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New posts at Many Years Young 4/30/11
Safely Dispose of Unused Prescription Drugs Today
Mammograms Can Save Lives of Women in Their 40s: Studies
Poll: Chronic disease swells in middle age, then declines
Study: Weight loss ‘bribery’ effective
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/29/11
Adults With Arthritis Suffer With Poorer Health Related Quality of Life
Rising Obesity Rates Add to Arthritis Woes in U.S.
Interval Training and Healthy Eating Is Solution to Obesity, Study Shows
Tropical Blueberries Extremely High in Healthful Antioxidants, Study Suggests
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/28/11
WHO warns of enormous burden of chronic disease
Some willing to spend all to extend life [but may not be willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary to prevent the disease in the first place]
Read a Book, Stay Connected
Americans Still May Not Be Getting Enough Calcium
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/27/11
Pet Owners Are Healthier, Happier
Higher Levels of Social Activity Decrease the Risk of Cognitive Decline
Fitness and Frailty in Adults Linked to Health Outcomes
Red Pepper May Help Curb Appetite, Study Suggests
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/26/11
Breathe Deeply to De-Stress
Exercise with your pooch and both of you will lose your paunch
Why You Should Stretch
Caveman diet draws grunts from nutritionists
Think Progress:
Rising Gas Prices Expected To Increase Exxon’s Earnings By More Than 50%
The country’s five biggest oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — made a total profit of nearly $1 trillion over the last ten years. In 2008, ExxonMobil broke its own record for most profitable year for a public company in history by making more than $45 billion. And according to an analysis in the Wall Street Journal, rising oil prices in 2010 mean that Big Oil’s profits this year “could come close to rivaling the industry’s record year in 2008”.
If Walmart paid its 1.4 million U.S. workers a living wage, the average Walmart customer would pay just 46 cents more per shopping trip, or around $12 extra dollars each year.
Dean Baker:
Robert Samuelson decided to lecture President Obama on being an adult today. He wants President Obama to take big steps to reduce the budget deficit. Interestingly, all of the ways that Samuelson suggests for reducing the budget deficit, such as cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits or raising gas taxes, hurt middle income people. Apparently, this is Samuelson’s view of what adults do.
Increased taxes on the rich are not on his list nor are taxes on financial speculation. These might seem obvious ways to reduce the deficit since the share of the wealthy in national income has increased by so much in the last decade as has the financial sector’s share of total output. But Samuelson apparently does not believe that adults tax rich people or the financial industry. It also doesn’t seem as though adults talk about cutting the military budget, since this doesn’t come up in Samuelson’s article either. Nor does constraining health care costs, which is by far the most important contributor to the country’s projected long-term deficit problem.
While Rahm Emanuel campaigned on reforming the way Chicago is governed, millions of dollars were pouring into his campaign fund from businesses and firms who have long been accustomed to the old way of doing business with City Hall… More than $1 million in contributions came from companies with recent city business.
The most successful kings of Britain have been its three long-lived and long-reigning queens—
Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/25/11
Well, $#!* Some swearing can be good for you.
Music Lessons as Child May Keep Aging Minds Sharp
Eat Healthier Just by Picturing This
Lose Weight by Eating Slowly
Plus lots more.
. . . from the South Loop of Chicago. The egg harvest was pretty good this year.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/23/11
To Get Americans Healthier, U.S. Targets the Heart
Got a Health Goal? Watch Success Stories
Engaged workers report good health
Pecans may lower bad cholesterol
Plus lots more.
New posts at Many Years Young 4/22/11
It’s Easy Being Green
Older minds cluttered with irrelevant data
Meditation May Help the Brain ‘Turn Down the Volume’ on Distractions
Mindfulness Meditation Changes Decision-Making Process
Plus lots more.
Parks, green space essential for wellbeing
Happiness Is U-Shaped: It Drops in Middle Age, Rises Later
Hopeful Consumers Make Healthier Choices Than Happy Ones
Spring foods to help you shed your winter weight
Plus lots more.
Healthy Living Cuts Death Rate in Half: Study
Eat This Sweet, Chewy Treat to Live Longer
Canola Oil Protects Against Colon Cancer, Study Suggests
How Peppermint Helps to Relieve Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Plus lots more.
Lifestyle Changes Can Slash Blood Fat Levels, Experts Say
Cheap Alternatives to Hiring a Personal Trainer
The Juice That Makes Exercise Easier
How to Serve a Healthy Easter Brunch
Plus lots more.
When right wingers tell you Americans pay more taxes than citizens of other countries, they’re either ignorant or they’re lying.
