From Newsworks:
New Jersey deploys tax changes for elderly and veterans in 2017
The legislation that raised New Jersey’s gas tax 23 cents in November also includes some tax cuts that have taken effect with the ringing in of 2017.
The amount of retirement income excluded from New Jersey’s income tax has doubled to $40,000, with an increase to $100,000 by 2020.
That will make a difference for many people, said Bernard Kiely, a certified financial planner and public accountant in Morristown.
“For most people who are retired, they’re living on Social Security, which New Jersey does not tax, and they’re living on either pensions or IRA distributions,” he said. “So, a whole lot of retirees will no longer pay New Jersey income tax.”
The exemption from the state’s estate tax increases to $2 million and will be completely eliminated in 2018.
And the 7 percent state sales tax rate decreases to 6.875 percent.
Most people probably won’t notice that, Kiely said, adding that the phase-out of the estate tax and the retirement income exclusion change are a big deal.
“It means people will no longer have an incentive to leave the state of New Jersey when they retire,” he said.
…
The legislation also gives an income tax break to veterans and increases a tax credit for low-income workers.
https://youtu.be/DM_FGAL0-Mg
Nailed it.
“ASKED why the Federal Reserve had failed to anticipate the lax bank lending that ultimately led to the global financial crisis, Alan Greenspan, the Fed’s former chairman, said he had the wrong model. He had assumed that bankers, acting in their self-interest, could not blow up their own banks. He was wrong, and the regulation of banks has since become far stricter. Indeed partly as a consequence of the crisis, and the political upsets (Brexit, Donald Trump’s electoral victory) that it helped give rise to, the bias against intervening in markets (for credit, for internationally traded goods, and much else) has greatly weakened. The question for policymakers no longer seems to be “How can markets be liberated?” Rather it is, “Can markets be too free?”
Given the now-general disdain for free markets, it is easy to forget the economic miracles they conjure. In his book, “The Company of Strangers”, Paul Seabright, an economist, uses a purchase of a shirt as an example. His shirt is made in Malaysia using German machines out of Indian cotton grown from seeds developed in America. Millions of shirts of different sizes and colours are sold every day. The wonder, he notes, is that no one is in charge of supplying shirts. Were there such an agency, the complexity of the task would defeat it. The enterprises that make up the many links in the chain supplying Mr Seabright’s shirt are responding to price signals from various markets all along that chain. The great merit of market prices is that they convey information about what people want to buy and what others want to sell. A branch of economics, called general-equilibrium theory, captures this formally. It says that in a competitive market, prices are a signal of the marginal value of goods to consumers as well as the marginal cost of goods to producers. Indeed it goes further. When prices (and wages) are set in free and competitive markets, the economy’s resources are allocated “efficiently”. In other words, no person can be made better off without making someone else worse off. In this theoretical utopia, markets cannot be too free.
The theory is beautiful, and thus seductive. But it does not reflect any world that real people live in or might live in. There are several big objections to the free-market-as-nirvana view of economics. One is that some firms inevitably have market power. General-equilibrium theory assumes perfectly competitive markets made up of businesses that all set prices at marginal cost. In reality some industries will have a few number of large firms, either because of economies of scale or because of “network effects”, which mean the more customers flock to a platform, such as Facebook, the more useful it is to others. Such firms have enough muscle in the marketplace to sell above their marginal cost; the can also pay below-market wages (so-called “monopsony” power). Such sand in the wheels is fatal to the socially efficient outcome of general-equilibrium theory. And where there is market power, there is often also inequality. Another problem is that an atomised free market would systematically under-provide certain goods and services that society nonetheless values, because it is hard for suppliers to charge enough to cover their costs. One example is so-called “public goods”, like national defence. Another is research and development. In a competitive market, there is too little incentive to innovate (hence drug patents). And the full social costs of goods are not reflected in market prices wherever their production leads to economic “bads” such as pollution, congestion, urban blight and so on.
Dealing with such “market-failure” problems requires judicious regulation. Minimum standards of business practice are required in industries for markets to work tolerably well: think of capital requirements in banking of food-safety in the catering business. Free-marketeers rightly point out that intervention is often injudicious and ends up tilting the scales not towards consumers but to vested business interests. But the intellectual momentum now is with the interventionists.”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/01/economist-explains
All this “nailed” was the increasingly leftward move of The Economist” staff toward that of typical modern economic thought. The article is written with all the rigor of what one would expect from a newly minted college graduate who had been reading too much Salon.
Really good read.
“Do I think it will hurt Bill Clinton in the long run?” Sperling asks. “No, because he will still be most remembered for helping to bring about eight of the best years of shared growth and peace our country has had.”
