You Can't Silence Us

TANSTAAFL

The story is titled Denmark’s generous child care and parental leave policies erase 80% of the ‘motherhood penalty’ for working moms. The story begins with this premise: motherhood tends to depress women’s wages, something social scientists call the “motherhood penalty.”

Then it goes on to point out Denmark policies intended to help mothers stay full time employed.

  • subsidized child care is available for all children from 6 months of age until they can attend elementary school. Parents pay no more than 25% of its cost.
  • payments made to parents of children under 18. These benefits are sometimes called a “child allowance.”
  • housing allowances, that are available to all Danes, but are more generous for parents with children living at home.
  • In the year they first gave birth to or adopted a child, women received over $7,000 more from the government than if they had remained childless. 
  • the Danish government offset about 80% of the motherhood earnings penalty for the women we studied. While mothers lost about $120,000 in earnings compared with childless women over the two decades after becoming a mother, they gained about $100,000 in government benefits, so their total income loss was only about $20,000.

What the article is saying is every woman who has a child receives $10,000 a year, simply because they had a child. Where does that money come from?

Denmark has one of the highest personal income tax burdens in the world. It includes:

  • State income tax
  • Municipal income tax
  • Labor market contribution (AM-bidrag) – an 8% tax on gross income
  • Optional church tax (if a member of the Church of Denmark)

Altogether, income-related taxes make up the largest share of total government revenue, with VAT taxes being the second largest share.

The median worker in Denmark makes about $89,000 per year, before taxes. Here is what happens to that:

  • $33,000 is taken in payroll taxes
  • an average of $3500 per year in VAT tax
  • $4500 in a mandatory pension payroll deduction
  • there are also other taxes for Capital gains, electricity, food, alcohol, etc. These other taxes average another $2000 per year.

In all, taxes take about 53% of the median Dane’s income. At any given time, roughly 30–35% of Denmark’s population receives some form of public transfer payment. That includes:

  • Early retirement programs
  • State pensions (old-age pension)
  • Disability benefits
  • Unemployment benefits
  • Student grants (SU)
  • Social assistance

With all of that, among working-age adults (roughly ages 18–64):

  • About 15–20% receive some form of income transfer in a given year.
  • A smaller share (often under 5–7%) receive long-term social assistance.

Another advantage Denmark has, is they have a different racial makeup.

If translated loosely into U.S. census-style categories:

  • ~80–85% White
  • ~5–8% Middle Eastern/North African
  • ~3–5% Asian
  • ~2–3% African

Now compare that to the US: In the US, about 45% of citizens are receiving government payouts, but in Denmark, college and healthcare are free of charge to the user.

So how does Denmark afford it? No one is excluded from income taxes. In the US, more than half of the country doesn’t pay income taxes.

Now imagine the howling if the US announced “free health care” and college, but changed to a simpler, no deduction, everyone pays income tax of more than 50%, up from the US average of about 30%. Yeah.

People who have read this post: 217
By Divemedic, ago

Red Flagged

I know this happened a couple of months ago, but I just learned of it. A man in Stuart, Florida was attending the town’s Christmas parade when police noticed he was wearing what turned out to be Level IV body armor. He was detained and it turned out he was also carrying a dagger and a pistol.

Local residents freaked out, saying that he must have been up to no good, since he was carrying those items and was in the same general area as a sitting congressman.

The cops held him for hours before releasing him without charges. That doesn’t matter to the cops, they kept his vest, knife, and gun, and are going to use a risk protection order to strip him of his rights. Keep in mind, he wasn’t breaking any laws.

This is why I have been, and remain, opposed to so-called “red flag” laws.

People who have read this post: 465
By Divemedic, ago

Not Surprising

Kim is a bit shocked that Rand Paul doesn’t like ICE. That isn’t anything new, since the Pauls are staunch libertarians, and are therefore opposed to borders and border enforcement. Read the LP platform yourself:

We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders.

Yet another reason why I can’t be a libertarian. You can’t get rid of borders until you get rid of government giveaways. An open border cannot coexist with a welfare state. It’s math.

People who have read this post: 214
By Divemedic, ago

Clearing Some Tabs

The headline reads “Judges may have found a way to bypass 5th Circuit ruling upholding Trump’s mass detention policy” Since when are judges supposed to be finding ways to circumvent superior courts? This proves to me that our court system is just as partisan as the rest of the nation, and there is no justice to be found in the courts.

Stolen military explosives found in The Villages neighborhood, deputies say; residents evacuated. I know what this is, and it isn’t as nefarious as it seems. It happened once to me, back when I was working for the fire department. An old woman came to the fire station with an ammo can, told me that her Korean war veteran husband had passed away, and she didn’t know what to do with some of his old military stuff. The ammo can contained several hand grenades. I’m guessing that is what happened here.

Mark Zuckerberg becomes latest California billionaire to relocate to Florida amid tax concerns. A tale that is told thousands of times every day in Florida- rich liberals move here from other places because they don’t like the tax climate, but they continue to vote for the same bullshit that caused them to flee their old home states. Sooner or later, it means we become a liberal shit hole. Liberals are like locusts- they enter an area, devour everything of value, then move on to other fertile fields.

Teachers say ICE agents are ‘not the only ones with guns’ Remember when the plan to prevent school shootings from many of us was to arm teachers? Yeah the pushback from teachers was that teachers need to concentrate on teaching, not engaging shooters. I guess the same doesn’t apply when confronting ICE agents.
Microsoft announces that they are trying to eliminate personal computers in favor of subscription based cloud computing. You will own nothing and be happy about it, or else.

Hospital evacuated after 8-inch WWI artillery shell discovered in patient’s butt. We talked about this at the hospital. The funniest comment I heard was when one nurse said “Eight inches in diameter? Yeah, that isn’t the first time something was shoved in there.”

