Does government regulation really kill jobs

Does government regulation really kill jobs

The Muskingum River coal-fired power plant in Ohio is nearing the end of its life. AEP, one of the country’s biggest coal-based utilities, says it will cut 159 jobs when it shuts the decades-old plant in three years — sooner than it would like — because of new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency.

About an hour’s drive north, the life of another power plant is just beginning. In Dresden, Ohio, AEP has hired hundreds to build a natural-gas-fueled plant that will employ 25 people when it starts running early next year — and that will emit far fewer pollutants.

The two plants tell a complex story of what happens when regulations written in Washington ripple through the real economy. Some jobs are lost. Others are created. In the end, say economists who have studied this question, the overall impact on employment is minimal.

“If you’re a coal miner in West Virginia, it’s not a great comfort that a bunch of guys in Texas are employed doing natural gas,” said Roger Noll, an economics professor at Stanford and co-director of the university’s program on regulatory policy. “Some people identify with the beneficiaries, others identify with those who bear the cost, and no amount of argument is ever going to change their minds.”

The arguing has lately turned into a brawl. In the face of the country’s unemployment crisis, many politicians have portrayed regulations as the economy’s primary villain.

House Republicans have identified 10 “job-destroying regulations” they want to repeal, and a steady stream of bills have been proposed to block environmental rules governing everything from cement plants to boilers. GOP candidate Mitt Romney has vowed that on his first day as president, he will “tear down the vast edifice of regulations the Obama administration has imposed on the economy.” The White House, meanwhile, says it is making a determined effort to assess how rules are affecting jobs.

The critique of regulations fits into a broader conservative narrative about government overreach. But it also comes after a string of disasters in recent years that were tied to government regulators falling short, including the financial crisis of 2008, the BP oil spill and the West Virginia mining accident last year.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that very few layoffs are caused principally by tougher rules.

Whenever a firm lays off workers, the bureau asks executives the biggest reason for the job cuts.

In 2010, 0.3 percent of the people who lost their jobs in layoffs were let go because of “government regulations/intervention.” By comparison, 25 percent were laid off because of a drop in business demand.

One of the most obvious reasons for regulations is to protect hard working Americans from being ripped off - The Telecom Scam: 5 Behemoths That Strangle Innovation and Ensure You Pay Too Much for Bad Service

Conservative Lying Sleaze Bag of the Week - John Boehner for claiming that taxing millionaires will hurt small businesses

Conservative Lying Sleaze bag of the Week - John Boehner(R-OH) for claiming that taxing millionaires will hurt small businesses

Will increasing taxes on millionaires squelch job creation?

That’s the assertion behind Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s remarks on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, criticizing President Barack Obama’s jobs bill.

The bill, which so far has been stymied in Congress, calls for a 5.6 percent surtax on incomes greater than $1 million to pay for tax cuts for workers, infrastructure spending, hiring incentives and cash for local governments to keep teachers and police from being laid off.

Republicans oppose the so-called millionaires' tax because they say it will discourage investment and expansion by business owners who are best positioned to create new jobs. But the idea is popular with the public, a point raised by Amanpour in her Nov. 6, 2011, interview with Boehner.

"Now, you obviously disagree with the idea of paying for this with extra taxes," Amanpour said. "Some 75 percent of Americans agree with an increase in tax on millionaires as a way to pay for these jobs provisions. Do you not feel that by opposing it you're basically out of step with the American people on this issue?"

"Well," Boehner responded, "over half of the people who would be taxed under this plan are, in fact, small businesspeople. And as a result, you're going to basically increase taxes on the very people that we're hoping will reinvest in our economy and create jobs. That's the real crux of the problem."

We see this argument raised regularly, so we decided to look further.

Who are the small businesspeople?

To determine the accuracy of Boehner’s statement, we first needed to define a small business owner.

To be clear, we’re not talking about large companies that pay corporate taxes. We’re talking about individuals who have some amount of business income that they are able to account for on their personal tax returns.

