Count the citizens!

Back to School purchases big business for retailers

• $8.2 Billion – The estimated amount of money spent at family clothing stores in August 2014. Sales at bookstores in August 2014 were estimated at $1.6 billion. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services
• For back-to-school shopping, choices of retail establishments abound: In 2013, there were 27,340 family clothing stores, 7,047 children and infants clothing stores, 25,100 shoe stores 6,998 office supply and stationery stores, 7,064 bookstores and 8,102 department stores. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2013 County Business Patterns

The War on Poverty

Notice that the bottom quintile is lifted briefly about 10 years, and after that the top quintile takes off. Poverty is lucrative business for politicians and bureaucrats.

With 126 programs to transfer wealth, there's not enough incentive to give up the government safety net and take the risk that education, investing and marriage require.

Are we being lied to about race and income by the media and politicians?

Today I was looking at the U.S. Census.  Now, to answer a question, you can’t always get a table of Honey Crisp apples.  Sometimes it’s apples and oranges in a box.    For instance, I looked at the Family Income by race—but the table didn’t define “family.” That’s not necessarily mom, dad and kids.  I suppose for census purposes it’s any group of related people living in a household, but I don’t actually know.  Anyway, it’s Table 695. Money Income of Families—Number and Distribution by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2009. U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012   Based on that table, the percent of white families earning over $100,000 is 27%; the percent of black families earning over $100,000 is 12.1%; the percent of Hispanic families earning over $100,000 is 12.4% and the percent of Asian families earning over $100,000 is 37.7%.  So if whites are 77.7% of the population and blacks are 13.2%,  and Asians are 5.3%, if something needs to be investigated, if something isn’t “fair,” if the president wants to address a wealth gap, wouldn’t it be the fault of the Asian families?  What are they doing to “deserve” such a big slice of the pie?  Marriage?  Education?  Values? Entrepreneurship? Have you ever heard the president chastise Asians for their education, intelligence, hard work?  Their median family income is $75,027, black family income is $38,409.

Census will now include same sex marriage—but how?

It's going to be tricky counting married same sex couples; just because they live together, they might not consider themselves "partners" or "married." Many same sex couples have no intention of getting married, even if they support the concept. Many have never insured their partner, put them in the will, their insurance, their mortgage or added the name to the bank account. This isn't societal prejudice; it's a lack of commitment, or a casual relationship of convenience for sex or rent, or concerns about costs if there were a breakup--just like other couples who have decided marriage is just a piece of paper.

 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/29/census-says-it-will-count-same-sex-marriages-but-with-caveats/

http://money.msn.com/personal-finance/gay-marriage-can-muddle-finances

March will be a 2-fer for me

March is Women's History Month and Irish Heritage Month in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 36.5 million
U.S. residents claimed Irish ancestry in 2007 (the year we visited Ireland). This is more than eight times the population of Ireland itself (more than 4 million). Irish was the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only German. My ancestors also came from Germany and Switzerland and were Lutherans and Mennonites many of whom became German Baptist Brethren (Church of the Brethren) shortly after arriving. The Scots-Irish I'm assuming were Presbyterian types--but I don't have much evidence.

Although I have no idea why, Irish Americans make more money. The median income for households headed by an Irish-American is $56,966, higher than the $50,740 for all households. In addition, 8 percent of people of Irish ancestry were in poverty, lower than the rate of 13 percent for all Americans. Appalachia is heavily Scots-Irish and they sure aren't rich. 72% of Americans of Irish heritage own their own home, which is also higher than the national average of 67%. After visiting Ireland and learning its history and how brutally they were driven off their land, I can sort of see that one. There are 9 cities in the U.S. named Dublin, one right here in central Ohio where famous people like Jack and Tiger play golf at Muirfield and others and librarians go for millions and millions of shared records (OCLC).

There were 154.7 million females in the United States as of Oct. 1, 2008 and 150.6 million males. By age 85, there are twice as many women as men in that age group, but I don't hear of too many government grants going to address that situation. They all go the other direction--to give women even more advantages and health benefits. $34,278 is the median annual earnings of women 16 or older who worked year-round, full time, in 2007, up from $33,648 in 2006 (after adjusting for inflation). Women earned 77.5 cents for every $1 earned by men. But that's a pretty silly statistic because men and women doing the same job with the same education and the same family situation, make virtually the same salary--women may even edge ahead on this, if you're comparing single people. During the ice storm last week I saw two women and a truck at 6 a.m. cleaning the parking lot and side walks where I get coffee. I'm guessing that if they are private contractors with some hustle in their bustle, they are pulling down just as much money as the guys, and getting home in time to fry up some bacon in the pan.

