Unemployment remains high

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits was unchanged last week at a seasonally adjusted 374,000, suggesting slow improvement in the job market.
The Labor Department said Thursday that the four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, increased to 370,250.
Applications for unemployment benefits reflect the pace of layoffs. They have risen slightly over the past three weeks, though they remain lower than in spring, when hiring nearly stalled. Last week's number was revised upward to 374,000 from the 372,000 that was reported initially.
Still, when applications fall consistently below 375,000, it generally indicates that hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.
The latest applications data suggest that the government's employment report for August, to be released next week, will show job gains near the recent monthly average of 100,000, said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist with Capital Economics. That isn't enough to drive down unemployment significantly.
"Given some of the indicators seen so far, the August payroll report is not going to look terribly inspirational," said Jennifer Lee, senior economist with BMO Capital Markets, in a note to clients.

Read more: http://www.gopusa.com/news/2012/08/30/unemployment-remains-high/?subscriber=1

Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: Here‘s a Break Down of the Claims Bashing Paul Ryan’s Speech

Paul Ryan’s speech accepting his nomination for the vice presidency of the United States last night has already been widely hailed as a home run national debut by many sources. So it’s no surprise that the Left, which views Ryan’s ideas as the political equivalent of Typhoid Mary, has already pounced on the speech for its alleged inaccuracies, while simultaneously bringing up every conceivable nitpick they can.
Dave Weigel at Slate huffed, “So I was in the cheap seats, not on carpet, when Ryan plowed through one of the more impressive strings of whoppers we’ve seen at this level. Ryan’s been doling out chunks of this speech for weeks, which made the fibs sound even stranger.”
ThinkProgress, meanwhile, attacked the speech practically every minute in their liveblog, seizing on every rhetorical flourish of Ryan’s, no matter how inconsequential, to blast him with some figure or quote that would make him seem to be a hypocrite or a liar. The piece de resistance has to be their final response to Ryan, in which they managed no less than two shots in response to an unfalsifiable bit of feel-good rhetoric:
Ryan reminds the convention of the need to protect the weakest among us. It’s too bad that his budget would drastically cut the programs they rely on. Religious leaders have described Ryan’s budget as a “immoral disaster” that “robs the poor.” At the same time, it gives the rich and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks.

Read more: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fact-checking-the-fact-checkers-heres-a-break-down-of-the-claims-bashing-paul-ryans-speech/

UK needs a permanent, property-based wealth tax

The UK deputy prime minister's call for an emergency wealth tax has a whiff of political opportunism: things are tough, let's get those fat cats. Yet Nick Clegg is partly right. But a tax on the wealthy needs to be fair and predictable, not the quick grab that he advocates. Property tax is the way to do it.

Taxing the wealthy is tricky. The government reduced the top rate of income tax from 50 percent to 45 percent in the budget. George Osborne, the Chancellor, claimed on shaky evidence that the higher rate didn't raise additional revenue. Clegg's statement may be his political response. Furthermore, disappointing fiscal numbers are another spur. In the first four months of the tax year, government borrowing was 11.6 billion pounds higher than a year ago. The deficit is rising, not falling.
There is scope to raise more from the wealthy and the best way to do it is to tax their homes. Britain's wealthiest tend to live in properties, sometimes more than one, whose multi-million valuations reflect their wealth. Unfortunately the only current property tax, the council tax, is based on obsolete 1991 valuations. And the top band starts at 320,000 pounds - now the value of a small flat in some prime locations. Moreover, the rate isn't progressive enough: the top tax bill on a property stands at a paltry 2,536 pounds.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/08/29/us-breakingviews-uk-wealth-tax-idUSBRE87S0PZ20120829

Paul Ryan’s Speech: Too Much Debt, Not Enough Growth Read more: Paul Ryan’s Speech: Too Much Debt, Not Enough Growth

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan gave a powerful speech Wednesday night that repeatedly brought conventioneers at the Republican National Convention in Tampa to their feet. I am going to give him high marks for the delivery of his speech.

Ryan, in typical fashion, seriously and analytically ripped apart the Obama Economy, what has been called Obamanomics. He ripped it to pieces, and it needed to be done. But most especially, he ripped apart Obamacare. Ryan also did his level best to defend the Republicans against the usual attacks on Medicare reform — that is, what the Democrats call “Mediscare”.