Still, defining a small business owner is no simple task.

"A person who gets paid to give a speech shows up along with the owner of a small manufacturing plant, the guy who runs a pizza place, a lawyer in solo practice, a small investment firm and so forth," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "Some of them are what we think of as small businesses that might grow and hire more workers while others are not...Tax returns lack the information needed to sort out the different types of small businesses."

For one thing, they don’t distinguish if a business has any employees.

The Tax Policy Center did glean some valuable insights from tax return data, though, namely by calculating how many people in different income categories get various percentages of their income from businesses.

The information, contained in this chart, shows that among people with income over $1 million, about 60 percent of them get more than 10 percent of their income from businesses. But just 37 percent get more than a quarter of their income from those sources and only 29 percent get half or more.

"Are people who get relatively little income from business really small businessmen?" Williams asked.

These millionaires are more likely earning the bulk of their income through wages or capital gains, he said.

What’s a small business?

The Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department recognized the vacuum in the debate over taxing small businesses without a clear definition of a small business.

In an August analysis, the authors acknowledge that defining a small business is a matter of setting some subjective parameters. The ones they set include a limit of $10 million in income or deductions to be counted as "small" and a minimum labor deduction of $10,000 to distinguish businesses that don’t have any employees.

Other tests they applied excluded businesses on the very low end of the scale, such as those with $4,600 or less net annual income.

Not surprisingly, by narrowing the definition, far fewer tax filers qualified as small businesses.

The authors found that:

• one-fifth of small businesses are employers, using their definition.

• slightly more than half of small businesses reported total income of less than $50,000, and half of those businesses reported a tax loss for the year.

• only 0.5 percent of small businesses reported a profit in excess of $1 million. For those businesses, investment and rental income comprised roughly half of their reported income.

The study paints a clearer picture of what many of us think of as a small business -- a bagel shop or dry cleaner -- that has several employees, earns a modest income for its owner and yields profits of much less than $1 million.

Other evidence

Boehner’s spokesman acknowledged the speaker could have worded his statement better. Then he referred us to a 2010 report by the Joint Committee on Taxation that examined Obama’s previous proposals to raise income taxes on high earners. The top two income brackets would have seen a bump from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively if the proposals had been adopted.

That report said "50 percent of the approximately $1 trillion of aggregate net positive business income will be reported on returns that have a marginal rate of 36 or 39.6 percent."

But half the income being taxed at that rate is not the same as half the earners being taxed at that rate.

Furthermore, the report said, that $1 trillion income figure does not imply "that all of the income is from entities that might be considered ‘small.’ For example, in 2005, 12,862 S corporations and 6,658 partnerships had receipts of more than $50 million."

We know of few bagel shops and dry cleaners with revenues anywhere near $50 million.

Our ruling

Boehner said, "Over half of the people who would be taxed under this plan are, in fact, small businesspeople."

Boehner is wrong on two points -- the "half" and the "small businesspeople."

Of the business income reported on tax returns, half of it would have been taxed at the top two rates, the Joint Committee on Taxation found. But that doesn’t mean half of the earners are paying those rates.

And it’s incorrect to call small business owners and millionaires who would see a tax increase one and the same. The Joint Committee as well as the Tax Policy Center have given credible evidence that for top earners who report business income, it is often just a fraction of their total income. They are not the folks operating small manufacturing plants or neighborhood pizza parlors. In fact, only 0.5 percent of small businesses make that kind of money. More often, small businesses are small in every sense -- most have incomes of less than $50,000 and almost all have profits of less than $1 million -- and they wouldn’t be affected by the millionaires tax. We rate the statement False.

Jon B. continues to shame the state of Ohio with his sleazy lies and corrupt politics.

