Category Archives: Economy and Debt

May 18, 2013

Women are more unhappy despite 40 years of feminism, claims study

Posted on May 18, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that while post-war era happiness surveys found women were noticeable happier than men, the difference had eroded to ‘zero’.

Women are less happy nowadays despite 40 years of feminism, a new study claims.

Despite having more opportunities than ever before, they have a lower sense of well-being and life satisfaction, it found.

The study, The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness, said the same was true for women of different ages and whether or not they were married or had children.

It said the results appeared surprising given that modern women had been liberated from their traditional 1950s role of housewife.

Instead, their earning power has soared, women are doing better than men in education and they are in control of decisions over whether to start a family.

The findings were released as Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks & Spencer, claimed that women ‘have never had it so good’.

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Posted in Culture, Economy and Debt

May 14, 2013

City of Detroit is financially ‘insolvent’

Posted on May 14, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The Detroit city government is weeks away from running out of the cash it needs to operate, according to an initial report from the emergency manager overseeing its finances.


One of an estimated 78,000 vacant buildings in Detroit. Years of financial decline have left the city government insolvent, according to a report released Monday.

The report from Kevyn Orr, the bankruptcy attorney appointed by the state in March, lays out a bleak financial position for the city.

“The city has effectively exhausted its ability to borrow,” he writes in the report, adding that the city “is clearly insolvent.” To avoid running out of cash before the end of its fiscal year on June 30, it must “defer payments on its current obligations,” including more than $100 million in pension payments that are due.

“No one should underestimate the severity of the financial crisis,” Orr said in a statement. “The path Detroit has followed for more than 40 years is unsustainable and only a complete restructuring of the city’s finances and operations will allow Detroit to regain its footing.”

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Government

May 8, 2013

Ron Paul: Coming collapse gov. will use force, intimidation (Video)

Posted on May 8, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“I would expect that there is going to be a lot more chaos yet to come, and it will not be limited to Europe. I think it will be a worldwide phenomenon, the (United) States won’t escape it, either.” Ron Paul

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Ron Paul

May 5, 2013

NYT: Real Unemployment at 21.9 Million

Posted on May 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

On Friday, President Barack Obama’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan B. Krueger took a victory lap of sorts after the Labor Department’s jobs report showed the U.S. added 165,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in April.

“Today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover,” said Krueger.

But behind Friday’s Labor Department figures lies a stark economic reality: America remains in a downward jobs spiral.

Consider the following: according to the Labor Department, the U.S. added 165,000 jobs in April, but to return to pre-recession employment levels, the U.S. would need to add 208,000 jobs a month over seven years.

The government officially recognizes 11.7 million individuals as being unemployed. But as the New York Times notes, including “those who are underemployed—that is, adding in those workers who are part-time but want to be employed full time, and workers who want to work but are not looking—brings the total up to 21.9 million.”

Since President Barack Obama took office, 9.5 million Americans have fallen out of the U.S. workforce. Today, 89,936,000 people living in the U.S. no longer work.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Economy and Debt, Employment, Obama, Radicals

April 29, 2013

San Bernardino bankruptcy could spell the end of the city

Posted on April 29, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The inability to create effective public policy is also a result of the toxic and unhealthy relationship elected officials have with the public safety unions that have consistently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy elections, castrate elected officials to vote their way and threaten those who vote against their selfish interests.

Since the city of San Bernardino declared bankruptcy in July 2012, there have been many opinion pieces written with all sorts of different ideas about how the city got to where it is.

While the entire story really is comprised of lost industries, closed military bases, re-routed freeway systems, an influx of renters without the same financial interest in maintaining property values and neighborhoods, a sinking tax base and a county seat that is home to many of the social services needed by those resting upon society’s safety net, the crux of the issue resides with the system that dictates the operations of the city as a municipal corporation – the City Charter.

At the end of the day, we are where we are – and that is on the brink of insolvency, disincorporation, no longer being the city of San Bernardino, and losing the oldest historic city in the county.

The City Council is fundamentally unable to make the difficult decisions that are needed to pull the city back off the brink of the precipice. This is the result of a council that is bound by rules imposed by a charter that dictates to those decision-makers what to pay certain city employees (public safety) – a specific rate that is compared to cities throughout the state that share no commonalities with San Bernardino.

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Posted in California Story, Economy and Debt, Government, Unions

April 25, 2013

How to battle the Fedzillacrats by Ted Nugent

Posted on April 25, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The Social Security Trust Fund has been raped and pillaged by greedy Fedzillacrats from both political parties, who, if there was true justice, would be tarred and feathered and run out of the District of Clowns

So goes the old adage that if you place a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog, too stupid to feel the increasing danger, will sit in the pot and be boiled to death without jumping out to save itself.

Sadly, the same holds true for America. Too many Americans are ignorant frogs, and Uncle Sham and his band of Fedzillacrats are slowly turning up the heat to a boiling point.

Our list of failures is long and ugly, but we have arrived at the boiling point, and here we are – borrowing and spending trillions of dollars we don’t have, graduating kids who can’t read, scrambling to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens because of what some bug-eyed lunatic did and punishing the producers while rewarding society’s slugs.

