[an]

Although I didn’t try to freeze my kids’ credit, I know that you can only freeze for 7 years if you have a police report for an identity theft. Else, they’ll only freeze it for a few months or a couple of years (don’t remember which). Then, you’d have to pay them (each credit bureau have a different price) to continue to have them frozen. In another word, it’s not easy to get it frozen and it’s even harder and more expensive to keep it frozen. This is one of the few areas where I wish the government would take a more active role. It’s extremely horrible to have your identity stolen and it’s extremely stressful and hard to get it go away.

[an]

I installed one. It has a temp gauge and only turn on when it reach a certain temp and turn it off when it gets cool enough. It sits above my kid’s bedroom. You can’t hear it from any other room, but in his room, you’ll hear a hum. It’s not that bad, IMHO. But maybe I’m just more tolerant of noise. It’s only very noticeable in the middle of the night but most of the days, it turns off a couple of hours after the sun goes down, since it’ll be cool enough. Except for the last few weeks when it’s hot all the time. You can install it above a room that are least used if you can. I bought mine at Home Depot. Installation was super easy.

WRT whether it works or not, I think it lower the temp in our up stairs by a at least a few degrees. It used to be very hot during the summer up stairs, but now, it’s just hot.

[an]

[quote=flu]Holy shit AN, would you stop posting useless real estate drivel on piggington and post some more relevant topics on piggington these days, like

1)Who should pay their fair share on taxes
2)Obama/Biden versus Romney/Ryan
3)Ryan
4)Pensions

Come one AN, get with the program. Heavens forbid people might actually find your info useful….[/quote]Screw the program, I’ll only post about RE from now on. With those 3 properties, 2 down, 1 to go. I was low by $3k on the first one and high by $5k on the second one. The 3rd one should close soon. We’ll see how close I’ll be there.

The condo inventory stick suck really bad in MM. We never saw the spring inventory bounce nor did we see the summer inventory bounce. Will we see inventory decline in the Fall and Winter? I feel sorry for buyers right now. Even SFR supply is horrible, though not as bad as condo supply.

[an]

[quote=AN][quote=AN][quote=sdrealtor][quote=AN]Talking about jobs in MM, looks like good time is here again: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/11/shire-add-several-hundred-biotech-jobs/?sciquest

Here’s another one, a block away: http://www.sdlookup.com/MLS-120028338-7815_Dancy_Rd_San_Diego_CA_92126. Went pending after a few days with multiple offers. Take a look at the interior. That’s straight out of the 80s. Take a look at the asking price too, that’s $50k more than the Feller Cv house. I guess that’s the difference between short sale and equity sale.[/quote]

Its a range price on Dancy from 450 to 500K. My guess would be closer to 450K but we will have to see. Shouldnt be much of a difference on final sales prices.[/quote]
Here’s another one, a few blocks away: http://www.sdlookup.com/MLS-120032791-10119_Parkdale_Ave_San_Diego_CA_92126. Exact same floor plan. Asking $425-450k and went pending after 2 weeks. The interior is also straight out of the 80s. My guess is, the Dancy one will close around $480k, the Feller and Parkdale ones will close around $450k.[/quote]
Dancy one just closed at $483k.[/quote]
Feller Cove just closed at $445k.

[an]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=AN]Anyways, like I told dumbrenter earlier, my anecdotal examples isn’t meant to prove that there’s a causation between increasing taxes and reducing wage, which would lead to decreasing demand and GDP. Maybe the majority of the businesses don’t do this. I don’t have data to prove one way or another. However, it’s meant to disprove SK’s statement that higher marginal tax is stimulative. There’s no data on the mass scale to prove that and I gave anecdotal example that disprove it. The data he did provide show no real clear correlation much less causation of increasing top rate is stimulative.[/quote]

Just to be clear, that wasn’t what I said. What I said was that higher top rates (>50%) on high income is stimulative for business. It doesn’t apply in those lower income brackets where your friend’s business fits. We’re talking about taxable income level of $250K. Thats total net business income of probably at least $280K a year, often more than $300K a year. That’s rarely the kind of business where the spouse will come in and pick up a few more work hours so that they can make ends meet.[/quote]
I still haven’t seen convincing data to prove this as well. The only data you’ve provided actually disprove your statement that top rate >50% on high income is stimulative for business (I assume when you gave your data, you’re trying to say increase GDP = stimulative). I’ll say it again, with your data, when we have 37.5-42.4% top marginal rate, we have higher GDP growth than when it was 42.5-62.4%. So, even if you disregard my anecdotal example, your data alone disproves your statement.

