Sample of Wall Street Journal Comments, 2015-16
- Peter Lorenzi
- Sep 14, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 18, 2023
21 Oct 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-sanders-and-the-soak-the-rich-myth-1445379556Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Income is income, be it from work, interest, capital gains or inheritance. The "double taxation of dividends" complaint ignores the fact that most income is taxed several times, not just twice, and not just dividends. Taxed when you earn it, when you spend it, when you die and again when you die. The problem is that most government spending is not for funding the government's basic obligations of defense, courts, police and such; rather 65% of federal spending alone is on human resources, meaning transfer payments in the form of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, disability and such, while states and localities spend more than a trillion dollars on schools and teachers, not on education. Convert all government spending on schools and medical care into vouchers for each citizen, and convert the Social Security Ponzi scheme into savings accounts and private retirement insurance plans. Then give individuals personal deductions and a flat tax to income above the household deduction.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bernie-sanders-and-the-soak-the-rich-myth-1445379556Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Income is income, be it from work, interest, capital gains or inheritance. The "double taxation of dividends" complaint ignores the fact that most income is taxed several times, not just twice, and not just dividends. Taxed when you earn it, when you spend it, when you die and again when you die. The problem is that most government spending is not for funding the government's basic obligations of defense, courts, police and such; rather 65% of federal spending alone is on human resources, meaning transfer payments in the form of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, disability and such, while states and localities spend more than a trillion dollars on schools and teachers, not on education. Convert all government spending on schools and medical care into vouchers for each citizen, and convert the Social Security Ponzi scheme into savings accounts and private retirement insurance plans. Then give individuals personal deductions and a flat tax to income above the household deduction.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/not-there-yet-on-equal-opportunity-1445379418Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
In typical galling liberal fashion, Galston can't see the differences among equal opportunity, equal treatment in process, and equal outcomes. You could give every marginalized minority group a free public education and admission to Harvard, but that would have little to do with how well they succeed in school, in life, in incomes or in their careers. The dirty secret of equal opportunity is that it does not produce equal effort, equal results, or equal outcomes in wealth or income. As long as people make choices with their opportunities, there are going to be great differences in the outcomes.
13 October 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/measuring-world-poverty-as-it-shrinks-1444692792Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
The lack of math skills among the laureates is depressing. Take average daily incomes of $1, $10, $100 and $1000 in 1980. Triple them -- as has happened since that time -- and the impact is clear: Strong economic growth means greater absolute differences across income groups. But the worst off have also tripled their own incomes. The original UN goal was tor reduce absolute poverty; the unintended by clear consequence of great progress was increased inequality. The needed economic growth equates to increased inequality, period. But that is before the trillions in wealth transfers that ameliorate much of this gap, only those transfers tend to be within countries, to the middle class, and not to the poorest of the poor.
Equalitists have three major problems: (1) They offer no universal, widely accepted definition or description of income or wealth equality, (2) they overlook the increased varianace guaranteed by strong growth, and (3) they confuse entitlement and envy for equality
1 Oct 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-more-people-want-an-m-b-a-1443647494Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Contrary to a recent feature article in another business publication, business schools are not likely to experience a GM moment, i.e., near bankruptcy, bailout and restructure. Rather, they are more likely to have a Chrysler dealershipexperience, i.e., 20% to 50% of unprofitable dealerships, er, business schools, will succumb to the powerful draw of the top schools, with their high brand quality, strong demand, and massive revenues and endowments.
Part-time MBA programs -- where perhaps the majority of MBAs are minted may get some relief from the demise of some of the major for-profit programs -- but the lift will be short-lived, as MOOCs, online degrees, and short-term executiveeducation soak up that market.
As today's WSJ front-page article also notes, reliance on foreign students for new revenues is a risky business and not the gold mine that colleges, universities and business schools would like them to be.
