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Who Are America’s Millionaires?

June 15, 2012

There is a serious ongoing political debate over the tax rates paid by millionaires. Some say the tax rates paid by wealthy Americans are not progressive enough while others argue that the top rate should be lowered while overhauling the tax code. Neither side of this debate, however, has made any attempt to provide a basic profile of who these taxpayers are. How old are they? What is their marital status? What is their education level? What are their sources of income? In other words, put a demographic face on millionaire taxpayers.[1]According to the latest data from the IRS for 2010, there were roughly 268,000 tax returns reporting more than $1 million in adjusted gross income (AGI), a slight increase above 2009 levels. As Chart 1 indicates, however, 2009 had the fewest number of millionaire returns since 2004. Indeed, there were 40 percent fewer millionaire tax returns filed in 2009 than were filed in 2007.

When we look beyond these sterile financial statistics we learn that these taxpayers are typically married (and most of them are two-earner couples), they are highly educated, many are business owners, and nearly half are over the age of 55.

Chart 1

And while the political discourse frequently treats millionaires as monolithic, the data indicates that millionaire status appears to be fleeting or episodic. People rarely report million-dollar incomes consistently year after year because many of them become “millionaires” as the result of a one-time event such as the sale of a business or stock. Thus, it is likely that the taxpayers who reported $1 million or more in income in 2009 are not the same people who filed million-dollar returns in previous years.

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Real earnings of full-time, full-year female workers, by race and ethnicity, 2000-2014

9467

U.S. Gets “Big F” on Health Report Card

By Dr. Mercola

In a health report card published in September, titled “F as in Fat,” the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health1 predict that half of all American adults will be obese by 2030.

The report also predicts obesity-related illness will raise national health care costs by $48 billion annually over the next two decades by adding another 7.9 million new cases of diabetes, 5 million cases of chronic heart disease and stroke, and 400,000 cancer cases – all courtesy of Americans’ ever-expanding waistlines.

That prediction is only slightly more dire than the American Journal of Preventive Medicine‘s projection that 42 percent of all adults will be obese by then.2 According to the authors,

“If obesity were to remain at 2010 levels, the combined savings in medical expenditures over the next two decades would be $549.5 billion.”

Weight gain since 1970

That’s no chump change, especially in light of the current struggles to keep Medicaid going, and the fact that medical expenses not covered by health insurance is one of the top reasons for personal bankruptcy in the US. Most families are already only one bad diagnosis away from a financial catastrophe and many are at risk of abject ruin should their health fail.

To me this is yet another compelling argument to stay as healthy as you can by following the recommendations on this site, many of which cost next to nothing. All you need to do is give your body the raw materials like healthy unprocessed food, sleep, exercise, appropriate amounts of sunshine to optimize your vitamin D levels, love, emotional balancing and staying away from toxins and poisons and you probably won’t need to set foot in a doctor’s office or hospital, outside of an unfortunate accident.

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Dollar’s Rise Papers Over Miners’ Woes

By 

Mining companies, slammed by tumbling commodities prices, have in recent days vowed not to cut production, saying the stronger dollar is cushioning the blow of falling markets.

Companies ranging from Australian miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto to smaller firms like South Africa’s Lonmin PLC are benefiting from the stronger greenback because they receive dollars for the gold, copper and iron ore they dig up, but pay for labor and many other costs using local currencies. When the dollar rallies, revenue generated by metals sales stretch further in covering expenses.

MI-CH828_MINING_16U_20150216170309

The dollar’s rise is reverberating across the global economy, dividing the corporate world into winners and losers along geographic lines and reshaping the next phase of commodities prices. The greenback rose against virtually all currencies in 2014 and is off to a roaring start this year, as some central banks around the world, reaching for new ways to boost sluggish economic growth, take steps to devalue their currencies.

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On work hours in the US and Europe

It is no secret that Americans work more than Europeans – 30% more according to recent studies. Many economists point to higher taxes in Europe as a major cause. This column suggests that divorce rates also play a role, particularly for women’s labour supply.