Everywhere I go, I’m stopped every single day by concerned Americans who want to express their dismay, shock, heartbreak and disappointment at the condition of America. While I lend a damaged rock ‘n’ roll ear to them, I remind them that unless they are working double overtime to reverse the kamikaze course we are on, they are part of the problem, not the solution.

Enslaving America to a life of addiction to government cheese and generational poverty while stripping them of their work ethic and pride is largely a Democratic ploy, but the Republican Party has also been guilty of turning up the heat, bringing the water to a boil.

Tough times call for tough people willing to make even tougher decisions.

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Entitlements, Government, Ted Nugent

April 14, 2013

The War against the Young by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 14, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The offspring of well-connected journalists, politicians, academics, professionals, and celebrities assure us in their documentaries and op-eds, and through their parents’ voices, that conservatives have lost the war for America’s youth. They certainly have, at least for a while, at in-the-news, private liberal-arts campuses. But for the vast majority of the state-schooled who have no such connections, little if any expectation of an inheritance, and lots of accumulated debt, there is nothing liberal about the values inherent in the present economy.

It is popular wisdom that President Obama’s progressive social agenda is predicated on widespread support from the younger, hip generation. Certainly, concerns like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, the DREAM Act, gun control, women in combat, and blocking gas and oil exploration and pipeline transportation all get a lot of play on campuses and in popular culture. And these wedge issues supposedly represent the future direction of the country — a wise agenda for liberals eager to cement a majority constituency for decades to come.

But aside from the common-sense recognition that people become more conservative as they age and mature — and start paying taxes, and become financially responsible for their own children’s future — there is just as much likelihood that Barack Obama may inadvertently be building a conservative youth movement. Indeed, the new liberalism in all its economic manifestations is reactionary and anti-youth to the core. The administration seems aware of the potential paradoxes in this reverse “What’s the matter with Kansas?” syndrome of young people voting against their economic interests. Thus follows the constant courting of the hip and cool Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lena Dunham, Occupy Wall Streeters, and others who blend pop culture, sex, youth, energy, and fad — almost anything to avoid the truth that today’s teenagers are starting out each owing a lifetime share of the national debt amounting to more than three-quarters of a million dollars. Those who ran up the debt enjoyed the borrowing, but won’t be around to pay back their proverbial fair share.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Economy and Debt, Tax, Victor Davis Hanson

April 6, 2013

Immigration bill would import 1 million workers per year

Posted on April 6, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Amid the stalled economy, college graduates comprise roughly one-third of the minimum-wage workforce. Half of recent graduates are working in jobs sought by high-school graduates and dropouts, and roughly 20 million skilled and unskilled Americans lack full-time jobs.

The Senate’s draft immigration bill will provide 1 million visas for foreign workers each year, according to government data and news reports.

The 1 million inflow would provide companies with almost one foreign worker for every four Americans who turn 18.

The inflow would be high enough to fill up all the new non-farm jobs created during the last six months, and it is in addition to the routine annual inflow of 540,000 working-age immigrants.

The 1 million worker inflow would include at least 350,000 people capable of competing for middle-class skilled jobs sought by the 1.8 million Americans who graduate from university each year. Only about 10 percent of the visa workers are farm workers.

“I believe in a free-market, but this [inflow] will aggravate the problems for [American] graduates,” Richard Vedder, director of the libertarian Center for College Affordability and Productivity, told The Daily Caller.

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Posted in Economy and Debt, Employment, Immigration

April 1, 2013

Video: Canaries in Coal Mines

Posted on April 1, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

What are the canaries in the coal mine that is our global economy? The bank crisis in Cyprus? The election of a socialist president in France? Should American taxpayers expect European policies like bank deposit taxes, and 75 percent tax rates? Find out as Bill Whittle gives you the answers.

Video linked here at original source.


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Posted in Bill Whittle, Economy and Debt, Tax

March 31, 2013

American labor takes an ‘amnesty’ hit

Posted on March 31, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Now, more Americans are treading water in the very part of the job market that is most vulnerable to immigration. Given the current economic downturn, people with advanced degrees are searching out low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Increasing competition with low-skilled immigrants would further crowd the narrow avenues of subsistence.

Senate Republicans in the “Gang of Eight” have rejected straightforward language, suggested by labor advocates as part of an amnesty proposal, that would have had visas issued “only when the employment of foreign workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly situated workers in the United States.”

The visas at issue largely concern low-skilled workers, and some scholars say rejecting the idea amounts to a betrayal of American working people.

Professor Vernon Briggs, a Cornell labor economist, tells WND that “[a]mnesty for illegal immigrants sanctions the overt violation all of the nation’s worker protection laws.”

Briggs, who focuses on the economic impact of immigration, argues that, “[t]he toleration of illegal immigration undermines all of our labor. It rips at the social fabric. It’s a race to the bottom.”

This downward pressure on wages operates in tandem with an upward pressure on social services and welfare spending, critics complain.

“Assimilating into the welfare system,” according to Harvard economist George Borjas, is too often the trend.

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Posted in Amnesty, Economy and Debt, Employment, Immigration