FYI, their business is not their only sources of income. Good cash flowing investment properties is another. So, yes, I have no doubt their combined income is over $250k. The business itself might not be over $250k net profit (I don’t know for sure).

[an]

[quote=CA renter][quote=SK in CV]The bolded part. If they’re already running at the bare miniumum, how can they cut if tax rates go up? I’m guessing this example really doesn’t apply since this business isn’t making anywhere near $250K a year.

AN, I spent the first 20+ years of my career with small business consulting being a big part of my practice. I worked with them on increasing profits, cost cutting, and saving taxes. Never once was I involved in a decision making process where there was such a thing as a “target profit”, where the owner would consider cutting employees in order to hit that target. We did operational projections and budgets, and taxes were a by-product, not a driver until after the projections were complete.[/quote]

Ditto what SK said. I’ve also worked for a number of small and medium-sized businesses. Like SK, I have never heard anyone say that they had a “target profit.” Additionally, nobody ever said they were going to shrink the business/shrink capacity because of taxes.[/quote]
SK, I already said before how they would cut if tax rates goes up. Get the other spouse who currently work part time to work there full time. So, net family take home stays the same to support their current life style. At the same time, they’ll cut their employee hour some more or eliminate that position all together. The type of small business I’m talking about probably wouldn’t use your service, so you probably never see their thought process.

CAR, I’ve also worked for small, medium, large businesses. I’ve seen my pay freeze and cut, bonuses freeze. It’s only common sense that as a boss, you’ll squeeze your employees first before you take a hit on your take home pay. Taxes directly affect their take home pay. How much it affect their decision will depend on how close to the edge of that decision they are before the tax increase.

Anyways, like I told dumbrenter earlier, my anecdotal examples isn’t meant to prove that there’s a causation between increasing taxes and reducing wage, which would lead to decreasing demand and GDP. Maybe the majority of the businesses don’t do this. I don’t have data to prove one way or another. However, it’s meant to disprove SK’s statement that higher marginal tax is stimulative. There’s no data on the mass scale to prove that and I gave anecdotal example that disprove it. The data he did provide show no real clear correlation much less causation of increasing top rate is stimulative.

[an]

[quote=dumbrenter]AN, like I told you, I was just speculating. You once again state that it is decreased demand that is forcing them to cut their employee’s time. Which makes sense. But then you make an extrapolation from there to include a causation of taxes which is incorrect. As net income goes down, the tax liability goes down too….reduction of employee’s time is because the employee’s time is not translating to increased top line. Again, not related to taxes.
On a convoluted note, increasing employee’s compensation will actually decrease the tax liability (due to compensation being a deductible expense), but again, no sane person would do it.

I wish your business friends the best, and agree with you that everything gets cut before the take home living expenses; just differ about the cause.[/quote]
I said demand was the cause before. The last year or so, it has been pretty flat. I’m saying, if it stays flat and you increase their expense through taxes, I don’t see why they wouldn’t cut their employee hours some more or cut their wage if they’re not already at minimum wage. It only make sense and you agree that everyone will cut everything else first before they’ll cut their living expenses. Increasing employee’s compensation to decrease tax liability is like saying paying $1 to get 30-40 cents back. That doesn’t make any sense and you agree that no sane person would do it.

I guess everything I’m saying is only extrapolation, since I have no data and I haven’t seen any data for the other arguments as well. We’ll never really what would happen until it happen. Like you and everyone else on here, I’m just guessing. There are SOOO many moving variables in the economy that I can’t say for certain changing one variable will directly affect another. Although, SK, is certain that raising top marginal tax is stimulative.

[an]

[quote=CA renter]That’s exactly it, dumbrenter. The notion that people won’t hire or expand because of higher taxes is pure BS, and there is no historical evidence to show that higher taxes cause businesses to shrink/not expand. If anything, in the presence of adequate demand, higher marginal tax rates can be somewhat stimulative, as discussed above.

The only reason people don’t hire/expand is because the demand isn’t there to justify it (or they like to keep things small just for personal reasons).[/quote]
Who’s saying anything about hiring right now. We’re talking about not reducing employee’s pay or hours. That’s totally different than hiring. You’re right that when business is expanding, they’ll absorb the higher taxes. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll do the same during a declining demand.

I still haven’t seen proof that higher marginal tax rates is stimulative. All I saw is, during period of growth, increasing taxes didn’t affect growth. Two totally different point and I’ve been trying to point out that correlation does not equal causation many times in this thread.