The Death of Clintonism – POLITICO
https://apple.news/A26ehE_j-T-2ID0Ek63iSvQ
Didn’t Politico write that Palin would be in the Trump cabinet?
What does “left” have to do with logic? Instead of bashing the left which has nothing to do with this ability to think of the flaws that come with free market theory, please explain in the passage below where the logic is flawed?
“The theory is beautiful, and thus seductive. But it does not reflect any world that real people live in or might live in. There are several big objections to the free-market-as-nirvana view of economics. One is that some firms inevitably have market power. General-equilibrium theory assumes perfectly competitive markets made up of businesses that all set prices at marginal cost. In reality some industries will have a few number of large firms, either because of economies of scale or because of “network effects”, which mean the more customers flock to a platform, such as Facebook, the more useful it is to others. Such firms have enough muscle in the marketplace to sell above their marginal cost; the can also pay below-market wages (so-called “monopsony” power). Such sand in the wheels is fatal to the socially efficient outcome of general-equilibrium theory. ”
No One says:
January 2, 2017 at 9:04 am
All this “nailed” was the increasingly leftward move of The Economist” staff toward that of typical modern economic thought. The article is written with all the rigor of what one would expect from a newly minted college graduate who had been reading too much Salon.
The left cares little for logic, only ideology and “feelings”.
Like Ben alludes to on this blog with labor based free market principles, it doesn’t work in reality, only theory. Tariffs must be placed in order to not destroy one labor market at the expense of another, otherwise the essence of competition ceases to exist like we have here in America with the people that lost their jobs and now have no access to any other. Competition based principles only work when there is an actual competition. When it’s one side kicking the living daylights out of the other, the system is broken. What good is a theory that puts one individual is a state of hell in the only life they have to live. Why would they continue to follow the rules of this economic theory if it causes them to live in a state of torture in the only life they have? These helpless people are the individuals who made trump the president. If he doesn’t improve labor conditions for these people, what’s to stop them from being the next radical terrorist group in America?
ASKED why the Federal Reserve had failed to anticipate the lax bank lending that ultimately led to the global financial crisis, Alan Greenspan, the Fed’s former chairman, said he had the wrong model. He had assumed that bankers, acting in their self-interest, could not blow up their own banks.
Alan Greenspan was the man primarily responsible for this. See “the Greenspan put”. He created an environment where bankers went for broke because they knew they would get bailed out in the form of low interest rates and by 2008, free money to pay them 100 cents on the dollar on bets that were worth 0 dollars.
Holding on to an ideology actually describes the conservative thinker. They hold onto their ideology no matter what evidence is presented because they hate change.
Feelings matter. We are a highly developed species in which emotions play a significant part in our thought process and day to day life. If the individual is emotionally unstable, it is not good for the individual or anyone else. Que terrorist attacks.
Now Spanky, be reasonable says:
January 2, 2017 at 9:43 am
The left cares little for logic, only ideology and “feelings”.
Foxconn = Skynet
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/12/31/if-foxconns-chinese-factories-are-now-automating-then-those-apple-jobs-are-never-coming-back/?client=safari
The Great Pumpkin says:
January 1, 2017 at 2:20 pm
They have no understanding why public education is important because they are as dumb as nob.
Anyone catch the irony? Hahahahahaha
11:31
Interesting comment on that article.
“A couple of my observations on such topics:
Economically speaking, automation and use of “cheap outside labor” are economically indistinguishable. That is, suppose you draw an abstract bounding box around an economy, the US say for example. The economic effects of automation or outsourcing to cheaper labor outside that box are identical. Either way it is increased economic productivity to the economy in that bounding box at lower cost to those consuming that product in that bounding box. That is to say, both produce a greater abundance and affordability to the consumers in the economy (which is to say everyone in that bounding box) while consuming less of the finite and expensive economic resource of labor inside that bounding box (which is also to say everyone in that bounding box).
However all economic productivity carries an economic cost (meaning a consumption of economic resources) to provide for that. This is implicit from thermodynamics, which as such, there is no such thing as an economic perpetual motion machine. Sure, you can increase the efficiency of a machine, or increase the capacity of a machine to apply larger quantities of energy (power output) (economic resources and value in the case of economic endeavor), but in no case will the output be greater than the resources consumed. For automation the cost is in producing those machines. In outsourcing, the cost is that which must be exported to pay for that outside labor. But in both cases, that economic cost is less than the economic cost incurred to have it produced by more costly domestic labor.
But this is quite telling as to how it is in net beneficial to the consumers in an economy. In both cases, for the economic cost we pay, we get more for our consumption. The converse as counterpoint to the rejectionists, is that of, if you want more to consume, how do you obtain that by “giving workers spoons rather than shovels”?
