Japan has decided to lower its corporate tax rate to 36.8%. Japan previously had the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Now, the United has the highest corporate tax rate--39.2%.
The United States holds the world’s title for highest corporate tax rate, with average combined federal and state profit levies of 39.2%. That's higher than Sweden. Higher than Russia, China, Mexico, Denmark, and even France.
The last four years have seen numerous U.S. economic milestones—four years of trillion-dollar deficits, some $5 trillion in new debt, the loss of America's AAA credit rating, three years of near-zero interest rates (that have not done anything to lower unemployment), postwar records for federal spending as a share of the economy, and now the world's number one corporate tax rate.
To read more about this, go to http://on.wsj.com/AtqNG9.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Value of Family
Following is a letter from a 12-year-old girl to her grandfather in the retirement community where Nancy and I live. She wrote the letter on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Only the family name has been changed.
“It is amazing how one little act of kindness or one little thing you do can really benefit someone’s life! You have no idea how happy you can make someone feel just by even visiting them! There are many examples of things I learned from the O’Malley family. They have helped me learn the importance of family and how having a good relationship is very important!
“The importance of family is that family comes first, always! You have to take care of each other so when they have families of their own; they know how to take care of them too!
“You have to spend time together if you want to create memories! Laughing and sharing moments together is good for your soul! Doing things together helps you remember that family is the best of friends that you will never lose, and that will always be right by your side no matter what! The more time that you spend together, the better relationship and the better memories, you will share together!
“I know that the little things that you do for your family and friends, can make them happier than ever before! An example of this is when my whole family went to visit my grandpa on his 80th birthday. We had dinner with him and he opened up presents. That night we talked, laughed, and laughed some more! We made him a book of memories and photos of the family! It was a great way to display such happy and memorable moments! My grandpa was so happy! It was a simple thing to do, and a very easy way to make him happy! This taught me that we should all try to do something nice/kind to make someone happy every day!
“Family is the most powerful love, greatest love that you could ever have! Family encourages you to follow your dreams and to take chances! Family does things for each other that they would not do for anyone else. Family is just, super exciting! There is never a dull moment! Sometimes you lose friends easily, just from something stupid or something that you said. But family will NEVER leave you! They learn to forgive after you make a mistake! Nothing is more important and powerful than family!”
“It is amazing how one little act of kindness or one little thing you do can really benefit someone’s life! You have no idea how happy you can make someone feel just by even visiting them! There are many examples of things I learned from the O’Malley family. They have helped me learn the importance of family and how having a good relationship is very important!
“The importance of family is that family comes first, always! You have to take care of each other so when they have families of their own; they know how to take care of them too!
“You have to spend time together if you want to create memories! Laughing and sharing moments together is good for your soul! Doing things together helps you remember that family is the best of friends that you will never lose, and that will always be right by your side no matter what! The more time that you spend together, the better relationship and the better memories, you will share together!
“I know that the little things that you do for your family and friends, can make them happier than ever before! An example of this is when my whole family went to visit my grandpa on his 80th birthday. We had dinner with him and he opened up presents. That night we talked, laughed, and laughed some more! We made him a book of memories and photos of the family! It was a great way to display such happy and memorable moments! My grandpa was so happy! It was a simple thing to do, and a very easy way to make him happy! This taught me that we should all try to do something nice/kind to make someone happy every day!
“Family is the most powerful love, greatest love that you could ever have! Family encourages you to follow your dreams and to take chances! Family does things for each other that they would not do for anyone else. Family is just, super exciting! There is never a dull moment! Sometimes you lose friends easily, just from something stupid or something that you said. But family will NEVER leave you! They learn to forgive after you make a mistake! Nothing is more important and powerful than family!”
Monday, March 12, 2012
Coming Apart—The State Of White America
Charles Murray has written an important book with the above title. This book has received 3 top level reviews lately, 2 in the Wall Street Journal and 1 in the New York Times.
The book describes the development of two, here to fore, new classes of people in White America, i.e., the new upper class and the new lower class. I’ll make some comments on the new upper class in this blog post.
The new upper class is a group of people who were selected out of the upper middle class by their superior intelligence and by their elite educations at premier universities, such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, etc. These people are the upper level of our present day movers and shakers in government, business, communications, and education. They are the drivers of the new and important cultural, financial, and social changes we see in our country. They were raised in homes of very affluent parents and born into the baby boom generation.
One characteristic of this new class of people is their isolation from mainstream America. They do not participate in the activities of ordinary Americans to a great extent. They make much more money; they live in their own residential compounds, mostly in the neighborhood of New York, Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; they maintain stable families; they do not smoke; they take different vacations from ordinary Americans; they exercise a lot; they are not overweight; etc., etc.
We have a lot of things in our lives for which we can thank this new upper class. They are the innovators of most of the good material things we have in our lives, e.g., advances in technology and medicine. While the author accurately describes this new upper class of Americans, he fails to assess the value of spiritual life they manifest.
I would imagine that when God looks at this group of overeducated, elitist, snobs, He might not have a very rosy appreciation of them. Nevertheless, they are with us; and we had better understand them—they control our lives more than we, perhaps, know.
The book describes the development of two, here to fore, new classes of people in White America, i.e., the new upper class and the new lower class. I’ll make some comments on the new upper class in this blog post.
The new upper class is a group of people who were selected out of the upper middle class by their superior intelligence and by their elite educations at premier universities, such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, etc. These people are the upper level of our present day movers and shakers in government, business, communications, and education. They are the drivers of the new and important cultural, financial, and social changes we see in our country. They were raised in homes of very affluent parents and born into the baby boom generation.
One characteristic of this new class of people is their isolation from mainstream America. They do not participate in the activities of ordinary Americans to a great extent. They make much more money; they live in their own residential compounds, mostly in the neighborhood of New York, Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles; they maintain stable families; they do not smoke; they take different vacations from ordinary Americans; they exercise a lot; they are not overweight; etc., etc.
We have a lot of things in our lives for which we can thank this new upper class. They are the innovators of most of the good material things we have in our lives, e.g., advances in technology and medicine. While the author accurately describes this new upper class of Americans, he fails to assess the value of spiritual life they manifest.
I would imagine that when God looks at this group of overeducated, elitist, snobs, He might not have a very rosy appreciation of them. Nevertheless, they are with us; and we had better understand them—they control our lives more than we, perhaps, know.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Divorce In Old Age—Getting More and More Common
Divorce in America spiked in incidence in the 1980’s and has been decreasing since then. However, the story is different for old people—their divorce rate is increasing. In 1990, only one in 10 who got divorced was 50 or older, but by 2009, the number was roughly one in four.
Infidelity is stated as the cause of 27% of divorces in the elderly; and that is the same as for all divorces in general. Women are the ones in marriages seeking the split—they file for divorce 66% of the time.
One must wonder—what could be the reason for these elderly people seeking divorce? To answer this question, it is useful to look at the reason they got married in the first place. Before World War II, I am told that people got married primarily for “economic” reasons. My own parents married in 1934; and they told me that was the reason they married. I am not sure what “economic” reasons are; but I assume that they thought they could cope better money-wise if they divided the work of raising a family and supporting themselves. In the decades of the 50’s and 60’s, sociologists say that spouses married for reasons defined by the degree to which each spouse could fulfill his or her role. Husbands were measured by their prowess as providers and wives by their skills in homemaking and motherhood. Whatever the reasons for these older marriages, the partners respected one another and did their best to help and support one another in the partnership. These marriages held tightly together for the most part.
After 1970, however, I believe that people got married for different reasons. These marriage partners were baby boomers who set much higher expectations on self-actualization. They saw marriage as a way to develop their personal skills and professional advancement in various ways. Their emphases were not on building up one another—they sought to advance themselves! This was the “Me Generation.” That idea has finally come home to roost. Marriages built on a desire to advance oneself will not last—stable marriages will only be established by people bent on helping the other member of the arrangement.
If you are interested in following this idea further, I would suggest that you look at http://on.wsj.com/wF6HrH.
Infidelity is stated as the cause of 27% of divorces in the elderly; and that is the same as for all divorces in general. Women are the ones in marriages seeking the split—they file for divorce 66% of the time.
One must wonder—what could be the reason for these elderly people seeking divorce? To answer this question, it is useful to look at the reason they got married in the first place. Before World War II, I am told that people got married primarily for “economic” reasons. My own parents married in 1934; and they told me that was the reason they married. I am not sure what “economic” reasons are; but I assume that they thought they could cope better money-wise if they divided the work of raising a family and supporting themselves. In the decades of the 50’s and 60’s, sociologists say that spouses married for reasons defined by the degree to which each spouse could fulfill his or her role. Husbands were measured by their prowess as providers and wives by their skills in homemaking and motherhood. Whatever the reasons for these older marriages, the partners respected one another and did their best to help and support one another in the partnership. These marriages held tightly together for the most part.
After 1970, however, I believe that people got married for different reasons. These marriage partners were baby boomers who set much higher expectations on self-actualization. They saw marriage as a way to develop their personal skills and professional advancement in various ways. Their emphases were not on building up one another—they sought to advance themselves! This was the “Me Generation.” That idea has finally come home to roost. Marriages built on a desire to advance oneself will not last—stable marriages will only be established by people bent on helping the other member of the arrangement.
If you are interested in following this idea further, I would suggest that you look at http://on.wsj.com/wF6HrH.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Where Are All the Good Young Men and Women?
Kay Hymowitz has written a book called “Manning Up,” in which she decries the tendency in America for young men to, more and more, be irresponsible, couch potatoes who look only for sex at the local singles bar. They do not want to settle down and support a family with the conventional wife and children. They seem to have entered a stage of life, which she calls “pre-adulthood.” To young women looking for a good husband, the typical young man looks more like an overgrown and aged fraternity boy. They often get money from their parents and spend a lot of their time playing video games and watching spectator sports.
Statistics on this age group shows that they are marrying later and later in life—the mean age for marriage is now 27.5 years for men; in 1980, it was 23. (For women, the mean age of marriage is 25; in 1980, it was 20.) Many people are not even getting married; among both sexes, 53% of all people in the age group of 25-29 have never been married. Men are not even bothering to get a college degree to the same extent as women (26% of men now get bachelor’s degrees; 33% of women get bachelor’s degrees in the United States.).
Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust give up on any idea of a husband and kids. This rational choice on the part of women only serves to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do.
I lay, at least part of this problem, at the foot of the feminist movement. Women have become so apparently independent of men that men do not feel called to take care of women as they did in the past. And…they can get all the sex they want at the local bar. So, why should these lazy and worthless men tie themselves down with family responsibilities?
They might just as well have another beer.
This whole bad scene demonstrates what happens to legitimate manhood and womanhood when the Christian principles of the Bible are ignored and sinful mankind goes his own way.
If you are interested in following this question further, I refer you to http://on.wsj.com/z1dXvn.
Statistics on this age group shows that they are marrying later and later in life—the mean age for marriage is now 27.5 years for men; in 1980, it was 23. (For women, the mean age of marriage is 25; in 1980, it was 20.) Many people are not even getting married; among both sexes, 53% of all people in the age group of 25-29 have never been married. Men are not even bothering to get a college degree to the same extent as women (26% of men now get bachelor’s degrees; 33% of women get bachelor’s degrees in the United States.).
Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust give up on any idea of a husband and kids. This rational choice on the part of women only serves to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do.
I lay, at least part of this problem, at the foot of the feminist movement. Women have become so apparently independent of men that men do not feel called to take care of women as they did in the past. And…they can get all the sex they want at the local bar. So, why should these lazy and worthless men tie themselves down with family responsibilities?
They might just as well have another beer.
This whole bad scene demonstrates what happens to legitimate manhood and womanhood when the Christian principles of the Bible are ignored and sinful mankind goes his own way.
If you are interested in following this question further, I refer you to http://on.wsj.com/z1dXvn.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Deficits, Deficits, Deficits!!
I was asked yesterday if the national deficit had become greater under the Obama or the G.W. Bush administrations. The question stimulated me to do some research to finally answer that question without doubt. The facts are as follows:
Under President Bush, the national debt added $4.5 trillion over the 8 years he was in office leaving, at the end, a national debt of $10.2 trillion. Under President Obama, the national debt increased by $4.2 trillion in his first 2½ years in office. Our national debt now stands at $14.5 trillion. The Obama administration is asking for another annual budget that will expand the national debt by more than another $1 trillion. These figures can be gleaned from several places and are part of the public domain. They are reliable.
Republicans see these figures as very dangerous; and believe that we should do all in our power to reduce the debt. If we do not, conservatives see America sinking into the same pothole as Greece.
The national debt of the United States now stands at greater than 100% of our GDP (gross national product). Reliable economists have said that a debt/GDP ratio greater than 90% prevents a government from managing its economy constructively.
Democrats and liberals of all kinds see the situation differently. They point to a set of data released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May 2011 that resulted in a graph, which shows that the largest piece of the national debt is caused by the Bush tax cuts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have little effect on the resultant national debt. To peruse this graph, control click on the following link http://bit.ly/yPwpeR . What this graph fails to depict is the fact that the largest part of our national deficit, by far, is spending on entitlements.
Personally, I still think that taking money away from investing private citizens will have a bad effect on the business and employment climate situation in America. I think the overspending MUST BE REINED IN.
Under President Bush, the national debt added $4.5 trillion over the 8 years he was in office leaving, at the end, a national debt of $10.2 trillion. Under President Obama, the national debt increased by $4.2 trillion in his first 2½ years in office. Our national debt now stands at $14.5 trillion. The Obama administration is asking for another annual budget that will expand the national debt by more than another $1 trillion. These figures can be gleaned from several places and are part of the public domain. They are reliable.
Republicans see these figures as very dangerous; and believe that we should do all in our power to reduce the debt. If we do not, conservatives see America sinking into the same pothole as Greece.
The national debt of the United States now stands at greater than 100% of our GDP (gross national product). Reliable economists have said that a debt/GDP ratio greater than 90% prevents a government from managing its economy constructively.
Democrats and liberals of all kinds see the situation differently. They point to a set of data released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May 2011 that resulted in a graph, which shows that the largest piece of the national debt is caused by the Bush tax cuts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have little effect on the resultant national debt. To peruse this graph, control click on the following link http://bit.ly/yPwpeR . What this graph fails to depict is the fact that the largest part of our national deficit, by far, is spending on entitlements.
Personally, I still think that taking money away from investing private citizens will have a bad effect on the business and employment climate situation in America. I think the overspending MUST BE REINED IN.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Why Doctors Die Differently From Their Patients
It is a fact that physicians die differently from the way their patients die. Physicians have a much smaller tendency to use on themselves, chemotherapy, radical surgery, high dose radiation therapy, and artificial kidney treatment for their own terminal diseases. The reason for that is that they are familiar with the complications and the small recovery rates of many terminal-type treatments available today. And…they just say “NO.” One friend of mine who had been in an intensive care unit for two weeks; the suffering there was so intense that he said if he had it to do, again, he would not consent.
Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).
In a 2003 article, Joseph J. Gallo and others looked at what physicians want when it comes to end-of-life decisions. In a survey of 765 doctors, they found that 64% had created an advanced directive—specifying what steps should and should not be taken to save their lives should they become incapacitated. That compares to only about 20%for the general public. (As one might expect, older doctors are more likely than younger doctors to have made "arrangements," as shown in a study by Paula Lester and others.) Often those advanced directives specify that in the case of cardiac arrest, no resuscitation is to be done.
A 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. If CPR is done in a nursing home, less than 1% survive for 3 months.
Physicians have seen that it is often better to go home for the last weeks of a life than to spend that time in a painful and fruitless attempt to ward off a certain death. Informed physicians realize that having the last weeks at home enjoying their families and the things they enjoy is much better than spending that time in the hospital with needles being stuck into them and undergoing other invasive techniques. (Control click)
http://on.wsj.com/AmKniq
Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).
In a 2003 article, Joseph J. Gallo and others looked at what physicians want when it comes to end-of-life decisions. In a survey of 765 doctors, they found that 64% had created an advanced directive—specifying what steps should and should not be taken to save their lives should they become incapacitated. That compares to only about 20%for the general public. (As one might expect, older doctors are more likely than younger doctors to have made "arrangements," as shown in a study by Paula Lester and others.) Often those advanced directives specify that in the case of cardiac arrest, no resuscitation is to be done.
A 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. If CPR is done in a nursing home, less than 1% survive for 3 months.
Physicians have seen that it is often better to go home for the last weeks of a life than to spend that time in a painful and fruitless attempt to ward off a certain death. Informed physicians realize that having the last weeks at home enjoying their families and the things they enjoy is much better than spending that time in the hospital with needles being stuck into them and undergoing other invasive techniques. (Control click)
http://on.wsj.com/AmKniq
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