President Obama and Middle Class Economics

Photo courtesy of Latin Post

I had a friend offer the following question

Serious Question: If the policies that President Obama and his administration are working and improving the entire government, economy, and the lives of Americans (stats can prove), why are the Republicans (some Dems also) so offended and/or against them? I thought that was what was supposed to happen.

Here are a couple of issues with President Obama. 

From the perspective of Free Market Economics Obama is not doing much that is helping the economy. I would argue that President Obama is not much different than GW Jr. Republicans want a small government less interference in capitalism. With all of the "Green" initiatives Obama has pushed has ended up costing us "Small guys" more money. 

1. There is the argument that what we are doing is simply printing more money to prop up the country and the gains that we are experiencing are non-existent. Just Google "Quantitative Easing" According to people over at the Economist, the jury is still out over Quantitative Easing

To carry out QE central banks create money by buying securities, such as government bonds, from banks, with electronic cash that did not exist before. The new money swells the size of bank reserves in the economy by the quantity of assets purchased—hence "quantitative" easing. (The Economist)

When I think of Quantitative Easing, I think about the government creating money out of thin air.  as the article points out the central bans are buying bonds with, electronic money that did not exist before.

2. President Obama has waged a war against conventional energy means. Democrats often argue that the environment is important, however, all of these changes that we are making end up we only improve our situation by less than 5% globally. Personally I would argue that this 5% difference would attribute to about 40% of the high prices we are seeing while there are hardly any increase in wages. 

 

According to the experts:

Declining real household incomes, coupled with increased energy prices, are burdening family budgets for millions of low- and middle-income Americans. Real household incomes have declined across all five income quintiles measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since 2001. The largest percentage losses of real average household incomes have occurred in the first and second income quintiles, among households least able to afford higher energy costs for heating, cooling and other necessities. Average real household incomes in these lower-income household groups decreased by 13% and 10%, respectively, from 2001 to 2012 (americaspower.org)

 3. The Administration is touting low unemployment numbers that are not telling the whole story.

I would personally argue that wages have been going down as the jobs that are available are less and less viable. Meaning prior to 2008 one might have been making $50k annually and now a person would struggle to make $40k. A person making said $50k a year might have been able have $5k left at the end of the year now the same person would have to make about $70k in order to be in the same position pre 2008.  My numbers may not line up but, the people at the Pew Research are saying the same thing.

4. There is a decline in the amount of Small Businesses at least according to USNews

How the Dallas Nurse Got Ebola

photo from nbcnews.com

A lawsuit commenced on Monday in Dallas against Texas Health Resources, according to Lauren F. Friedman at Business Insider and Yahoo Finance.

In case you missed the whole ebola news. The Dallas nurse that took care of one of the first Ebola patients in the US.

In the court case Nina is suing for Corporate Neglect.

1. According to the Article Nina Pham the nurse never had infectious diseases training according to the article Nina was ambushed about taking the assignment.

2. According to the Article Nina was not even given any training on how what type of protective care to use. The other part that gets me is that Nurse Pham even went home with the soiled scrubs.

3.The article alleges that Nurse Pham didn't even have protection on her neck and hair.

4. The article alleges that there was a buildup of soiled clothes in the changing room. You can look at the control technique according to the World Health Organization. I took a snap shot of the booklet.

I'm sure there are more points that I could perhaps go over but, I think the significant thing is that the World Health Organization put the 200 page pamphlet together for healthcare workers in emerging countries. Some of the things that the PPE rules do dictate is that the soiled garments should be taken off in the changing room. With the advent of the portable internet device that contain libraries worth of information the best thing to be done are a few over garments, exposed neck and hair all within a multi million dollar first world hospital?

According to her lawyer, she's still dealing with some after-effects of the virus and the four experimental treatments she received. Her symptoms, Walker says, include lethargy, weakness, liver problems, and hair loss. She's on "the equivalent of sick leave" from the hospital, and while she hopes to use her expertise to help other nurses, she will not likely return to clinical nursing.  (Business Insider)

Thousand Dollar Challenge

The past few days I have been working extra time to get my new website up to par. Why? I'm glad
you asked. This year I have challenged myself to generate over $1000 dollars on my own type of hustle. Meaning not a one time selling something for $1000 but being able to provide some type of service in order generate that type of money.

For a long time I thought I would be able to make a certain amount of money through a job. My number was somewhere around $100k annually.  Since I am 37 years old and I don't make anything near that amount working a 9 to 5 I thought I need to change up my approach. 

After leaving the military I decided to utilize my GI Bill and go back to school. I graduated with a MBA, I'm hoping that with my current job it has great hours where I only work 40 hours a week and within 4 years I am very hopeful that my salary will more than double working the same hours. I have previously worked twice the hours for only a little more money. I could leverage my degree and work in healthcare environment but my thought is that in the long run every 5 years or so I would be looking for a new job and over the course of 20 years I would make less taking that job with an immediate salary boost rather than staying at my current job.

So for now my challenge is to either get another side job or learn how to hustle. Right now I think is the perfect situation to learn how to hustle.

I came across this website called Making Sense of Cents Specifically How To Make Money Blogging. The author of the Blog listed how her monthly income has been between a few hundred dollars and as high as 15K. I found that to be very motivational. I have already been blogging through blogger.com and having watched this go for a few months I want to go Independent. I just now got to the point where I could ad the Google Ad Sense. However, reading what someone else has done I thought I would take the opportunity to do things more independent and how she has outlined.  With a few exceptions. I didn't use Bluehost.com I decided to use Arvixe.com where with a little investigation I bought  web hosting for two years plus up to 6 domain names for $67.