But this converse point goes to another observation that should be obvious. As I’ve stated before here, the entire purpose of an economy is to provide the people with the goods and services that the people need and want. And the corollary to that is that everything that occurs in the economy must serve that purpose or else it is either not contributory to the people having more of the goods and services they need and want or is outright at odds with serving that purpose. The further corollary is then that it is NOT the purpose of an economy to provide jobs, as what purpose or benefit is a job that does not serve the purpose of providing (producing) those goods and services that the people need and want? What is the benefit to that? What purpose does it serve to that end to cause less to be able to be produced? The Luddite fallacy is the mistaken belief that there is some finite amount of need and want that having met that, no more labor is useful, thus we need to make sure that all of our labor resources are consumed to produce that assumed level of productivity, beyond which would not be wanted. This is utter nonsense. Really? If more could be produced than what could be produced at any given time, we would turn that down? Seriously? But without that, the argument that we would somehow run out of “jobs” as a basis to argue for make-work falls on it’s face.
No, the fact is that if there is a resource that could be producing something to expand our array of goods and services which we could have to consume, that resources WILL get put to use. No one is lamenting the out of work would-be farmers put out of a job by farming automation. Nor the weavers put out of work by mechanized weaving as was the claim of the Luddites. Why? Because that labor was put to use building things that could not have been possible without that labor being freed up from producing things like our food. Yes, we can now have all the food we want thanks to that automation. Are people lamenting people out of work on account of that? NO, because those people are employed producing other things we found that we also want.
And no, it doesn’t happen as if by a light switch. This is simply a fallacious argument by Luddites. “Where are those jobs going to come from, what is going to be produced to replace those jobs”. As if the people who called the Luddites wrong could have foreseen all that we can now produce thanks to machines killing off those jobs lamented by the Luddites? Yet _today_ we do know that in fact there are such things to which that labor could be applied even if the anti-Luddites could not possibly have imagined it. Meaning, just because we might not be able to imagine today to what uses that freed up labor might be put, that does not mean such uses do not exist. And yes, it takes TIME for people to find or invent such uses.
No those jobs are not coming back, nor should they. What is needed is a healthy environment that enables and encourages people to find and invent uses for that labor to produce yet more of what we need and want – even if we do not yet know we want it. Who knew they wanted, for example, an iPhone or related products before Apple created the market for it? Could Apple have created that if, as the Luddites believed, maximal labor resources should be perpetually employed weaving fabric to the consumption of all available labor so that people could have jobs weaving? If all labor was consumed in such endeavors for the sake of providing them with (those) jobs, who would have been available to invent and develop the iPhone and all the other related products”
Smart one, you obviously are among the group that questions why you have to pay for education when you have no kids using the system anymore. Go talk amongst your group about how unfair society is because you have to cover the cost of education for someone else. Pat yourself on the back and tell yourself how smart you are while using technology created from this educational investment.
“Anyone catch the irony? Hahahahahaha”
The great pump is certainly no nob. He certainly is a knob, though.
nob
/näb/
noun BRITISH informal
a person of wealth or high social position.
Thank you for teaching me something today. I honestly didn’t even know what a nob was.
Economically speaking, automation and use of “cheap outside labor” are economically indistinguishable. That is, suppose you draw an abstract bounding box around an economy, the US say for example. The economic effects of automation or outsourcing to cheaper labor outside that box are identical.
No they aren’t. Automation can occur domestically and all economic activity can remain internal to our own borders. Once you outsource, payments are made to foreigners and those dollars come back in many ways. More recently, they’ve come back to swoop up prime west coast and urban real estate. This drives up the cost of living dramatically for people on those areas and thus, decreases their standard of living. Outsourcing results in the systemic depletion of our assets over time. Automation does not.
This left wing position that automation is bad and that outsourcing was not an issue is the biggest threat to the long term viability of America’s standard of living.
I have to agree with you, outsourcing brings more harm than good. It was a terrible strategy applied by people (clintons of the world) who believed the free market can solve all. Criminal to allow this type of behavior that will destroy our country in the long term.
“The Bottom Line
The short term gain derived by companies that outsource operations offshore is eclipsed by the long term damage to the U.S. economy. Over time, the loss of jobs and expertise will make innovation in the U.S. difficult, while, at the same time, building the brain trust of other countries.”
