers licenses to immigrants allows for better tracking of them but leads to risks like illegal voting, etc.

— Immigrants kept prices for low income work low as they increased supply with increased demand

— Deporting parents leads to higher costs for the children

- unions are supported by democrats in theory and criticized by republicans for taking jobs overseas

- social security - argue for privatization because government always loans from it, helps the poor or financially illiterate bc there is a cap on how much you get annually, and it is always projected for bankruptcy

- unemployment subsidies and the costs of hiring a woman

- agriculture subsidies - food wonks, food protectionists, and food free marketers; almost everyone supports it; it is needed to compete for markets in Europe that will pay more for food and to bring together dispersed interests

- food stamps and welfare - in the past food stamps were sold to buy drugs but has been fixed with electronic swipe system; today still mostly Democrats support stamps only, believing it is a private matter to support people;

- welfare was important in the Great Depression but became a dependency to be reduced; many poor immigrants work harder and better than the poor; culture is the root cause

HOMELAND SECURITY

- Pork infrastructure jobs get hired through ricision or earmarking, eg bridge to nowhere, and generally politicians support infrastructure for whatever region they represent

- Republicans usually favor privatization of roads, transportation. However Amtrak and private airlines are both examples of how this fails

- roads remain heavily subsidized with tolls or taxes (people prefer tolls on the turnpikes)

- Department of homeland security started after 9/11 by Republicans — doesn’t receive federal employee benefits of non-firing

- Infrastructure is failing, e.g. 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis

- Disaster response from FEMA is terrible, demonstrated by Katrina. However more of that could have been a wealth issue

EDUCATION

- has always been connected to race and class, with Republicans favoring freedom and Democrats favoring improvements to public schools

- busing, desegregation of schools in 1950s

- affirmative action quotas were outlawed but a middle ground was allowed as long as individual consideration still happened

- vouchers for private school is controversial given 70% or private schools are religion

- NCLB by Bush failed 50% of schools and was lifted by Obama, not providing support to failing schools — compassionate conservatism or just support McGraw for its political funding

TRADE

- protectionist (Democrats) vs liberalist or free traders

- Great Depression was the start of the trade wars of tarifs for all foreign imports, with protectionism generally looked down upon

- bureaucratic tariffs like more checks etc also exist

- After WW2, created:

—- World Bank to loan money to European banks suffering

—- WTO to regulate trade and provide IP protection

—- IMF to provide cash when a country goes bankrupt

- from this emerged the free traders, who believe developing worlds should not have free trade or protectionism pushed onto them

- free traders believe in morality issues and protectionists believe it hurts the US:

—- lose jobs to people overseas

—- pollution in China makes its way here

—- lack of labor standards abroad is immoral

—- corporations getting around taxes with overseas taxes

—- trader deficit since US imports more than it exports is a bad thing for the US

—- race to the bottom to compete within developing world for jobs from the US, hurting those in developing markets while the US affords more

- agreements like NAFTA pop up around the world: Arab, ASEAN, CAFTA, Malaysia and China, Russia and China, EC or parent of EU, with some challenging trade in the dollar

- banana war: forced EU to buy US Dole bananas thru sanctions and the WTO, angering the EU

- steel tariffs from GW Bush harmed auto industry buying steel in US

[mikemortgage]

Jack Mintz: Carbon taxes fail to satisfy the smell test for voters. What went wrong?

Why are carbon taxes so unpopular? According to the latest World Bank report on carbon pricing, 23 countries have carbon taxes (another dozen jurisdictions have only emission trading systems like the one recently dropped by Ontario). At least two jurisdictions— Australia and Washington State – have disbanded carbon tax proposals in recent years. Another carbon tax will see its death if Alberta’s Conservative party leader, Jason Kenney, has his way in 2019.

In contrast, 176 countries have targets for renewable energy and/or energy efficiency and 110 jurisdictions have feed-in tariffs. With relatively so few countries using carbon taxes, a new paper published in WIREs Climate Change asks why this is the case — a question to which Canadian politicians should also pay attention this coming election year. Carbon pricing can be implemented with a carbon tax (e.g. BC and Alberta) or an emission trading system (e.g. Quebec and Nova Scotia). The case for carbon pricing is based on minimizing economic costs associated with controlling GHG emissions. Many economists argue that only a single price on carbon is needed to control emissions since businesses and consumers will find the best technologies to reduce costs with as little government intervention as possible.

Any tax revenue can be recycled to reduce the punitive impact of carbon pricing on household budgets and business costs. Emission trading used in Europe, North America, China and New Zealand requires large emitters to buy or be given free allowances from governments to emit up to a limit.

