Friday, September 4, 2015

Profits up, wages down=disaster?

Corporate profits at 40-year high but worker share at all-time low
Billionaires know income inequality is dangerous—think French guillotine! So Paul Jones wants to shame corporations with a ‘Just Capital’ listing. The wealthy can fix the problem by paying more to employees he thinks. CEOs take 373 times employees pay and so workers have no money for the basic American dream of the 50s. He quotes Adam Smith, that capitalism must have a moral foundation to be sustainable otherwise the rift leads to “the highest degree of disorder.” But corporations are NOT people (despite the Supremes) and don’t live by “community” standards. The largest firms take HALF their profits from the poor of the world so the firm’s world is based on the lowest labor and materials costs on the planet. Their new moral foundation is the 19th century robber barons with no regulations and worldwide markets. The most successful corporations pay little tax by pitting one COUNTRY against another. There is no fair share of profits.
            Nearly every major corporation has its share of tax tricks. Apple accomplishes this feat with a two-pronged tax strategy. For domestic sales, the company pays profits as a royalty on a subsidiary it owns in Ireland, which are then routed to a tax haven. For overseas sales, the company uses a second Irish sub, routes the profits through The Netherlands to avoid European taxes, and then sends its profits to its tax haven via the first Irish sub. This sub is called a “disregarded entity”—an affiliate not subject to U.S. income tax. (This strategy is called the “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich,” this report says.)

Is your advisor providing the best advice and products?
Most non-fee advisors/brokers/agents are sales people who get paid by selling you. They sell what their firm tells them to sell. Financial services is a very profitable industry and sales people can’t provide the best product from your point of view. Most sales people don’t know what the ‘best’ solution for you is because usually the best for you does not provide the highest revenue for the firm. Proof: The average investor earned just 3.79% while a simple non-advisor index fund earned 11% over time. Dalbar.com QAIB survey.

 “Are you paying anything for your retirement plan?”
An AARP survey said 71% of respondents answered NO—It’s FREE. (23% say they do pay for their plan (6% were unsure)). The fact that seven in 10 Americans have been tricked by Wall Street is a scandal, especially because 401(k) fees can take 63% of your nest egg by the time you need it. Brokers/advisors and also employers have lied or misled us on five fees and charges, despite a regulation in 2012. The Perfect Crime! No one reads those book-length disclosures because the lawyers write them so we can’t read them.
Double your nest egg! Drop your 401k fees and live longer.  http://www.amazon.com/Tune-your-401k-EARN-Tax-FREE/dp/1490591028

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.” The 2016 President?


Warren stumping for student loan refi bill candidate
Elizabeth Warren will fight with GOP over her 2014 bill that would have allowed students to refinance their loans. Approximately 40 million Americans have student loan debt, with the average borrower owing nearly $30,000. Many can’t pay without jobs and the 6-8% finance charges continue to grow. Young voters may feel 8% is unfair since the money costs only 1% for a Fed profit of 7%.
GOP says not fair to rich if miss 7% profit.

Can your credit score double your car premium?
Survey says a poor score tells insurer you are not careful and can double your coverage premium compared to someone with excellent score.

Buy life insurance without an agent
PolicyGenius asks the questions for 26 different insurers so you find the one you can afford for the coverage you need. Standard health questions in 4 minutes give you the list of carriers and their prices per month and year. You can adjust the coverage and term in real time. You can buy a policy with FREE fluid tests. Laddering 10-year term is best.

How do you pick a health plan if my employer went private?
Time, Inc just switched 5,000 to Towers Watson’s exchange. After checking if your docs are on the three or four cost levels, you decide how much to spend before all expenses are covered by using past spending as a guide. Low premium-high deductible plans are good if you never need a doctor checkup. Employers cut costs with wellness plans.


Obama visits Alaska to watch ice melt and cover island village—Cruz says not real!
Obama sees tiny village of Kivalina on the shores of the Chukchi Sea, which is being increasingly battered by extreme waves that, as sea ice dwindles, are more easily generated offshore. Sometimes waves can wash across the entire island, which can be terrifying, especially for a place so remote where help is very far away. Kivalina will have to be relocated, at a cost that has been estimated at well over $100 million of our taxes.

Neanderthal Cave Featured Hot Water, One Bedroom—Manhattan version $650,000
They think a hole among the hearths and heated rocks near a wall of the rock shelter that may have been used to heat water some 60,000 years ago. Ivory soap nearby?

11-year old with gun shoots intruder—NRA wet dream
MO boy, home alone, kills 16 year old kid breaking in to home. Parents leave loaded gun and 11 and 4 year old home alone. Welcome to the future.

New toy for survivalists—flamethrowers
New rage is not regulated so venture capital has rewarded a company selling flamethrowers to consumers that retail between $900 and $1600. You can shoot flames to 25 feet for “fun with family and friends.”

Consumer Reports' picks worst cars of 2015
The 200, Discovery Sport, Lexus NX, and Sedona top the list!
AND best used cars including Miata!

SCAMS
We are still wasting $8 million per HOUR we don’t have in Iraq/Afghan/Ukraine.
America needs to take care of American’s needs FIRST!
Rebuild America Act: a five-year plan would invest $1 trillion and create or maintain at least 13 million decent-paying jobs—Senate Budget Committee but GOP says no.

IL stiffs lottery winner—another American promise broken
Danny Chasteen won $250,000 last month in the state lottery but could not claim the prize as legislators had not passed a state budget. “You know what’s funny? If we owed the state money, they’d come take it, and they don’t care whether we have a roof over our head,” Chasteen’s friend said, according to the Tribune.
We pay, they delay, just like insurance, brokers, “guarantees,” etc.

Citi caught misleading us and NO ONE goes to jail nor even named—Crime pays!
Regulators gave bank a deal that holds no one at the bank accountable for behavior that caused investors to lose an estimated $2 billion. Brokers can screw us with tacit OK!
Reaz Islam should be the one fined and going to jail. Instead Citi stockholders pay and Islam got $10 million. Started his own firm (L-RManagers) to defraud and mislead again.

Ponzi operator does crime again but bigger!
Eric J. Aronson raised $26 million from investors in Ponzi for high life AND pay court-ordered restitution payments to victims of a previous financial scheme to which Aronson pled guilty in 2000, serving over three years in prison. Jail was not enough?

H&R Block pays Congress to add 5 pages to tax forms—more fees
It has pushed to expand the Schedule EIC—the form required to claim the credit. The new form would go from one page to five, and it would incorporate most of a 30-question eligibility checklist that only paid preparers, as opposed to self-filers, are currently required to submit. This new form will send more customers to Block to get taxes done.
AARP is asking Congress to cut it out of bill.

Muslims convert to survive in Germany
Hundreds of mostly Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers who have converted to Christianity at the evangelical Trinity Church in a leafy Berlin neighborhood.
Most say true belief prompted their embrace of Christianity. But there's no overlooking the fact that the decision will also greatly boost their chances of winning asylum by allowing them to claim they would face persecution if sent home.

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