How Much Do You Need To Be “Wealthy” In America? Here Is The Magic Number

The age old question of whether or not money can buy happiness seems to have once again be answered with a resounding yes, and we even have a number. And, predictably, the amount of money that the younger generation says it will will need to be happy has risen again.

Bloomberg reports the results of an annual survey used to determine how much “wealth“ people feel they need to be happy. 

Many Americans cite leading a stress-free life and having “peace of mind” as their personal definition of wealth. That doesn’t sound too money-centric on the face of it—until you consider that money, or specifically the lack of it, is a major source of stress.

Americans don’t like to admit that assets can buy happiness—just 11 percent of those surveyed for the second annual Modern Wealth Index from Charles Schwab chose “having lots of money” as their definition of wealth. But while most respondents selected more high-minded concepts as their keys to contentment, they weren’t afraid to put a number on what they needed to get there.

Aside from the fluff, the survey asked for specific dollar amounts, and the monetary targets that the younger generations seek to be “comfortable” have moved higher, up to $1.4MM from $1.2MM, while those hoping to be happy with their wealth, will need to have at least $2.4MM to their name:

To be financially comfortable in America today requires an average of $1.4 million, up from $1.2 million a year ago, according to the survey. The net worth needed to be “wealthy”? That’s an average $2.4 million, the same as last year in the online survey of 1,000 Americans between age 21 and 75.

To be sure, as with every survey about money, many respondents said that “money can’t buy happiness”, and instead survey participants gave warm and fuzzy answers to the question of what makes them feel “rich”:

There were some heartening signs amid the numbers. While 18 percent defined wealth as being able to afford anything they desired, 17 percent said it was “loving relationships with family and friends.” That jibes with how Joe Duran, chief executive officer of money manager United Capital, said he likes to think of “wealth.” After building and selling his first company, “I realized that money is nothing more than fuel,” he said. “It is a resource that lets you have choices, but if you don’t think about what you are working for, you will die rich but not live rich.” 

The survey asked people to choose which of the below statements came closest to their personal definition of wealth. When asked about what made respondents feel “wealthy” in their daily lives, the survey found that spending time with family was most commonly cited, at 62 percent overall. That was followed by what can be the most elusive of things, cited at about the same level across generations: “taking time for myself,” which came in at 55 percent. Hard to do either of those without some bank, though.

Which, of course, is ironic, considering that money is required to do all the things list above like travel and live stress-free. You’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone who can “live stress free”, “afford anything they want” or “enjoy life’s experiences” without having the giant wallet needed to fund all these expensive plans. But still, the American dream seems to still be in tact, at least in the minds of younger generations:

Millennials displayed some youthful optimism when it came to their financial future. Some 64 percent of twenty- and thirty-somethings believe they’ll be wealthy (the cash kind) at some point in their lives, compared with 22 percent of boomers. Maybe better financial habits will help that happen, since more millennials than boomers said they regularly rebalance their portfolio—49 percent compared with 43 percent, respectively. The same percentage of millennials and boomers, 24 percent, felt “very confident” about reaching financial goals.

This is also ironic, as we just reported weeks ago that millenials with student debt have negative net worth for the first time ever. Recall that the Young Invincibles released an update to their report, “The Financial Health of Young America: Measuring Generational Declines Between Baby Boomers & Millennials”, which included a cross-generational study of the financial well-being of Millennials today versus Baby Boomers when they were in their adolescence. The update covered the economic challenges facing millennials age 25 to 34 between 2013 and 2016.

What it found was shocking: despite the fact that this has reportedly been the second longest economic expansion/central bank-induced channel of financial capital into speculation and financialization, the update showed how the millennial generation has transformed into the lost generation, as their financial security has eroded late in the business cycle.

For the first time, young adults age 25 to 34 with college degrees and student loans have a median net wealth of negative $1,900, said the advocacy group.

So while it may be true that you don’t need to be a billionaire in order to find happiness and/or freedom for yourself, getting past a certain point of savings and wealth is certainly paramount in achieving “happiness” – regardless of how you define it.

