LIVING OFF DIVIDENDS & PASSIVE INCOME

Here’s an excellent video about an empty city in China that has been built using government funds. Ploughing billions of dollars in infrastructure and construction works theorectically improves the GDP but benefits no one (unless you count the companies that were awarded the contracts), and actually punishes tax-payers. But of course, the people reaping the rewards are not those being punished so there is no incentive to change the way things are.

The government bailout of poorly run companies (via direct investment and subsidizing of their products) also distorts the GDP. GDP numbers in the US without the Trillion dollar bailout would not look so rosy.

Despite all the talk of the economy being out of recession, 39 million people in are on food stamps. [source: USA Today] Thats 12.65% of the US population! And 6 million of that number have no other source of income. In what was once the world’s most prosperous nation, 2% of people would starve if the government didn’t send them food stamps.

Maybe they should start blogging to earn some online income. I see that LivingOffFoodStamps.com is still available!

• $5 Trillion In Sovereign Debt Issuance! I just finished reading John Mauldin's weekly newsletter. He has a very interesting graph that I'm reproducing below. This year there's an expected $5.3 Trillion dollars in new sovereign debt issuance!  He asks a great question - where is this money going to come from? Most of this money is......
• Too Rich To Save? According to a study by HSBC, 49% of respondents with at least $250,000 in income aren't saving more because they simply "want some spending money." In 28% of the cases for those who earn between $100,000 and $250,000, respondents say they do not save more because "something unforeseen always comes......
• Interesting Libertarian Rant Of The Week This is an interesting rant on the equality of paying taxes by newsletter editor Porter Stansberry: According to the federales themselves, the top 1% of wage earners in the United States earned more than $388,806 in 2006. There were 1.65 million citizens in this category. As a group, they paid......

• Unemployment Down Because of Government Data Manipulation? Mike "Mish" Shedlock does a daily blog commentary on the global economic situation, which is quite balanced and strongly recommended.  He is a skeptic and digs for motivations and the truth. Today's post has an excellent analysis on how, with the loss of 11,000 jobs in November, total unemployment......
• Planning Your Wealth Preservation Options for a Post-Election Economy The election will be over in few days.  The end of this interminable campaign has good and bad components.  The good is that we will no longer be subjected to the candidates' incessant misstatements of fact and making of promises that we know will be broken.  The bad is that......
• What's In The Economic Stimulus Package For You Other Than Cash? I get at least a few emails a week asking for more details about the economic stimulus package, so I figured I would go looking for a couple more examples of how it will be affecting you. I already wrote about the cash and paycheck aspects of the stimulus, but......

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