Personal Finance advice on Savings relies on Legal Ponzi scheme

I find a lot of Personal Finance advice on the net about savings - how to save, how much to save, how to kill the credit card debts etc.  The 'Latte savings' buzzword got a lot of coverage a few years back - how you can save $1000/year by skipping the $3 starbucks latte every morning.  So what if everybody takes this advice and cuts down the morning latte from Starbucks - Starbucks will eventually close down, fire all its employees.  These employees may have been buying some product that your company may be making and that would vanish as well.  The economic wheel turns by people exchanging goods and services between each other.  If that exchange slows down, it will have a negative impact on the unemployment rate and the good health of the economy.  The 'Latte savings' only works in the bigger picture if you and a few others skimp on the latte and have greater fools who will keep spending their money on the latte - same as how a Ponzi scheme works though this savings advice is a legal one. 

There are umpteen reasons to save but there has to be some specific goals for the savings.  Savings, for the sake of being frugal, is not a good enough reason.  will continue to write on this topic.   

10 Myths about Taxation

Myth #1: Higher Taxation will lead to loss of Jobs

This is an argument made by small business owners all the time. They say that they will have less money to hire people. Every business makes its decision to hire or invest capital based on the return it can expect on the investment. The investment decision is not based on the amount of money they have left over. Many businesses have cash loaded on their balance sheet as they don’t see good opportunities in this economic environment to earn a good return on their investments. A higher tax rate will not automatically increase the unemployment rate.

Myth #2: Higher Taxation will slow down consumer spending

It all depends on how the tax rates are structured. A household with higher than $100k in earnings are saving rather than spending all their disposable income. A higher tax rate is needed today to fund the deficits of the govt. The govt. in turn uses those taxes to pay the salary of all its employees and pay for the social programs and govt. infrastructure. A higher tax rate shifts some of the disposable income from the private workforce to the govt. This should also slow down the layoffs of the govt. The higher taxes won’t hit consumer spending in a big way as the upper middle class is saving, not spending their extra cash. Higher tax rates are preferable to the alternative of long-term deficit spending and govt defaults.

Myth #3: Taxes need to be fair

Taxes are usually progressive in nature, with the tax rate increasing as the taxable base amount increases. It serves to reduce income inequality in the society. It doesn’t do any good to raise taxes from minimum wage people when they spend all their income on basic life necessities. Flat tax rates are cruel to the poor and the govt. will have to come back to support them with more social programs. So it is inefficient to tax the poor.

Myth #4: Higher taxes will lead to movement of capital to other lower tax countries

Capital moves around the world based on relative net returns. A higher tax rate may reduce net returns in the USA but it may still produce greater relative returns. Capital is not going to move to Mongolia because they have zero tax rates. Companies are not going to abandon the USA because of higher tax rates – the consumers are here and they have to market their products to their consumers.

Myth #5: Lowering the Tax rate will bring in more Tax revenue dollars

This is usually called the Reganomics, referring to the economic policies promoted by the U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, also known as supply-side economics. President Reagan did actually increase taxes twice during his term. This effect is true when the top marginal tax rate is high, like 70%. The top marginal tax rate is currently only 35% and the average tax rate is more close to 15%. A 1% reduction in the tax rate would reduce taxes to the population by 0.01*2.162 trillion = $21.62 billion. The federal govt will only collect the same level of taxes if the $21.62 billion freed up for the consumers have a money multiplier factor of atleast 6.7 to the GDP (=21.62*6.7*0.15). Tax rebates during the D.W. Bush presidency were mostly saved and not spent. Tax cuts have more effect when they are lowered from very high rates.

Myth #6: Higher Income taxes are communist policies

Communist govt policies usually takeover of the assets of the individual citizens. A communist govt owns all the country’s assets. Income taxes are not about taking over the assets of individuals but taking a portion of the income realized from those productive assets to fund the govt. If an entity earns zero income from its assets, the income tax would be zero. An income tax rate greater than 50% does reduce some of the motivation to earn the income. As the famous economist Laffer pointed out – Taxes would be zero at 0% tax rate and 100% tax rate.

Myth #7: Just tax the super-rich to close the govt deficit

There isn’t enough super-rich to tax to close all the govt deficit. The US govt ran a deficit of $1.3 trillion in 2011. The top 1% of americans had an AGI of $1.685 trillion dollars in 2010 and they paid $392 million in taxes (average tax rate of 23.27%). They had an after-tax income of $1.293 trillion and we would have to tax that at 100% to close the govt deficit. The top 50% has to contribute in some fashion to close the deficit gap. It cannot be achieved by taxing the top 1% or the top 5% of the taxpayers.