As for most of today’s youth, stuck in a negative net worth prison, the goal to reaching the “magic number” between $1.4 and $2.4 million seems virtually unachievable.

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John Whitehead: “It’s Time For A Bracing Dose Of Reality, America”

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the name of the national good by an elite class of government officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions, and inflicted on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace.

Consider, for example, that federal and state governments now require – on penalty of a fine – that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

A current case before the Supreme Court, Niang v. Tomblinson, strikes at the heart of this bureaucratic exercise in absurdity that has pushed overregulation and overcriminalization to outrageous limits. This particular case is about whether one needs a government license in order to braid hair.

Missouri, like many states across the country, has increasingly adopted as its governing style the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

In Missouri, anyone wanting to braid African-style hair and charge for it must first acquire a government license, which at a minimum requires the applicant to undertake at least 1500 hours of cosmetology classes costing tens of thousands of dollars. Tennessee has fined residents nearly $100,000 just for violating its laws against braiding hair without a government license.

It’s not just hair braiding that has become grist for the overregulation mill.

Almost every aspect of American life today – especially if it is work-related – is subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control, whether you’re talking about aspiring “bakers, braiders, casket makers, florists, veterinary masseuses, tour guides, taxi drivers, eyebrow threaders, teeth whiteners, and more.”

For instance, whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 3 American occupations requires a license.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technicianor a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

This is the mindset that tried to penalize a fisherman with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water and subjected a 90-year-old man to arrest for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public.

It’s no coincidence that both of these incidents—the fishing debacle and the homeless feeding arrest—happened in Florida.

Despite its pristine beaches and balmy temperatures, Florida is no less immune to the problems plaguing the rest of the nation in terms of overcriminalization, incarceration rates, bureaucracy, corruption, and police misconduct. 

In fact, the Sunshine State has become a poster child for how a seemingly idyllic place can be transformed into a police state with very little effort. As such, it is representative of what is happening in every state across the nation, where a steady diet of bread and circuses has given rise to an oblivious, inactive citizenry content to be ruled over by an inflexible and highly bureaucratic regime.

Just a few years back, in fact, Florida officials authorized police raids on barber shops in minority communities, resulting in barbers being handcuffed in front of customers, and their shops searched without warrants. All of this was purportedly done in an effort to make sure that the barbers’ licensing paperwork was up to snuff.

As if criminalizing fishing, charity, parenting decisions, and haircuts wasn’t bad enough, you could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

This transformation of the United States from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation illustrates perfectly what songwriter Joni Mitchell was referring to when she wailed, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Only in our case, sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, we’ve allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp. 

The problem with these devil’s bargains, however, is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all—the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”

In exchange for the promise of safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, lower taxes, lower crime rates, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

Yet when all is said and done, who is really to blame when the wool gets pulled over your eyes: you, for believing the con man, or the con man for being true to his nature?

It’s time for a bracing dose of reality, America.

Wake up and take a good, hard look around you, and ask yourself if the gussied-up version of America being sold to you—crime free, worry free and devoid of responsibility—is really worth the ticket price: nothing less than your freedoms.

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While Preaching Anti-Corruption, MbS Gets Rich Through Politically-Connected Deals

Given the fact that the new Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has had such a stringent and overwhelming focus on rooting out corruption in Saudi Arabia since his November 2017 declaration to do so – and the ensuing arrests that took place shortly thereafter – it would certainly be ironic (though not entirely surprising) to learn that the crown prince could be involved in what could only be described as optically questionable business practices himself.

But such was the topic of a Wall Street Journal article released today, that outlined and detailed bin Salman’s business dealings, including a recent massive deal with Airbus, that has helped him grow his enormous wealth.

The crown prince – who has grand plans to usher in a new era of prosperity for Saudi Arabia, including a “Saudi 2030” economic vision that looks to modernize and change the landscape of the country’s economy over the course of the next decade or so – is often credited with expanding the role that women play in Saudi corporations – removing a ban on female drivers, and implementing Saudi sports stadiums that admit women. Despite this, organizations like Human Rights Watch still contend that the Prince is overseeing a growing and unprecedented number of human rights violations.

