Life in "Progress" State - California edition

Remember the good old days when Californian's made fun of Applachia (run by democrats at the time)?

Now that those hicks have seen the light and California has degraded into a Eurotopia, who's laughing now............

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.

Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing. (View the new census data report)

The state’s costs are boosted by its environmental and workplace regulations, and by 38 million residents’ competition for housing close to the sea.

The new measure, however, also incorporates a controversial calculation of relative equality that demotes states, including California, that have wide gaps between wealthy people and people with less than one-third of state residents’ average income.


Whoa Whoa Whoa............ I thought high taxes and more social programs brought income equality.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/16/golden-state-turns-to-lead-now-leads-poverty-rankings/#ixzz2CQBA4NnJ

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.
Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/16/golden-state-turns-to-lead-now-leads-poverty-rankings/#ixzz2CQAqPYPm

The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia’s and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.
Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government’s new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/16/golden-state-turns-to-lead-now-leads-poverty-rankings/#ixzz2CQAqPYPm

How government works

During my time in continuing education, we had a big time discussion about tax preparer compliance audits.


To catch you up to speed. In recent years, the tax preparation business has become populated with various criminals and now the IRS is trying to clamp down.You may ask yourself, why?

Like any question in life, if you answer money, you'll be right about 90% of the time.

Over the years, every time the rich got some tax break the poor had to get something as well. Never mind that they paid no income tax to begin with.

So to throw the poor a bone, Congress expanded the Earned Income Credit.

Now you have poor people getting refunds of up to $7,500 and unscrupulous preparers more than willing to help these people scam the government.

If you were a normal thinking person, you might say. Wow there's a lot of fraud in here! Maybe this program shouldn't be so lucrative as to encourage fraud. And with that kind of thinking you'd never make above a GS 14 payscale.

How you move up the government totem pole is to suggest that the government sets up a whole new bureaucracy to regulate tax preparers.Never mind the people getting the dough.

And you wonder how the feds can't seem to cut a trillion or two.

Quit making education more affordable

For the past couple of days, I've been catching up on my continuing education requirements to keep my accounting license.

As we went through some of the tax provisions related to education, I noticed this chart with the various tax credits and/or deductions that are all centered around education. 

Now outside of the the exclusionary provisions in the chart, all of these items have been implemented with the past 15 years. All in the vain of making education more affordable.

Now ask yourself this question. Is education more affordable or less affordable than it was 15 years ago?

Who gets hurt more from the escalating costs of education Warren Buffett or a middle class working stiff trying to make it work for their kid?