From HousingWire:
Here’s a sample cover letter to help secure your client’s dream home
Cover letters are one example of how to put buyer offers above the competition, and looking at how tight inventory is in today’s market, buyers could use any extra help they can get.
According to a recent Redfin report, the number one way buyers are standing out against the competition is through cover letters, with 43% of winning offers using them in March, up 35% from last year.
…
In his third point, he went in depth on what a letter should look like.Letter to the seller:
A letter to the seller does help, but it has to be done a certain way. The point of the letter to the seller is to make your clients come alive. You want your buyers to be more than just a number on a paper. When touring a property, find certain things that your buyer and the seller have common, such as water skiing, camping, local sports teams etc. When writing the letter to the seller, include that in there. People do business with other people that are just like them, so it’s important to build that rapport with the seller. Another important thing to do is to talk about just how amazing their home is. Never ever bad mouth or try to negotiate in a letter to the seller. The main point in the letter to the seller is to make your buyers come alive, tell the seller how beautiful their home is and how you are putting your best foot forward to buy the home.
Everyone shouting over each other yesterday trying to show their political philosophy is the best one. 178 comments and no one understanding each other.
There must be an election coming up.
On another note, I’ve always had good luck with letters. It’s about building a rapport and connection. I’ve had deals where the buyers met the sellers at the showing and immediately hit it off (letter not necessary, they already had playdates setup), it doesn’t always mean a sweetheart deal, but it usually means a smooth negotiation and easy concessions. Doesn’t always work, some sellers just don’t care or are miserable themselves, but in a number of cases it will. Inverse applies as well, don’t be a dick at the showing if the owner is there.
In some of the older, more established neighborhoods (usually more upscale), with tight relationships, it makes a big impact. I knew lots of people who selected offers based on who they thought would get along best with their good friends who were also neighbors. I’ve had one showing, house had just gone under contract the night before, we still went through the house anyway. Sellers and buyers hit it off. Got a call an hour after the showing that the sellers wanted to break the contract because they liked my buyers better.
I’ve heard plenty of times from sellers’ agents or the sellers themselves that they thought the buyers “were a good fit” or “would get along well”, etc.
I’m not talking about feed the squirrels bullshit, but it works. Not ever single time, but enough to do it every time.
By the time you get to the home inspection, you want Grandma Wilma to have made the coffee and put out the Entennman’s for you.
Frist (non) Grim
From the Star Ledger:
Christie: There’s no money for full pension payment, and I won’t raise taxes
Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday said there’s no money in the state budget to make a full public employee pension payment, and told a friendly town hall crowd he “will not raise taxes on the people of New Jersey to pay for this.”
…
Protestors had massed around the steps of the Statehouse earlier this week, chanting, “Make the payment!” Christie recounted, somewhat amused.
“I’d be delighted to! I’m happy to make the payment if we have the money, but (Democrats) won’t tell you where they’re gonna get the money from,” he warned.
Then, sounding a bit like Jeff Bridges’ character The Dude in “The Big Lebowski,” Christie insisted that the only means available were income tax increases authored by Democrats, to be foisted on an unsuspecting public.
“And beware, man. I’m telling you where the money will to come from to fix the pension problem: Lower heath benefits, take that savings, put it in the pension. That’s what we do. I’m telling you how I’d do it.”
…
“Ask them where they get the money from. When they don’t tell you, what’s that tell you?” asked Christie. “It’s from you, man! They only don’t tell you where the money’s coming from when they’re going to take it from you.”
…
“You want shared sacrifice? Then have health benefits like everybody else has,” Christie said.
Someone on this blog already suggested the idea of writing a letter not sure who it was.
Personally, I would feel cautious about sending such a cover letter when bidding on a house. I think it sends a message of weakness from the get-go and even though it is wrapped in a warm and fuzzy feeling, it will be used against me in the future.
Then again – I do not transact in the single family home market often enough to know if this tactic has merit, per Grim it seems to bring some value.
I nominate #1 as post of the day. Of course, the day is young.
In other news, another wealthy crank heard from
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-13/druckenmiller-says-rates-could-remain-near-zero-10-years
6 – It can backfire, sure.
The real point of the approach is to deflect some focus away from the bid number. Like we’ve always said here, leave emotion out of the decision. In this specific case, you are intending to forcibly insert emotion into the seller’s decision. It might work, it might not, it may have no impact at all. But that’s the point, inject emotion, something other than a 100% laser focus on the bid, or the seller’s own emotional connection to the house.
While this is generally poised at a cutesy kind of tactic, this can be a hardcore negotiation tactic if you are willing to potentially stretch the truth a bit or pander to the seller’s emotion (gasp, the horror).
Warm and fuzzy weakness?
Think of this like an CIA/NSA operation – emotional warfare. Inject weakness into the target. F*cking black ops drone strike of glitter and sparkle heart confetti right into their faces.
We did not use a letter but when we were looking in 1993 we avoided a bidding war by letting the agent know my wife was expecting and we thought that the house and block would be great for our emerging family. The buyer accepted our bid even though others were coming in higher and noted our family “status” at contract close.
Grim 8 – I get the point that you are trying to mis-direct away from the bid and bring emotion into play for the Seller’s, but it seems that any reasonable Seller will read this letter and recognize it as emotion coming from the buyer, one that can be exploited if needed when the time comes. You are really hoping for a simple minded seller that can be “duped” into bringing their emotions to the party. That type of seller is going to be loaded with so many other time bombs to navigate that a letter doesn’t seems like it will pave a smooth road to close.
But if it works for some – Go for it. Personally, I wouldn’t write one.
[176] Rory
“#83 Lib
At your stage in Life I would have thought you would be in a traditional IRA. For most Roth only really work at the start or the end of a career as you are funding with your highest marginal (yes there is a proper use for the term) rate dollars.”
Academically, that is a correct statement but it ignores one probability and three other important planning factors.
The probability is that the future rate differential will stay wide enough to justify tying up $$$, such that the loss due to PV will be offset by tax savings. Not a safe assumption.
Second, you assume Lib qualifies for a trad IRA. He probably doesn’t unless it’s non-deductible then what’s the point unless you are back-dooring into a Roth.
Third, retirement funds are generally (there are exceptions) safe from creditors–a poor mans asset protection trust. IMHO, this is one of the good reasons to use one. More people than you know need that protection.
Fourth, trad IRA for those who qualify (typically young, lower earners, no ret plan at work) is a suckers bet–every dollar is taxed at ordinary rates when distributed, and dollars that would be taxed today at either low ordinary rates or LT cap gain rate are instead all taxed at rates which won’t be lower but you’ve tied up the cash for decades.
The only way I’d advise IRAs is to go Roth when young, the if you are ineligible, go nontrad IRA for the asset protection and convert in a year when you have reduced or no income. But closer to retirement, none of this makes much sense.
[8] grim
Must agree. It ,any convey weakness but if it gets you in over stronger offers, it worked. And if you get no acceptance, you’ve lost nothing.
It almost worked for us the one time we did that in the Brig. Was told wife wanted to sell to us, husband wanted offer at 10k more. We lost out but thetop bid pulled out right away and we got the house (now wish we hadn’t). Don’t know if we were second in $$ or letter prevailed.
The thrill is gone
Vigoda>B.B. King
Vigoda….jogger…
B.B…..eater.
Usually the people opting to go the letter route are not doing it because they are submitting near ask offers with incredibly strong financing and negotiating from (an actual) position of strength. Why would they need to? The offer speaks for itself.
(The buyer thinking their “25% Off” offer with a 9% down payment on a fair valued property is “strong” does not make it so.)
However, a buyer entering a negotiation with the preconception that they are negotiating from a position of strength is usually a sign that the negotiation is going to inevitably blow up due to ego. It goes both ways. I’ve seen ego (on both sides) kill plenty of great deals. The buyer communicating in a way that conveys some sort of superiority doesn’t necessarily yield any advantages.
I’ve been a part of plenty of deals where “radio silence” was clearly the best option.
Estate sales, dealing with the bickering kids – radio silence.
Single guy buying a condo from another single guy – radio silence
Hell buying anything from a single guy – radio silence.
Divorces – radio silence – you’d be an idiot to lob the touchy feelie letter into a toxic mess
Short sales – radio silence
Foreclosures – makes no sense – radio silence
Weak sellers – certain lowballs – radio silence
this story doesn’t sound very credible to me. sold my house to highest bidder and knew nothing about buyers other than price offered
1987 Condo says:
May 15, 2015 at 7:15 am
We did not use a letter but when we were looking in 1993 we avoided a bidding war by letting the agent know my wife was expecting and we thought that the house and block would be great for our emerging family. The buyer accepted our bid even though others were coming in higher and noted our family “status” at contract close.
More often then not its about putting context around a low offer. I’ve seen plenty of sales be consummated with bids that were not the highest or strongest bidder.
A lowball bid from an arrogant dickhead and a lowball bid from a family with two young kids offering the max they can afford are two completely different things. To some people, it matters, to others, it doesn’t. Not everybody is a dick or focused only on the price.
The top nominal rate in the 50s was 70% using 91% or whatever clouds the issue, use real life numbers.Reagan complained he paid in the 70% bracket and thus made no more than 4 movies per year. So that shows how a progressive system works,RR did nothing and someone else got the chance to make some money. If so few paid at 70%, then why would they lower the rate in 1964 to 50%? If people could deduct nearly everything , why would they gladly pay 50% when they could pay nothing at 70%? And that rate started at less than $100,000, so how much could a millionaire deduct? It just doesn’t make sense.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324705104578151601554982808
joyce says:
May 14, 2015 at 9:56 pm
Agreed regarding marginal tax rates… you also going to burst pumpkin’s bubble regarding the 70%+ rates of the ’50s?
Exactly, not everybody is only focused on making top dollar. Some people care about the community they live in and wish to place good people in that neighborhood. They actually care about their neighbors. Some people have morals, as opposed to being filled with absolute greed.
grim says:
May 15, 2015 at 8:14 am
More often then not its about putting context around a low offer. I’ve seen plenty of sales be consummated with bids that were not the highest or strongest bidder.
A lowball bid from an arrogant dickhead and a lowball bid from a family with two young kids offering the max they can afford are two completely different things. To some people, it matters, to others, it doesn’t. Not everybody is a dick or focused only on the price.
“it seems that any reasonable Seller will read this letter and recognize it as emotion coming from the buyer”
What makes you think most people are reasonable? Science and psychology say otherwise. Hence we get unsupportable housing bubbles, unjustifiable wars, vilification of dark skinned people as lazy and deserving of their lots in life, the belief that giving rich people money means jobs for all. Corporations manipulate people through their irrational emotions all day long. Writing the letter is definitely the wiser move more often than not. And I’m sure there are more than a few sellers agents that would be biased, perhaps unconsciously, toward a buyer who went this extra step too.
#17..we toured the house the Sunday of Memorial day weekend. Went home, put our bid in for $192k on a $199k list, they countered at $195k, we accepted at 11:30 am. Drove from Belleville to CG to sign and ran into others coming out of the house offering full, so basically the owner was stand up and honored our $195 vs the higher $199. Not important enough to worry about…
We looked at incomes and tax rates in 1963, then adjusted for inflation and looked at today’s tax rates.
We found:
* A person making $2,500 a year in 1963 was taxed at 22 percent. Today that would be $17,445, taxed at 15 percent.
* A person making $5,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 26 percent. Today that would be $34,890, taxed at 25 percent.
* A person making $10,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 34 percent. Today that would be $69,780, taxed at 25 percent.
* A person making $15,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 47 percent. Today that would be $104,670, taxed at 28 percent.
* A person making $25,000 a year in 1963 was taxed at 59 percent. Today that would be $174,450, taxed at 33 percent.
The 1963 rates are higher than today’s rates. It’s true that the tax code is substantially different today, with many credits and rules that didn’t exist then. But on the question of income tax rates, we find that Hillary Clinton has her history right. We rate her statement True.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/may/02/hillary-clinton/rates-were-a-lot-higher-back-in-the-day/
But the disagreement on this issue, as well as the facts surrounding it, is intense.
Democrats, to the extent they care about the budget deficit, want to raise taxes, which they say are too low–especially on rich people.
Republicans, meanwhile, generally say that taxes are too high and that the budget deficit should be addressed with spending cuts. To get the economy back on track, Republicans argue, you need to give Americans an incentive to work hard–by letting them keep more of what they earn. Republicans also argue that raising taxes would clobber an already fragile economy.
So who’s right?
Are taxes too high? Or are they too low?
Do high tax rates on “rich people” create a lazy population in which no one has an incentive to work hard?
And what about the Republican mantra that cutting taxes is always good for the economy, while raising taxes is always bad?
Thanks to the Tax Foundation and other sources, we’ve analyzed tax rates over the past century, along with government revenue and spending over the same period.
This analysis revealed a lot of surprising conclusions, including the following:
Today’s government spending levels are indeed too high, at least relative to the average level of tax revenue the government has generated over the past 60 years. Unless Americans are willing to radically increase the amount of taxes they pay relative to GDP, government spending must eventually be cut.
Today’s income tax rates are strikingly low relative to the rates of the past century, especially for rich people. For most of the century, including some boom times, top-bracket income tax rates were much higher than they are today.
Contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, super-high tax rates on rich people do not appear to hurt the economy or make people lazy: During the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90%–and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed.
Super-low tax rates on rich people also appear to be correlated with unsustainable sugar highs in the economy–brief, enjoyable booms followed by protracted busts. They also appear to be correlated with very high inequality. (For example, see the 1920s and now).
Periods of very low tax rates have been followed by periods with very high tax rates, and vice versa. So history suggests that tax rates will soon start going up.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates-2012-5?op=1#ixzz3aD8gQMnI
Gotta love this mindset.
“Society’s for weak suckers that need other people. A true capitalist knows this is a new wolf age and he is mean and strong enough to make his way through the world totally alone, with nothing but a sword (that he made himself) and a smelly loin clothe. It’s incumbent on all true capitalists to overthrow the enlightenment and put to rest the idea of everyone having a chance to succeed and better themselves.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates-2012-5?op=1#ixzz3aDB0jzMk
The bottom line.
“Income tax does not “punish success”. No individual or corporation ever became successful without society’s infrastructure (regardless what Ayn Rand says). The “social contract” is a very real economic quid pro quo successful institutions must pay back to society. Society has invested in every citizen education, housing, roads and infrastructure. There are many countries with small governments and minimal societal investments, but for some reason we refer to them as third world. Why is Wall Street not flocking to invest there? If conservative economic theories were correct, investments should be flooding these countries. I wonder why not?”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates-2012-5?op=1#ixzz3aDBKV2JF
High-school senior Ronald Nelson had an incredibly hard decision to make this year about college — mainly because he got into all eight Ivy League universities.
In the end, he decided on the University of Alabama and rejected offers from all eight Ivy League schools.
Nelson also rejected offers from Stanford, Johns Hopkins, New York University, Vanderbilt, and Washington University in St. Louis.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ronald-nelson-turned-down-every-ivy-league-school-for-university-of-alabama-2015-5#ixzz3aDCvUmdn
silence….your shrink wrapped opinion on this matter is more than worthless….it is specious……
Fabius Maximus says:
May 14, 2015 at 11:27 pm
#83 Lib
At your stage in Life I would have thought you would be in a traditional IRA. For most Roth only really work at the start or the end of a career as you are funding with your highest marginal (yes there is a proper use for the term) rate dollars.
Ha Ha,
Henry Blodget, the ivy-trained historian who was an incompetent, lying, corrupt analyst who knowingly fluffed failing companies to clients he despised, and was banned for life from the investment industry, is now holding himself out as an expert on business and societal ethics. How apt that our very own village idiot would be first to buy his new pack of misrepresentations.
Thought the letter was to going to a homeowner who was going to be a potential seller heard by word of mouth.
I see. that makes more sense
1987 Condo says:
May 15, 2015 at 8:37 am
#17..we toured the house the Sunday of Memorial day weekend. Went home, put our bid in for $192k on a $199k list, they countered at $195k, we accepted at 11:30 am. Drove from Belleville to CG to sign and ran into others coming out of the house offering full, so basically the owner was stand up and honored our $195 vs the higher $199. Not important enough to worry about…
Great article.
“If Occupy Wall Street supporters are looking for new places to protest, they might think about picketing the economics departments of the most prestigious American universities.
Not only would they find a more convivial place to camp than an ugly concrete slab in lower Manhattan, but protesting at universities would serve two purposes.
First, those who are unemployed and burdened with non-dischargeable student debt — which now exceeds U.S. consumer debt —could make a point about the inutility and expense of American higher education.
Second, and more important, protesters could confront another group of elites who are responsible for the financial meltdown and have yet to apologize: the nation’s academic economists.
Free market economic “literature” as economists call it — and their papers frequently are works of fiction — gave succor and intellectual respectability to the decades of deregulation and tax cuts that have bankrupted the country. Congress is compromised, to be sure, but lobbyists and members need economic studies as cover for what they are doing.
The United States is a plutocracy, with an income and wealth distribution that rivals South America’s worst cases, but economists refuse to acknowledge that these outcomes are attributable to ill-advised public policies on taxation, regulation, trade, and education spending over the last several decades.
Economists bleat about “globalization” as though it were inevitable rather than a set of deliberate policy choices. Markets are political creations, so results produced by them are not inviolable or free from question. And they don’t always produce equilibrium.
No, we don’t have to lower the U.S. corporate income tax rate just because the Europeans did, or because tax havens are allowed to leech off market countries without fear of being booted out of the bank clearing system.
Companies compete with each other. Countries do not. The notion of tax competition among countries is absurd, but it has become a mantra. The Cayman Islands does not bail out banks or maintain a navy protecting international shipping lanes.
Why do economists so readily identify with the 1 percent? Why do public finance economists call for tax cuts whenever two of them get in a room? Aren’t academics supposed to be independent thinkers?
Economists won’t reveal which right-wing foundations fund their dubious tax and public policy research. The American Economic Association voted not to require economists to disclose the sources of their funding.
Given that the academic world features some meritocratic competition, academics transpose their miniature meritocracy onto the entire society, and tend to believe that all income and wealth is earned, and all market-clearing outcomes are just and defensible. Another way of putting this is that they have never met Paris Hilton.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/leesheppard/2012/05/03/economists-malign-influence-on-taxes/
#7 – “We’re going to go from five workers of working age supporting every elderly person to two and a half because of demographics”
Tax the robots.
Problem solved.
32- Article cont.
“What if some economists just hold those anti-tax views on their own, without getting paid consulting fees or grants from right-wing foundations? Then they’re fools who are guilty of having failed to maximize their own economic utility. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, it is the height of stupidity to write right-wing piffle without getting paid for it.
Most American voters support the Buffett rule, a sort of alternative minimum tax that would hit the rich if they didn’t give substantial chunks of their income to charity. Economists hate the alternative minimum tax, because it’s not pretty, it’s not simple, and it’s not above board. Economists have never administered a tax system.
Prettifying the tax system is not an issue that anyone should take seriously. Politics is not pretty. Americans like deductions because they like to think they’re getting a tax break, having been conditioned to believe they are overtaxed, which they manifestly are not. Most Americans use preparers, the better to maximize their benefits or their recovery from deliberate overwithholding on wages.
In the area of business taxation, economists base their opinions on models that do not accurately describe corporate behavior. Economists’ models for corporate income taxes assume that the corporation is in liquidation mode. They assume that the corporation is not growing, does not earn more than normal profits, and has no sources of outside finance.
The models essentially treat the corporate income tax as an excise tax on the factors of production. So according to the models, whenever a corporation pays an income tax, it shrinks, like a snake eating its own tail.
This is nonsense, but these models are widely accepted and have been in use for decades. The reality is that a corporation that is profitable enough to owe a corporate income tax is growing. A profitable corporation has outside sources of capital. If it isn’t profitable in other years, it can use its losses to offset past and future tax liabilities.
Yes, the U.S. government buys back business losses through the tax system, like a silent business partner. Economists don’t know this, because few of them know the nuts and bolts of the tax law. They also don’t understand that financial accounting presentation matters more than tax liability. They don’t understand corporate structures, unless they are working directly for multinationals that abuse transfer pricing.
Yet they feel free to tell lawmakers what to do. Surely the U.S. government exists to improve the lives of citizens who are not members of the investor class? Economists’ anti-tax advocacy flirts with the right-wing view that the highest purpose of government is protection of property rights.
That philosophy would still argue that the rich ought to pay proportionally more tax because they have more property to protect, invoking a user fee rationale. If the same rationale were invoked for multinational corporations whose worldwide property interests are protected by American military power, they should pay a whole lot more than they are currently paying.
Taxes are not mere user fees. Economists should try to understand human needs, and stop advocating a Hobbesian world where everyone fends for himself. Public goods are a human need that must be paid for by taxation.”
One of the best lines from that article.
“Given that the academic world features some meritocratic competition, academics transpose their miniature meritocracy onto the entire society, and tend to believe that all income and wealth is earned, and all market-clearing outcomes are just and defensible. Another way of putting this is that they have never met Paris Hilton.”
YUP!
“In the area of business taxation, economists base their opinions on models that do not accurately describe corporate behavior. Economists’ models for corporate income taxes assume that the corporation is in liquidation mode. They assume that the corporation is not growing, does not earn more than normal profits, and has no sources of outside finance.
The models essentially treat the corporate income tax as an excise tax on the factors of production. So according to the models, whenever a corporation pays an income tax, it shrinks, like a snake eating its own tail.
This is nonsense, but these models are widely accepted and have been in use for decades. The reality is that a corporation that is profitable enough to owe a corporate income tax is growing. A profitable corporation has outside sources of capital. If it isn’t profitable in other years, it can use its losses to offset past and future tax liabilities.”
Rags, this is for you. I became a millionaire off the current tax system, but I’m overtaxed. So how the hell did you become a millionaire if you are overtaxed? Please explain.
“Prettifying the tax system is not an issue that anyone should take seriously. Politics is not pretty. Americans like deductions because they like to think they’re getting a tax break, having been conditioned to believe they are overtaxed, which they manifestly are not. Most Americans use preparers, the better to maximize their benefits or their recovery from deliberate overwithholding on wages.”
At least I don’t believe tax breaks will lead to job creation. At least I don’t believe giving the rich more money will lead to more jobs. At least I don’t believe the more money concentrated at the top the better it is for everyone else. If you believe this, please resort from calling anyone an idiot but yourself.
Ragnar says:
May 15, 2015 at 9:10 am
Ha Ha,
Henry Blodget, the ivy-trained historian who was an incompetent, lying, corrupt analyst who knowingly fluffed failing companies to clients he despised, and was banned for life from the investment industry, is now holding himself out as an expert on business and societal ethics. How apt that our very own village idiot would be first to buy his new pack of misrepresentations.
38 – You assume you know what Ragnar thinks or believes. Really you just project political talking points onto him. It makes you look dumb and unable to think for yourself.
Breaking economic news:
U.S. industrial output down for the 5th straight month.
Yup, bottom line. If our military is used to protect your business interests, you owe the u.s. tax payer for that protection. Don’t care if you are a mult-national corporation, you use the service, you pay for it. It’s so wrong to be hiding money off shore from the govt that you use for protection of your business model. “Surely, the U.S. government exists to improve the lives of citizens who are not member’s of the investor class?”
“Yes, the U.S. government buys back business losses through the tax system, like a silent business partner. Economists don’t know this, because few of them know the nuts and bolts of the tax law. They also don’t understand that financial accounting presentation matters more than tax liability. They don’t understand corporate structures, unless they are working directly for multinationals that abuse transfer pricing.
Yet they feel free to tell lawmakers what to do. Surely the U.S. government exists to improve the lives of citizens who are not members of the investor class? Economists’ anti-tax advocacy flirts with the right-wing view that the highest purpose of government is protection of property rights.
That philosophy would still argue that the rich ought to pay proportionally more tax because they have more property to protect, invoking a user fee rationale. If the same rationale were invoked for multinational corporations whose worldwide property interests are protected by American military power, they should pay a whole lot more than they are currently paying.
Taxes are not mere user fees. Economists should try to understand human needs, and stop advocating a Hobbesian world where everyone fends for himself. Public goods are a human need that must be paid for by taxation.”
Are you kidding me? Have you not read ragner’s posts over the past few years? The name says it all, “ragner”.
D-FENS says:
May 15, 2015 at 9:53 am
38 – You assume you know what Ragnar thinks or believes. Really you just project political talking points onto him. It makes you look dumb and unable to think for yourself.
Surprised? That’s what happens when you offshore jobs in the name of profit.
Jason says:
May 15, 2015 at 9:53 am
Breaking economic news:
U.S. industrial output down for the 5th straight month.
Grim – We have actually started getting cover letters with the applications for our rentals.
As for where the state’s money is going, I had a conversation this week with a friend that is considering leaving Hoboken because of changes to the public schools that she thinks their new Super is likely to make. Got all sorts of questions about our public schools.
Um no, you will not be finding free PreK or class sizes in the range of 12-16 here. Unlike the former Abbott districts we have to pay the whole bill for our schools here.
no. they should get to enjoy the benefits of their labor.
the fukcers won’t want to work if you tax them too much.
Juice Box says:
May 15, 2015 at 9:34 am
Tax the robots
[2] Grim
In some of the older, more established neighborhoods (usually more upscale), with tight relationships, it makes a big impact. I knew lots of people who selected offers based on who they thought would get along best with their good friends who were also neighbors. I’ve had one showing, house had just gone under contract the night before, we still went through the house anyway. Sellers and buyers hit it off. Got a call an hour after the showing that the sellers wanted to break the contract because they liked my buyers better.
I had suggested to Fast Eddie that he needed to write a letter but he wisely has taken himself out of the search. I would write a letter to connect with the seller but the thought of wondering if they would get along with their neighbors who are good friends hints at discriminatory. It would be contradictory to the fantasy that only similar minded people can afford to live there. If I’m looking at similar bids I may take the letter into consideration but I’m trying to sell my house.
Although they may be doing a potential buyer a favor by not selling to them because they KNOW their neighbors.
Pumps, yesterday you said that since Rags still made his money despite the tax burden, that proves that taxes had no impact.
That’s like giving last year’s NYC marathon winner a 20 pound weighted vest for this year’s marathon. When he crosses the finish line, albeit much slower, you say, “see, he crossed the finish line, those extra 20 pounds had no effect”.
[27] Pumpkin
At first I was think WTF, then I saw he was from Memphis. This is a good illustration of a bright kid that doesn’t have anyone around them to help in guiding important life decisions. Roll Tide
re: #44 – Some of our Hoboken friends are trying to fight the good fight and attend the PTA and board meetings etc. Hoboken Public school enrollment is down considerably over the last 5 years, it dropped 25.3% or from 2176 to 1625 students. Allot as the parents are moving their kids to the charter schools and private schools, so to keep the machine going (the budget still increases every year). Charter enrollment in Hoboken is 684 students overall in 2014, and so to fill seats the School Board is busing in lots (over 200 last I heard) of out of district students to fill seats.
Budget never goes down however. I knew it was time to move on when we started looking at the schools, plus we did not want our kids growing up with that very distinct Hoboken accent, it is one of a kind for sure.
Has anyone read this book? Just looking over the reviews to see if it’s worth reading.
“Steve Keen’s book is so refreshing. Many people know that neoclassical, or Chicago School, economics is bunk, but not many know exactly why. Keen understands the mathematics, not just the philosophy of this economics, and shows us where it goes wrong. Basically, it’s “garbage-in, garbage-out”. That is, neo-classical economics is full of assumption that are blatantly false in the real world. Thus its conclusions are baloney except in highly idealized circumstances.
For example the perfectly rational, fully informed consumer doesn’t exist, not even as a rough approximation, except in extremely restricted circumstances. Nor do all consumers act as if they all had the same preferences, as anyone in the business of marketing knows. And similar assumptions are made about investors. Without these kinds of assumptions, the neo-classical theories of perfect competition, efficient markets, free trade, etc., have no basis.
Keen even cites a theorem that the premier goal of neo-classical economics – a competitive market economy in perfect equilibrium – is impossible if the economy is growing. Mathematically, such an equilibrium would be an “unstable stationary point”, so that any real market that accidentally found itself close to perfect competition would quickly move toward a less competitive market. Of course this is exactly what happens, as industry after industry has evolved more profitable markets, manipulated by the monopoly power of a few dominant corporations. The strong guys either drive out, or buy out, the weaker guys, by one means or another.
As the whole world now knows, this kind of faith-based economics can lead to economic disaster. Ironically, as Keen shows, many of the creators of this ideology recognized the absurdity of these assumptions. Yet they so much wanted to believe in the conclusions that they either glossed over these problems or, in the case of Milton Friedman, even tried to make a virtue of them (p 150). In fact Friedman would have flunked even the most elementary course in logic, since his argument amounted to saying that if a conclusion is true then the assumption must have been true.
This kind of ideological economics should have been relegated to a crackpot fringe, but it served very powerful corporate and financial interests. Via Friedman’s Chicago School, it became the basis of economic policy for much of the world after the 1970s. Keen shows that Karl Marx too made bad assumptions, in order to derive his labor theory of value, yet, overall, he had a better grasp on reality than Friedman.
Keen gives a brief overview of several alternative schools of economics (Austrian, Post-Keynesian, Sraffian, Complexity, Evolutionary). Each of these constitutes a trenchant critique of one or more aspects of mainstream economics. I hope that Keen writes another book that gives us more depth on these alternatives and adds ones that he didn’t get to, such as Ecological Economics.
More to the point, a new approach to economics itself is needed. For example, it is obvious that the fundamental goal of this new economics must be to help guide the world toward a sustainable global economy during the 21st century. In particular, economics must be rooted in an understanding of ecology and natural resources, combined with an understanding of the psychological, social, and political behavior of humanity and of current cultural forms. Thus I see economics as the science of “human ecology”.”
http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-Economics-Emperor-Social-Sciences/product-reviews/1856499928/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R25Z4VE43LZQEH
Rags, this is what I try to explain to you. I wish a free market based on competition was the answer to it all, but it’s not. It’s not that simple.
“Keen even cites a theorem that the premier goal of neo-classical economics – a competitive market economy in perfect equilibrium – is impossible if the economy is growing. Mathematically, such an equilibrium would be an “unstable stationary point”, so that any real market that accidentally found itself close to perfect competition would quickly move toward a less competitive market. Of course this is exactly what happens, as industry after industry has evolved more profitable markets, manipulated by the monopoly power of a few dominant corporations. The strong guys either drive out, or buy out, the weaker guys, by one means or another.”
took you a full day to come up with that gem
Jason says:
May 15, 2015 at 10:24 am
Pumps, yesterday you said that since Rags still made his money despite the tax burden, that proves that taxes had no impact.
That’s like giving last year’s NYC marathon winner a 20 pound weighted vest for this year’s marathon. When he crosses the finish line, albeit much slower, you say, “see, he crossed the finish line, those extra 20 pounds had no effect”.
52-Actually anon (the twitiot) it came to me immediately, but with so many posts already yesterday, it was more likely to get lost in the shuffle.
#9 Eddie Ray
I made a mistake. I was thinking ROTH 401k vs Traditional 401k.
ROTH near retirement is more estate planning if your want to put funds past the mandatory draw down.
As always, it is not one size fits all
[52] twitiot
At least he’s original. No retweet required.
(I like this new name for anon. Very imaginative. Can we work this into our race card drinking game?)
We are not talking about a race. More evidence that your philosophies encompass a race to the bottom for the rest of the population. You only care about the winners. This is not a race. This is about real people and their lives. Should we just give everything to the top because they are the best and everyone else is a loser? Is that what you want? Do you really want a society better for EVERYONE or only the WINNERS?
Jason says:
May 15, 2015 at 10:24 am
Pumps, yesterday you said that since Rags still made his money despite the tax burden, that proves that taxes had no impact.
That’s like giving last year’s NYC marathon winner a 20 pound weighted vest for this year’s marathon. When he crosses the finish line, albeit much slower, you say, “see, he crossed the finish line, those extra 20 pounds had no effect”.
[53] Jason
anon for Handicapper General!!!
#28 Chi
Burn that brand baby!
California senators approve ban on grand jury investigations into police deaths
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article20444133.html
Do you have any reason or evidence to think after years he is actually doing that?
Fabius Maximus says:
May 15, 2015 at 11:04 am
#28 Chi
Burn that brand baby!
This is my whole basis for attacking income inequality. I look to the end result. I know how it will end because it has happened over and over again throughout history.
“That may add to it in the current-day world, but my point is that this scenario has played out again and again and that appeals to economic theories are useless at best and likely harmful. As the historian in the link points out, the real question is what is the end-game this time? History going back to the Greeks ans Romans but following through to modern times tells us this ends in one of two ways: “by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”
Those that seek to prevent the former end up with the latter. Don’t think that this time is different. A conflict based on economic theories will give you the latter like it did in under economic-theory driven communism and fascism. It’s especially dangerous the way we approach it these days a a pseudo-religion with assorted gods named Keynes, Hayek, Friedman, and von Mises substituting in for the gods of Marx and Pareto. A fervent and uncritical belief in any is a road to ruin.”
Oh, I wanted to write a few letters during the house buying process but not the kind mentioned in the lead article. They usually started out as :
“Dear Delusional F*cks,
Your house has been on the market 8 months because it is an overpriced pile of sh*t masquerading as a Crate and Barrel catalog. Your basement smells even with two dehumidifiers. Also, laminate Ikea cabinets do not justify a 30% markup on your 2006 purchase price. Wake up d-bag.
Signed,
Someone sorry he ever stepped into your rat hole”
Pumps, as others noted you really do have problems with reading comprehension. My analogy had nothing to do with a race per se, only to point out, that when you say Rags made his money despite the taxes imposed on him, that proves that taxes aren’t an issue. But in all likelihood he was able to overcome those tax burdens and obstacles, with much greater difficulty than he would have if the tax burden were -no not eliminated- but lessened.
Joyce, perhaps “California is the place to be” for you.
“Grand juries would be prohibited from investigating police shootings and cases where an individual dies from excessive force during an arrest under a bill passed Thursday by the California state Senate. . . .
Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, who introduced Senate Bill 227, argued that the lack of transparency and oversight in grand jury deliberations, which do not involve judges, defense attorneys or cross-examination of witnesses, did not serve the public.
“The use of the criminal grand jury has fostered an atmosphere of suspicion that threatens to compromise the nature of our justice system,” she said.
By banning the use of grand juries, the decision to prosecute officers would rest solely with local district attorneys. Mitchell said forcing district attorneys, who are elected, to deal with these cases would provide accountability.
“The general public would then have an opportunity for recourse” at the next election, Mitchell said in an interview, whereas ‘referral to a grand jury can be a way to avoid having fingerprints” on a case.’ . . . ”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article20444133.html#storylink=cpy
Wow. Just wow.
When the rule of law doesn’t give you the result you want, change the rules.
The best letter or contact is one that keeps the property from going on the market and keeping the realtors out of the mix. We were lucky enough to hit it off with a reluctant landlord who was going to rent because she didn’t have the time to sell. We were looking to rent because we had to move and were running out of time to buy. When I realized that we were simpatico I offered to buy instead of rent. A very savvy realtor who took us out literally the day before on Saturday, knocked on our seller’s door trying to list the place because she had us in her pocket at motivated buyers. Imagine the realtor’s surprise when the guy who knew nothing about the area on Saturday found the place she wanted to sell us on Sunday before she could list it on Monday. The realtor is good friend of my mortgage chick. She told me the realtor called her in tears on losing both ends of what would have been a very fast sale.
64
Comrade
It’s worth noting that I posted that article and gleaned the exact opposite conclusion.
Are we going to pretend that the local prosecutors and district attorneys have a tense and adversarial relationship?
I can read fine, thank you. Your analogy had nothing to do with a race, but you use a marathon as the basis, and question me if the winner with an added 20 lbs will still be able to finish in first place in the next race. Next time, use a different analogy if you don’t want me to associate it as a race.
Jason says:
May 15, 2015 at 11:24 am
Pumps, as others noted you really do have problems with reading comprehension. My analogy had nothing to do with a race per se, only to point out, that when you say Rags made his money despite the taxes imposed on him, that proves that taxes aren’t an issue. But in all likelihood he was able to overcome those tax burdens and obstacles, with much greater difficulty than he would have if the tax burden were -no not eliminated- but lessened.
Everytime anon or pumpkin copies and pastes someone else’s tweet, article or blog and regurgitates the idea as their own…
Drink!
more errors of omission…….as usual, your size fits few, if any…….
Maximus says:
May 15, 2015 at 10:59 am
#9 Eddie Ray
I made a mistake. I was thinking ROTH 401k vs Traditional 401k.
ROTH near retirement is more estate planning if your want to put funds past the mandatory draw down.
As always, it is not one size fits all
[68] D-FENS
No way. I’d be hammered by lunchtime.
[66] joyce,
I figured you’d like it.
As for local prosecutors and district attorneys, they are one and the same in many jurisdictions.
Finally, I see two major problems: First, its likely unconstitutional. Second, the collateral effects of this can already be measured in NYC and Baltimore and they aren’t good.
The effect of an income tax on the labor market
http://www.freeeconhelp.com/2011/07/effect-of-income-tax-on-labor-market.html
Michael, observe lines Q and Qt in the second diagram, which is after a tax is imposed. It moves from right to left. That means the labor supply is decreased….and fewer people get jobs.
evidence that taxes haven’t reduced the number of runners
@TuckerDBP: Annual marathon runners in the US:
1976: 25,000
Today: 541,000
gulp!
My favorite pumpkin move is when he Ctrl-V’s a huge long article that I get to scroll through and then he quotes the highlights of the same article in the next post. It’s like his own cliff note’s. Amazing.
[75] D-FENS
You can’t drink every time anon says something stupid. Don’t do it. You’ll be dead by the time this post uploads.
Demand is the Number 1 determinant of a Business to hire. A business can always pass on cost to consumer to “max of demand’. It has nothing to do with taxes. As long as people are willing to pay for the product at maximum cost, the business will keep on creating and hire more workers to get the product into market. You get a slow down in demand, business will lay off workers. As simple as that.
Yes,business will want to pay for less but if competition for the product is there.Businesses will have to increase salary to get and keep Talents. As simple as that.
Social Security’s cash deficit is set to explode to $361 billion in 2025 from $74 billion in 2014, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Chris Christie and Jeb Bush have both put themselves squarely behind a further increase in the retirement age. Christie specifically advocated a hike to age 69, closing a bit more than one-third of the financing shortfall.
But a hike to age 69 would mean that early retirees would have a whopping 39% benefit cut for life. The right thing to do would be to cut the benefits TODAY and level the inflow with the outflow. These 2 poly’s don’t want to touch that third rail. No courage.
http://news.investors.com/051415-752658-social-security-retirement-age-rising-hitting-early-retirees.htm
Seems like the old goats in this country are eating more grass in the field than they planted when they were young.
Did not want to pay in then, don’t want to pay in now. Kick the can down the road right into a millennials face. They don’t call them the locust generation for nothing….
I’ll give up for the sake of not being called an idiot. I’ll line up like a sheep and believe everything the rich elite spit out. For example, I will willingly increase my taxes so that the job creators can lower their taxes and expand the economy and create jobs. Everyone should willingly take on more taxes so the job creators can pay less taxes and create some jobs!! The focus should now be on the job creators and making their life as easy as can be. All aboard, let’s go off this cliff!!!
Better yet, if you are not a job creator, you should not be allowed to have money. A job creator is the only person that knows best on how to efficiently use capital in the economy.
#78
As an example; Does businesses prevent them from hiring when people uses Credit Cards to make payments? It cost the Business 5% for every CC transaction. Add to that all the taxes imposed on that transaction. NO. It is all passed to the Consumer.
Does the Consumer stop working because they have to pay all this ,added to a transaction?
That Graph dont make any sense to me
Wait, so lowering taxes does not equate to job creation? lol
yome says:
May 15, 2015 at 1:16 pm
Demand is the Number 1 determinant of a Business to hire. A business can always pass on cost to consumer to “max of demand’. It has nothing to do with taxes. As long as people are willing to pay for the product at maximum cost, the business will keep on creating and hire more workers to get the product into market. You get a slow down in demand, business will lay off workers. As simple as that.
Yes,business will want to pay for less but if competition for the product is there.Businesses will have to increase salary to get and keep Talents. As simple as that.
tax
taks/Submit
noun
1.
a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.
synonyms: duty, tariff, excise, customs, dues; More
antonyms: rebate
2.
a strain or heavy demand.
“a heavy tax on the reader’s attention”
synonyms: burden, load, weight, demand, strain, pressure, stress, drain, imposition
“a heavy tax on one’s attention”
verb
verb: tax; 3rd person present: taxes; past tense: taxed; past participle: taxed; gerund or present participle: taxing
1.
impose a tax on (someone or something).
“hardware and software is taxed at 7.5 percent”
synonyms: charge (duty on), tithe; formalmulct
“they tax foreign companies more harshly”
2.
make heavy demands on (someone’s powers or resources).
“she knew that the ordeal to come would tax all her strength”
synonyms: strain, stretch, overburden, overload, encumber, push too far;
Michael, would you say the word “tax” has a positive connotation or a negative connotation?
Not trying to be argumentative; but I just want to clarify. I initially posted that article and implied it was a bad thing. After you posted it, I commented negatively again.
I think it is a BAD idea for several reasons including the two you mentioned just now.
Comrade Nom Deplume, who needs to stop screwing around and get back to work says:
May 15, 2015 at 12:40 pm
[66] joyce,
I figured you’d like it.
As for local prosecutors and district attorneys, they are one and the same in many jurisdictions.
Finally, I see two major problems: First, its likely unconstitutional. Second, the collateral effects of this can already be measured in NYC and Baltimore and they aren’t good.
Yes, because no one wants to pay taxes. If you understand that taxes are needed to run a society, then you won’t get so mad. They are nothing more than an investment in the society you live in. Someone has to pay for jails. Someone has to pay to keep crime at a controllable rate. Someone has to pay for roads, airports, public transportation, etc… Most of all, someone has to pay for a public education system. Get rid of that and it’s the end of our society. You think Napoleon came up with a public education system for no reason? He just wanted to waste money? He knows how much better a society is if the people are educated. Right off the bat, violence goes down with an educated class. That’s better for everyone.
D-FENS says:
May 15, 2015 at 1:33 pm
Michael, would you say the word “tax” has a positive connotation or a negative connotation?
[85] joyce,
I stand corrected, I think. But given your decidedly anti-cop stance, I figured anything that would put cops under more scrutiny would be welcomed by you.
86 – it was a simple question…to which I already gave you the answer. (still you answered it incorrectly…good lord) SMH
More cop scrutiny would be very much welcome. I think the opposite will happen if that bill became law. While the handful of recent examples get all the headlines… countless times before/during/after the prosecutors decline to bring charges against a cop with or without a grand jury.
A while ago when discussing the Eric Garner situation, I posted a question on here as to what the rules were for when the prosecutor can/must/has the option to go to a grand jury…. when it can/can’t be bypassed… it seems like the rules fluctuate greatly depending on the jurisdiction (or outright ignored when convenient).
Comrade Nom Deplume, who needs to stop screwing around and get back to work says:
May 15, 2015 at 1:50 pm
[85] joyce,
I stand corrected, I think. But given your decidedly anti-cop stance, I figured anything that would put cops under more scrutiny would be welcomed by you.
This from an article on Obamacare, but I note that this issue existed long before O-care:
“Obamacare has failed to deter emergency room visits because many patients have no choice when they can’t get an appointment with a primary-care physician, the founder of hospital operator Universal Health Services said Friday.
While the millions more who have health insurance certainly play a part in the doctor shortage, Alan Miller told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that poor reimbursement rates for primary-care physicians is also a major factor.
“They get a better reimbursement when they take care of people that have insurance from their employer,” the Universal Health chairman and CEO said. “The doctors are reluctant to schedule appointments” with patients who have government plans.
“So people are still going to the emergency room, which is opposite of what Obamacare was supposed to do,” he added.”
Doctors have always been reluctant to take on too many Medicaid/Medicare patients because they don’t make money (and some would lose money) on these patients. Certain types of insurance had similar problems (“capitation” plans were unpopular for the same reason). You could alleviate (but not solve) the problem with HMOs, HDHPs, and cat health, but the left hates these because they don’t result in risk-sharing.
I don’t even think single-payer would solve it. Different classes would get different benefits and docs would focus on certain groups to the exclusion of others. You’d also lose docs to concierge medicine, either fully or partially, and that lowers available supply for gov payer clients.
The most leftist jurisdictions are already floating ideas like mandatory medicaid/medicare acceptance (like pro bono for lawyers) and banning concierge (i.e., cash basis) medical.
That’s why I made the sarcastic comment about prosecutors and cops being adversaries (they aren’t, except in the rarest of occasions).
I just saw a really interesting chart about US car ownership. Over the past 13 years, average monthly payments have been very stable at about $475 to $500 per month. Meanwhile the average selling price has risen from $24,000 to $31,000. How to explain? Average term of loan has risen from 61 to 66 months, loan to value is up to 92%, and lately 20% of auto loans are subprime.
Hard to see how to get much more demand without more economic growth and rising income levels.
Simple question? Why are you asking simple questions for complex subjects. The same thing with economics. Bunch of people out there that think it is as simple as supply and demand. The invincible hand will fix everything. Sure it will after it leaves a path of destruction.
D-FENS says:
May 15, 2015 at 1:52 pm
86 – it was a simple question…to which I already gave you the answer. (still you answered it incorrectly…good lord) SMH
So why don’t you invest in new jobs and raises for workers to create some demand? Where else is the demand going to come from? Are they going to extent the loans for cars to 30 years so that we can keep demand up and at the same time not have to give raises or jobs? Invest in infrastructure and education, and the money will not be wasted.
Ragnar says:
May 15, 2015 at 1:58 pm
I just saw a really interesting chart about US car ownership. Over the past 13 years, average monthly payments have been very stable at about $475 to $500 per month. Meanwhile the average selling price has risen from $24,000 to $31,000. How to explain? Average term of loan has risen from 61 to 66 months, loan to value is up to 92%, and lately 20% of auto loans are subprime.
Hard to see how to get much more demand without more economic growth and rising income levels.
Im packing it in. My husband and I have lived in NJ our whole life. We both retired young, hit our number could afford to stay but have decided as of last week to put our house on the market and leave. I have visited Raleigh, Chapel Hill area and am convinced that its a better life for us. I could afford to stay in NJ but see no point. Were done. Another multi millionaire is leaving and had enough!!
I’m done with fancy cars, I want cars with no frills at all. I want roll down windows, manual seats, heated nothing. I gladly accept my lower standard of living. I don’t need to drive my living room couch, I don’t deserve anything.
I agree grim im done with that too!! DOne with NJ, done with fancy cars.
[91] joyce,
No, they aren’t, and in places where prosecutors are elected, they run on law and order platforms. Only in Da Hood can they run on an anti-cop platform and I know of none.
As you surmised, it will result in uneven prosecution and more tension. Prosecutors will feel pressure to prosecute from certain constituencies but equal pressure from others who want cops on that wall, who need cops on that wall. The fraternal organizations will support their opponents who will lambast them as weak on crime, so I agree, prosecuting a cop could be a bad career move.
The grand jury option permits more prosecutions and what irks the left isn’t that the GJs refused to indict, its the belief that the prosecutors tanked the cases on purpose. But that doesn’t mean a prosecutor won’t tank a case at trial; I’ve seen it done and in cop trials, there are plenty of ways to do it. First, you don’t challenge a change in venue or you put forth a feeble argument. Get the case moved to the conservative, white jurisdiction. Then you don’t challenge cameras in the courtroom, or you even endorse the move to keep them out. Now the public can only rely on reporters and pundits to claim it was a tanked case. In pre-trial, you put low-level, inexperienced attorneys on the case, don’t challenge motions that hard, don’t try to withhold evidence, don’t challenge exculpatory evidence on relevancy, and don’t pay much attention to voir dire. Let the defense get an all-white jury and all the evidence they need. Then go to trial with the same mindset.
In the end, same results. Cop is acquitted, minorities riot, Obama shakes his head.
Yup. Keep thinking supply and demand is an iron-law.
“Keen has accomplished from the inside what many critics have attempted, and that is to decisively reveal the fatal flaws of neoclassical economics. Yes, it’s a paper tiger, a giant with feet of clay, a Potempkin Village, or my favorite metaphor — the thundering Wizard of Oz, which is really a little man behind a curtain.
With Keen’s book in hand, any professor ought to be able to effectively challenge the ruling TINA orthodoxy that “there is no alternative” to The Market. The supposedly iron laws of supply and demand are not iron after all, there is no One Perfect Equilibrium, so it’s back to the political economy that prevailed prior to the “marginal revolution” — politics matters, institutions matter, and the Masters of the World are nothing but Naked Emperors. Keen offers a section on alternatives, and he favors post-keynesian theory, but is fair to other approaches.
As Keen warns, this is not easy reading, and I can’t imagine assigning it to undergraduates. Hopefully some economics professors will (I’m a sociologist). But it should be required reading for every professor and graduate student in the social sciences.”
[96] grim,
My standards are goes fast, holds the road well, inexpensive to run and maintain, durable, has a radio and cupholders. Everything else is gravy.
Suspect I’ll support this, need to do more research:
N.J. doctors fight plan to limit hospital bills
Pushback came from many sides Thursday as Democratic lawmakers in Trenton unveiled a plan to corral high out-of-network charges and protect consumers from surprise medical bills when they go to the hospital.
A chain of Hudson County hospitals called the bill “a massive gift to large insurance companies.” The state medical society said it would have “a dangerous and deleterious effect on health care quality in New Jersey.” It labeled a provision that would have an arbitrator settle billing disputes “an insult.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars is at stake as the measure seeks to limit the amount hospitals and doctors can charge for their services. The measure calls for full written disclosure of expected charges for hospital patients and creation of a database to set the limits on what out-of-network providers can charge insurance companies. It would prevent patients from being charged more than the in-network rate for any service when they chose an in-network hospital and doctor for their care.
The savings — to patients, insurers, and those who pay for insurance coverage, including state and local governments and school systems — could be enormous. Opponents, however, say it could drive hospitals and doctors out of business.
No worries, jersey will tax you on the way out.
Seriously though, best of luck in your new home.
Marilyn says:
May 15, 2015 at 2:07 pm
Im packing it in. My husband and I have lived in NJ our whole life. We both retired young, hit our number could afford to stay but have decided as of last week to put our house on the market and leave. I have visited Raleigh, Chapel Hill area and am convinced that its a better life for us. I could afford to stay in NJ but see no point. Were done. Another multi millionaire is leaving and had enough!!
Grass is always greener on the other side. Good luck!
Marilyn says:
May 15, 2015 at 2:07 pm
Im packing it in. My husband and I have lived in NJ our whole life. We both retired young, hit our number could afford to stay but have decided as of last week to put our house on the market and leave. I have visited Raleigh, Chapel Hill area and am convinced that its a better life for us. I could afford to stay in NJ but see no point. Were done. Another multi millionaire is leaving and had enough!!
Many patients have faced unexpected bills from out-of-network anesthesiologists, radiologists who read their X-rays, or even neonatal intensive-care physicians, as The Record reported this week. They’ve tried to play by the rules, and have chosen hospitals and surgeons and obstetricians who participate in their health plan’s network, only to be confounded by bills from professionals they didn’t know would be involved in their care.
I got a $54,000 bill from the neonatal icu physician – not the hospital, not for supplies, drugs, or otherwise, from the physician. This was for 5 days of service, 1 patient.
Surprise! Not in network!
Surprise! Doesn’t actually accept any insurance, there is no network!
Surprise! They have the contract to staff the neonatal ICU, there is no in-network option available (even though the hospital is)!
I don’t know how this is legal, it’s not healthcare, it’s criminal.
So why do you need so much money?
Marilyn says:
May 15, 2015 at 2:12 pm
I agree grim im done with that too!! DOne with NJ, done with fancy cars.
105 – Get your fucking hands out of everyone’s pockets.
re # 106 – Grim – just drive by his house tonight and toss a few bags of garbage on his front lawn.
Sounds good to me. Something has to be done to stop out of control costs. This is probably one of the biggest costs for everyone including the govt. Of course they say they will go out of business. Just like the minimum wage debate, and I haven’t seen any businesses closing shop due to a rise in minimum wage.
grim says:
May 15, 2015 at 2:17 pm
Suspect I’ll support this, need to do more research:
N.J. doctors fight plan to limit hospital bills
Pushback came from many sides Thursday as Democratic lawmakers in Trenton unveiled a plan to corral high out-of-network charges and protect consumers from surprise medical bills when they go to the hospital.
A chain of Hudson County hospitals called the bill “a massive gift to large insurance companies.” The state medical society said it would have “a dangerous and deleterious effect on health care quality in New Jersey.” It labeled a provision that would have an arbitrator settle billing disputes “an insult.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars is at stake as the measure seeks to limit the amount hospitals and doctors can charge for their services. The measure calls for full written disclosure of expected charges for hospital patients and creation of a database to set the limits on what out-of-network providers can charge insurance companies. It would prevent patients from being charged more than the in-network rate for any service when they chose an in-network hospital and doctor for their care.