 According to recent research, Americans work 30% more than Europeans (Prescott 2004 and Rogerson 2006). This was not the case in early 1970s when Western Europeans worked more than Americans. What accounts for the large differences between countries today? Our study finds that divorce rates and tax rates together on average explain 58% of the difference in terms of hours worked between the US and 17 European countries.

Our research starts by trying to uncover the determinants of cross-country differences in work hours through analysing the hours worked by different demographic subgroups (Chakraborty et al. 2012). We find that women are typically the largest contributors to the aggregate differences. European women work less than American women, irrespective of whether we look at single or married women, or women with and without children.

Cross-country variation in tax systems is one of the most popular proposed explanations for the observed discrepancy in work hours between the US and Europe. The basic intuition here is straightforward – higher labour income taxes reduce the incentives to work. However, for the 18 countries in our sample, we find that, while there is indeed a negative correlation between various measures of taxation and hours worked by men, the corresponding correlation for women is close to 0. Figure 1 below plots the correlation between male and female labour supply and the “average effective tax rate”, a measure that combines the average labour income tax and consumption tax in each country into a single tax rate.

Figure 1. Tax rates and labour supply by gender

At the same time, Figure 2 shows that we get the opposite result when looking at the relationship between divorce rates and work hours – we find a strong positive correlation between divorce rates and hours worked by women, whereas male hours and divorce rates are completely unrelated.

Figure 2. Divorce rate and labour supply by gender

While Figure 2 shows that female labour supply is correlated with divorce rates in a statistical sense, it does not answer the key question: Why would the likelihood of divorce affect the decision of females to work?

We believe this is because marriage provides an implicit social insurance since the spouses are able to share their income. However, if divorce rates are higher in a society, women have a higher incentive to obtain work experience in case they find themselves alone in the future. The reason the incentive is higher is because in our data, women happen to be the second earner in the household more often than men. European women anticipate not getting divorced as often and hence find less reason to insure themselves by working as much as American women.

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A classroom revolution

A classroom revolution

The Conservatives’ plans to change Britain’s deeply flawed education system may be the most interesting idea in this election

THE general election due in Britain on May 6th is not the one David Cameron was chosen to fight. The opposition Conservatives made him their leader in 2005 after a barnstorming speech delivered without notes to their annual conference. His pitch: that he could persuade the electorate to trust him with public services and offer tax cuts too, by “sharing the proceeds of growth”. It was a formula worthy of an earlier young, centrist, opposition politician: Tony Blair, who in 1997 led Labour to victory after 18 years of Conservative rule.

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Work Smart, Work Hard but don’t work Long!!!

 Get a life

BERTRAND RUSSELL, the English philosopher, was not a fan of work. In his 1932 essay, “In Praise of Idleness”, he reckoned that if society were better managed the average person would only need to work four hours a day. Such a small working day would “entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life.” The rest of the day could be devoted to the pursuit of science, painting and writing.

Russell thought that technological advancement could free people from toil. John Maynard Keynes mooted a similar idea in a 1930 essay, “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren”, in which he reckoned people might need work no more than 15 hours per week by 2030. But over 80 years after these speculations people seem to be working harder than ever. The Financial Times reports today that Workaholics Anonymous groups are taking off. Over the summer Bank of America faced intense criticism after a Stakhanovite intern died.

But data from the OECD, a club of rich countries, tell a more positive story. For the countries for which data are available the vast majority of people work fewer hours than they did in 1990:

And it seems that more productive—and, consequently, better-paid—workers put in less time at the office. The graph below shows the relationship between productivity (GDP per hour worked) and annual working hours:

The Greeks are some of the most hardworking in the OECD, putting in over 2,000 hours a year on average. Germans, on the other hand, are comparative slackers, working about 1,400 hours each year. But German productivity is about 70% higher.

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Syllabi FINA-5320, FINA-1307, and FINA-4315

Syllabi Spring 2015 Dr. Friday for Finance Classes are available !