Now the left is realizing footage from ICE body cameras can be used against them, so they want agents to be forced to wear them, but want restrictions on them, so they can only be used against ICE, but not against anyone else.

People who have read this post: 340
By Divemedic, ago

Ten Seconds Later

He becomes a “lessons learned” chapter in someone’s concealed carry class.

People who have read this post: 701
By Divemedic, ago

Lending

I want you to look at this post, then I will explain my position (as if you don’t already know)

I once tried peer to peer lending as one of the lenders. I wanted to see if it worked or not. I ‘invested’ $1000 in Prosper. Here is how I remember it working: a person applies for a loan. The application, along with the person’s pertinent financial information (Credit score, income, etc.) is listed. You as an investor can then offer to fund some of the loan. Once the loan is fully funded, the lenders offering the lowest interest rates are the ones who fund the loan. At the end of the bidding period, those people are the ones who ultimately fund the loan. All loans are for 36 months and are unsecured. Example:

Person wants to borrow $3,000.

Person A agrees to loan $1000 at 18 percent. Person B $2000 at 18 percent. Now that the loan is fully funded, others can come in and offer to fund it at lower interest. Person C agrees to lend $1500 at 16 percent, then Person D agrees to $2000 at 14%. In the end, the loan funds at 13.4%, with a monthly payment of $101.66. The total of all 36 payments for that $3000 loan is $3,659.79.

I decided to put $1000 into my account to see what would happen. (My first loan was for $50. I was repaid $35 of it) so I added more funds, and I loaned that money out to other people. The interest rates were all sky high, 14 percent or higher, and I didn’t choose a single person with bad credit. All had credit scores that were higher than 650. Two of the three of them had defaulted before the end of the first year. I only got back about $140 of the thousand I had invested.

That was 13 years ago. I have learned a lot about money, business, and finance since then. Now I know why they are charged so much.

Why? Because each and every one of those people had already tried to get a loan through a conventional process, and couldn’t. The reason was that they are all high risk borrowers. If a given pool of people has a 10% risk of defaulting on a loan, a lender has to charge enough interest to cover the cost of servicing the loan, plus enough to cover those who will default. The higher the chances are of default, the higher the interest rates need to be in order to make the loan financially feasible. If you have a 10% chance of defaulting, then the lender needs to charge that 10% to compensate for risk, another percent or two to cover office and other administrative expenses, and some for profit. You are now staring at 14 or even 16 percent.

Make charging interest illegal, then loaning someone money without interest means they might as well set it on fire. All lending will simply stop. I’ve posted on this enough times, that if you still don’t understand it, it’s because you are either obtuse or being deliberately contrary.

There are no opinions on this- it’s a mathematical fact. It’s just how money works.

People who have read this post: 319
By Divemedic, ago

I Understand

San Francisco schools are closed today because their teachers are on strike. The largest part of their demand is access to the same healthcare benefits enjoyed by their illegal immigrant students.

The district announced that schools would be closed Tuesday and urged parents to check the district website “for learning, food, childcare, and district support resources.

Fully half of all San Francisco students are illegals, or the anchor babies of illegal immigrant parents. Illegal immigrant households get free healthcare. I understand why teachers feel that it is unfair that they have to pay healthcare costs when their students don’t. You know what?

I also don’t care.

The teachers voted for this. Elections have consequences.

People who have read this post: 302
By Divemedic, ago

Lies and Misrepresentations

I have seen a meme on social media, something about “Arguing with a leftist largely consists of them deliberately pretending to not understand something that is obvious, and then arguing against that misstated position.” What you are describing is a logical fallacy called a strawman argument. We see it everywhere. I don’t think its entirely ignorance, I think in many cases the leftist you are arguing with knows they are being disingenuous, but they are hoping others are too stupid to know it.

A leftist blog complains about a gun dealer who has lost his FFL, stopped selling actual firearms, and pivots to selling parts and accessories for firearms. One of the major misstatements is this:

The M16 bolt carrier group is the part worth flagging. It’s legal to own and common in semi-auto builds. But it’s also a prerequisite for converting an AR-15 to full-automatic because the geometry of a standard AR-15 carrier won’t work with an auto sear. 

Of course, they fail to mention that there are several parts required to convert an AR15 into full auto, and the full auto BCG is only one of them. The one the ATF has chosen to define as the key component of converting an AR15 to a machine gun is the auto sear. If an FA BCG is legal to own, then why wouldn’t the store be able to sell them?

The blog article then meanders off topic into the non sequitur of COVID death rates in the same county where the gun dealer is located:

People there apparently were so anti-life, they maintained the highest death rate from COVID-19 compared to any other county in the nation: One death out of every 132 people.

before pivoting into yet another accusation that this is because they are all racist there because something racist once happened there:

Speaking of heavily armed white supremacists being anti-life, Mann today still lives in an area known for the 1989 naming of “noose road“, near a sundown town of many lynchings. It was said in Hays, Kansas that “Blacks were not allowed to stay overnight”, keeping alive a Jim Crow “legacy that kind of hung over the town going back to the lynching.”

Then goes on to babble about another unrelated meandering:

On the same day Custombilt filed for bankruptcy, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against distribution of 3D-printable ghost gun files and machine gun conversion devices. One state is suing over digital blueprints. Another is goosing a revoked dealer to liquidate physical machine gun components from a bankruptcy warehouse into unknown “noose” hands, no questions asked.

Showing that the left doesn’t REALLY support the First Amendment, or they would realize publishing plans is protected speech. Still, that last quote is about as coherent as Joe Biden rambling about Corn Pop and children braiding his leg hair. (That’s how you use a non sequitur for maximum effect.)

People who have read this post: 398
By Divemedic, ago