And now, the Wall Street Journal is digging deeper into his business practices, which look to be politically influenced and organized within the Prince’s close family. 

The Journal has released a report detailing several of the prince’s own business dealings and methods that he himself has used to enrich himself and build exorbitant personalwealth. The incredibly long and detailed piece put out by the Journal talks about some of the prince’s business ventures which have been little publicized in the past, noting:

Prince Mohammed is managing director—and 20% owner—of a chemical producer that supplies large, state-controlled firms, Saudi corporate filings showed as recently as last year. A company majority-owned by two of the crown prince’s younger brothers was awarded a coveted broadband license from the government, Saudi records showed.

Additionally, in 2015, Prince Mohammed helped engineer a multibillion-dollar deal between European plane giant Airbus SE and Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudia Airlines, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the transaction. The deal is worth tens of millions of dollars to his family, the documents show.

The article notes the obvious – that the “anti-corruption” attitude could be a “do as I say, not as I do” policy for the prince:

The story of the Airbus deal suggests this mixing of business and government remains a staple of the Saudi economy, despite the crown prince’s highly publicized crackdown on many other royals who the prince said abused their power to get rich. Indeed, Airbus decided to go into business with the king’s family despite its reservations over the blurry distinction between private and public financial interests, according to people familiar with the matter.

Further called into question is a company called Tharawat that the prince allegedly helps control, despite not having an equity interest in. His younger brother supposedly owns 99% of the company, keeping it tied closely to the prince:

A company called Tharawat has emerged as a key player in the business activities of Prince Mohammed’s family. According to Saudi corporate filings, one of his younger brothers, Turki bin Salman, owned 99% of the investment firm as of May 2017, while another brother, Naif, owned the remaining 1%. Prince Turki has since bought his brother’s stake, according to Ammer al Selham, Tharawat’s CEO.

In practice, Prince Mohammed controls and benefits from Tharawat’s business, say several people familiar with their dealings, including two who have discussed the firm with him. Mr. Selham disputed that, saying: “At no time was HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman a shareholder or a beneficiary of the company.”

The journal reported that this company is involved in several businesses:

Tharawat and a subsidiary own the majority of a tech firm called Jawraa that was awarded a coveted broadband license from the Saudi government in 2014, Saudi records show. The license allowed it to become one of three companies operating new mobile-phone networks in the country.

Tharawat has had interests in fish farms, real estate, tech services, agricultural-commodity trading and restaurants. It owns an office park in Riyadh. An investment vehicle Tharawat owns, Nasaq Holding, says on its website that it is investing in construction to take advantage of “the government’s tenth development plan including investments worth $358.2 billion in real estate.” Saudi corporate filings show that Tharawat owned a company that partnered with Ochsner Health System in New Orleans to bring Saudis to the U.S. for organ transplants.

But the main focus of the WSJ article appeared to be to put a recent deal with Airbus under the microscope. As the article explains, Airbus conducted a recent deal with Saudia Airlines using Therawat as an intermediary. In addition, Therawat is reported to have an interest in a bank that raised capital to enter the jet leasing business. Ultimately, Tharawat was to benefit by being able to somehow get Airbus to sell them jets at a discount, and then not passing those discounts to Saudia Airlines who would pay close to the market price to lease them:

Tharawat in 2014 acquired a 54% stake in Quantum Investment Bank, a Dubai-based company with scant history of deal making, corporate documents show. Prince Turki, Mohammed’s younger brother, became Quantum’s chairman. Quantum executives didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the bank later took down its website.

Executives from Quantum and another small bank formed a company called International Airfinance Corp., or IAFC, to enter the jet-leasing business.