There were 116,985 women-owned businesses with receipts of $1 million or more and nearly 6.5 million women-owned businesses in 2002. Women owned 28 percent of all nonfarm businesses and employed more than 7.1 million people. 38% of women 16 or older worked in management, professional and related occupations, compared with 32% of men. So you can see that President Obama's confiscatory tax policies are going to really hurt business women, which makes the Lilly Ledbetter Act a piece of poo.

There's a pretty good chance that those taxes will be prepared by a woman--62% of tax preparers were women in 2007--our accountant owns her own firm.

Our household income fell by one-half under Bush!

Of course. We retired during the Bush years. Eeek! And our insurance costs have gone up! Just like the leftist say. Yes, we're on Medicare, a government health plan and our costs have gone up! Not nearly as good or cost worthy as what I had at the university. And we're not the only ones, we're part of a million household trend. And it will only get worse, unless Obama decrees that the Census reports can no longer be issued until he's finished with the country. Whenever that will be.

Here's a lefty who just doesn't get it.

Listening to lies about the economy

CNN had extensive coverage of Biden banging the drum for a depression, and the sooner the better. Yes, he actually was doing that even when the August 2008 report read thusly:

Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the third annual increase in real median household income.

Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate in 2007 was 12.5 percent, not statistically different from 2006. There were 37.3 million people in poverty in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006. The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007.

However, I went in an looked at the 2007 Census report and was charmed to see what I realized my last few years of working. We were in a recession in 1999 and 2000; then the 9/11 attacks took place in 2001, we went to war, and although the economy struggled, Bush took on the burst bubble from Clinton, as the next president will take on this burst bubble. (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1968 to 2008 Annual Social and Economic Supplements., p. 5)

Household income is going to continue to go down, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama--hello! Have you heard? Baby Boomers are retiring! They certainly aren't poor, but they aren't living on salaries, but on investments, that item Obama wants to tax more (i.e., the rich). They aren't buying high end consumer goods; they aren't buying new houses; they don't need new clothes and new cars. I bought my van in 2002, I love it, and see no reason to trade. My income (a pension check) is about 1/3 of my (fabulous) salary. They're taking money out of the country and spending it in Europe and Asia.

And we continue to import poor people to flood our social services at the bottom. Neither McCain nor Obama have a plan to stop a huge economic and social problem created by bad legislation in the 1960s when socialist brain surgeons decided the country was too white and too European.

Change? Hope? You bet. And you'd better hope someone is paying attention to demographics, or you'll be as famous as FDR following Hoover, dragging us down, and down and down for a full decade.

Irish immigration

When we were in Ireland in September we noticed 1) the booming economy, and 2) the booming immigration. We visited a Catholic church and the newsletter was in Polish and Portuguese. William over at Atlantic Blog is an American living in Ireland, and he comments that they are undercounted in the Census (although obviously, it's a lot harder to sneak into Ireland than Texas or Arizona).

The other night, my wife and I went out to dinner with another couple we know. Here is how the nationalities stacked up. We, an American born couple, got a French born babysitter for our Vietnamese born daughter to go out with a Polish born couple who left their two Polish born children with their Polish born au pair. We went to a Spanish restaurant, where the waitress was Polish and the only other group in the restaurant were English. We did not encounter one Irish born person that evening.

2868 How to lie with statistics, charts and quintiles

David R. Henderson at TCS Daily has an interesting thought. Read the Census Report on income, poverty and health 2006 before deciding that the gap between rich and poor is widening. It's important to note, he says, that income is not wealth (ask any retired baby-boomer). To me this is always the most glaring failing when liberals try to cram horror stories about the economy down our throats at election time. The oldest boomers are now 60; many have retired. Hello! What happens to income when you retire? It either stops, or is reduced drastically. Does that make you poor? Not if you have a home, pension and investments.

I'm guilty. I haven't read the report. But here's what I know for a fact going in.

• Married people are wealthier than unmarried;
• children of divorce are poorer than children of in tact families;
• divorced and unmarried fathers are less likely to provide a college education for their children than fathers married to the children's mother;
• people who work have more money than people who don't work;
• government programs often encourage people not to work, or at least reward them for working less, so they have the unintended consequence of creating a poor class;
• people in the bottom quintile usually don't stay there because their age, education or marital status changes;
• inexpensive leisure activities and entertainment lull people into not doing their best but create great wealth for a small number;
• millions of destitute people sneak into our country every year and are added to the poverty rolls;
• marijuana and alcohol keep a lot of people poor and dysfunctional while making a small number rich;
• for 30+ years schools have encouraged students to seek non-monetary satisfactions and rewards in life and liberals shouldn't complain if it is working.

Women (of certain types and political thought) have been leading the charge that keep families poor for over 30 years. Wake up and smell the coffee, ladies.

poverty
U.S. Census
economy