Migration of the Tax Donkeys

Dear local leadership: here's the formula for long-term success.

A Great Migration of the Tax Donkeys is underway, still very much under the radar of the mainstream media and conventional economists. If you are confident no such migration of those who pay the bulk of the taxes could ever occur, please consider the long-term ramifications of these two articles:

Stanford Says Soaring Public Pension Costs Devastating Budgets For Education And Social Services

Which American Cities Will File Bankruptcy Next?

Allow me to summarize for those who aren't too squeamish: a lot of cities and counties are going to go broke, slashing services and jacking up taxes, all to no avail. The promises made by corrupt politicos cannot possibly be kept, despite constant assurances to the contrary, and those expecting services and taxes to remain untouched will be shocked by the massive cuts in services and the equally massive tax increases that will be imposed in a misguided effort to "save" politically powerful constituencies and fiefdoms.

These dynamics will power a Great Migration of the Tax Donkeys from failing cities, counties and states to more frugal, well-managed and small business-friendly locales. I've sketched out the migration in this graphic: the move by those who can from incompetently managed and/or corrupt cities/counties/states to more innovative, open, frugal and better managed locales.

Unlike Communist regimes which strictly control who has permission to transfer residency, Americans are still free to move about the nation. This creates a very Darwinian competition between sclerotic, corrupt, overpriced one-party-dictatorships whose hubris-soaked political class is convinced the insane housing prices, tech unicorns, abundant services, and a high-brow culture ruled by an artsy elite are irresistible to everyone, and locales that are low-cost, responsive to their Tax Donkey class, welcoming to new small businesses, employers and talent, unbeholden to a politically-correct dictatorship and conservatively managed, i.e. not headed for insolvency.

Not everyone can move. Many people find it essentially impossible to move due to family roots and obligations, poverty, secure employment, kids in school, and numerous other compelling reasons.

However, some people are able to move--typically the self-employed independent types who can no longer afford (or tolerate) anti-small-business, high-tax municipalities and their smug elitist leadership that's more into virtue-signaling than creating jobs and a small-biz conducive ecosystem. (Giving lip-service to small-biz doesn't count.)

Memo to hubris-soaked politicos and elites: in case you haven't noticed, an increasing number of the most talented and experienced workers can live anywhere they please and submit their output digitally. In other words, they don't have to live in Brooklyn, Santa Monica or San Francisco.

This is the model for many half-farmer, half-X refugees I've described elsewhere: people who are moving to homesteads with the networks and skills needed to earn a part-time living in the digital economy. In a lower cost area, they only need to earn a third or even a fourth of their former income to live a much more fulfilling and rewarding life.

Not that hubris-soaked politicos and elites have noticed, but only the top few percent of households can afford to own a home in their bubble economies.Paying $4,000 a month in rent for a one-bedroom cubbyhole in San Francisco may strike the elites living in mansions as a splendid deal, but to the people who have surrendered all hope of ever owning anything of their own to call home--not so much.

Though this chart is based on national data, there are many regional variations. When it takes a year just to obtain a permit to open an ice cream shop (in San Francisco), how much will the insolvent "owner" have to charge per ice cream cone to make up a year in hyper-costly rent paid for nothing but the privilege of being a scorned peon in a city ruled by privilege and protected fiefdoms?

Dear Rest of the Country: you have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to eat the lunch of all the overpriced, corrupt, bubble-dependent locales that are convinced they are irresistible to the cultured, creative class. Many of those folks would actually like to own some land and a house without sacrificing everything, including their health and family.

Dear local leadership: here's the formula for long-term success: welcome talent from everywhere in the U.S. and the world; make it cheap and quick to open a business, and cheap to operate that business; make public spaces free, safe and well-maintained; insist on a transparent, responsive government obsessed with serving the public as frugally as possible; support a political class drawn from people with real-world enterprise experience, not professional politicos, lobbyists, etc., and treat incoming capital well--not just financial capital but intellectual, social and human capital. Focus on building collaboration between education and enterprise--foster apprenticeships not just in the trades but in every field of endeavor.

Provide all these things and success will follow; ignore all these in favor entrenched elites and fiefdoms and go broke as those paying the taxes decide to save their sanity, health and future by getting out while the getting's good.


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Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised

What the Federal Reserve is actually whining about is not low inflation--it's that high inflation isn't pushing wages higher like it's supposed to.

It's not exactly a secret that real-world inflation is a lot higher than the official rates--the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Personal Consumption Expenditures PCE). As many observers have pointed out, there are two primary flaws in the official measures of inflation:

1. Big-ticket expenses such as rent, healthcare and higher education--expenses that run into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars annually--are severely underweighted or mis-reported. While rents are soaring, the CPI uses an arcane (and misleading) measure of housing costs: owners equivalent rent. Why not just measure actual rents paid and actual mortgages/property taxes/home insurance premiums paid?

