RickMcCharles.com

People are angry at too big to fail corporations.

Yet protesters are having trouble explaining what they want changed. Perhaps this will help.

Click the image below to see the full cartoon explanation.

via Sly Oyster – Decades Old Calvin and Hobbes Strip Succinctly Explains Occupy Wall Street Movement

Update: Warren still prefers to live in the red countries.
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I love seeing complex data presented in an easy to understand way.

Do you live in one of the RED countries? … RED is bad.

Click through for even more detail – Economist magazine debt clock

Thanks Fedak.

Although Verizon paid less in income taxes than its average customer paid in phone bills, the company broke no laws. America’s corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on lobbying, and they get a good return on their investments. They get tax loopholes — and plenty of them. Last year, Verizon shelled out $16.8 million to lobby federal lawmakers and another $18.7 million on contributions into the campaign accounts of their favorite federal politicians.

Obviously Verizon needs to charge customers MORE … so they can pay some corporate tax.

Read more on Consumerist.

I know that the USA cannot tax itself to fiscal balance. But it’s stupid to perpetuate a system where “25 out of the country’s 100 highest-paid chief executives actually earned more in 2010 than their companies paid out in corporate income taxes”.

Corporations and rich individuals should actually pay more tax.

… What can economists possibly have to say about something as emotional, as nuanced, as humane, as parenting? Well, let me say this: because economists aren’t necessarily emotional (or, for that matter, all that nuanced or humane), maybe they’re exactly the people we need to sort this through. Maybe.

You may remember that we wrote a bit about parenting in Freakonomics; now we’ve put together an entire roundtable of economists to talk about a great many elements of child-rearing, with one essential question in mind: how much do parents really matter, and in what dimensions? …

New Freakonomics Radio Podcast: “The Economist’s Guide to Parenting”

All parents should listen to the audiocast linked above. It’s a shocker. They conclude that parents have remarkably little influence on how their children turn out.

The current research shows that parenting has little influence on a child’s educational attainment and on how much money the child will earn. Reading to your child doesn’t help, taking them to museums doesn’t help …

It does show that a parent can have a significant influence on whether your child smokes, is a heavy drinker, treats others with kindness and how happy your child is. Children with loving nurturing parents will be happier.

… But music lessons are simply a point of friction and unhappiness for both parent and child.

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The Economist’s Guide to Parenting: Full Transcript

The world’s 3rd richest man:

… Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent. …

read more in the NY Times

Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his cleaning lady.

The mega-rich should pay higher taxes, certainly. But that’s only going to solve a tiny fraction of the American Debt problem.

… I only link to this as it’s so hilarious to hear Fox Business’s Eric Bolling ask:

… if Buffett, one of the great capitalists of all time, is “completely a socialist” …

Fox News – fair and balanced.

Right.

In expensive Canada, about $0.07 / GB.

What does your ISP or Phone company charge YOU / GB?

In Canada, folks are charged as much as $10 per gigabyte. (Companies try to convince that there is a shortage of electrons traveling over wires or fibre. That’s a lie.)

Once the wires are in place, the cost for extra electrons is almost zero.

related – CNet – Are you overpaying for smartphone data?

… Students can already save a few bucks by opting for a digital version of a textbook over a hardcover, and they can now save even more courtesy of Amazon if they aren’t too intent on hanging onto the book after they’re done with it. The company has just announced textbook rentals for Kindle, which promises to let students save “up to 80 percent” off the list price of those often pricey textbooks. That discount varies depending on the rental period — which can be anywhere from 30 to 360 days –

… The National Association of College Stores estimates that U.S. college stores posted $10.25 billion in sales for the 2009-2010 fiscal year with each student spending $745 on average.

read more on Mashable

This is only the beginning of the end for the many ripoffs associated with the textbook industry, but at least it is a start.

Internet service providers are normally sneaky, or downright evil. One of the most hated industries.

But SHAW in Canada is garnering a wee bit of praise in the Tech community for this:

“We’ve created a non-cap kind of regime. If you’re always going over, we’re going to ask you to go into a package that really fits you.”

The immediate result is that the download limits on existing plans will at least double, so that high speed jumps to 125 gigabytes from 60 and Extreme to 250 gigabytes from 100 at the current price.

The company will also offer a number of new plans that provide choice in download and upload speeds, as well as increased data limits, including two unlimited options.

Those will become available next month, with new additions rolling out over the next 16 months as the analogue to digital TV upgrade happens and capacity is created.

“It should provide sufficient choice for our customer” …

Shaw responds to public outcry over Internet pricing, increasing data limits

Those packages are still way over-priced. But it’s the right direction.

The BIGGER issue is whether or not SHAW and the other Canadian oligopoly carriers will be able to convince the new FREE ENTERPRISE Conservative government to stiffle competition …

Click PLAY or watch a CBC TV News feature on YouTube.

Kris from Vegas linked to this graphic. It shows the very worst time to have purchased a house in the USA was July 2006.

source

The situation in Vegas is worse than the national average.

Last week I toured the new Vegas home of a couple who defaulted on their old mortgage. They could easily afford to pay the (high) mortgage on their current house, but they got a far better home for much less due to the current market.

This was a strategic default.

People who default on mortgages they can afford to pay are savvy about credit and tend to have better credit histories than other defaulters, new research shows …

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business estimates that strategic defaults accounted for 35% of defaults in September vs. 26% in March 2009. In January, the Nevada Association of Realtors released a study showing that 23% of Nevadans who lost homes admitted to strategically defaulting. …

USA Today – Study: Underwater homeowners who walk are more credit savvy

They don’t seem to be too worried about any drop in credit rating. So many people are making strategic defaults that it’s become normal business practice.

Brian found a site that actually makes Economics interesting.

“Fight of the Century” is the new economics hip-hop music video by John Papola and Russ Roberts at EconStories.tv.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession ended almost two years ago, in the summer of 2009. Yet we’re all uneasy. Job growth has been disappointing. The recovery seems fragile. Where should we head from here? Is that question even meaningful? Can the government steer the economy or have past attempts helped create the mess we’re still in?

In “Fight of the Century”, Keynes and Hayek weigh in on these central questions. Do we need more government spending or less? What’s the evidence that government spending promotes prosperity in troubled times? Can war or natural disasters paradoxically be good for an economy in a slump? Should more spending come from the top down or from the bottom up? What are the ultimate sources of prosperity?

Keynes and Hayek never agreed on the answers to these questions and they still don’t. …

They’re working on a sequel. (VIDEO)