164 replies to this topic

[stocks]

The Golden State Is Crumbling

North Dakota vs California

Cultural leaders making headlines cursing the 1% have made it a virtue to force California taxpayers to help pay for electric cars purchased by millionaires.

It is a mathematical impossibility that California's "renewable" technologies will ever make economic sense in a world awash in oil and gas. This makes the results of all this malinvestment entirely predictable. As North Dakotans become rich pumping oil, Californians are going broke erecting a vast subsidy-dependent green infrastructure primed to collapse the moment the funny money runs dry.

This year's state budget will be $6 billion in the red, even after painful cuts in education, health care, and transportation. And despite the fact that 1 percent of the state's income earners already shoulder half the state's income tax bill - leading one third of California's high income residents to flee the state over the past several years - Governor Jerry Brown is plumping for a ballot initiative to jack up taxes on "the rich" even higher.

And the vaunted entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley? they are salivating over the free money being served up by Obama's energy department, using it to leverage up their bets on windmills, solar plants, and algae farms


link

[stocks]

New York's future is fleeing

For one thing, according to a recent survey in Chief Executive, our state has the second-worst business climate in the country. (Only California ranks lower.)

Deficits Push N.Y. Cities and Counties to Desperation

The reality is that from Long Island to Buffalo, New York cities and counties face severe and growing fiscal woes. The chief drivers of the crisis: sweetheart programs that are out of control: state pensions, Medicaid, and retiree health costs.

“Everybody was complicit in this tsunami, and now it’s landing, but not in Washington or Albany,” he said. “It’s in places like Yonkers, where the choice is between school kids and safe streets.”

http://www.nytimes.c...mp;ref=nyregion

http://blogs.the-ame...s-empire-state/

[stocks]

Illinois: the Deadbeat state

Owes billions in unpaid bills

Chicago Called Most Corrupt City In Nation

Weekend of violence claims 10 shooting victims across Chicago

At least 10 people were killed, including a 6-year-old girl, in shootings over the weekend in Chicago.


http://articles.chic...est-rogers-park

[Rogerdodger]

Taxes Prompt More Americans to Renounce Citizenship
Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. But not everyone's motivations are as lofty as Superman's. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons.
The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they're living abroad.
Americans abroad can be punished for noncompliance even if they owed no income tax - and IRS data show that most of them don't owe money.

And across the pond a similar loss of citizens:
Over five million British citizens have moved overseas. Four thousand more depart permanently each week.
"What's interesting is one of the highest proportions of people looking to leave are wealthy people living in London, and the highest proportion of wealthy people looking to leave are aged 25-34.

"It is people who are out there with a career in front of them, looking to go out and make money, do things and make their own impact in the world, not just people retiring to France or Spain for a place in the sun," he added.
"Our research suggests the number of wealthy people leaving the UK is set to increase in the next two years," he said.

"Clearly there's a growing minority that is worried about the outlook; infrastructure, crime, anti-social behaviour, tax, red tape and do believe that there are better options abroad."

IRS Travel Ban: Revoking Citizenship By Stealth...

Edited by Rogerdodger, 17 April 2012 - 12:22 AM.

[Rogerdodger]

Since Warren Buffet wants higher taxes but refuses to pay them, I guess this is the real Buffet Rule in action:
98,000 federal employees owe $1 billion in back taxes...
"A report by the Internal Revenue Service showed that in 2010, 98,000 federal employees owed a combined $1 billion in back taxes.
Members and employees of the U.S. Senate alone owed over $2 million."



PAYING AXES = Tithing for Government Worshiping Believers

Edited by Rogerdodger, 17 April 2012 - 10:41 AM.

[stocks]

The Golden State Is Crumbling

If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego?

U-Haul Rates Confirm The Great California Exodus

U-Haul rates for one-way 26 foot truck rentals in May:

From Sacramento to Houston: $2,370
From Houston to Sacramento: $1,007

From San Francisco to San Antonio: $2,214
From San Antonio to San Francisco: $1,069

Dynamically-determined U-Haul rates reflect the differences in relative demand for one-way truck rentals between any two U.S. cities.

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak,"


http://mjperry.blogs...nia-exodus.html

[diogenes227]

The Golden State Is Crumbling

If Stockton Is Broke, Why Isn’t San Diego?

U-Haul Rates Confirm The Great California Exodus

"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak,"

No "basically" about it, everyone on the West Coast (not just California), DOES OWN a piece of Facebook AND Google (and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and Boeing for that matter), and HAVE NOT robbed banks (that's New York) BUT ARE rich parents who have raised Mary Jane and made movies quite lucratively since the 1960s and ARE ALWAYS ABLE to climb majestic mountains and surf sun up to sun down or just sit back and savor sea breezes.

The last time there was a "Great California Exodus" was in the 1980s when the population was 23 million. It is now 37 million.

Who was it here who once said: "I spent a year in North Dakota once. I think it was a Sunday"?

When my kids were young, one of them explained to his equally young cousin in the Midwest who was dying to leave her hometown that he'd probably stay in his hometown "because we live where everyone else wants to visit." His young cousin from Kansas? Grown up now, and graduated from college, she just moved to Seattle.

[stocks]

Illinois: the Deadbeat state

Owes billions in unpaid bills

Chicago Called Most Corrupt City In Nation

Weekend of violence claims 10 shooting victims across Chicago

Illinois ‘Treads Water’ as Unpaid Bills Top $9 Billion

llinois’s backlog of unpaid bills has risen to more than $9 billion because of pension costs and falling federal aid, leaving the state “essentially treading water,” Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said.

Illinois is second only to California as the state with the lowest credit grade from Standard & Poor’s.


http://www.bloomberg...-9-billion.html

[diogenes227]

Twelve-room luxury hotel for sale in Capital. Only $71,000.

There are some places where the government doesn't interfere in the free market.

BUY LOW

And:

AND HOPE FOR THE BEST

[Rogerdodger]

Buffet and Immelt may be brothers from another mother.

Immelt defends GE's tax bill...

Protesters chant: 'Pay your fair share'...

FLASHBACK: GE Files 57,000-Page Tax Return, Pays No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits...

Edited by Rogerdodger, 24 April 2012 - 09:07 PM.