Healthcare is 18% of GDP but only 8.5% of CPI. To those exposed to the actual costs of healthcare, 8.5% of the CPI is a joke.

The same can be said of higher education: households paying tuition and other college costs are exposed to horrendously high rates of inflation, as illustrated in this chart:

Revealing the Real Rate of Inflation Would Crash the System (August 3, 2016)

The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 (August 1, 2016)

Inflation Isn't Evenly Distributed: The Protected Are Fine, the Unprotected Are Impoverished Debt-Serfs (May 25, 2017)

Then there's the hedonic adjustments that are made to reflect improvements in quality, features, safety, etc. So the price of computers is discounted to reflect the increase in memory, etc. compared to previous models. This is a can of worms, as anyone shopping for a new car or truck can attest: yes, the vehicles have more safety features, but the sticker price is much higher. Do we knock $10,000 off the "price" because of these additional features? Why should we, when consumers have to pony up $10,000 more than they did a decade ago?

More honest and accurate estimates of real-world inflation that include the big-ticket categories of housing, healthcare and higher education reckon annual inflation is around 7% or even as high as 10% in high-cost metro areas, not 2%. This sets up a very peculiar cognitive dissonance in the financial media.

On the one hand, government agencies are bending over backward to under-report inflation. On the other, the Federal Reserve is whining that inflation is too low and their efforts to push it higher have failed. Heck, folks, the solution is obvious: just report real-world inflation without the hedonic adjustments and other shuck and jive, and when the rate of inflation comes in at a hot 7% instead of the official 2%, the Federal Reserve can declare victory.

Why does the Fed want higher inflation? The general explanation is higher inflation benefits bankers, borrowers and the expansion of credit that underpins our consumerist economy.

The idea is that as wages rise with inflation (assuming wages are rising, which they're not for the bottom 90%), households will have an easier time servicing existing debt and getting new loans.

The payments due on existing debt become easier to make as inflation expands everyone's paychecks. (Note that this expansion doesn't mean the purchasing power of the wage has increased; it's an illusory expansion that serves the credit industry.)

Banks benefit because they earn fees on originating new loans and rolling over existing debts into new loans.

But the supposed benefits of high inflation are undercut if wages don't rise as fast as prices. As many observers have noted, wages for the bottom 90% have not kept pace with higher costs. For the bottom 90%, rising rents, higher property taxes, higher health insurance premiums, higher healthcare co-pays and deductibles, soaring college tuition and so on, have squeezed household budgets while household income has stagnated.

No wonder the government wants to mask the real rate of inflation. If it was widely understood that inflation is reducing our purchasing power at an annual rate of 7% while wages are rising at 1% or 2% if at all, people might realize the Fed and other authorities have stripmined the many to enrich the few.

So what the Federal Reserve is actually whining about is not low inflation--it's that high inflation isn't pushing wages higher like it's supposed to. In the simplistic models of conventional economics, inflation is supposed to be a monetary function, i.e. a generalized secular dynamic that pushes everything higher--not just prices, but wages, too.

Alas, the world isn't as simple as the economists' models. So what we have instead is stagnating wages and soaring wealth-income inequality.

No wonder so many people reckon this was the real plan all along: it's worked brilliantly for the eight years of "recovery", greatly enriching the few at the expense of the many.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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What Few Expect: Inflation Will Surge, Destabilizing the Status Quo

Few seem to ponder what global shortages in key commodities might do to prices.

If there is any economic truism that is accepted by virtually everyone, it's that inflation is low and will stay low into the foreseeable future. The reasons are numerous: technology is deflationary, globalization is deflationary, central banks will keep interest rates near-zero essentially forever, and so on.

Just for laughs, let's look at healthcare, almost 20% of America's entire economy, as an example of low inflation forever. If being up over 200% in the 21st century is low inflation, I'd hate to see high inflation.

Here's the official Consumer Price Index (CPI), which as many have noted, severely distorts real-world inflation by claiming big-ticket items such as college tuition and healthcare are mere slivers in household budgets.

Note the remarkably stable trend line in CPI over the past 40 years. This certainly doesn't shout "inflation is near-zero and will stay low indefinitely."

Here's the PCE, Personal Consumption Expenditures, the Federal Reserve's favored measure of core inflation. Let's put it this way: either the PCE is real and the CPI is false, or vice versa; they can't both be accurate measures of real-world inflation.

Here's a look at the annual rate of inflation. The go-go years prior to the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008-09 and the years of "recovery" 2010 to 2014 look very similar: some modest volatility between 1.7% and 2.5% annually.

But something changed in 2015-2017. The wheels fell off and then inflation turned up. Maybe it was nothing, maybe not. Let's turn to a chart of asset inflation for a different perspective.

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs, here is a chart comparing asset inflation with real-world inflation. Note how assets have soared while real-economy measures have barely edged higher--commodities actually fell in price.

Now let's look at where the gains of the "recovery" were concentrated: in the hands of the few in the top .5%. This chart depicts the unprecedented concentration of income gains in the very apex of the wealth-power pyramid. Needless to say, very little trickled down to the bottom 90%, and even the top 9.5% received mere crumbs.

So what do these charts tell us about future inflation prospects? To the conventional punditry, they suggest more of the same: higher asset valuations, low real-world inflation and near-zero interest rates (courtesy of central bank purchases of bonds and other financial assets).

I beg to differ. To me, these charts suggest real-world inflation is about to take off in the next 5 years, surprising everyone who expected more of the same. My reasoning is simple:

The leadership of the Status Quo has a simple choice: continue with more of the same, enriching the top .5% at the expense of everyone else, and face a political firestorm of upheaval, instability and insurrection, or start funneling the trillions of dollars, yen, yuan and euros that have been channeled into the hands of the few into the hands of the many.

The policy of funneling fresh cash into the hands of households has a number of variations: negative tax rates (lower income households get a hefty tax rebate annually), Universal Basic Income (UBI--every adult gets a monthly cash stipend), QE for the people (the central bank buys special government bonds that eliminate all student loan debt), and so on.

Where virtually all central bank monetary stimulus over the past 8 years went into assets, QE for the people would go right into household bank accounts where most of it will be spent in the real economy. 

The incomes of the bottom 90% have gone nowhere for 8 long years. No wonder real world inflation has been capped outside of housing, healthcare and higher education. (Never mind these are the dominant expenses for the majority of households.)

So what happens when fresh trillions start flowing into the real world economy instead of into assets? If history is any guide, inflation picks up. Toss in some global shortages in key commodities and the fuel for inflation will be ready to ignite.

One part of the inflation will stay low indefinitely story is there's an abundance of everything: grain, oil, natural gas, copper, bat guano--you name it, the world is awash in the stuff.

Few seem to ponder the possibility that this surplus of everything might be temporary, a brief run of extraordinary luck rather than a permanent abundance. Few seem to ponder what global shortages in key commodities might do to prices.

Whether you call soaring prices inflation or not, the result is the same: the purchasing power of currency declines. Every unit of currency buys less of whatever is no longer in surplus.

The funny thing about inflation is that it's not a problem that can be solved by creating trillions more dollars, yuan, yen and euros out of thin air. Issuing mountains of new currency actually increases inflation.

Oops. Our only "fix" is to issue trillions more in new currency and credit. If that doesn't fix the problem, the toolbox is empty.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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What If the Tax Donkeys Rebel?

I would hazard a guess that an increasing number of tax donkeys are considering dropping out as a means of increasing their happiness and satisfaction with life.

Since federal income taxes are in the spotlight, let's ask a question that rarely (if ever) makes it into the public discussion: what if the tax donkeys who pay most of the tax rebel? There are several likely reasons why this question rarely arises.

1. Most commentators may not realize that the vast majority of income taxes are paid by the top 10%--and that roughly 60% are paid by the top 4% of households. (A nice example of the Pareto Distribution, i.e. the 80/20 rule, which can be extended to the 64/4 rule.)

As David Stockman noted in Trump's 1,500-word Airball, "Among the 148 million income tax filers, the bottom 53 million owed zero taxes in the most recent year (2014), and the bottom half (74 million) paid an aggregate total of just $45 billion. So let me be very clear. There was still $4 trillion left in the collective pockets of these 122 million taxpayers — even after the IRS had its way with them!

By contrast, the top 4% or 6.2 million filers paid $802 billion in Federal income taxes. That amounted to nearly 58% of total Federal income tax payments."

2. Few commentators draw a distinction between earned income (wages and salaries)and unearned income (dividends, interest, and more broadly, rentier income streams from the ownership of productive assets.

Here are a few examples to clarify the difference. Let's say a couple earn $300,000 a year--a nice chunk of change, to be sure, but since this is earned income, it's exposed to higher tax rates: 33% and up.

The primary tax breaks available to wage earners are mortgage interest and tax-deferred retirement contributions (IRAs and 401Ks). But there's only so much income that can be sheltered with these deductions. The household earning $300,000 may not own much in the way of wealth, and might even devote much of that income to servicing student loans, paying private school tuition, supporting elderly parents, etc.

If this household is typical, its primary wealth/assets are home equity and retirement funds. A house doesn't generate income, and any income generated by retirement funds is unavailable until retirement age, unless the owners are willing to pay steep penalties.

Now compare the hard-working folks earning $300,000 with a couple who don't work at all, but live off a rentier/investment income of $300,000 annually. Long-time readers know I often distinguish between assets that don't generate income (the family home, etc.) and assets that produce income, i.e. productive assets such as family businesses, stocks, bonds, commercial real estate, etc.

If these wealthy folks are typical, much of their income is taxed as capital gains at 15%, not 35%, and they also avoid the Social Security/Medicare payroll taxes paid by wage earners and the self-employed.

If we separate out these sources of income and types of wealth, we can distinguish two separate classes of high-income taxpayers: those who earn a lot of money and pay a lot of taxes, but who don't get much income from productive assets/wealth. Furthermore, any increases in the value of their primary assets (the family home and retirement funds) are not available in the same way as gains registered in stocks, bonds, and other income-yielding assets.

These high-earners are tax donkeys--they pay much of the nation's income tax but have to work hard for that privilege. While they typically have considerably more wealth than lower income households, their wealth is either inaccessible or unproductive, i.e. doesn't generate income.

The top 9.5% of households are tax donkeys to some degree, while the top .5% are typically rentiers who live very well off the income streams flowing from productive wealth (apartment buildings, ownership of businesses, stocks, bonds, etc.)

At some point, tax donkeys may decide that it's no longer worth it to work so hard, and so they downsize, retire, sell the business, etc.--get out while the getting's good. The average wage earner may reckon that those making the big bucks and paying the big taxes would never stop slaving away because their net income would drop--and who would voluntarily let their income decline?

I would hazard a guess that an increasing number of tax donkeys are considering dropping out as a means of increasing their happiness and satisfaction with life. When the often overworked tax donkeys start bailing out, there may be no substitute source of taxes.

Those who reckon some new tax donkey will quickly take the place of the retiring tax donkey overlook the fact that many are entrepreneurs and/or highly experienced professionals who can't be replaced as easily as a typical salaried person.

Courtesy of my esteemed colleague Lance Roberts, here are some charts that illuminate the widening disparities of income and wealth that differentiate those who pay little income tax, the tax donkeys and those who pay lower rates of taxes on unearned income:(Fed Admits The Failure Of Prosperity For The Bottom 90%):

Family income:

Family financial assets:

Business equity:

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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2009 - 2016: Was the Eight-Year Experiment in Maintaining the Status Quo a Success or a Failure?

Clearly, the core strategy of maintaining the status quo is to borrow and spend trillions of additional dollars every year.

The Obama presidency was a grand experiment to test this thesis: the status quo of the U.S. is a self-correcting mechanism. Left to its own devices, it will automatically correct any socio-economic-political imbalances, given enough time.

The Grand Strategy of the post-Global Financial Crisis era was simple: maintain the status quo as is. The Obama administration's major policy initiative, ObamaCare, a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act, was nothing but the formalization of the existing status quo in healthcare, i.e. the taxpayers subsidize private-sector profiteering.

That is the Affordable Care Act in a nutshell. Costs have not declined, the health of Americans can hardly be said to have improved significantly, but garsh, did healthcare sector profits soar. Most importantly, the status quo was maintained: nothing actually changed in the insurance, pharmaceutical or hospital sectors.

The same can be said for every other sector of the economy: nothing really changed, just more of the same. Higher education: nothing changed, just more student loan debt was issued. The defense industry: more of the same. Global War on Terror, a.k.a. The National Security State--more billions sluiced into the shadows.

President Obama was a master of telling everyone what they wanted to hear while changing nothing in the basic structure of the Empire. The Imperial Imperative of destabilizing nations that didn't meet with Imperial approval continued unchanged. The murder-by-drone campaign expanded, the support of a hopelessly corrupt regime in Afghanistan continued unchanged, and so on.

There were two unstated assumptions in this eight-year experiment:

1. The status quo is perfectly fine and didn't need changing

2. The self-correcting mechanism of the status quo--the self-serving pursuit of maximizing private gain--naturally yielded up whatever policy tweaks were deemed beneficial/ necessary.

If there is any dividing line in America today, it's not political: it's the division between those who see the status quo arrangement as marvelously successful, and those who see the tiller lashed down tight as the great ship heads for shoals that will rip the hull to shreds.

Those in the first camp see no need to change anything beyond minor policy tweaks. Those in the second camp see an unsustainable status quo that kicked the can down the road for eight years rather than tackle the systemic problems that are undermining the nation.

It's too early to say if the eight year experiment is a success or a failure. There is precious little evidence that the relentless self-serving pursuit of maximizing private gain is magically self-correcting what's broken. Rather, it seems that existing extremes are simply being pushed to new extremes--for example, student loan debt:

Federal debt:

Consumer credit:

Bank credit:

Clearly, the core strategy of maintaining the status quo is to borrow and spend trillions of additional dollars every year. Fortunately for the status quo, near-zero interest rates have created the comforting illusion that debt doesn't matter because it's almost free.

Perhaps the eight-year experiment will appear successful until the ever-expanding debt loads finally start to matter.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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