The savings — to patients, insurers, and those who pay for insurance coverage, including state and local governments and school systems — could be enormous. Opponents, however, say it could drive hospitals and doctors out of business.
[100] Nom – Here’s the car you ordered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTPHytxPngk
My standards are goes fast, holds the road well, inexpensive to run and maintain, durable, has a radio and cupholders. Everything else is gravy.
[90] redux,
Health plan providers feared the doctor shortage caused by low reimbursement long before Obama came along:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2003/07/07/newscolumn1.html?page=all
I have an invisible hand in my pants.
106- How specifically do I have my hand in everyone’s pocket? This is why there is no hope for society. It will end the exact same way every time. Under the hand of greed. I have mine so screw everyone else. I’m a billionaire, but f u if I have to help anyone. Not my problem. This mindset sucks.
I’m seriously hurt that you would accuse me of having my hand in everyone’s pocket. I’m advocating for a better society, but it’s impossible with greedy mindsets.
That right there scares the hell out of healthcare providers, I’m sure.
grim says:
May 15, 2015 at 2:17 pm
The measure calls for full written disclosure of expected charges for hospital patients..
Remember the articles about doctors using others doctors as aide’s in surgery rather than using a PA or nurse
undisclosed of course
I’m 35, but my passion to change this world is slowly dwindling. The poor are f’ed beyond belief. Their mindset has been destroyed by a lack of education and upbringing, so there is no talking sense to them.
At the top you have a bunch people patting themselves on the back thinking they are above everyone else. Some actually think of themselves as “god like “. All knowing beings that know what’s best for everyone. They refuse to acknowledge that their position in life deems that they should have some sort of role in helping people. Instead they run to other countries and give up their citizenship in the name of money. No one is touching my money!!! NO ONE!!! IT’S ALL MINE!!! My advice to them, go to hell. You suck. You are selfish and bigot. That’s right, you are the greatest. You did it all on your own. You’ll be damned if you have to help people that can’t help themselves. What a joke. I’m done. Yes, I’m disgusted with the mindset on this board.
That right there scares the hell out of healthcare providers, I’m sure.
Pretty sure that nobody knows what the hell is being billed, it’s probably just a bunch of random number generators spitting out invoices.
117, healthcare is such a sham, just had a baby 6 months ago. Totally routine, wife was in the hospital 2 nights(I paid the extra 1k for the private room), was in labor at hospital for less than 2 hours, saw ob for 45 minutes. Spin the wheel and guess what the hospital billed the insurance company in aggregate for the birth? It was right around 35k, if the insurance paid that it is no wonder our healthcare system costs are spiraling out of control. There was barely any medical intervention, how can that cost be justified? There needs to be more transparency in the charges and the billing because if you told me the OB need to get paid 5k for the 1hr she was there I’d say it’s a lot but training, insurance, etc. As for the rest of the hospital experience it was like something out of the USSR pre Glasnost.
I just got bill yesterday from medical clinic who helped with our pregnancy in 2013. They claim that we now owe $2500 more because Oxford pulled back payments just last month. I already paid them back thousands and have not seen a bill or been to their clinic in 1.5 years. This system is f-ed. Not paying them a dime.
grim, I was hit once by an out of network anesthesiologist at an in network surgeon private practise. The insurance company gave me a cheque which fortunately the doctor said the anesthesiologist would accept, but the whole experience left me worried about the lack of transparency. I signed off a cheque and with no receipt saying that the extra 1000 dollar was waived or not. On top of it, the day of the surgery as I am on the bed for the procedure the anesthesiologist asks if I need general/local and I am like “what?”
One thing I do now is when I visit anyone beyond family practise, I put a had written note on the application form when getting admitted saying “use in network providers only”. Not sure if that helps, but atleast I have made my intentions clear.
good question
The Great Pumpkin says:
May 15, 2015 at 2:20 pm
So why do you need so much money?
An In- Network Hospitals should be required to match Patients Doctors according to their Insurance. A Patient have the option to say before being admitted to have In- Network Doctors Only. But why does a Patient need to go through with that. An In -Network Hospital needs to be In Network Doctors Only. Stop Surgeons giving their friends an Out of Network Anaesthesiologist the Patient because they get a cut.
This was early in week, note that this guy did indicate “in network only”
http://www.northjersey.com/news/doctors-deliver-a-costly-health-insurance-surprise-1.1330837
…Fraser, the Valley spokeswoman, said: “We do inform our patients that there may be occasions where services provided at Valley by physicians not employed by the hospital may not be covered by their insurance plans.”
The disclosure is part of the boilerplate consent form, handed to every patient — often with a raft of other forms — before they receive care. It is not specific to the individual patient.
When Anthony Cristiano saw the “important notice regarding medical providers” on his wife’s consent form, he crossed it out. “Do Not Agree,” he wrote, initialing it “AC.”
Just one question for the people that are for lowering taxes. If you lower taxes on the wealthy, who has to make it up? That’s right, the people that can’t afford the hike.
If you lower govt spending, who takes the hit? That’s right, the little people. You want to lower taxes for the rich, then take it out of something that affects them….defense spending. Cut the whole damn budget and pass it the savings to the rich and let’s see what they do with it. Talk a big game, then let’s go.
I am leaving for so many reasons but not for more money for myself. I have no kids , large estate and NJ will tell me to help Paterson when I die. Instead I would like to choose to help w/ my money. They will take most of it and decide where it goes instead of me!! There are other reasons but I don’t know anyone who retires in NJ especially with a large portfolio. Im done. I had it. Let the Unions pay for themselves, let Paco pay for it. I don’t love it hear. I hate NYC, I don’t have kids, I have really no great family around. I hate the weather. I hate the estate laws, I hate all the cops ticketing me, I hate the liberalism, I hate the illegals. I hate the high taxes. I hate the unfriendly morons. I have a lot of reasons.
122, One of the rare times I agree with yome. It’s simply false advertising for a hospital to claim to belong to a network, and then allow pieces of the service to be exceptions to that rule. Sort of like a Hotel saying they are charging $200 for a room, $10 for internet, $15 for breakfast, and then pay the bill on checking out expecting to pay $225, and instead see $1,000. Ask why, and they say that extra $750 wasn’t us, it was the electric bill from the electric company for your lights and A/C.
a good shrink could help you with the anger issues
Marilyn says:
May 15, 2015 at 4:02 pm
I am leaving for so many reasons but not for more money for myself. I have no kids , large estate and NJ will tell me to help Paterson when I die. Instead I would like to choose to help w/ my money. They will take most of it and decide where it goes instead of me!! There are other reasons but I don’t know anyone who retires in NJ especially with a large portfolio. Im done. I had it. Let the Unions pay for themselves, let Paco pay for it. I don’t love it hear. I hate NYC, I don’t have kids, I have really no great family around. I hate the weather. I hate the estate laws, I hate all the cops ticketing me, I hate the liberalism, I hate the illegals. I hate the high taxes. I hate the unfriendly morons. I have a lot of reasons.
Marathon bomber sentenced to death.
Pumpkin says “What a joke. I’m done. Yes, I’m disgusted with the mindset on this board.”
Adios – But I’ll bet you a nickel you will still post at least a dozen times a day. You aren’t going anywhere.
Dr Winters Paramus!
Hey you love it you can pay for it. I am looking for something different. I really like the Triangle area!! Its got so much to offer someone like me. Im so excited. I will always come back and read this board. I find you people great. All of you. Even you Anon!! Im not angry, Im happy. I can afford to stay here in NJ. I don’t want to. Its not the money. Its so many other things. I have spent a lot of time in Raleigh and Chapel Hill (which is liberal) and love it!!!
124 vote Republican and let Paco pay his own way your taxes wont go up. They are for no taxes. Hey the rich can move!! They are moving. Rich people are fiscally conservative that’s why they are rich. That’s not cheap!! Raleigh is loaded with jobs, Corporations , The Research Triangle area is cranking. They don’t tax the shit out of everything. Perhaps if you pay 48 percent in taxes fed/state/and local maybe you would not be so quick to raise taxes.
its not only high taxes the rich people are upset with , its how the money is wasted.
Many wealthy people have sacrificed to get rich. They don’t want to see the money squandered!
You know what, I’ll leave. I don’t belong here. I don’t complain about taxes. I don’t hate my govt. I don’t hate my state. I don’t belong in this circle jerk. That seems to be people’s m.o. on this board and that certainly doesn’t reflect me. The people on this board only get along with like minded individuals. People with different thoughts are annoying. So I will stop annoying you and move on.