Those with emissions in excess of the limit could invest to reduce emissions or, if cheaper, buy credits from those businesses with emissions lower than their limit. Emission trading systems also have two flaws – carbon prices are volatile and the system only applies to large companies, leaving other emitters exempt.

Thus carbon taxes are recommended to provide price certainty and be applied widely to smaller companies and households. Despite the appeal among policy elites for carbon taxation, carbon taxes do not satisfy the smell test for voters.

Why is this the case? Based on voter surveys around the world, the WIREs paper outlines five reasons as to why carbon taxation politically fails: (i) the levies are regressive, hitting lower income households most, (ii) voters are worried about competitiveness and employment effects, (iii) voters view the personal costs as too high, (iv) carbon taxes are believed to be ineffective in reducing emissions, and (v) governments can’t be trusted.

The first two criticisms in principle can be dealt with by offsetting policies such as grants or tax cuts. However, governments often limit support to low-income households leaving many with average income bearing high-energy costs. Further, business support is often targeted at political favourites as recently seen with the federal government announcement awarding higher limits to selective industries.

It is the last three criticisms that especially make carbon taxation an uphill battle. Unlike subsidies and regulations, voters perceive carbon taxes as increasing their personal costs. Large businesses and the wealthy are better able to contend with carbon costs while smaller firms and the general public have fewer alternatives for transportation and heating.

Carbon taxation is also inconsistent with the objective of achieving emission reduction targets. Taxes will raise fuel, electricity and heating prices but other factors such as the business cycle and energy price volatility will also affect emissions.

Thus carbon taxation is viewed as ineffective if emissions do not fall as in the case of British Columbia with growth coming back after the 2008 recession and sharp decline in energy prices.

Moreover, governments are unwilling to forgo regulatory and other interventionist policies, showing little confidence in the effectiveness of carbon taxation.

So why have it? Most important, voters don’t trust governments who so often break their promises. A government might argue that carbon revenues will be used to reduce taxes or provide a certain subsidy. But with no ironclad way to make sure the revenues are earmarked for a purpose, a government can easily use the money to expand their budgets and increase the size of the bureaucracy. When B.C. and Alberta brought in their carbon taxes, they promised that revenues would not be used for the general budget.

Both provinces have now backtracked, increasing cynicism among voters. These arguments underlying the political fragility of carbon taxes leave out another important dimension: non-transparency.

Taxes are perceived by voters to impose costs on them but tax-financed subsidies and price-distorting regulations are less transparent to voters in terms of their economic cost.

Governments purposely fail to measure the implicit price associated with various regulatory and subsidy policies hoping to fool people about their cost. For example, studies have shown that electric vehicle subsidies have a carbon-tax-equivalent cost of over $600.

The federal proposed fuel carbon standard may have a carbon price ranging from $450 to $650 per tonne. And if a government does use regulatory and subsidy polices, they get no credit for it. P.E.I. and Saskatchewan propose their own carbon plan without a carbon tax even if the policies have associated implicit prices.

Why not? So here is a thought. No carbon policy should be adopted without an official carbon-tax-equivalent price. The methodology should also be published so that interested parties can review and challenge it. Let government explain why they choose some policies with high costs over others.

And if voters prefer some policies over others so what? Carbon taxes and emission trading systems are not a must so it is key that voters be informed about policy costs. Otherwise, carbon taxes will remain unpopular and deservingly so.

Jack Mintz is President’s Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2Mc1MOF via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[greggory--lee]

The "I" Word is Coming to a Town Near You

Hello Inflation, it has been awhile, I see you on your way back again. Inflation? What inflation? Oh things like; Energy, diesel fuel, Aviation Fuel, Gasoline, Natural Gas, Milk, Wheat, Corn, Beef, Poultry, Hogs, Soy Beans, Building materials, paper, housing, Auto Prices, Health Care, Insurance, etc. You know the basics. Also considering the wholesale inflation, which comes from fuel costs being passed on, government regulations infringing on productivity and additional fees and fines to replace the taxes and incentives. When wholesale prices go up, those are passed onto the consumer.

How do we know all this? This is not a guess by any means. We have studied these issues for quite a while. Here is why we think this. Well as far as agriculture, we know from the droughts in the major farming regions and we can tell by the commodities market. We have seen the high temperatures and lack of water with Wheat and Corn in ID, MT, ND, SD, NE, KS. In other markets floods have hurt some crops. Also droughting the growing of feed for Cattle, meaning beef prices will go up. Canada MAD COW now our Mad Cow problem, problems with Japan's increased tariffs on beef. Hogs and Beef in KS can not get the water they need. Also in farming we have seen areas where the Sierra Club is suing so many projects to stop or slow building of new reservoirs in NM, ID, CO, AZ, NV, OR, CA. Also the specialty crops are running low and not enough to meet demand, things like berries (see bear lake issues) and issues in Winnepeg and BC, grapes (2 buck chuck run supplies low), etc as well as issues with depleted soil in Central Valley CA, Desert Farmers along the AZ and CA border can not use that amount of water since CA and AZ will need it for new housing areas, golf courses and other uses (see the Colorado river situation) Farmers VS Developers and housing in PHX, Tucson , Las Vegas, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, many are predicting a bubble burst, we have seen issues in the REITs which was a little bit of a shake up.

