Posted on 03/01/2013 7:50:07 AM PST by whitedog57
According to the BEA release this morning, personal income dropped by 3.6% in January, the biggest drop in 20 years.
Meanwhile, the personal savings rate (as a percentage of disposable income) fell to its lowest point since 2007.
As I have pointed out before, wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP continues to plummet since 1970.
Of course, none of this is positive news for the housing market. The housing recovery cannot be eternally lifted by cash investors and The Fed zero interest rate policies.
At least the 10 year Treasury rate is falling with wages and salaries.
But never fear. There are ongoing efforts to avoid the measly budget cuts (albeit badly done) that are called sequestration.
So-called "progressives," in their arrogant and overwhelming desire for accumulation of power for themselves, readily acknowledge the taxing power as a useful tool for restraining motivation toward what they deem to be undesirable behavior.
On the other hand, they deny the certain fact that "taking," or taxing productive citizens also discourages and restrains opportunity and motivation toward productivity, wealth creation, and saving.
Democrats, under Obama, now have endangered the liberty of millions yet unborn with their illogical arguments on behalf of "taking" and "redistributing" the earnings of hard-working Americans. They claim they are "taking care" of those who elected them. Their "taking care" amounts to enslaving every citizen, born and unborn, for generations to come.
Their claims would fall on deaf ears, if most citizens understood their Constitution's limits on the powers of government. Here what some of the Founders said about the policies of today's "progressive" Democrats.
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Is it now high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which ought to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.” - Samuel Adams
And:
“The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods, are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.” - Samuel Adams
Other than this, it seems that the economy is booming, housing is back with a vengeance, all the talk of a Euro collapse is nonsense and the fed says it will keep on printing. Good times!
I heard a news caster say that the decline in Savings Rate shows that the economy was improving since people were more willing to spend instead of saving. What a dipshit.
Actually, this significant drop in personal income is more the result of people accelerating income into 2012 rather than pay higher taxes in 2013. It makes sense that January’s number would be lower after December’s number was much higher. Let’s see what happens in subsequent months to get a better feel of what’s going on.
YAY, I was WAYYYYYY better off in 2007 ! ! !
Good news?, uh, wait
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