The Most Desperate Sleaze Bags of the Week - The Drudge Report Attempt to Discredit Cain Accuser With Lame Obama Administration Link

The Most Desperate Sleaze Bags of the Week - The Drudge Report Attempt to Discredit Cain Accuser With Lame Obama Administration Link

In continuing to defend Herman Cain, the right-wing media have tried to connect one of Cain's accusers to the Obama administration. The Drudge Report said that the woman in question, Karen Kraushaar, "works in the Obama administration," while The Blaze said she "works for the Obama administration." However, Kraushaar also held positions in the federal government during both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The Drudge Report:

The Blaze:

According to the story from The Daily that first named her publicly, Kraushaar has served in several government agencies:

    Karen Kraushaar currently serves as a communications director at the Inspector General's Office of the Treasury Department, a position she has held since last year.

    [...]

    After the settlement, Kraushaar served as a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She was a chief spokeswoman during one of the agency's most controversial immigration cases -- the custody battle over Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban boy rescued at sea who was then held by Florida relatives against the will of his father in Cuba. The boy was eventually returned to his dad.

    In 2003, Kraushaar was a communications specialist for the Tax Advocate Service, an independent arm within the Internal Revenue Service that helps impoverished taxpayers.

In addition, the head of the agency Kraushaar reportedly works for now, the Treasury Department inspector general's office, is a Bush appointee.

In other words the worse one can say about her is that she is a career bureaucrat. Republicans say they are for small government  try not to laugh too hard at that long held myth, but they stamped like mad cows when it comes to trying to get appointed to a government job, as many will remember - Bush Makes More Last-Minute Appointments. Drudge continues the right-wing conservative tradition of utter contempt for integrity in reporting.

Federal Workers Are Underpaid Compared To Their Private Sector Counterparts, Despite What Flawed Republican Study Says

Federal Workers Are Underpaid Compared To Their Private Sector Counterparts, Despite What Flawed Republican Study Says

To hear Republican presidential primary candidates tell it, the federal workforce under President Obama has experienced ballooning job growth and huge wage increases. Such claims are a staple of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) stump speeches, and for months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has promised to bring the rest of the workers’ pay into line with comparable employees in the private sector.

Speaking at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity annual summit Friday, Romney repeated this pledge, saying the pay gap between public and private workers “must be corrected.” “Public servants shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers they work for,” Romney added.

But if Romney truly wants to match the pay of public employees to that of private workers, he would have to give the federal workers a raise, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And such a raise wouldn’t be a small one — according to the report, federal workers are underpaid compared to their private sector counterparts by an average of 26.3 percent, and that gap is widening, the Washington Post reports:

    The federal government reported Friday that on average, its employees are underpaid by 26.3 percent compared with similar non-federal jobs, a “pay gap” that increased by about 2 percentage points over last year while federal salary rates were frozen.

When asked if, given the BLS report, Romney was promising to give federal workers a raise should he become president, a Romney campaign spokesperson sent ThinkProgress a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation that said federal workers “receive 30 to 40 percent more in compensation than private-sector employees” once wages and benefits were included. “The federal pay system gives the average federal employee hourly cash earnings 22 percent above the average private worker’s. Including benefits raises the average compensation disparity to between 30 and 40 percent,” James Sherk, the report’s author, wrote.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) took an extensive look at the Heritage study, however, and found that it was riddled with errors and “methodological problems that call into question the validity of its findings and recommendations.” The Heritage study, for instance, used a BLS survey with a much smaller sample size than the one normally cited in such reports, leading to distortions in its analysis of federal worker pay. In fact, POGO found that the less reliable data distorted Heritage’s wage differentials by 21 to 146 percent.

When I was growing up a lot of the older adults - relatives and their friends - who worked for the government used to complain about their pay, but they always ended by saying that at least they have more job security than the big corporations that would lay off thousands of people every year. I think that is why some people still prefer government work even though state and federal government has slashed payrolls over the last 5 years.