26 Sept 2016
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pope-the-poor-and-the-benefits-of-wealth-1443214070Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Re Kommers: It is a bad idea to claim that people are 'victims' of capitalism by assuming a 'maldistribution' of wealth is a cause of poverty, or by assuming that by taxing away the wealth of the rich will correct poverty or reduce victimization. Many people are victims of their own poor choices. Kommers also ignores the current massive re-distribution of wealth through progressive taxation that supports a large and growing retired population and a very expensive educational system for the young. Simply read today's front-page article on aging in place. We spend three to four trillion dollars each year on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, disability payments, unemployment benefits, and public education from for ages 6 to 21. And then there are the hundreds of billions in personal and corporate charity. And what pays for all this? Capitalism.
24 Sept 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-birth-dearth-saps-economic-growth-1443047264Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Earlier this week, a WSJ blog lamented the absence of 540,000 Mexican construction workers as an impediment to the housing market. Perhaps the housing market would not need to grow so much were there not so many immigrants...comingin to build houses. In any case, as long as there are 94 million working age Americans that are not in the labor force, the author needs to replace the catchy term "birth dearth" with the more accurate but less sexy one, "work dearth."
Creating public pensions was a great thing for reducing if not eliminating poverty among the elderly, but life expectancy at the time (actuarily unsound or unfunded) pensions were created was 10 to 15 years less than it is today, sort of a "death dearth." By protecting the growing number of elderly and subsidizing (while creating over a trillion dollars in student debt) immigrant education for the youngest third, we have impoverished the working poor and middle class, while dimming the prospects for the well-educated dreamers.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-rev-the-growth-engine-1442441653Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Dan Chambers Peter Dodson This is an inaccurate characterization of vouchers. First, vouchers go to students, not the school; that is why vouchers provide true school choice for the public at large. Second, 'public' schools are not open to the public unless you can afford to live in the neighborhood of the public schools; much the same is true of charter schools. 'Private' and parochial schools are more public, and they educate the public. Third, if every student had a voucher, it wouldcreate hundreds of not thousands of schools, very few of which would be parochial.
Much the same can be said for healthcare. Rather than single-payer, 'universal,' government-dictated healthcare, we need healthcare vouchers for every citizen to then tailor his or her medical, healthcare and well-being needs to his or her specific needs and values.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillarycare-comes-to-college-students-and-campuses-1439836522Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
Taxing the wealth of 'rich' schools is not a solution, nor is collusion. Taxing wealth does little other than to reduce wealth and subsidize non-producers with wealth transfers. While private schools should not collude, they tend to march in lock-step with their peers in setting tuition rates. Private university costs are heavily weighted towards financial aid and administration, nor instruction or education. University presidents need to understand their costs, from an accounting,economic and even social perspective. Financial aid is one huge cost. Were the university to reduce tuition by their institutional discount rate -- which is primarily a wealth transfer from the full-paying students to the subsidized students -- tuitions could drop by forty percent at many schools. And as to salary-based loan re-payment, that is what any good parent or student knows and does now: A good degree will pay off the debt incurred to earn it. You don't need the government involved.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB12629032146271714730204581045751947507850Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
An A in Rhetoric but an F for Reality. First, Alexander ignores the grotesquely lavish amounts paid to university presidents, public and private. Administrative bloat is a sad form of social injustice and income inequality within universities. Second, while Georgetown can provide generous scholarships from tax-free endowments built from tax deductible donations, most middle and upper income parents with children at private schools have to pay the full cost with after-tax dollars. And that $27,000 average college debt may 'only' be the amount of a car loan, but it means that with that debt, that grad can't take out a car loan or make a down payment on a house because those payments are going to that college debt -- assuming he or she is employed and not defaulting on the loan.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-workers-ask-wheres-my-raise-1433385001Stop receiving notifications about this conversation Unfollow
John Pound D Dykes This is a silly question. These are two separate labor markets. Highly educated immigrants are taking jobs once filled by well-educated non-immigrants. And the low-skilled immigrants are filling jobs traditionally filled by low-skilled, poorly educated Americans, from construction day labor, domestic work, agricultural work, meat-processing, taxi driving. And then there are the informal and underground economy jobs, most often filled by undocumented workers. When a quarter of Mexico's population has moved to the United States, the entire wage and employment dynamic has changed.
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