I wrote a few resumes in order to raise the money to pay for the online presence. So now my goal is to use the resume business to make it to my goal of $1000.  Wish me luck as I continue with the challenge.

Roadie

© Billy Hathorn/Wikimedia

Today I was reading an article on MSN.COM Money one of my favorite sites. I ran across this article about U.S. Postal Service, FedEx Have New Competition…from Waffle House  Apparently I missed out on the emergence of UBER, the company that allows individuals to contract rides around town for a fee.

This is one of those contract ideas that I would have love to been ahead of the curve on. The other day I typed an article about how instead of jobs that are 9 to 5 there are contract temp jobs that don't pay benefits but if you could monetize something that is already occurring and have the ability to make it pay out you have effectively come up with a great side hustle. I say forget the 9 to 5 figure out a way to facilitate the side hustle. Some think the side hustle is a bad thing. I think Ideas like Rodie and Uber are exciting. 

About Roadie Inc.

Roadie, headquartered in Atlanta, has created an app-based community that puts unused capacity in passenger vehicles to work by connecting people with stuff to send with drivers heading in the right direction. Roadie’s model enables efficient, low cost delivery for senders and rewards drivers for trips they were already taking. Roadie is backed by Warren Stephens of Stephens Inc.; the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund; Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures; Guggenheim Partners’ Executive Chairman Alan Schwartz, Square Co-founder Jim McKelvey; the Mellon Group; former CEO of ISS Tom Noonan, and H. Barton Asset Management, among others.

To learn more about the world’s first neighbor-to-neighbor shipping network, visit http://www.roadie.com.

Feds Economic Policy Pushing the Markets Higher

According to an Article at MSNBC today's spike in the market is due to the Fed delaying the raising of interest rates.  My spin is based off of Gold Seller and Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff.  I'm not one of those guys who has anything more than a passing interest in the markets. I do however get a little bit nervous every time another delay in raising the rates. Why?


According to Schiff all of this QE is causing inflated prices in the market. So what will happen once the bubble gets popped is you will see a reduction across the board. Granted Mr. Schiff is stands to make quite a bit of money in gold if things go the way he predicts or even if enough people are scared.






Below if you take a look at the chart you  can see how the Dow Jones Industrial Average has not been higher and is roughly 5000 points higher than things were in 2008. I would make the argument that we have not returned to an economy that is better than pre recession. However we still are under Quantitative Easing. Why? Because something else is at hand.

President Veto Pipeline Bill

President Obama has done something that again does not quite make sense in my mind. Why in the blue sam hill would he veto the pipeline when our economy is as weak as it is? The main thing I keep seeing is the issue of climate change. As discussed yesterday I am still wondering why I should be worried about climate change and not population. I am by no means arguing for the more extreme measure of sustainability. But given the information that makes the most sense to me, I wonder what advantage does this move offer me?  From what I understand about the WCS or Western Canadian Select is that is is more aligned with export to Europe. While the benchmark right now is the WTI or the Western Texas Intermediate out of Cushing, Oklahoma.

1. Instead of the environmentalist getting upset at the damage from transportation over road or rail this has turned into a position of parties. Even reviewing the information at the Washington Post posits that moving oil by rail as a riskier position environmentally.

2. Cows emit significantly more carbon into the atmosphere than the keystone pipeline Cows emission 6.5 Billion tons per year vs 18.7 million tons according to Onegreenplanet.com.  My argument here might seem a bit extreme but if you are consuming beef you should worry more about your purchase of beef than an opening of the keystone pipeline. This is like saving .0029 I don't know about you but I would imagine that as insignificant.

3.  I imagine ExxonMobile which holds a 69% stake in Imperial Oil would stand to remove barriers to getting the oil to US ports. Again I don't gain much here but for those who are for a free market situation the veto seems to be a bad idea.

4. I would like to make the argument based off of population energy is a shell game of sorts. Just because one avenue of energy is blocked an alternative is brought in from somewhere else. Environmentalist might win a deal but instead of heavy crude oil we will shift to the fracking of natural gas.  If we stop fracking natural gas then we will shift to coal. If not coal the other alternative is nuclear power. In any case you come up with a scenario in which a hard decision needs to be made. In effect I believe it is a zero sum game.

What this means to me is that when the prices of energy go up the prices of CPI and more importantly the price of food goes up for you data wonks out there here is another link with data by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics for the non data wonks my understanding this means that you can thank Obama for the high cost of beef or other associated food products because this is not environmentally sound.

However, unlike Hobijn’s account, the analysis presented here finds that oil and gas commodity price movements had a substantial impact on the all-items CPI, as well as on lower level indexes both in the longer term and in specific years. Rising oil and gas prices contributed substantially to both all-items and core CPI price changes from 2003 through 2008, accounting for approximately 26 percent of both indexes combined. During years of large price increases in oil and gas, higher prices accounted for an even greater share of the all-items and core CPIs; in 2008,higher prices accounted for nearly 40 percent of each. (BLS)

Managing Online Presence

http://poetsandquants.com/2015/02/22/why-cleaning-up-an-online-profile-isnt-enough/

I thought this was an interesting article over at poetsandquants.com about cleaning up an online profile. I have been going through this as I am currently evaluating extra streams of income through
e commerce.