Myth #8: Taxes should be simple

Taxes by their very nature become complex. The salary or revenue is easy to know. The complex part is all the deductions allowed on an individual’s income to arrive at the Taxable income. The deductions are there for various social, political and economic reasons. There is no reason to have a mortgage interest deduction but the federal govt has instituted it to raise home ownership – how much di d the home builders’ lobby have an influence on this? Now that it is there, it is very difficult to get rid of. It is the case with most of the deductions. Every politician during the presidential election season will present his/her own simplified tax policies which are never practical to implement.

Myth #9: Taxes should be abolished and there is no need to balance the budget

There is a small group of people still in the US that refuse to pay taxes based on the notion that taxes are unconstitutional. That aside, any govt should have checks and balances and one of those checks are its revenue vs spending. The govt. cannot keep spending on deficits continuously – it is not sustainable. It will lead to lack of credibility in the currency of the nation as a long-run deficit spending is equivalent to printing more paper currency. It will eventually lead to the debasement of the dollar and cause huge economic catastrophes. The loss of confidence and the subsequent economic problems don’t happen gradually but happen suddenly.

Myth #10: Deficits should always be closed by reducing govt spending

There are two issues around taxation – how to structure it (where everybody wants to tax the other guy) and what is the appropriate size of the govt. The Republican camp wants to cut the size of the govt to close the deficit and the Obama camp wants to raise taxes to close the deficit. Lost in this argument is the need for a dialogue on an appropriate size for the govt. The federal govt doesn’t operate in a competitive environment and its spending is not based on a ROI. So the question should be as to whether the govt is spending its money efficiently. The answer doesn’t lie in shrinking the govt to the size of its current revenue base. The govt does perform an important function in providing public services to our nation. Raising taxes and shrinking the govt size should both be on the table.

Occupy movement is not a bunch of cry babies

In the past couple of weeks, there have been a number of articles in the mainstream news about the occupy movement participants being a bunch of cry babies (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576640962366762204.html?grcc=c55cb65a12d38771ac008972b7e6dcb1Z3&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion) and that they are just venting their disappointments in life at Wall street. They try to portray the participants as having no practical agenda or suggestions to improve the situation but just a party mob shouting and waving placards against the 1% rich. What is getting lost in the arguments are some of the reasons behind the rise of such a movement. These people represent a voice against the unfairness we are seeing in the current society. Life is unfair and every adult recognizes this and moves on with life, sometimes bitching and moaning about it in private parties and family gatherings. But when the unfairness becomes really stark, then it galvanizes a larger group of people to take their gripes to the public arena.

We all realize that wall street told lies, sold toxic mortgages and brought the US and the world to the brink of a financial collapse and the federal govts throughout the world had to bail out the banks. I believe the bailout was necessary to stave severe depression and to save the banking institutions. but the problem is that the banks have been settling all their charges easily with the SEC - recently citibank - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/friedman-did-you-hear-the-one-about-the-bankers.html?_r=1, without admitting any guilt. On the other hand, none of mortgage relief proposals by the US adminstrn have worked - the banks have been really stingy about writing off principals on near to foreclosure mortgages. They hold the moral line as to how the borrowers need to pay in full no matter what, though there was no moral line in their bailouts. This is the unfairness you see in the society and that is what is galvanizing the people to protest.

It is ok for these occupy protesters not to have any agenda or come up with ways to solve the problem. As a sane society, we atleast need to have people protesting gross unfairness. The insititutions are not working and the financial firm lobby groups are as powerful or more than in the past. Obama has not delivered on any of the lobbying reforms he promised. What do the masses do if the institutions don't work? The african americans had to fight for civil rights to get some fairness in treatment - they got derided in a big way in the Southern US states for all their protests. The french poor probably got derided for being a bunch of lazy bums during the french revolution.

Full employment - society must provide it.

There was an article in WSJ with some paragraphs trashing the people at the OccupySF. those paras copied below. It is a baseless statement. Here is my reply to it:

I don't think we can associate the bank's collapse and rescue with the inability to get a job. yes, the banks lied, sold toxic mortgages but when they collapsed, what can you do? Just because a judicial system becomes corrupt, you can't just throw away the institution. All you can do is try to reform the institution - put more regulations, checks and balances etc. same thing with the banks. we need the banks to run the society. you can get rid of the heads but not the institutions themselves.