 

Managerial Finance 5320-W01 Professor H. Swint Friday

International Finance 4315 Professor H. Swint Friday

Personal Finance 1307 Professor H. Swint Friday

TAMU-CC Academic Calendar

December 24-January 2
Winter Break (CLOSED)
January 19
Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday (CLOSED)
January 21
Classes begin
January 28
Last day to late register or add a class
March 16-20
Spring Break

  • Classes will not meet March 16-20.
  • The campus will be closed March 19-20.
April 10
Last day to drop a class
May 4
Last day to withdraw from the University
May 5
Last day of classes
Last day to apply for Spring (May) 2015 graduation
May 6
Reading Day
May 7-8,
May 11-13
Final examinations
May 14-15
Grading days
May 16
Spring Commencement
May 18
Deadline for faculty to submit spring grades
May 22
Faculty End Date

* Some courses will follow a different schedule. Please see the class schedule for information on when particular courses are offered.

NOTE: Dates of holidays are tentative, pending approval by The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents. For the latest information on dates and deadlines, please consult the appropriate class schedule.

Payback time

Multinationals will face rising labour costs

In 2015 the chief executives of big multinationals will worry a lot about pay: not their own, but that of their toiling staff. Rising labour costs will squeeze profit margins, which are at peak levels. Bosses will have to decide whether to resist or accommodate this pressure. Plenty, in the end, will raise their workers’ pay.

At first glance this may seem far-fetched. Since the 1990s Western firms have managed to restrain wages at home and boost efficiency. The share of value added by American non-financial firms that is spent on pay is 58%, its lowest since records began in 1929. Production has also been shifted overseas. American multinationals now have a third of their staff abroad. Per dollar of sales they are paid 40% less than their American colleagues. European firms are even more international.

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The headwinds return

Source: The Economist
Ten years ago, developing economies were catching up with developed ones remarkably quickly. It was an aberration
Sep 13th 2014 | From the print edition

NOWHERE are the consequences of different rates of growth clearer than on a trip up the Pearl River Delta in southern China. At the river’s mouth sits Hong Kong, a city in which average living standards exceed those in most rich European countries. Travel farther north and you pass the container ports of Shenzhen, behind which new skyscrapers tower over a sprawling melange of housing and factories. Since its establishment as a special economic zone in 1980, Shenzhen’s economy has grown at a frenetic pace, and incomes there are now just over half of those in Hong Kong, which is similar to what you would see in southern and central Europe.

 

Farther north and west sits Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, with its newly constructed motorways and tower blocks among the rice paddies. Average incomes in Guangdong are just a quarter of those in Hong Kong, equivalent to Algeria or Costa Rica. Finally, toward the western edge of the watershed, the tributaries reach across Guangxi into Yunnan—provinces where the people have yet to get into the flow of China’s voyage of development. Incomes there are but a tenth of those in Hong Kong, on a par with those in Angola or the Republic of the Congo.

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Syllabuses are Available

Please check out the syllabus for classes you registered!!

 

Fall 2014 FINA 5320 Syllabus

Fall 2014 FINA 4315 Syllabus

Fall 2014 FINA 5340 Syllabus

Cell phone versus accident statistics

By Swint Friday

Cell phone versus accident stats_Page_2
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Spring 2014 Syllabus

Syllabus Spring 2014 are now available for viewing.

Instructor: H. Swint Friday

FINA-1307_W01 ( Personal Finance– 100% Online Course)

(Please note that this course does NOT require the Connect access code)

FINA-3331_001   (Investments)

FINA-4315_001   (International Finance)

Click on here to see book materials

For Syllabus Spring 2014 (All Courses at TAMUCC), Please click TAMUCC-Syllabus Spring 2014.

(Please check for current edition if available).

Fall 2013 Final Exam Schedule

Final examination schedule for courses that begin/meet regularly at the following times: (more…)

What’s Your Financial IQ?

Take the Challenge every day, and complete all questions by November 20, 2013.

Each time you play, you are entered for a chance to win one of three tablet computers.

The more days you play – the better your chance of winning!

Welcome to the Texas A&M University System Quiz!  (Click on the link to complete the IQ quiz)