Poll: 50 Percent Say GOP Is ‘Intentionally Stalling’ Economy To Hurt Obama

Herman Cain Carries On the Tradition of Corrupt Elitist Conservative Politics

Herman Cain Carries On the Tradition of Corrupt Elitist Conservative Politics

A major conservative advocacy group, funded by Koch family oil interests, says it is reviewing its "financial dealings" with a Wisconsin charity headed by Herman Cain's campaign manager, raising fresh questions about the source of tens of thousands of dollars in funds that were used to pay expenses for Cain's presidential campaign.

The Center for Public Integrity reported late Thursday that Americans for Prosperity, one of the largest and most prominent of conservative political groups, has confirmed unspecified financial transactions with two closely linked Wisconsin non-profits -- Prosperity USA and Wisconsin Prosperity Network -- that were founded by Mark Block, Cain's campaign manager.

One of those groups, Prosperity USA, paid for $37,000 in expenses, including iPads, charter flights and items, for Cain's presidential campaign, according to financial documents disclosed this week by the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

Non-profits are barred by law from paying for campaign expenses, and when the allegations  first surfaced this week -- at the same time as the sexual harassment charges against the presidential candidate -- Cain said he would order an investigation of whether there were improper campaign violations.

Right-wing Conservative Scientist Who Testified In Support Of Mining Around The Grand Canyon Stands To Make $225,000 From It


Police almost kill US military vet who was near OWS protests.

 Local El Cerrito newspaper where Sabeghi's Brew Pub, Elevation 66 is located has a story with a photo of Mr. Sabeghi in the sidebar.

    Kayvan Sabeghi, one of the three main [partners] who started the popular Elevation 66 brewpub in El Cerrito, suffered a lacerated spleen and other injuries in a beating by Oakland police on duty for the Occupy Oakland protests Wednesday night, according to the UK Guardian newspaper and one of his Sabeghi's partners. [...]

    Brian Kelly, another partner at Elevation 66, told Patch this afternoon (Friday) that he had talked to Sabeghi Thursday.

    "He was walking down 14th (14th Street in Oakland) away from the protest," Kelly said. "He walking to his house. He got beaten by police. He's got a lacerated spleen, maybe a couple of broken ribs too."

Anti-American Conservatives At Fox Push Cain's Radical Tax Plan That Would Rise Taxes on Blue Collar America

Anti-American Conservatives At Fox Push Cain's Radical Tax Plan That Would Rise Taxes on Blue Collar America

Fox News' Steve Doocy and guest Neal Boortz hyped GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan on Fox & Friends, claiming low-income tax payers would "probably still [come] out ahead" under Cain's plan. However, experts have said that lower and middle income families would bear a disproportionately larger tax burden under Cain's plan, while some higher-income earners would see their taxes decrease.

Boortz Claims Low-Income Earners Would "Probably Still [Be] Coming Out Ahead" Under Cain's Tax Plan

Boortz: Low-Income Taxpayers Would "Probably Still [Be] Coming Out Ahead Of The Game" Under Cain's 9-9-9 Tax Plan. On the September 28 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy talked about GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's proposed "9-9-9" tax plan with guest and radio talk show host Neal Boortz. After Doocy asked Boortz how the a national sales tax would affect "the poor,"  Boortz replied that because payroll taxes would be eliminated under Cain's plan, low-income earners would "probably still [be] coming out ahead of the game." From the show:

    DOOCY: [I]t's the backbone of presidential candidate Herman Cain's economic proposal -- his 9-9-9 plan. Have you heard about it?

        [start video]

        CAIN: Throw out the current tax code and pass the 9 percent business flat tax, a 9 percent personal income tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.

        [end video]

    DOOCY: So what are the pluses and minuses of the 9-9-9 plan, and could it really work? Let's talk to Neal Boortz, radio talk show host extraordinaire and the co-author of a great book called The FairTax Book.

    [...]