Washington Wire:
Federal Taxpayer Receipt: A Multipurpose Tool
The White House marked the traditional tax filing deadline on April 15 by releasing a new online tool called “Your Federal Taxpayer Receipt,” to show Americans where their tax dollars go. Like many tools, it can be put to more than one purpose.
The site allows visitors to enter dollar amounts for what they paid in Medicare, Social Security and income taxes for 2010, and see a display that shows what share of the income taxes paid went to pay for categories such as “national defense” or “job and family security” or “agriculture.”
. . . You To Know About Taxes
David Cay Johnston, author of two bestsellers on taxes, Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch:
As millions of Americans prepare to file their annual taxes, they do so in an environment of media-perpetuated tax myths. Here are a few points about taxes and the economy that you may not know, to consider as you prepare to file your taxes. (All figures are inflation-adjusted.)
1. Poor Americans do pay taxes…
This year the first $9,350 of income is exempt from taxes for singles and $18,700 for married couples, just slightly more than in 2008. That means millions of the poor do not make enough to owe income taxes.
But they still pay plenty of other taxes, including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax-free in America…
2. The wealthiest Americans don’t carry the burden…
The Internet is awash with statements that the top 1 percent pays, depending on the year, 38 percent or more than 40 percent of taxes.
It’s true that the top 1 percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the federal income taxes in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available). But people forget that the income tax is less than half of federal taxes and only one-fifth of taxes at all levels of government…
3. In fact, the wealthy are paying less taxes…
Despite skyrocketing incomes, the federal tax burden on the richest 400 has been slashed, thanks to a variety of loopholes, allowable deductions and other tools. The actual share of their income paid in taxes, according to the IRS, is 16.6 percent. Adding payroll taxes barely nudges that number.
Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, whose share of their income going to federal taxes increased from 13.1 percent in 1961 to 22.5 percent in 2007…
4. Many of the very richest pay no current income taxes at all.
John Paulson, the most successful hedge-fund manager of all, bet against the mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero…
5. And (surprise!) since Reagan, only the wealthy have gained significant income…
Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax cuts, the average income of the vast majority—the bottom 90 percent of Americans—has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent…
Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent’s average income more than doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.
The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150 million…
6. When it comes to corporations, the story is much the same—less taxes.
Corporate profits in 2008, the latest year for which data are available, were $1,830 billion, up almost 12 percent from $1,638.7 billion in 2000. Yet, even though corporate tax rates have not been cut, corporate income-tax revenues fell to $230 billion from $249 billion—an 8 percent decline, thanks to a number of loopholes…
7. Some corporate tax breaks destroy jobs…
America’s corporations are sitting on close to $2 trillion in cash that is not being used to build factories, create jobs or anything else, but acts as an insurance policy for managers unwilling to take the risk of actually building the businesses they are paid so well to run. That cash hoard, by the way, works out to nearly $13,000 per taxpaying household.
A corporate tax rate that is too low actually destroys jobs. That’s because a higher tax rate encourages businesses (who don’t want to pay taxes) to keep the profits in the business and reinvest, rather than pull them out as profits and have to pay high taxes…
8. Republicans like taxes too.
President Reagan signed into law 11 tax increases, targeted at people down the income ladder. His administration and the Washington press corps called the increases “revenue enhancers.” Reagan raised Social Security taxes so high that by the end of 2008, the government had collected more than $2 trillion in surplus tax.
George W. Bush signed a tax increase, too, in 2006, despite his written ironclad pledge never to raise taxes on anyone. It raised taxes on teenagers by requiring kids up to age 17, who earned money, to pay taxes at their parents’ tax rate, which would almost always be higher than the rate they would otherwise pay…
9. Other countries do it better…
Germans work less, make more per hour and get much better parental leave than Americans, many of whom get no fringe benefits such as health care, pensions or even a retirement savings plan. By many measures the vast majority live better in Germany than in America.
To achieve this, unmarried Germans on average pay 52 percent of their income in taxes. Americans average 30 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
At first blush the German tax burden seems horrendous. But in Germany (as well as in Britain, France, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and Japan), tax-supported institutions provide many of the things Americans pay for with after-tax dollars. Buying wholesale rather than retail saves money.
A proper comparison would take the 30 percent average tax on American workers and add their out-of-pocket spending on health care, college tuition and fees for services, and compare that with taxes that the average German pays. Add it all up and the combination of tax and personal spending is roughly equal in both countries, but with a large risk of catastrophic loss in America, and a tiny risk in Germany.