IAFC became the manager of a fund called ALIF, structured to follow Muslim strictures against paying interest. Airbus agreed to invest $100 million in ALIF if the fund bought only Airbus planes. On June 23, 2014, Airbus and IAFC held a “signing ceremony” in London to announce the new fund, hosted by Prince Turki bin Salman, International Airfinance said in a press release. The fund was aiming to raise $5 billion in equity and debt, deal documents show.

Of course, it was then reported that Saudia didn’t really “shop around” for a deal and that Airbus wanted to complete the deal despite reservations, including investigations into potential corruption overseas because they didn’t “want to prevent the son of the king doing business.”:

People involved in the process say Saudia didn’t solicit competitive bids from leasing companies, and rebuffed the advances of companies seeking to offer competitive rates before choosing ALIF to do the deal.

In response to questions about the deal, Saudia Vice President Abdulrahman Altayeb said in an email that “the aircraft acquisition transaction was in accordance with Saudia’s internal procedures, which included a review of the lease price to ensure its competitiveness against the market benchmark, as well as aircraft delivery schedule being in line with Saudia’s requirements related to its fleet plan.”

Lending his name to the deal made it easier to consummate, WSJ reported:

Others with a stake in the deal were thrilled by the involvement of a Saudi prince. “We took it as a good thing that there were people with deep pockets and political connections that we thought would make this transaction happen,” says one of those people, who says he considered the princes’ involvement “a good risk mitigator” for investors.

And so, in addition to receiving a share of income that the country produces from its oil, these new business ventures that seem to leverage the crown prince’s political and family ties are helping propel him to new levels of wealth and power. If the Prince is trying to consolidate power, his actions are likely helping him do that and the addition of grandiose wealth as a result of these types of deals also comes in handy.

If the prince wants to convince us that he’s really serious about rooting out corruption, maybe he could start to understand that when one finger points forward, three more point back.

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“I Am Julian Assange”

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Julian Assange appears to be painfully close to being unceremoniously thrown out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If that happens, the consequences for journalism, for freedom of speech, and for press freedom, will resound around the world for a very long time. It is very unwise for anyone who values truth and freedom to underestimate the repercussions of this.

In essence, Assange is not different from any journalist working for a major paper or news channel. The difference is he published what they will not because they want to stay in power. The Washington Post today would never do an investigation such as Watergate, and that’s where WikiLeaks came in.

It filled a void left by the media that betrayed their own history and their own field. Betrayed the countless journalists throughout history, and today, who risked their lives and limbs, and far too often lost them, to tell the truth about what powers that be do when they think nobody’s looking or listening.

Julian is not wanted because he’s a spy, or even because he published a number of documents whose publication was inconvenient for certain people. He is wanted because he is so damn smart, which makes him very good and terribly effective at what he does. He’s on a most wanted list not for what he’s already published, but for what he might yet publish in the future.

He built up WikiLeaks into an organization that acquired the ultimate trust of many people who had access to documents they felt should be made public. They knew he would never betray their trust. WikiLeaks has to date never published any documents that were later found out to be false. It never gave up a source. No documents were ever changed or manipulated for purposes other than protecting sources and other individuals.

Julian Assange built an ’empire’ based on trust. To do that he knew he could never lie. Even the smallest lie would break what he had spent so much time and effort to construct. He was a highly accomplished hacker from a very young age, which enabled him to build computer networks that nobody managed to hack. He knew how to make everything safe. And keep it that way.

Since authorities were never able to get their hands on WikiLeaks, its sources, or its leader, a giant smear campaign was started around rape charges in Sweden (the country and all its citizens carry a heavy blame for what happened) and connections to America’s favorite enemy, Russia. The rape charges were never substantiated, Julian was never even interrogated by any Swedish law enforcement personnel, but that is no surprise.

It was clear from the get-go what was happening. First of all, for Assange himself. And if there’s one thing you could say he’s done wrong, it’s that he didn’t see the full impact from the campaign against him, sooner. But if you have the world’s largest and most powerful intelligence services against you, and they manage to find both individuals and media organizations willing to spread blatant lies about you, chances are you will not last forever.