If studying arts, humanities or gender studies won't get you a job to sustain yourselves, why then allow those degrees to be taught at univs here. how is it then any different from some religious madrasas in pakistan? just inculcating some useless knowledge? Then the society is lying to their children. they restrict the amount of MD degrees in the US based on the demand for those doctor specialities - do it for all other courses of study as well. make art univs have the students sign a beware stmt that their probability of landing a job is very low - like a warning on the tobacco label. The society is indebted to provide jobs to its every member - if not, you don't have a stable society. Unless you can prove all the unemployed are lazy bums, the society has to figure out a way to make them employed - it can't just say that you have got lousy degrees. well, the univs, the accreditation boards, and everybody else were in cahoots to market those useless degrees then.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576640962366762204.html?grcc=c55cb65a12d38771ac008972b7e6dcb1Z3&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion

Maybe this is all really about disappointment. I spoke to a young woman who had clearly bathed more recently than most. I asked her why she was at OccupySF. She told me she'd done all the right things. Studied hard. Graduated college. (She was an art major.) And now she can't get a job. It didn't matter. It's all messed up. She was lied to.

Of course she was. She's a member of the Trophy Generation. Win or lose, you get a trophy. We embraced mediocrity to an entire generation of kids during good times who are now finding themselves mediocre in bad times. There still is that American dream: Go to college, get a job, buy a Prius. But like it or not, studying art or humanities or gender studies won't get you there. Marissa Mayer at Google complains she can't find enough computer-science majors. Civil engineers are getting hired sight unseen.

Municipal Bonds and Fareed Zakaria

Two things I want to talk about in this blog - about a recent meltdown of municipal bonds prediction by Meredith Whitney (http://seekingalpha.com/article/243169-why-you-should-listen-to-meredith-whitney-s-municipal-bond-default-thesis?source=yahoo) and Fareed's TV interview with a bunch of CEOs on christmas day.

Meredith Whitney predicts a wave of municipal bond defaults that is about to hit the US municipal bonds. She thinks it will probably in the order of $100 to $150 billion. Again she argues based on the sagging revenue base of municipalities and their big pension obligations. But she doesn't take us thru a picture how exactly the municipalities would default. The recent experience of Vallejo,CA and Harrisburg, PA have provided a picture of how difficult, costly and messy it is to default. It is not like a homeowner defaulting on his/her home payments and the creditor can come in to foreclose and auction the property to the higher bidder. and also it is not a like a company that can be either taken over by a new management (after shedding liabilities in a bankruptcy court) or completely folded down in a organized sale of assets. A municipality is a local government entity that is there to provide services to its residents and it can't be liquidated. It is a non-profit entity. The reason they issue bonds is that they have to raise money to undertake big capital projects (like school buildings, sewer, water treatment etc) and they can pay the bondholders over a period of say 10 or 20 years thru assessing property taxes and local sales taxes. The municipalities are in a tough situation right now because their revenues are not enough to pay the annual bond payments plus the other obligations of the municipality (like salaries, pension payments, healthcare premiums, services maintenance etc. ). The economic slow down has affected their revenue base. Defaulting or renegotiating the bond payments is not easy. They have to go thru a court process to do this and it takes money to pay lawyers. The other big issue is that if a municipality does do the default, it will have a hard time raising money next time at good rates. Defaulting doesn't solve any problems for a municipality and it is much better for them to raise taxes or get support from the State govt. Which is why I believe that this wave of municipal defaults will not happen and I am slowly investing in municipal bonds (have a position in AKP that now pays 7.2% tax free yield). The bonds may go down because of default fear and I see it as a good investing opportunity to pick up some yields for the portfolio.

The other issue I want to talk about is the interview of Fareed Zakaria with some CEOs on christmas day on CNN. At the end of the interview, Fareed gave his view on why the US is stuck in this slowdown and high unemployment. His take was that our economy is powered by 70% consumer consumption and we are not investing much in the economy. We need to invest a lot more in R&D and other infrastructure. GDP of an economy powered by 70% consumption is not in and of itself a bad thing. This happens in mature economies where the need to build roads, electric grids is not that great as in developing economies. When consumer consumption is only say 40% of the economic activity, the other 60% is coming from infrastructure investments and net exports. Infrastructure investments like road building is an economic exchange between businesses and the govt and so is not part of end consumer consumption. and yes, the exports driven economy require less internal consumer consumption but as I have said before, all countries in the world cannot run a net export surplus. For long-run growth, we have to improve the skills of our people and that requires a cultural change among the population to see the importance of a high school and graduate education. It is not just building more schools and more universities - the population has to be coaxed to believe that education is a must for living. It is more the soft campaign and marketing stuff. A 70% consumption driven economy is not the problem that is dogging our economy - it is the lack of skills among the population compared to the world that is dogging it. Globalization has allowed Companies to shop around the world for the skills and that has made life a lot more difficult - the competition is not regional but global now.