I’ve learned a lot over the years, and have sharpened my skills in debating ideologue right wingers by participating on this board. If there is anything I can say to describe a hardcore right wingers mentality, it would be this…..I’ve got mine, screw everyone else. Totally filled with hate and anger. Wish I could help. Can’t say I haven’t tried, but I was called an idiot every time I tried to show a different perspective on this issue. There is no hope for humanity. Too many are consumed with all out greed and rage. I can’t help. I really thought I could. Maybe I was just too young and naive, thinking you could change people’s mindset for the better. There will never be a society where everyone works together and helps one another. Too many selfish personalities that will never allow it. Coming to them for help turns into “you’re after my money”. Let it all crash and burn. These people don’t deserve anything.
If wage inflation hits in 2017-2018…you can count on me leaving a post to let you know I told you so. If wage inflation doesn’t come to save the economy, my prediction is that it will all go up in smoke by 2030 the latest.
It’s been real guys. Good luck with everything.
homeboken says:
May 15, 2015 at 4:41 pm
Pumpkin says “What a joke. I’m done. Yes, I’m disgusted with the mindset on this board.”
Adios – But I’ll bet you a nickel you will still post at least a dozen times a day. You aren’t going anywhere.
You do know the origins of the totally f***ed up health care system we have?
It was my industry for two plus decades…
C’mon lefties give it up!!!!!!
Yes, the winner behind door number 1, is….THE FEDERAL GOVT!!!
Employer based healthcare exists in the US, and basically only in US, because during WWII the omnipotent control freaks (back then, not you guys now) enacted federal wage controls limiting what an employer could pay an employee. To attract workers companies started offering benefits which were outside of the wage controls set up by the federal sages and thus employer based healthcare was born.
And how much more power and money do you want to give these azzclowns in DC?
Punkin,
There is a difference between ‘coming for help’ and ‘you are after my money’.
Many us here have contributed exceptional sums to both. One day you may be able to appreciate the difference.
It is a matter of free will, choice, and accountability.
Pumpkin,
Don’t let the door slam your ass on your way out.
Don’t forget your vow next week, month, year…
Thanks for the laughs at your expense
I think there’s a Montclair board perfect for you, as well as at the NY Times.
132- Marylin, thought you should read this. I know I said I’m done posting, but thought this was worth sharing with you. Everything has a positive and a negative. No such thing as perfect.
“*2 Reasons It’s Finally Time to THINK Different in RTP*
I am skeptical that RTP’s future will turn out as it’s predicted here. For two reasons. Bad development practices and a lack of competition with high speed broadband.
There is little evidence that future RTP development will be done in a environmentally sustainable way. Big development here doesn’t plan for enough clean water, it’s often not dense enough, there are poor plans to deal with waste made from construction, Wake County hasn’t approved light rail, most of our electricity in the State is made from coal fired power plants, etc. etc. etc. You get the picture. Unless RTP releases a radically different proposal with real consequence for straying this is bad for everyone except those profiting from it. Not just us but for our children.
Plus we don’t have affordable high speed internet with more than one company in the Triangle. Let me unwrap that hugely complicated issue a bit. We need affordable 1 Gigabit symmetrical broadband services for business, schools, and individuals if we’re to compete with South Korea and Chattanooga, TN. We need more than one company in the 1 Gb broadband business so consumers can have choice if they aren’t served well. Finally the digital divide will be bridged well into the future if it is handled by publicly owned broadband service companies. Like how Wilson, NC does it. But most of that is illegal in North Carolina.
These two things are REALLY big barriers to long term success. I’m as “gung-ho” about new technology and science as anyone. But if we can’t build smart and provide modern connectivity North Carolina is going to get left in the dust.
Note: I usually refrain from sharing my thoughts in blog comments these days. But due to my HIGH respect for David Kroll I felt safe doing so here. I will ignore trolls. :)”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2014/02/04/7-reasons-its-finally-time-to-live-in-research-triangle-park/
Our government is inherently messed up, it is the 21st century and most government offices have not substantially revamped their processes since the 1970’s and the healthcare industry isn’t too far behind. NJ’s tax base is toast, the rich leave as soon as they aren’t working and by leave I mean buy a home in Florida, declare it as their primary residence and spend a little bit of time in NJ to avoid income tax and the death tax. Liberal/Conservative I think we can all agree that the government does a very poor job with the money it is collecting and any liberal being honest with themselves would understand that reforming the government needs to come before more money is spent. A big part of the problem is the government worker, the boots on the ground so to speak, they are not empowered nor do they have any desire to improve the process, it isn’t incentivized at any level and is in fact punished, the goal of government entities is not to change. People are tired of the taxes, so we have a healthcare problem…don’t worry Obamacare will fix it…..some how I am now paying more taxes, taxes on my healthcare and the healthcare still costs 20k per yr plus deductibles.
The only thing I can conclude about Pumpkin is that he works for the government in some shape or form. Any high earner gets the nice surprise when they start to EARN a lot of money and if the stupid public was aware of how high the taxes are on the high earners, the people they depend on for medical care, legal and financial advice, and pretty much all commerce they might understand that raising taxes on these people is not the answer.
Marilyn says:
May 15, 2015 at 4:02 pm
I am leaving for so many reasons but not for more money for myself. I have no kids , large estate and NJ will tell me to help Paterson when I die. Instead I would like to choose to help w/ my money. They will take most of it and decide where it goes instead of me!! There are other reasons but I don’t know anyone who retires in NJ especially with a large portfolio. Im done. I had it. Let the Unions pay for themselves, let Paco pay for it. I don’t love it hear. I hate NYC, I don’t have kids, I have really no great family around. I hate the weather. I hate the estate laws, I hate all the cops ticketing me, I hate the liberalism, I hate the illegals. I hate the high taxes. I hate the unfriendly morons. I have a lot of reasons.
Lot of hate in there. I can’t imagine anyone will miss you.
Fit right in down in Dixie. Sucking up NE tax dollars.
Education level seems about right too based upon spelling, grammar and punctuation. You will be a belle of the balls.
I’m tired of stupid people all around and I’m four 90 Minutes in. Where is Clot’s mortar launcher?
Let’s get this party started.
I think the Pumpkin has multiple personality disorder and Marilyn recently emerged.
For all the underwater homeowners….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caRsJ3EkGqM
God bless America
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wt3cYpFLJiM
U.S. I’m a little sick of people runnin from the Jersey corruption. Stand up for something.
Nom,
Correct on all four fronts about my Roth. Though, I haven’t been contributing in recent years to either Roth or Traditional.
Now here is my question for Blimpy? If the government chooses to change the law to tax gains in Roth IRAs, would you support it?
The End Is Nigh (clot Haute Cuisine Edition):
Nigerian Restaurant Shut Down for Serving Human Flesh
Sad and horrifying and gross and true.
A hotel restaurant in Anambra, Nigeria has been shuttered by authorities for serving human flesh. According to the BBC, suspicious residents told police of rumors that the restaurant was cooking human meat for customers. Police then raided the restaurant, where they discovered fresh human heads that were still bleeding. The blood was in the process of being drained into a plastic bag.
In addition to the illegal meat, authorities discovered automatic weapons, grenades, and cell phones. Ten people were arrested in conjunction with the crimes. One resident said, “Every time I went to the market, I observed strange activities going on in the hotel. People who were never cleanly dressed and who looked a bit strange made their way in and out of the hotel, making me very suspicious of their activities. I am not surprised at the shocking revelation.”
A priest who ate at the restaurant was alarmed when presented with a bill of 700 Naira, or roughly $3.50 (Tens of millions of people in Nigeria subsist on less than $1 a day). “The attendant noticed my reaction and told me it was the small piece of meat I had eaten that made the bill scale that high,” he said. “I did not know I had been served with human meat, and that it was that expensive.”
Last year, Australian chef Marcus Volke murdered and cooked his girlfriend before killing himself. In Brazil, also last year, a man and two women were arrested for murdering potential nanny candidates and then cooking their flesh into empanadas.nto empanadas.
Grim 104 – A friend of mine brought his 4 year old daughter to an in-network hospital for emergency care. She wound up having emergency surgery and died that night. He was balance billed by the surgeon, who was unbeknownst to him and his wife, not in network. The system is criminal.
“its not only high taxes the rich people are upset with , its how the money is wasted.”
Marilyn might have finally lost it, but she threw a real gem in there.
I’m pretty liberal myself. I support gay marriage, am pro-choice, support single payer insurance, yada, yada, yada. But I’ve witnessed the enormous waste in government firsthand? Perhaps it’s an issue stemming from the government creating jobs through the use stimulous programs every time there is recession. You gotta figure, all of the people they are hiring are the weakest of the pack since they were the one’s laid off during the downturn. Seriously though. I have zero faith in our government. I would support the socialization of more services if the government didn’t always f them up.
Shrink the size of government by making it more efficient. This is how you get the economy rolling. This will put more discretionary dollars into everyone’s hands. Not just the hands of those who are less likely to spend it (the wealthy). As for the tax rate. Could it be a little higher? Sure! But don’t keep on piling the additional revenues into a government that thinks that it helps the economy to give people nonsense jobs at the expense of the productive. Or which provide benefits and tax breaks to the highest (wealthiest) bidders.
I’m going to bed.
Oh yeah. Plumpy said wage growth and greed. Take two drinks.