If and when you have such forces running against you, you need protection. From politicians and from -fellow- media. Assange didn’t get that, or not nearly enough. Ecuador offered him protection, but as soon as another president was elected, they turned against him. So have news organizations who were once all too eager to profit from material Assange managed to obtain from his sources.

That the Guardian today published not just one, not two, but three what can only be labeled as hit pieces on Julian Assange, should perhaps not surprise us; they fell out a long time ago. Still, the sheer amount of hollow innuendo and outright lies in the articles is astonishing. How dare you? Have you no shame, do you not care at all about your credibility? At least the Guardian makes painfully clear why WikiLeaks was needed.

No, Sweden didn’t “drop its investigation into alleged sexual offences because it was unable to question Assange”. The Swedes simply refused to interview him in the Ecuador embassy in London, the only place where he knew he was safe. They refused this for years. And when the rape charges had lost all credibility, Britain asked Sweden to not drop the charges, but keep the pressure on.

No, there is no proof of links from Assange to Russian hackers and/or to the Russian government. No, there is no proof that DNC computers were hacked by Russians to get to John Podesta’s emails. In fact there is no proof they were hacked at all. No, Ecuador didn’t get tired of Julian; their new president, Moreno, decided to sell him out “at the first pressure from the United States”. Just as his predecessor, Correa, said he would.

Julian Assange has been condemned by Sweden, Britain, the US and now Ecuador to solitary confinement with no access to daylight or to medical care. Without a trial, without a sentence, and on the basis of mere allegations, most of which have already turned out to be trumped up and false. This violates so many national and international laws it’s futile to try and count or name them.

It also condemns any and all subsequent truth tellers to the prospect of being treated in the same way that Julian is. Forget about courts, forget about justice. You’ll be on a wanted list. I still have a bit of hope left that Vladimir Putin will step in and save Assange from the gross injustice he’s been exposed to for far too many years. Putin gets 100 times the lies and innuendo Assange gets, but he has a powerful nation behind him. Assange, in the end, only has us.

What’s perhaps the saddest part of all this is that people like Chelsea Manning, Kim Dotcom, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are among the smartest people our world has to offer. We should be cherishing the combination of intelligence, courage and integrity they display at their own risk and peril, but instead we let them be harassed by our governments because they unveil inconvenient truths about them.

And pretty soon there will be nobody left to tell these truths, or tell any truth at all. Dark days. By allowing the smartest and bravest amongst us, who are experts in new technologies, to be silenced, we are allowing these technologies to be used against us.

We’re not far removed from being extras in our own lives, with all significant decisions taken not by us, but for us. America’s Founding Fathers are turning in their graves as we speak. They would have understood the importance of protecting Julian Assange.

To say that we are all Julian Assange is not just a slogan.

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Just How Deep Does The Deep State Go?

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Most don’t have to look very hard to see clear evidence that there’s a deep state.  But now it’s becoming even more clear that president Donald Trump’s White House, at least in some capacity, is a part of the same deep state the president promised to eliminate by “draining the swamp.”

Trump does indeed have a problem with people working against him, but some of those people are awfully close by…

Leaks to the media have plagued Trump’s presidency since his first day in office, and a new report on leakers’ motives opens a window into the extent of the subterfuge. “To be honest, it probably falls into a couple of categories,” one White House official told Axios‘s Jonathan Swan. “The first is personal vendettas. And two is to make sure there’s an accurate record of what’s really going on in the White House.”  Many of those with ties and puppet strings connecting them to the deep state are actually in Trump’s White House, according to The Washington Post.

A wave of leaks from government officials has hobbled the Trump administration, leading some to draw comparisons to countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, where shadowy networks within government bureaucracies, often referred to as “deep states,” undermine and coerce elected governments. Though leaks can be a normal and healthy check on a president’s power, what’s happening now extends much further.

A former White House official who, according to Swan, “turned leaking into an art form,” said that “leaking is information warfare; it’s strategic and tactical — strategic to drive [the] narrative, tactical to settle scores.”