    DOOCY: I know you were at that particular debate down in Orlando last week. You have known Herman Cain for a very long time, what do -- and you're a proponent of the fair tax.

    BOORTZ: Right.

But Experts Agree 9-9-9 Plan Would Disproportionately Tax Low- And Middle-Income Taxpayers

EPI President Mishel Says Plan Would "Disproportionately Tax Lower And Middle Income Earners." A September 27 post on the ABC News blog The Note quoted Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, as saying that Cain's plan would disproportionately tax lower and middle income earners. The post also noted that the plan's provision of cutting capital gains taxes would "allow 23,000 millionaires to pay no income taxes." From the post:

    Lawrence Mishel , president of the center-left Economic Policy Institute, took issue with Cain's plan, saying it would disproportionately tax lower and middle income earners because they tend to spend a higher percentage of their incomes than wealthy people. And with a national sales tax, the more you buy, the more taxes you pay.

    [...]

    While a formal number crunch has yet to be completed, some economists are already crying foul over whether the 9-9-9 plan can bring in as much revenue as the current tax system.

    "The first thing I think is show me the money," said Joel Slemrod, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. "I want to know whether it adds up and I suspect it doesn't."

    The 9-9-9 plan eliminates the payroll tax and estate tax, which brought in a combined $883 billion in 2010, or about 41 percent of the $2.16 trillion collected by the federal government last year. Cain's proposal also wipes out taxes on capital gains and repatriated corporate profits.
    The Tax Policy Center estimates that cutting capital gains taxes alone would allow 23,000 millionaires to pay no income taxes, a move that would add $11 billion to the deficit each year. Cain's fellow GOP presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman also support eliminating the capital gains tax. [ABCNews.com, 9/27/11]

PolitiFact: Cain's Tax Plan Would Make "Some Poorer Americans Pay More Into The System." In an article published on PolitiFact on September 26, PolitiFact writer and St. Petersburg Times editor Aaron Sharockman wrote that "the flat income tax and the elimination of payroll taxes would result in shifting some of America's tax burden, making some poorer Americans pay more into the system while many middle- and upper-class Americans would pay less." From Sharockman's article:

    Herman Cain stunned the Republican political establishment on Sept. 24, 2011, easily winning Florida's Presidency 5 straw poll by trumpeting a platform of specific tax reforms he calls the "9-9-9 Plan." The plan would eliminate the current tax system all together, replacing it with a 9 percent personal income tax, a 9 percent corporate income tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.

    [...]

    Cain has yet to detail hyper-specific points about the 9-9-9 Plan, but we have a good idea of how it would generally function.

    The 9 percent income tax

    The centerpiece of the 9-9-9 Plan is to eliminate the current, complicated income tax system -- with its series of tax credits and deductions and its variety of tax rates based on income -- and to replace it with a flat income tax. Cain's flat 9 percent income tax also would replace payroll taxes, which all workers pay and that fund Medicare and Social Security, and would end the estate tax, which is a tax on inheritances. Currently, about 49.5 percent of all tax filers pay no income tax at all, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, a respected bipartisan committee of Congress. Cain's income tax would be collected equally for workers with two exceptions -- taxpayers could claim a deduction for charitable contributions (we haven't heard him discuss a limit) and taxpayers could earn a type of tax credit for living in an "empowerment zone," which Cain has described as inner cities needing revitalization. While the result of this part of Cain's plan would affect taxpayers differently, the flat income tax and the elimination of payroll taxes would result in shifting some of America's tax burden, making some poorer Americans pay more into the system while many middle- and upper-class Americans would pay less. [PolitiFact, 9/26/11, emphasis original]

PolitiFact: "A National Sales Tax" Like Cain's "Would Raise the Relative Tax Burden On Low- And Middle-Income [Earners]." Sharockman also noted in his article, "Most economists agree that a national sales tax would raise the relative tax burden on low- and middle-income earning taxpayers." From his PolitiFact article:

    Cain's national sales tax, in effect, would attempt to make up for the reduction of federal revenue by creating the 9 percent income tax. The national sales tax, which would help fund the federal government, would be on top of state and local sales taxes, which fund state and local government. In Florida, that would create a hypothetical tax rate of 15 percent in most parts of the state. In the Wall Street Journal, Cain said the national sales tax would be levied "on all new goods." (A good question to ask would be whether services are exempted.) Most economists agree that a national sales tax would raise the relative tax burden on low- and middle-income earning taxpayers. "The main reason is that low- and middle-income households consume more of their income than high-income households do," said William Gale, senior fellow for economic studies at the Brookings Institution. "Another way of saying that is high-income households save more of their income than low-income households do." [PolitiFact, 9/26/11, emphasis original]

Cain's plan in a nutshell is to rise taxes for America's who work the hardest - blue collar workers whose income comes from doing real work, while lowering taxes on people who make a lot and sometimes all their income simply from interests and stocks. Punish work, reward wealth is Cain's plan.

Anit-American Conservative Shift Blame for Recession on Poor and Middle-Class Americans

Private lenders held most sub prime loans

Wealthy homeowners have stopped paying mortgages at greater rate 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Myths and Facts about the Financial Crisis

The conservative spin machine went into overdrive after the financial crisis exploded the claim that unregulated markets always work best. Talking points fed to sympathetic columnists and reporters told an alternate, racially tinged tale: poor people were to blame. In the mythos they created, the Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to “loosen underwriting standards” and to lend to the poor and those with poor credit, forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the “800 pound gorilla in the room,” to careen down the path of bad loans, dragging other lenders with them. Incredibly, conservatives blame insufficient regulation of Fannie and Freddie, and cite the Clinton administration as the architect of the mortgage industry’s collapse.

Of course, none of this stands up to scrutiny. Here’s a guide to the most widely spun myths:

Myth #1: De-regulation had nothing to do with this crisis

The Facts
Conservative de-regulation left Wall Street with no cop on the beat. Bush’s conservative appointees rolled back regulation and oversight of banks, insurers, lenders, and credit raters. - The explosion in subprime loans after 2000 were made by unregulated mortgage companies, and the vast majority of them were issued to higher income borrowers, not low- to moderate-income borrowers. - The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA) dismantled Depression-era law that had prohibited bank holding companies from owning other financial companies such as investment, commercial banking, and insurance companies. GLBA ignited a wave of mergers and hampered government regulators charged with preventing conflicts of interest and risky financial behavior.

Myth #2: Private lenders were pressured into giving out risky loans

The Facts
Private lenders—not the government-backed Fannie and Freddie—issued the vast majority of subprime loans, and to low- and moderate-income borrowers in particular. Fannie and Freddie did not guarantee and securitize large quantities of subprime loans. - In fact, Fannie Mae actually lost market share because it chose not to “participate in large amounts of these non-traditional mortgages in 2004 and 2005” because it “determined that the pricing offered for these mortgages often was insufficient compensation for the additional credit risk associated with these mortgages.” As economist Dean Baker stated, “Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector….In short, while Fannie and Freddie were completely irresponsible in their lending practices, the claim that they were responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face—kind of like the claim that the earth is flat.” - In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld acknowledged that Fannie and Freddie’s role in Lehman’s demise was “de minimis,” or so small that it does not matter.

Why are conservatives acting like mad dogs in a fevered attempt to blame government, or Clinton or anyone but Wall Street for the housing meltdown and subsequent recession. Because the private sector is never to be held responsible for anything according to conservative dogma. The private banks just cannot make mistakes in Republicans fantasy world.

More here - Did the Poor Cause the Crisis?

Did Liberals Cause the Sub-Prime Crisis? - Conservatives blame the housing crisis on a 1977 law that helps-low income people get mortgages. It's a useful story for them, but it isn't true.

Rich Defaulting on Mortgages At Highest Rate