Natural Gas from the lack of new wells being drilled, for instance off the coast of Maine and the Gulf. Lack of ability to gear up in infrastructure fast enough to supply this winter's need even though it should be a reliably non-violent winter as far as that goes-though few Hurricanes on West Coast last year showed us a lowered Jet Stream and lower latitude airflows , La Nina comes next and that means drought continued and water prices will go up and many business which use water will be borne and charge more too for their services. I have also been studying the EU drafts and heat and the issues with their exports mean supply will not equal demand. Humanitarian needs are at issue as well. Meanwhile the Super Crops are being blocked by EU and WTO and much of those crops may not be able to be used in all markets. Some really bad deals here for humanity. Fruit in FL and the everglades issues are getting to be a bigger deal.

Dairy Farmers in ID are up 12% but they want more money and the National Dairy Association is also pushing forward. Increased demand is putting the dairy farmers feeling that they can charge more and will soon need to upgrade. The fires in ID, MT are using up much water supplies very early and fire season has another 2.5 months left. Also CO, NM, WY not out of the season yet. What about the threat of Bird Flu?

With Building materials we are seeing increased government regulation, timber tariffs on imported from Canada. Paper industry is in trouble and the replanted forests and forest farms are typically fast growing trees good for paper, not building grade timber. Housing spikes caused this, many areas growing fast.

Oil prices up due to manipulations in supply, Middle East issues, China coming on strong with needs of her own, military needs effecting supply and demand issues, International Terrorists screwing with infrastructures, South American trade war paybacks, oil pipelines too few, Nimby- Ism slowing output and inflows while the demand has increased, Airline fuel down and therefore price has too increase to pay for the direct cost loads. Our growth and consumerism has outpaced our supply and infrastructures. With energy the Blackout of 2003, rolling CA issues, generation plants being shut down, slowness of building new Nuclear Power Plants, issues in OR along the major Columbia River with Bonneville Power, issues with CA and SMUD, issues with upgrades needed in Coal Plants To meet EPA upgrades also same problems in VA, NC, SC, and the Tennessee River Valley Authority. Pipeline break in AZ and Phoenix they were paying nearly $ 2.00 per gallon, but now in CA they are at $ 2.65 per gallon. Sabotage in Iraq screws up supply for worldwide market. We are seeing OPEC moving forward to keep prices high, China coming online with needs, world demand is going up, takes too long to ramp up our own production and few companies wish too, for fear of dropping prices too quickly, meanwhile we are Seeing $ 2.46 gasoline on West Coast and $ 1.90 in San Antonio, no one expects these prices to come down, recessions follow high fuel prices by 6 months? So these are all issues and everything we buy has these high costs figured in. Construction, farming, transportation. Some school districts complaining about cost of buses and kids hurting budgets and at the same time increased prices mean more monies to state coffers which charge percentages of fuel prices as tax.

This article is in no way a doom and gloom showing, because I do see increased economic sunshine in many markets, but not all, those which have the burdens of daught, fires, shortages and manufacturing are going to see some more tough times. When energy goes up, some businesses running redline on low margins with lots of competition will see harder times and layoffs in the near future, while other sectors will be continuing the recovery.

These companies must raise prices, almost all airlines have announced even additional higher fares this week, 14 of the largest trucking companies; The ones which haul the food, building materials, cars to dealerships and everything on every shelf in America. Railroad is increasing rates too. And Independent truck drivers holding on by a thread with insurance costs up too. We are also not going to be able to release the Military reserves in such uncertain times. So Inflation, there she blows and meanwhile interest rates will increase and money flows continue offshore.

What is of concern is that without increased wages, higher percentages of consumer incomes will be spent on food, gas, energy and other artificial inflated or supply and demand driven goods and services, yes that includes many sectors.

Now is a very important time in our nations history and in the business cycles at hand. We will get through this as it also hits other nations who sell to us, the trick is to come out of this present period with after burners blazing and set a course to the future prosperity and into the annals of destiny. Which we may write through our human spirit and will.

Source by Lance Winslow

Source: http://bitcoinswiz.com/the-i-word-is-coming-to-a-town-near-you/