Edward Curtin sounded a more alarming note, however, accusing the Deep State of a “Reality-TV Coup d’etat in Prime Time”:

The day after his surprise election, the interlocking circles of power that run the show in sun and shadows — what C. Wright Mills long ago termed the Power Elite — met to overthrow him, or at least to render him more controllable. These efforts, run out of interconnected power centers, including the liberal corporate legal boardrooms that were the backers of Obama and Hillary Clinton, had no compunction in planning the overthrow of a legally elected president. –WhoWhatWhy

Axios reported that Mike Allen, who has spent nearly 20 years covering the White House, says we learn more about what’s going on inside the Trump White House in a week than we did in a year of the George W. Bush presidency. This White House leaks so much that meetings called to bemoan leaks begin with acknowledgment the bemoaning will be leaked, which is promptly leaked…by several leakers in a smallish room.

Most in the mainstream media find the links almost humorous, if not political gold mines.  But that leads us further down the rabbit hole.  We already know the media is nothing more than a propaganda arm for the federal government, and Trump has to know by now that anything said will be leaked.

So is Trump also then, a part of the deep state he claimed he wanted to take on? Is he aiding in some of these leakers for political reasons?  Maybe, maybe not.  But what is clear, is that the government isn’t operating as a “service” to the public and they haven’t in a very long time.

They are taking over completely, consolidating their power, and eliminating our wealth and personal freedoms. And that hasn’t slowed with the election of Trump.  The federal government hasn’t gotten smaller, deficits haven’t decreased, and taxes are still astronomically high even after the cuts.

All of this begs the question: just how deep does the deep state go?

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Broke Illinois Pension System Leaves Every Resident With $11,000 Of Debt

The Illinois state pension system is in a mess. 

For those unfamiliar, here’s a quick recap: Illinois (rate just one notch above junk) is drowning under a mountain of debt, unpaid bills and underfunded pension liabilities and it’s largest city, Chicago, is suffering from a staggering outbreak of violent crime not seen since gang wars engulfed major cities from LA to New York in the mid-90’s, while rising taxes have prompted a mass exodus with the state lost 1 resident every 4.3 minutes in 2017. 

And if you need a refresher, feel free to peruse some of our coverage on Illinois’ challenges:

The state’s horrendous mismanagement has left each man, woman and child of Illinois with nearly $11,000 in debt. 

“Illinois failure to address its pension crisis has resulted in further deterioration of the state and cities’ financial condition, exorbitantly high borrowing costs, and an inability to address other critical needs at the state and local level,” said Laurence Msall, president of Chicago nonprofit – the Civic Federation, which tracks state and municipal finances. “Time is not your friend when your liabilities are compounding and your revenues are not.”

The funding shortfall across Illinois’s five retirement systems climbed to $137 billion by last June, a jump of about $17.8 billion since 2015, after the government for years failed to make adequate contributions.

That pension deficit — more than four times larger that its debt to general-obligation bondholders — is adding hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to Illinois’s budget each year as the government plows more money in to catch up.

Illinois has been contending with the issue for decades. In 1994, Illinois passed a law that was supposed to ensure that the state had enough assets to cover 90 percent of its liabilities by 2045, though it went on to skip annual payments or fail to contribute enough. At the same time, investment returns were hammered by last decade’s stock-market busts. –Bloomberg

“There hasn’t been any progress made,” Dick Ingram, executive director of the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, the state’s largest pension. “It’s a case of the numbers have gotten so big that nobody honestly really knows what to do.”

While the state prepares to shell out $8.5 billion to its five retirement systems in 2019, it’s not nearly enough. Despite the 300% funding increase over a decade ago (just $2.8 billion in 2009), underfunded liabilities continue to grow. By 2045, the projected contribution will be $19.6 billion according to a March report described by Bloomberg.

Compounding the problem is 2016 loophole to a 2015 state supreme court ruling which required the state to step up its contribution if the assumed rate of return was lowered. Lawmakers instated so-called “smoothing,” which allowed the state to phase in hundreds of millions of dollars instead of contributing the funds all at once. 