Read more: 4 Ways Outsourcing Damages Industry | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0312/4-ways-outsourcing-damages-industry.aspx#ixzz4UdSmNC00
Follow us: Investopedia on Facebook
The free market minimizes pricing. It brings the most products at the lowest prices. When you are #1 in the world in terms of income, wealth, and production, the only thing the free market can do is eat away at that to the benefit of nations poorer than you. Add in some good ol fashioned currency manipulation and you have a one way pipeline to systematically remove all wealth domestically.
Free market is great for the world. Bad for the US. Unless we managed to make ourselves as poor as the rest of the world, this will continue.
Ben, it’s insanity.
Baby boomer management/owner class threw our generations to the wolves for short term gains which they have already collected. Chased short term bonus money, didn’t care that they were screwing the future, just wanted to increase profit and hit their misguided goals. Man, a generation that was given it all in economic terms, left the future with almost nothing. Just an enourmous income inequality problem that might one day take out this govt with the instability it brings. Thank you, boomers. Appreciate it. We will clean up your mess and make America great again, hopefully there is still a chance.
We should start by taking their social security payments and give it the young people who’s jobs they shipped for economic gain. Pay back is a bi!ch.
Your generation just had to go to college and would have it all. Thank you for throwing that all away. You ruined a beautiful thing called the “American Dream.” You should be leaving America in better shape than you received it, but we get it….you suck at life. You let the world catch-up to us, in fact, you helped them. Suckers
Yes pumpkin and part of all of that is boomer led inflated house prices and property taxes for the millennial generation. The same prices and property taxes that you believe are warranted and justified.
They should make boomers sell their homes at a discount to the younger generations to make up for the mess they created.
spankit 9:43-
correct you are. and neoliberalism and identity politics are dead.
modern necronomics:
1. smoke rock
2. smoke c@ck
3. formulate policy
Pumps, once Medicare is privatized the youth will be able to buy homes directly from the hospitals that will have liens on them.
A politically appointed central planner who massively distorts the financial system via government intervention then blames free markets for the problems he caused.
How convenient for him.
So the dolts leap on his self-serving excuse because it serves their ideological purpose as well.
no one 8:16-
ding, ding, ding…folks, we have a winner!
Automate domestically.
““The overreliance on credit rating agencies—a legally protected oligopoly—was driven by regulatory policy, which supplanted market discipline.”
No one required the banks that bought the fraudulent mortgages and mortgage products to “rely” much less “over rely” on the credit rating agencies. The banks had the ability, and the conservatives assured us that they had the proper incentives, to provide effective “market discipline.” Banks’ paramount expertise is (they tell how repeatedly) is recognizing, understanding, and quantifying credit risk. Wall Street officers have long disparaged credit rating agency employees as B-School “C” students.
Investigations have also confirmed that the banks were eager to induce the credit rating agencies to rate toxic waste derivatives as pristine “AAA” paper. The investigations confirm that the banks created a Gresham’s dynamic by threatening to move their business to rival credit rating agencies – or actually moving their business if the threat did not successfully extort a credit rating agency.”
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/aei-takes-regulatory-advice-alan-greenspan.html
“Second, the authors blame the regulators for reducing the banks’ capital requirements.
“Why else would bank equity be lower under the 347-page Basel II accord than under the 37-page Basel I agreement?”
There is some truth to this point, but it is deliberately written to mislead. The difference between the Basel I process and the Basel II process is that in Basel II the banks were allowed into the tent and their officers got to secretly lobby for dramatic reductions in capital requirements. The fact that the banks were allowed “under the tent” and the fact that the banks’ controlling officers successfully convinced virtually all of the regulators to support the bank officers’ desires for reduced capital requirements is a testament to the fact that Presidents Clinton and Bush maximized the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization. The three “de’s” were major contributors to the creation of the criminogenic environment. Those that hate regulation and regulators created a self-fulfilling prophecy of regulatory failure by urging the President to appoint “regulatory” leaders who were the leading opponents of effective regulation. AEI and its billionaire funders destroy effective regulation. As I explained, the AEI’s Wallison led that conservative campaign. One of the means they use it appointing their partners in plunder to run the regulatory agencies. Here is the iconic image of this aspect of the crisis. “
Lighthizer as the trade rep. Eminently qualified but a complete freaking a-hole to work with.
Tax loss harvesting complete. Trump hasn’t brought down America over the long weekend. DJIA 20K straight ahead. Buckle up!
Kids be confusing a Chocodile with Krokodil.
I was thinking it could be clot; alas I was mistaken…..
http://nypost.com/2017/01/03/chef-found-dead-in-midtown-home/
This year I need returns that will generate a $15K monthly RMD for my MIL. I nearly made today’s withdrawal up today.
Tax loss harvesting complete. Trump hasn’t brought down America over the long weekend. DJIA 20K straight ahead. Buckle up!