Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Elizabeth Warren, foolish redistributionist


Copied from an article dated March 6, 2014 on the Think Progress website:

U.S. Senator Warren (supposedly representing Massachusetts) ...
... plans to introduce a bill that would create an “America that invests in those who get an education” by revising the tax code and enacting the Buffet rule.

The Buffet rule is named after billionaire Warren Buffet and would establish a minimum tax on income in excess of $1 million.  The measure, which never got out of Congress, raises approximately $50 billion in revenue and ensures that millionaires do not pay lower tax rates than middle-class families.
She doesn't get it.

She just doesn't get it.

Most Americans make economic decisions with a lot of knowledge of the potential gains and losses, due to the unquestionable fact that there is so much knowledge that is available to the average American.  Senator Warren underestimates the education of the American consumer, investor, and even the students.  There are many things that Elizabeth Warren knows nothing about, and that includes most of what she should know in order to do her job as a U.S. Senator.


The American economy is dynamic

People in this country are allowed to make changes to their economic situations whenever they feel like it.  Many people have done it, some voluntarily, others were encouraged to do so by the benefits of various government welfare programs, and still others were forced to accept these benefits because their income shrank.

Over the past five years, there has been a very large-scale shift in the middle-class.  Many people who were working full-time jobs before Obama was elected are now working one or even two part-time jobs, thanks to a feature of the Unaffordable Care Act which imposes a harsh tax on any company that has 50 or more employees.

As a direct result of this harsh tax, companies all across the United States have reduced the number of hours that individual employees work down below the 30-hour threshold that is mentioned in the law.  These companies are thus taking advantage of the dynamic U.S. economy, and the reason why they are doing it is because this makes good business sense.


Elizabeth Warren is a classic redistributionist

She wants to rob from the rich, with a public goal of helping the poor.  If this is done more-or-less voluntarily, it is socialism.  If, however, the wealth is confiscated by a government, then this is Karl Marx's version of Communism.

Copied further from the same March 6th article.  Notice that the writer, Mason Atkins, doesn't even call it Elizabeth's plan.  He calls it "Warren's plan" and "the Buffet rule".  This is simply a cowardly coverup.  Warren Buffet didn't push very hard for the redistribution of wealth, but Elizabeth is pushing.
Warren’s plan would allow students with outstanding student loans to refinance at lower rates.  The cost of the change would be covered by a “dollar for dollar” effort where for “every dollar the Buffet rule brings in, we use that dollar to refinance student loan debt,” she explained.  She estimated that recent graduates who borrowed the maximum in undergraduate loans could see their payments drop by $1,000 a year and total interest paid over the life of the loan could be cut nearly in half.  Students with graduate loans or borrowers from private lenders would save even more, Warren projected.

Warren Buffet's "rule" and his projections were forced on him by a president who has been proven to use the I.R.S. to harass his political opponents.  Mr. Buffet has written extensively about wealth creation, and he has authentic first-hand experience.  The mutual fund that he began decades ago now has shares that are being bought and sold at a price of over $180,000 each, up from "only" $170,000 three months ago.

Here are some price charts of the Barkshire Hathaway Class A shares:
Three months Six months
One year Two years Five years

Please notice that five years ago, according to this chart, the price of this mutual fund was "only" around $80,000 per share.  Since then, shareholders have seen the price grow by an additional $100,000 per share.

Warren knows how to make money, and it isn't by taxing the wealthy people who include his earliest and thus wealthiest shareholders.


March 25, 2015 update

Elizabeth Warren's student loan plan has been defeated.

Copied from an article published today (March 25th) in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, where Congress does its' business.
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked an effort by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to attach an amendment aimed at lowering student loan rates to the budget.

Senators voted 46-53 against Warren's amendment to the Republican budget resolution.

Warren's amendment would have allowed people with college loan debt to refinance at interest rates from the 2013-2014 academic year.  The Massachusetts Democrat, who is rejecting calls to run for president, said the move would allow undergraduates to refinance their loans to a 3.9 percent interest rate, with a "slightly higher" rate for graduate students.

"Millions of borrowers are still stuck paying interest rates at 6 percent, 8 percent, 10 percent and even higher," she said.

Her plan would have been paid for by requiring millionaires to pay at least a 30 percent effective federal tax rate.
Her plan would redistribute money from millionaires to college students.

That's redistribution, which inflicts economic punishment on those millionaires for the "crime" of having a lot of money.


