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46.2 Million People in Poverty for 2010

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The Census released a comprehensive report on poverty, income and health insurance coverage in the United States for 2010. There were 46.18 million people living in poverty, in the United States. The Census population for 2010 was 305,688,000. This means that 15.1% of people in the United States are below the poverty thresholds, or one in 6.6 people.

 

How Obama is Going to Pay for a $245 Billion Cut to Social Security Contributions

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out of work free cardWe all know the United States needs jobs. We need jobs right now! Last week Obama proposed a new Stimulus plan, which we did a first pass on. Unfortunately most press is busy covering superficial politics instead of what is in the bill, how it would be paid for and most importantly, the effectiveness, or lack thereof.

USA today claims the plan is to tax the rich as they put it, or as we put it, close loopholes and tax hedge fund managers, currently living living high off the hog at a 15% tax rate.

Here's the gist of how Obama plans to pay the $447 billion his plan costs.

  • Limit on itemized deductions ($200,000 individuals, $250,000 families) - $400 billion
  • Carried interest would be treated as "ordinary income" rather than at capital-gains rate - $18 billion
  • Oil- and gas-company tax breaks - $40 billion
  • Corporate-jet depreciation would change - $3 billion

Greece on the Verge of Default

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greek dominoesThe rumors are swirling that a Greek Default is imminent:

Despite strong denials that the country is heading for a default, rumours have grown that the end game is approaching. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, has insisted that a sixth, €8bn (£6.8bn) instalment of aid will not be released unless Greece enacts corrective measures to kickstart its economy and improve competitiveness. Experts from Washington and Brussels will fly into Athens this week to assess whether Greece is sticking to its programme of drastic spending cuts and tax rises, amid fears that its creditors could be ready to pull the plug.

Literally there are talks about seizing Greek assets, by force.

Germany’s EU commissioner Günther Oettinger said Europe should send blue helmets to take control of Greek tax collection and liquidate state assets.

Greece, assuming in response, announced a new property tax, collected through electricity bills:

The tax is €4 per square meter (about $0.50 per sq. feet). The government is projecting this levy will make up for the revenue shortfall due to the sharper than expected contraction in the Greek economy.

Saturday Reads Around The Internets - Outsourcing Jobs and Tax Cuts

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shocknews
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

You may wonder why to create jobs, government doesn't just stop offshore outsourcing them? We sure do. With that, the theme of this week's links is offshore outsourcing.

 

First Pass on Obama's Jobs Stimulus Redux

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President Obama introduced his so called jobs plan, spending $447 billion. 51% of this is tax cuts, 31% is infrastructure and local aid and 14% of unemployment insurance. Firstly, it has been shown time and time again, tax cuts do not create jobs. We just showed one would be better off hiring people to cut grass with scissors than enact a payroll tax cut. The payroll tax cuts alone are $240 billion, or over half of Obama's plan.

Bank of America: Too Big to Obey the Law

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If you’ve watched the collapse in Bank of America’s stock this past month, you’ve probably read that investors are concerned about the bank’s legal liabilities from the devastation of the housing market. Analysts usually cite the raft of lawsuits filed by just about anybody who had anything to do with the bank or Countrywide, which was bought by Bank of America when Countrywide was on the verge of bankruptcy. Analysts, however, don’t tell you the details behind these legal claims – what exactly did Bank of America do to earn its position as poster child for banking industry fraud? To the rescue comes a lawsuit filled with such details, from someone who has access to thousands of consumer complaints about Bank of America. The complaint was filed recently by the Attorney General of Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto. You should take the time to read this lawsuit. It tells you in a comprehensive way what went wrong with the mortgage business from origination of the mortgage to foreclosure. But fair warning: be prepared to be nauseated. If Bank of America perpetrated even a fraction of the frauds outlined in this report, it raises a most serious question: why does this company still have a banking license?

Countrywide Sets the Tone

Payroll Tax Cut As Stimulus

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One cornerstone of Obama's jobs plan is a $120 billion payroll tax cut. This tax cut has been enacted already for 2011 and according to Obama, the claim is this tax cut put an average $1000 into worker's pockets.

This is a tax cut that reduced those Social Security contributions, what you see as FICA, the social security component, on your W-2, by 2% for 2011. That's right, they defunded social security by 2% for 2011.

Social security is calculated on gross income, normally 6.2%. This is why attacking social security is almost a crime. You've actually been putting money into your benefit your entire working life. It's capped to a wage base and for 2011 it's $106,800.

Additionally, median income is a tad misleading, for it's household income, on aggregate, instead of individual income. Additionally, it's not median wages, which since social security is a regressive tax, affecting wage earners disporportionately, using median income to estimate the tax benefit isn't quite right. After all, most of us are have nots, the median wage for 2009 was $26,261, much lower than the household median income of $49,777 for 2009.

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