Sinkhole action

The longer Illinois avoids addressing its pension crisis, the closer the state gets to having to impose overly burdensome taxes – as well as credit downgrades, suspension of pension payments, and even bond defaults according to Richard Ciccarone, president of Merrit Research Services. 

Everyone wants to find a “silver bullet,” said Illinois Representative Robert Martwick, chair of the personnel and pensions committee. But he’s exploring any way to save money. He’s held hearings on everything from reducing the debt by selling more than $100 billion of pension-obligation bonds to consolidating downstate police and fire pension funds to save money. The state cannot grow its way out of this problem, Martwick said. –Bloomberg

“We’re in some really, really difficult financial times here,” Martwick said in a phone interview. “We’re still digging a hole for ourselves.”

Rauner supports the so-called “consideration model,” which in part allows state employees to choose lower, delayed cost-of-living adjustments in return for ensuring their future raises count toward pensions. Opponents argue this still violates the ban on lowering benefits. “We need more pressure on the General Assembly,” Rachel Bold, a spokeswoman for Rauner, said in an email.

Lawmakers attempted such a “consideration model” in 2013 – approving cuts to cost-of living adjustments and a higher retirement age for some workers – however the courts unanimously struck down the law, saying it violated the state’s constitutional ban on reducing retirement benefits.

“Crisis is not an excuse to abandon the rule of law,” the May 8, 2015 state supreme court decision reads.

Maybe the judges can make defaults illegal too? 

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Voters In Several States Set To Roll Back Marijuana Prohibition This Year

Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paulk Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Polling suggests approval of state ballot measures in upcoming elections this year that would cause the number of states with legal medical marijuana to grow by three and with legal recreational marijuana to grow by one.

Absent earlier legislative action in other states, recreational marijuana legalization approval in Michigan would make it the tenth state with such legalization, and medical marijuana legalization in Oklahoma and Utah, as well as Missouri where petition signatures for ballot measures have not yet been counted and verified, would bring the total number of states with legal medical marijuana up to 33. Tom Angell discusses in a Thursday Forbes article the polling indicating substantial majority support in these states for the respective forms of legalization the ballot measures include.

The movement of states to roll back marijuana prohibition, via ballot measures as well as bills approved by state legislatures and signed into law by governors, is a very important development for advancing respect for liberty in America.

First, it significantly limits the war on drugs in America. That war on drugs has been a basis for the expansion of government power at the expense of people’s liberty and safety. Restraining or ending the war on marijuana in a state does not eliminate the war on many other drugs or all the terrible consequences of the broader drug war. But, it does provide relief from a portion of the broader drug war’s harms.

Second, rolling back marijuana prohibition at the state level provides an example for how states can withdraw from participation in aspects of dug prohibition pursued by the United States government, while demonstrating the nonsense of the Chicken Little arguments against ending prohibition. When people see that marijuana legalization, both medical and recreational, makes things better, they are more likely to consider that similar good results would come from ending the entire drug war.

Third, states going their own ways regarding marijuana laws are exercising an important check on the power of the US government. The Constitution defines the US government as having limited and enumerated powers, and provides no power to the US government to pursue drug prohibition. Nonetheless, the US government has pursued prohibition. While states may be powerless, short of war against the US, to stop the US government’s drug war, they can withdraw from participating in all of the drug war or any part of it — such as the war on marijuana. Without the cooperation of state and local police and judiciaries, as well as other state and local government resources, the US government lacks much of its prior ability to pursue the drug war.

Fourth, while Congress, successive presidents, and the US court system seem to have little interest overall in reducing the reach of US government power, states have shown through restraining marijuana prohibition that they can provide a check on expansive US powers. Let’s hope that marijuana law changes in states will lead to state actions to withdraw cooperation with the US government in areas beyond the war on drugs as well, thus limiting the power of the US government and expanding respect for liberty.