January 7, 2020 update

These are the first four paragraphs of a January 7, 2020 Washington Times story.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Tuesday rolled out a proposed rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law, including a repeal of certain provisions of a 2005 law supported by 2020 Democratic presidential rival Joseph R. Biden.

Ms. Warren’s proposal would make it easier for debt-ridden Americans to seek bankruptcy and. For example, it would reverse a provision in the 2005 bill that required people to seek pre-filing credit counseling.

“Thanks in part to the 2005 bankruptcy bill, our current system makes it far too hard for people in need to start the bankruptcy process so they can get back on their feet,” Ms. Warren said on her campaign website.

She also wants to make student loan debt dischargeable during the bankruptcy process, akin to other consumer debts, and make it easier for people to keep their homes and cars during the bankruptcy process, among other changes.
CNBC published a similar story on the same day.

The biggest reason for student loan debt is because greedy college professors, like her, were paid far more for their services as a teacher than they were worth.

These are the first two paragraphs of a January 12, 2012 Associated Press story that was published on the MassLive website.  The link in the first paragraph was in their story.  Note: This story was corrected by the Associated Press in March 2019 to show the accurate dollar value of her stock in IBM.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was paid $429,981 as a Harvard law professor from 2010 to 2011 and got nearly $134,000 in consulting fees on legal cases in 2010.

Warren's new personal financial disclosure report filed recently with the Senate shows she got $90,000 from a Florida law firm for her work as an expert witness against credit card companies in an antitrust case.
When any university has to pay $430,000 to one person to teach one class, all of the students at that university will be forced to pay a higher amount of tuition, room and board, and other fees to that university.


January 15, 2020 update

These are the first four paragraphs of a January 14, 2020 Washington Examiner story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their story.
Elizabeth Warren promised to cancel student loan debt for up to 42 million Americans on the first day of her administration, bypassing Congress to do so administratively.

The Democratic presidential candidate said, in a plan released Tuesday, that she would direct her secretary of education to "compromise and modify" federal student loans consistent with her plan to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for 95% of student loan borrowers.

"We can’t afford to wait for Congress to act," Warren said in the plan.

The Massachusetts senator said that the Education Department, through the Higher Education Act of 1965, already has the authority to cancel student debt.
As I said on Twitter in response to a tweet that included a link to this story, any bank whose student loans are cancelled by any U.S. President will refuse to make new loans on the legitimate grounds that these loans will instantly become financial losses for those banks, possibly leading to the financial failure of those banks.


Elizabeth's friend Barak also wants to redistribute wealth

The first YouTube video was recorded, with Barry's own voice, in 1998.

In the second video, you will hear Barry's voice as he called in to a Chicago radio station in 2001, fourteen years ago.  The transcript of his words is printed onscreen in the video.

America, love it or leave it

I really hate to break the bad news to Elizabeth and her redistributionist friend Barak Hussein Obama, but some of the wealthiest people in this country have had enough of the "tax the rich" dreamers and schemers.

They're leaving the United States.

This is the first sentence in an article dated March 11, 2014 on the Finance Page of the Yahoo website.  There are brief interviews with five former Americans later in the same article.
3,000 Americans around the world renounced their citizenship last year.  Meet five U.S. citizens who have given up their passports -- or are thinking about it -- to escape an overly complicated tax code.
When you see the phrase "overly complicated tax code", remember the Dodd-Frank law (PDF 848 pages, not counting the regulations), which regulated a very large portion of the American banking sector that was functioning with already high government regulations, and remember the thousands of pages of the Unaffordable Care Act, (PDF, 906 pages, not counting the regulations), which is now bankrupting millions of Americans because of higher insurance premiums caused by unnecessary "benefits" like pregnancy care for single men and senior citizens.  Are single men likely to get pregnant?  How about senior citizens?


Leaving America and moving to Belize

These are the first two paragrraphs of an article dated November 24, 2013 on the Huffington Post website.  All links in these paragraphs were in their article.
Expats have settled all over Belize, but one spot is starting to earn lots of attention lately... Corozal, the northernmost of Belize's six districts.  It has the second-largest population of the districts with about 35,000 people and shares the border with Mexico.  Once considered the undiscovered gem of Belize, this district and its tidy little capital of Corozal Town are quickly rising on the radar of foreign retirees and other expats, and there are lots of reasons why.

