Food for Thought

In our readings and research, we constantly stumble across factoids and tidbits that are worth sharing. Here is Food For Thought:

Populist politicians like John Edwards and Mike Huckabee claim that the middle class is shrinking and America will be left with only poor and rich people. George Will reports in a recent column that economist Stephen Rose, who defines the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, notes that the middle class is smaller than it was in 1979. Why? Because people are getting richer The percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12% to 24%, while the percentage of those under $30,000 is unchanged.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had estimated that the reduction in the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% would result in reduced revenues of $5.4 billion for the Federal treasury from 2003-2006. A subsequent CBO report issued in late January 2007 actual revenues exceeded expectations by 68%, with a windfall of $133 billion for the government. The original 2006 forecast for capital gains revenues was $57 billion -- the final receipts were $110 billion. (Info from The Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2007.)

The White House's overview on the State of the Economy released in January 2007 reveals that the top 5% of taxpayers paid 53.3% of all income taxes in 2006, with more than 40% of all households not paying any income tax at all. Since the tax cuts of 2003, tax receipts have increased by about 35%. Household wealth is at an all-time high of more than $54 trillion with almost 50% of all families owning stocks. A record 75 million families own their homes. In 2006, employment increased in 49 states. (It's all Bush's fault.)

More good economic news. Since the Bush tax cuts took effect in 2003: real gross domestic product is up $1.33 trillion or 12.6%; existing businesses have hired 5.9 million workers; corporate profits have soared 91% to $1.6 trillion; tax receipts have increased $503 billion; real wages rose 1.7% in 2006, much faster than the 0.3% average of the Clinton years. (Tip of the hat to Investor's Business Daily, January 31, 2007.)

About 74% of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq are white. 98% of the deaths have been males, with 47% being over the age of 24. So much for the ludicrous claims of Charlie Rangel and John Kerry that poor, inner-city high school dropouts are bearing the brunt of the war. (Info courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.)

How important is the newly-authorized offshore drilling for oil and natural gas? Well, for our manufacturing sector, it may prove to be its salvation. The average cost for natural gas has climbed 400% since 1995, due to growing demand and highly inadequate supply. As a result, approximately 3.1 million high-wage manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Chemical companies closed more than 70 facilities in 2004 alone. The fertilizer industry has lost more than 36% of its domestic capacity since 2002. And, the forest products industry has closed 232 mills and lost 182,000 jobs since 2000. (By acting toward the end of its session in 2006, the lame-duck Republican Congress may have taken one of its more significant actions.)

By 2050, the world population is expected to top 9.1 billion, compared to today's 6.5 billion. Nine countries are expected to account for about half of the projected increase: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Uganda, Nigeria, the Congo, Ethiopia and the United States. (More evidence of America as the last outpost of Western civilization. Data courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.)

The anti-war kook fringe constantly touts that 655,000 Iraqis have died since we invaded the country in March 2003. That's more than the number of Germans killed by allied bombing in World War II and more than the number of Americans who died in the Civil War. This ridiculous and bogus figure is based on a study led by Johns Hopkins academics, who based it on an extrapolation of very limited sampling in Iraqi cities. The study implies that 1,000 Iraqis died every day during the first have of 2006, which is totally absurd. (If this number were correct, don't you think government officials and the media would have detected a sharp upswing in the number of funerals?)

In her recent re-election campaign for the Senate, Hillary Clinton of New York managed to blow through $36 million, even though she had little more than token opposition. A little more than half that amount was spent for advertising, fund-raising and polling. Some of her other expenses: $160,000 for private jet travel; $745,000 for catering and entertaining; $50,000 for photographers; $27,000 for valet parking; and $13,000 for flowers. For her investment, she garnered 67% of the vote. In 2004, her fellow New Yorker Chuck Schumer spent $15.5 million on his Senate campaign, and gained 71% of the vote. (Can you imagine Federal spending under a Hillary Clinton presidency? Yikes!)

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi has benefited from strong labor union support throughout her political career. In the last four elections, she has received close to $1 million in union PAC contributions. But her family businesses, which include a vineyard in Napa Valley, luxury hotels and restaurants, are all staunchly non-union, relying heavily on Hispanic immigrant labor. (Just some of the rich information found in Peter Schweizer's book, Do As I Say (Not As I Do), which details the hypocrisy of such figures as George Soros, Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand.)

Imagine a place where there are an average of six murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies and 360 cases of assault each day. Or a place where there are 200 murders, 600 rapes and more than 600 violent robberies each month. Pretty violent place. Sounds like Baghdad? Nope, just good old California. Yet the media portrays Iraq as a hellhole and California as a paradise. It's all a matter of perspective. (A tip of the hat to Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, for unearthing this wisdom.)

According to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare currently makes up 13% of all federal spending, four times what it was in 1970. By the year 2030, it is expected to consume almost 25% of the budget. By then, the program will be $5 trillion in the red. (The entitlement program that ate America?)

“Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U. S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy ...” Larry Kudlow, National Review Online, July 10, 2006 (More good news you won’t find in the mainstream media.)

According to a Wall Street Journal editorial on June 28, 2006, the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Tax Committee of Congress have managed to underestimate tax revenues by $2.04 trillion in the past decade. (I guess that’s what Washington considers a rounding error.)

In fiscal year 2005, Congress okayed 15,877 pork barrel projects that added $47 billion in spending, including a $3 million fitness facility for the staff of the House of Representatives. (A tip of the hat to the Americans for Prosperity Foundation for this nugget.)

“There is no meaningful correlation between carbon dioxide levels and Earth’s temperature over this time frame. In fact, when carbon dioxide levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.” Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson of Carleton University testifying before the Canadian Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. (Put that in your pipe, Al Gore, and smoke it.)

“Over the course of the next 25 years, the over-65 population is expected to double to 71.5 million. As a result, the Social Security and Medicare systems are headed for trouble. Each year, the overseers of Social Security and Medicare, the two largest entitlement programs, warn that they’re on the cusp of bankruptcy. Why the pessimism? Starting somewhere around 2017 or 2019, the Social Security program will pay out more money in benefits than it takes in from taxes. Then by around 2041 to 2046, the Social Security trust fund will run dry.” U. S. News & World Report, 10/02/06 (Earth to Congress, Earth to Congress. Is anyone paying attention?)