No Work Anymore

This will be a different day. For the first time in ages, I won't be going to work this afternoon.  Instead, after I have breakfast with the girls, I will pick up my sweeper at Liebert Brothers and clean tomorrow. Bob and I will go to Joplin today to celebrate that I don't have to go to work. I will miss the money but  having a life again will be better. I will just have to be careful. We will eat at Olive Garden for lunch.  Then we will walk the mall and look around.

Tomorrow, it is supposed to cool off here.  I will clean house then.

Now Missy is ready to go outside. I will grab a sweater and take her out.

More later....

Well, that was short lived.  She stayed out perhaps ten minutes before wanting back in.  It is chilly out there. Maybe that's the thing she does not like.

Tomorrow I will fix stew for lunch. Stew is always a good lunch for cool weather. Tomorrow afternoon I will need to bake cookies again too.  Marilyn gave all of us some snicker doodles at lunch yesterday so I still have those. I will probably make some more sugar cookies. They are always good with fruit.

Saturday I will meet Myra for lunch in Bartlesville. We set that up before I decided to retire from my SER job. I always enjoy visiting with Myra.

More later...

Bob and I drove over to Olive Garden and ate soup and salad and then went to TJ Maxx and he did some shopping. I bought some Keurig coffees at a good price.  Then we came back home after walking in the mall.  I won't know how to act when I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

I saw on the news this evening that we Social Security recipients will not get COLA this year because there has not been enough of a raise in the cost of living this year. I wish they would tell that to the cable company, the electric company and the grocery stores.   Especially tell that to my landlady who raised the rent $25 this year and also cancelled the business cable that cost us an additional $38.00 a month.


Here are the top 10 examples of corporate welfare and welfare for the rich. There are actually thousands of tax breaks and subsidies for the rich and corporations provided by federal, state and local governments, but these 10 will give you all a taste.

1. State and local subsidies to corporations: An excellent a New York Times study by Louise Story calculated that state and local government provide at least $80 billion in subsidies to corporations. Over 48 big corporations received over $100 million each. GM was the biggest, at a total of $1.7 billion extracted from 16 different states, but Shell, Ford and Chrysler all received over $1 billion each. Amazon, Microsoft, Prudential, Boeing and casino companies in Colorado and New Jersey received well over $200 million each.

2. Direct federal subsidies to corporations: The Cato Institute estimates  that federal subsidies to corporations cost taxpayers almost $100 billion every year.

3. Federal tax breaks for corporations: The tax code gives corporations special tax breaks that have reduced what is supposed to be a 35-percent tax rate to an actual tax rate of 13 percent, saving these corporations an additional $200 billion annually, according to the US Accountability Department.

4. Federal tax breaks for wealthy hedge fund managers: Special tax breaks for hedge fund managers allow them to pay only a 15-percent rate while the people they earned the money for usually pay a 35-percent rate. This is the break where the multimillionaire manager pays less of a percentage in taxes than her secretary. The National Priorities Project estimates this costs taxpayers $83 billion annually, and 68 percent of those who receive this special tax break earn more than $462,500 per year (the top 1 percent of earners).

5. Subsidies to the fast food industry: research by the University of Illinois and the university at Berkley documents that taxpayers pay about $243 billion each year in indirect subsidies to the fast food industry because they pay wages so low that taxpayers must put up $243 billion to pay for public benefits for their workers.

6. Mortgage deduction: The home mortgage deduction, which costs taxpayers $70 billion per year, is a huge subsidy to the real estate, banking and construction industries. The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that 77 percent of the benefit goes to homeowners with incomes over $100,000 per year.

7. The billions above do not even count the government bailout of Wall Street, while all parties have done their utmost to tell the public that they did not need it, that they paid it back, or that it was a great investment. The Atlantic Monthly estimates that $7.6 trillion was made available by the Federal Reserve to banks, financial firms and investors. The Cato Institute estimates (using government figures) the final costs at $32 to $68 billion, not including the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which alone cost more than $180 billion.

8. Each major piece of legislation contains new welfare for the rich and corporations. The Boston Globe anayzed the emergency tax legislation passed by Congress in early 2013 and found it contained 43 business and energy tax breaks, together worth $67 billion.

9. Huge corporations that engage in criminal or other wrongful activities protect their leaders from being prosecuted by paying huge fees or fines to the government. You and I would be prosecuted. These corporations protect their bosses by paying off the government. For example, Reuters reported that JPMorgan Chase, which made a preliminary $13-billion mortgage settlement with the U.S. government, is allowed to write off a majority of the deal as tax deductible, saving the corporation $4 billion.

10. There are thousands of smaller special breaks for corporations and businesses out there. There is a special subsidy for corporate jets , which cost taxpayers $3 billion a year. The tax deduction for second homes costs $8 billion a year. Fifty billionaires received tax payer funded farm subsidies in the past 20 years.
If you want to look at the welfare for the rich and corporations, start with the federal Internal Revenue Code.

That is the King James Bible of welfare for the rich and corporations. Special breaks in the tax code are the reason that there are thousands of lobbyists in the halls of Congress, hundreds of lobbyists around each state legislature and tens of thousands of tax lawyers all over the country.