However, I was disappointed that his economic growth solutions were somewhat muddled and unclear. At one point in the speech, rather than speak about Mitt Romney’s own tax-rate proposals, Ryan used the term “tax fairness,” a Democratic term frequently used by President Barack Obama and other liberal Democrats. This was surprising to me. Ryan cited a Jack Kemp tax reform and the Reagan tax reform (and I am, of course, part of that gang). But the reality is, Ryan didn’t have anything to say on the subject.

He dwelled on debt to an extreme point. I don’t think discussing debt connects with people who are unemployed or marginally employed. I think they want a good-paying job, and debt is almost an academic abstraction.

Read more: Paul Ryan’s Speech: Too Much Debt, Not Enough Growth

Rhode Island's Economy Is In All Kinds Of Trouble

When it comes to state economies, bigger is not necessarily better — cf. California.
But the nation's smallest state remains stuck in reverse while the rest of the country slowly regains its footing.
Pick any survey or economic indicator, and Rhode Island is at the bottom.
Here's unemployment (and improvement, or lack thereof, since the recession), via Calculated Risk's Bill McBride:

The state was also the only one to register rising unemployment last month.
They also scored dead last in CNBC's survey of states' business climates, third-to-last in Forbes' and fifth-worst in the Tax Foundation's.
Companies who've recently laid off workers there include Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Hasbro — and, last February, every teacher in Providence.
We asked to two Rhode Island economists why such a small state could have such massive problems, and they were unanimous in their response: the state has the same problems as other former industrial powerhouse states, but lacks the Rust Belt glamour and urgency to have done anything about it.

"It's not a recent problem," he said. "It has a history that goes back to the 1990s, when the U.S. economy moved away from a traditional economy," to a knowledge-based one. "With that, you had to change the way you organized your economy, a more flexible system to take advantage of innovation.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/rhode-island-economy-2012-8#ixzz2544SztMG

Everyone Is Ignoring A Sign Of US Economic Decline We Haven't Seen In 60 Years

UBS economist Drew Matus was on Bloomberg TV with Tom Keene this morning discussing the U.S. economy – and one rarely-discussed trend in particular that is somewhat alarming.
Matus told Bloomberg TV that the decline of the U.S. capital stock is a bad sign:

I would say that one of the things that people have generally ignored is that the U.S. capital stock is in decline. This is the first time post-war we've ever seen it. We don't know what the repercussions are because we have nothing in history to look back on and say, "Hey, last time it did this, this is what followed on it."

I would submit to you, though, that it's probably nothing good.

The capital stock Matus is referring to is American companies' investments in new equipment and software – one of the four main components in GDP – less the depreciation of existing equipment.

The implication of a drop in the capital stock is that potential growth is much lower than it could be if businesses were investing more in new capital. As a result, economy-wide return on assets can be expected to be much lower, UBS economist Sam Coffin told Business Insider.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ubs-capital-stock-us-economic-decline-2012-8#ixzz25448c735

Federal court blocks Texas voter ID law

A federal court on Thursday blocked a Texas law that would require voters to show photo identification before casting ballots, saying the measure would likely curtail the ability of minorities to vote in the November 6 presidential election.
Evidence showed the law did the most harm to African Americans and Hispanics, who are more likely to live in poverty, Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote for a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington.
Those without the underlying documents to obtain ID would have to purchase them, discouraging poor voters, he wrote. During the July trial, lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice equated that purchase to an illegal poll tax.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, said he would appeal the decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Today's decision is wrong on the law and improperly prevents Texas from implementing the same type of ballot integrity safeguards that are employed by Georgia and Indiana, and were upheld by the Supreme Court," he said.
Texas had the legal burden to prove its requirement did not harm minority voters. Judge Tatel's opinion called all the state's evidence "unpersuasive, invalid, or both."
The requirement was adopted in 2011 by the Republican-dominated Texas legislature. Voters would have had to present one of six forms of photo ID before casting their ballots.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/us-usa-court-texas-voterid-idUSBRE87T11120120830