One big reason is that it's generally less expensive to live here than are other areas of Belize.  In large part this is because of that border we mentioned with Mexico... the city of Chetumal, Mexico, is just on the other side.  Since Belize has little domestic manufacturing and relatively high duties on imported goods, shopping trips to Chetumal -- to Sam's Club and other big-box stores and supermarkets -- help Corozal residents beat the higher prices on imported goods paid by folks elsewhere in Belize.

Chetumal is also where most in Belize go for medical care from an excellent, modern hospital.  But there's also a small and efficient public hospital in Corozal Town, fine for most general medical needs.

By the way, if you're looking to relax and enjoy life when you move to Belize, you can definitely do that. For just $25 to $30 Belize dollars ($12 - $15 USD) per day, you can hire someone to clean your house, do your yard work and more...

Real estate in Corozal is also less expensive than other places in Belize because Corozal doesn't have the notoriety of more popular destinations like Ambergris Caye or Placencia.  Deals still abound in Corozal for raw land, single-family homes, and residential developments.  Another plus is that this part of Belize gets less rainfall than the rest of the country, a big benefit for fans of dry, sunny days.

If you can see why Belize is such an attractive place to live, you can also see a good reason why people like Elizabeth Warren should think twice before trying to force wealthy and already heavily-taxed Americans to pay even more taxes for any reason, including subsidies for college students who have student loans.

Oh by the way, during 2013, a record number of Americans emigrated to other countries.


Some reading material for Senator Elizabeth Warren

I hope she reads them before she makes another fool of herself.

These essays were all published on my "Conserving the Nation" blog.

Redistribution of wealth, published September 28, 2012.

Taxes and national income, published October 22, 2012.

We're ignoring 200-year-old wisdom, published November 15, 2012.  Benjamin Franklin said that a penny saved is a penny earned.  I simply updated his wisdom for the 21st century by modifying his sentence into the following sentence, which every government official, including one particular Senator, should read and understand.

A trillion dollars saved (by not spending it) is a trillion dollars earned.

I do hope that she understands this principle before I move to Belize.


May 19, 2016 update


May 20, 2016 update.

She is being considered as Hillary's Vice-President.

These are the first two paragraphs of an May 18, 2016 Editorial in the Washington Times.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.
If the millennials can’t have Bernie Sanders at the top of the Democratic ticket, Hillary Clinton is feeling the burn (if not the bern) to put Sen. Elizabeth Warren at the bottom of the ticket.  This would wreathe the campaign in clouds and tendrils of estrogen, the female “gender” hormone, and give Hillary the opportunity to set two precedents in one.

The Constitution requires that both president and vice president be Native Americans, and Ms. Warren claims to be a Native American as well (born in Oklahoma), descended, at least in part, from the Delaware and Cherokee tribes.  Her claim is in dispute, however, and the only proof she has produced to back the claim she made in a campaign biography in 2012 is her contribution of two “family recipes” to the Pow Wow Chow Cookbook, published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Okla., in 1984.


April 22, 2019 update

On November 6, 2018, Elizabeth Warren, who pretends to represent this state in the U.S. Senate, won reelection against Geoff Diehl, who I supported in many ways.  During the campaign, she denied using a dubious claim of American Indian heritage to win an employment contract as a professor at Harvard University, which is why I often call her "Pocahontas" on my Twitter account (BennyTheKite, named in honor of Benjamin Franklin).

On February 9, 2019, she declared herself to be a presidential candidate.  Link to a New York Times story published that day.

These are the first three paragrraphs of an April 22, 2019 New York Times story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their article.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has structured her presidential campaign around a steady unveiling of disruptive policy ideas, on Monday proposed her biggest one yet: a $1.25 trillion plan to reshape higher education by canceling most student loan debt and eliminating tuition at every public college.

Ms. Warren’s sweeping plan has several planks.  She would pay for it with revenue generated by her proposed increase in taxes for America’s most wealthy families and corporations, which the campaign estimates to be $2.75 trillion over 10 years.  In addition to eliminating undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities, she would expand federal grants to help students with nontuition expenses and create a $50 billion fund to support historically black colleges and universities.

She would eliminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with a household income of less than $100,000; borrowers who make between $100,000 and $250,000 would have a portion of their debt forgiven.
Any time a debt is forgiven, the lender has lost any part of the principal amount that has not been repaid as well as the interest payments on that debt.

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