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Police Find Wrecked $300,000 McLaren In The Nevada Desert, Abandoned By Owner

Nevada police stumbled upon a bit of a mystery in the desert last week, where a totaled McLaren 720S was found around 70 yards off a road near Lake Mead.

Here’s a new one:

The damage suggested that the 710 horsepower supercar with a top speed of 212 mph rolled over at least once before landing in a heap of scrap metal and carbon fiber.

Nevada Highway Patrol posted pictures of the wreckage, noting that the driver and passenger “escaped serious injury because they were wearing their seatbelts.” 

According to police, neither of the occupants was seriously injured. They weren’t there when the car was discovered, however. After searching the area, police learned that they had gotten themselves to a nearby hospital to be treated for scrapes and bruises. –Fox News

As Jalopnik notes, “It didn’t take long to figure that this was part of the Corsa Rally West, one of those supercar road rallies that are not races and are not about speeding, as the event joked on Instagram when it wound through Las Vegas:”

 

Hunting around for the identity of the owner(s), Jalopnik did their homework – noting that there were three McLaren 720S at the event; a red one, a purple one and a brown one from Florida – the most likely candidate. 

One Twitter user suggested that this McClaren 720S is the same one which was involved in a Palm Beach FL road rage incident in which a woman driving a 720S was apparently cut off by motorcyclists before an altercation broke out. 

A description of the incident on YouTube reads: 

“The women was cut off by the motorcycles, the bikers blocked the car in and when the driver stepped out to talk to them she forgot to engage the parking brake causing the vehicle to roll into the bike in front. The bikers proceeded to damage the vehicle by punching and kicking it. One biker even swung at the driver which is why she got back into the vehicle left the scene and called the police from a safer location. I talk about the situation that occurred down in Florida with the bikers and the mclaren 720s the the real question is whose at fault who antagonized the situation to escalate to what occurred some say the 720s was the first one to escalate the situation others say the bikers started this bazaar thing to happen so what do you guys think about this altercation between the 720S and these bikers.”

And now, assuming it’s the same car, this poor McLaren sits in a heap in a Nevada scrapyard.

Bonus: Here’s a McLaren 720S being properly driven, and an in depth review by Drivetribe:

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The Trump-volution Explained In 4 Macro Charts

Authored by Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev via True Economics blog,

The current growth cycle has been the second longest on record:

Source: FactSet

But it has been much shallower than the previous cycles:

“real GDP growth in the current expansion lags the other three expansions – by a lot. As of the first quarter of 2018, real GDP has expanded by 21% since the beginning of the current expansion; this is far lower than the 36% compound growth we saw at this point in the 1991‑2001 expansion. The chart also shows that the growth path for the longest expansions has continued to shift lower over time; the 1961‑1969 expansion saw real GDP grow by 52% by the end of its ninth year, while the economy had grown by just 38% by the end of year eight of the 1982‑1990 expansion.”

Source: FactSet

And here’s a summary of why loading risks of recession onto households is not such a great idea:

“Real consumption has grown by 23% since the summer of 2009, compared to growth rates of 41% and 50% at the same point in the expansions of 1991‑2001 and 1961‑1969, respectively. The reluctance of consumers to spend in this expansion is not surprising when you consider how much of the brunt of the last recession was borne by this group.”

Households’ net worth collapse in the GFC has been more dramatic and the recovery from the crisis has been less pronounced than in the previous cycles:

Source: FactSet

Hey, you hear some say, but the recovery this time around has been ‘historic’ in terms of jobs creation. Right? Well, it has been historic… as in historically low:

Source: FactSet

So, despite the length of the recovery cycle, the current state of the economy hardly warrants elevated levels of optimism. The recovery from the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession has been unimpressively sluggish, and the burden of the crises has been carried on the shoulders of ordinary households.

Any wonder we have so many ‘deplorables’ ready to vote populist?

As we noted in our recent paper, the rise of populism has been a logical corollary to (1) the general trends toward secular stagnation in the economy since the mid-1990s, and (2) the impact of the twin 2008-2010 crises on households.

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