164 replies to this topic

[stocks]

The U.S. industrial base has been on a powerful upswing

In 2011 American manufacturing continued to expand, while Germany, Japan and Brazil all weakened in this vital sector.

Our top ranked area, Houston, is one of only four regions that enjoyed net job growth in manufacturing in the past 10 years.

Cheap natural gas, for example, makes petrochemical production in America more competitive than anyone could have imagined a decade ago. Linkages with Mexico in terms of energy as well as autos has made Texas — which is also home to No. 4 ranked San Antonio and No. 15 ranked Dallas — the nation’s primary export super-power, with current shipment 15% to 20% above pre-crisis levels.

Phenomenal Gains in Manufacturing Productivity

Today's factory workers produce more output in an hour than workers in the 1940s produced in a day.

It's hard to overstate how much the efficiency gains achieved by U.S. manufacturing have contributed to the improvements in our standard of living by making manufactured goods more affordable over time. We should spend less time complaining about fewer workers in manufacturing, and more time celebrating the phenomenal gains in manufacturing worker productivity.


http://mjperry.blogs...ufacturing.html

[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

Retirement Benefits May Sink the States

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently offered a stark assessment of the threat to his state's future that is posed by mounting pension and retiree health-care bills for government workers. Unless Illinois enacts reform quickly, he said, the costs of these programs will force taxes so high that, "You won't recruit a business, you won't recruit a family to live here."

http://online.wsj.co...Opinion_LEADTop


California to middle class: drop dead

California has always been a magnet – a land that has attracted people from across the nation and the world. It's a place that was known for its entrepreneurial spirit and open culture. But it has been turned into a regulatory and tax nightmare, a place where those who already have money can live in their coastal palaces and enjoy the splendor of the landscapes, but where it's unnecessarily difficult to move one's way up the economic ladder


http://www.ocregiste...nia-growth.html

[stocks]

The Golden State Is Crumbling

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

U-Haul Rates Confirm The Great California Exodus

Bleeding Green: California losing green businesses

Green businesses have joined the exodus of California companies leaving the state or expanding only outside state borders.

“Everything is difficult to do in California.” CEO of Green Trail Energy Dennis Wingo said. “When you try to rent property, the different requirements, the unemployment compensation. We knew if we were going to expand we either had to hire a bunch of robots who wouldn’t cost workmans’ comp or move operations out of state.”

Green Trail moved all operations to Maryland earlier this year.


http://capoliticalne...een-businesses/

[Rogerdodger]

BROWN WARNS OF BIG CUTS...
'Worst recession since 1930s'...
CA DOWN $16B

Blue States Fare Worse Than Red States

Edited by Rogerdodger, 12 May 2012 - 09:49 PM.

[stocks]

BROWN WARNS OF BIG CUTS...
'Worst recession since 1930s'...
CA DOWN $16B

Rick Santelli Discusses Greecifornia

Why would any taxpayer in his right mind keep throwing money down the bottomless pit called California.


http://www.ftense.co...eecifornia.html

[diogenes227]

Getting back to stock market.

Considering that the two biggest IPOs of recent times have taken place in California, there must be something going on there that Mr. Santellli has missed, like maybe the smart young people are moving in while the dumb old guys are "high-tailing" out, like at least two of the few industries in which the USA still dominates the world market (entertainment and computing) are quite at home there, like the state leads all states in agricultural exports (nearly doubling the next highest state)...like it's GDP is 13 percent of the total US GDP which makes it the eight largest economy in the world. I could go on and on but this is just as stupid as Mr. Santelli is clueless to the fact it was the followers of Arthur Laffer (why that guy has not been tarred and feather on national television is beyond me) for the past 40 years that have created the fiscal mess in California and everywhere else.

Would Mr. Santelli celebrate if we offered California with all of its "problems" to China in exchange for canceling our debt and they took the deal IN A HEARTBEAT?

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.

[Rogerdodger]

Greece is nice too. And they don't understand the Laffer Curve or supply side economics either.

Look upon California and despair.
Last weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown delivered the latest in a long line of bad news. Turns out the budget deficit is far worse than he claimed in January: What then looked like “just” $9 billion worth of red ink is now $16 billion.
And tax revenues in April came $2 billion short of state projections.

The Golden State boasts the world’s ninth-largest economy — and an 11 percent unemployment rate.
For all its natural beauty and vast resources, it now has the worst business climate in America.

Brown claims his new tax hike would rake in another $9 billion a year, with most of the money supposedly going to schools.
However, most of the money, in fact, would go to teacher pensions.
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System has a yawning unfunded liability of more than $60 billion.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 18 May 2012 - 07:05 PM.

[diogenes227]

Another "capitalist" blames the government for his failure. The state didn't give him the subsidies he wanted.

CURT SCHILLING

[Rogerdodger]

Atlas Shrugged in real time:

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: High-Taxing State Loses 3.4 Million Residents...
New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.
Where are they escaping to? The Tax Foundation found that more than 600,000 New York residents moved to Florida over the decade – opting perhaps for the Sunshine State’s more lenient tax system – taking nearly $20 billion in adjusted growth income with them.

UPDATE: Kerry's Yacht In RI - Still Owes MA Taxes...
The wealthy Massachusetts resident was avoiding a six-figure sales tax bill by keeping the luxury yacht in Rhode Island, rather than Massachusetts.
The stern of the Isabel now bears the name of its home port — Nantucket — but it’s barely even visible.

Edited by Rogerdodger, 29 May 2012 - 11:45 PM.

[salsabob]

Atlas Shrugged in real time:

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: High-Taxing State Loses 3.4 Million Residents...
New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.
Where are they escaping to? The Tax Foundation found that more than 600,000 New York residents moved to Florida over the decade – opting perhaps for the Sunshine State’s more lenient tax system – taking nearly $20 billion in adjusted growth income with them.

In the field of demographics focused on migration, New York is know as the "Golden Door State" -

http://tinyurl.com/7d47xmy


It has a net population growth rate of 2.1% but that masks a high degree of turnover with the State being one of the primary destinations of immigrants to the US but having a large emigration to other US states. Immigrants to NY are highly varied in terms of education, economic class, but with an overriding similarity of being in their primary working years. On the other hand, those leaving the state have a primary common denominator of being of retirement age. Essentially, NY is a magnet for those wanting to make money and once accomplished, they tend to move to areas with attributes more attuned to retirement - weather, cost-of-living, taxes. Those retirees wanting to escape the rat race but remain vibrant and open-minded in the NY style tend to go to places like Florida to be with like-kind escapees. Those who prefer the opposite, go to places like Oklahoma where their going-to-seed will fit in well with the locals.

While this was aimed at explaining different conclusions about the risks of climate change, it is likely applicable as well to why people derive different conclusions about taxes or government purpose -

http://www.env-econ....te-science.html

"Cultural cognition" is the term used to describe the process by which individuals' group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong.