GOP Debate #3 – No Clear Winner

A GOP effort to avoid offering solutions to issues.

The debates are becoming somewhat boring. We have all heard the positions of the candidates. For the most part we know who wants to create a flat tax and who wants to protect Social Security. That made the moderator’s job more difficult.

The candidates were asked some questions that were obviously meant to start arguments among them. For the most part that strategy failed. Jeb Bush’s attacks on Marco Rubio were induced by the moderator. The attacks were fended off fairly well by Rubio.

The one significant continuing problem for me was the lack of answers to reasonable questions. The candidates all spoke about the lagging income of the middle class but not one offered even an outline of a solution. There were some who acknowledged the growing college student debt but not one had any solution.

Remarks about the Federal Reserve by Ted Cruze and Rand Paul might have rung a bell with the No-Nothings but seemed obtuse and irrelevant. Inserting politics into the management of our monetary system would likely result in endless Benghazi like hearings conducted by people who have an agenda beyond the management of the nation’s banking system. Somewhat bizarrely, Cruz also appeared to call for a return to the gold standard.

Ted Cruze was a master at avoiding answering the questions put to him. He attacked the moderators and pointedly guessed that none would be voting in the Republican primaries. When asked his view on the fact that women on average earn 77% of the pay of men for the same job he went on a spiel about helping the middle class.

I could not identify a winner of this event. Neither Donald Trump nor Ben Carson offered any impressive position or statement that would keep them in the lead in the polling. Jeb Bush, considered the early favorite of the establishment made no statement that pushed him ahead. Carly Fiorina’s idea of a three page tax code was a good sound bite, remember Herman Caine’s 2012 9-9-9 plan, but is obviously an unlikely outcome. The Herman Caine plan was 9 percent “individual flat tax,” a 9 percent “business flat tax,” and a 9 percent sales tax.

I do not anticipate anyone dropping out of the race as a consequence of this debate.

The Wealthy Paint a Rosy Picture

Who can we believe?

( Bloomberg) — March 12, 2015 / Household wealth in the U.S. increased from October through December by the most in a year as stock prices advanced to an all-time high at the end of 2014. Net worth for households and non-profit groups rose by $1.5 trillion in the fourth quarter 1.9 percent from the previous three months, to $82.9 trillion, the Federal Reserve said Thursday from Washington in its financial accounts report, previously known as the flow of funds survey.

A report like that would make you believe that Americans are all richer and feeling quite confident about the future. The rest of that Bloomberg article was just as upbeat. It proves how numbers can give a distorted view of the world. Those numbers were provided by the Federal Reserve.

Wait this really isn’t what it appears to be. USA Today offered this additional piece of information: But the wealth gains are flowing mainly to affluent Americans. Broad stock market averages have jumped more than 150% from their trough in the spring of 2009. But roughly 10% of households own about 80% of stocks.

The reality is that millions of families live paycheck to paycheck. The majority do not have significant savings for their retirement. The Median Value of Assets for Households in 2011 was $68,828.00. Married couples over 65 years had the highest wealth at a Median Value of $284,790.00. Take away the value of their home and you realize that many senior citizens are primarily relying on their Social Security income. The source for this data is the U.S. Census Bureau.

This data says two things to me. 1) You cannot rely on the reporting from just one publication for complete information. 2) There is a great economic divide in this nation.