You’re right, the only reason people don’t hire/expand is because the demand isn’t there to justify it. So, income comes from demand, income – expense = net income. If income stay the same, if you increase expense through increase taxes, what make you think the business owner won’t decrease their other expense (worker’s hours/pay) to maintain the same net income?

[an]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=AN][quote=SK in CV]It’s the higher historical top tax rates (>50% marginal rate) that can be shown to have been stimulative, where tax savings actually provide a 50% or more subsidy for investment.[/quote]
Again, causation vs correlation.[/quote]

Absolutely. Both logical and high correlation over multiple periods.[/quote]
Again, you might claim that it’s correlating, but your original quoted statement is saying it’s the cause. Higher historical top tax rates cannot be showing to have been stimulative. If anything, one can say, during good economic growth, you can have high tax rates and it won’t affect growth. But the inverse cannot be assumed. If high rates are stimulative, then then why did we have negative GDP when rate was 90+%? Another example, when we have 37.5-42.4% top marginal rate, we have higher GDP growth than when it was 42.5-62.4%.

[an]

dumbrenter, to make it clear, my friends aren’t blaming anyone. You’re making an assumption and it’s completely wrong. I actually didn’t ask for their opinion. I just look at their actions over the last 4 years and extrapolate what would happen if their net income decrease further. When demand start decreasing a few years ago, they didn’t do anything, hoping their demand will come back. When it didn’t and it start to affect their net take home, they start to reduce their employee’s time. So, based on their action then, I would extrapolate that if their net income decrease due to higher taxes, they would decrease their employee’s time, so that their net take home would maintain at the same level. This is also common sense to me, because I would do the exactly the same thing. If you can offload the cost to someone else, you would. The employees will always get hit first before the employer. These businesses area already running at bare minimum and there’s no fat left to cut. These business owners have expenses to pay (life expenses), which they rather not cut. They can easily offset the increase taxes by cutting the cost of paying their employee and have the spouse who are currently working part time to work full time. Their net pay would maintain at similar level. This is also inline with what I was saying that during good times when demands are increasing, they would gladly take less growth due to higher taxes. However, during bad time, they will squeeze everyone else first before they squeeze themselves.

[an]

[quote=flu]UCGal,

You heard the the latest rumors on what Sanjay is up to? 🙂 If it turns out to be good, well it might be good.[/quote]
What’s Sanjay up to?

[an]

[quote=SK in CV]It’s the higher historical top tax rates (>50% marginal rate) that can be shown to have been stimulative, where tax savings actually provide a 50% or more subsidy for investment.[/quote]
Again, causation vs correlation.

[an]

[quote=CA renter]AN,

Think of it this way:

-You own a company and the tax rate goes up on taxable income over $250K.

-Your projected taxable income in 2012 is $300K.

-IF you had sufficient demand that you would really like to expand your capacity by hiring additional personnel and/or getting new equipment, etc. (all deductible expenses, subject to certain amortization rules on equipment), you could bring your taxable income under the $250K threshold, avoiding the higher rate on that income. I believe this is the stimulative effect (or effective subsidy) SK and Brian are referring to, as the tax saved on that $50K is essentially a subsidy for growing one’s business.

………

edit: It’s like when we hear peole claim that they will stop working so many hours, etc. in order to bring their taxable income under the $250K threshold; but instead of shrinking their business/gross income, they grow it.[/quote]
In a growing environment where demand is increasing, I agree with you that people will absorb the higher taxes because their net is increasing. However, in a flat to declining economy, I’m not so sure they would absorb the higher taxes. My guess is, they probably would reduce their cost (lower employee’s wage or lay them off). Employers will be the last one to eat the cost. I know a few mom and pop shop owners and they’ve been telling me business suck right now. So, increasing advertisement, etc. won’t help, since their clienteles don’t have the money to spend.

WRT your edit portion, again, same argument apply. There was an article on CNN awhile back that said more women are starting to decide to stay at home. Due to the fact that after taxes, daycare expense, etc. it’s not worth it for them to go to work. So, they stop working.

As I’ve stated before, if you slowly increase people’s taxes, they’ll probably take it and probably wouldn’t change their habit/work (kinda like boiling water with a frog inside). However, in this case, at a certain level, people will start to reevaluate. Everyone have a different tipping point.

It all comes down to how much you value money and how much you value time. Everyone have different value for these two. At some point, people will say, the time I’m wasting at work is not getting me the kind of net pay I want, so I rather spend that time doing something else.

[an]

Ouch!!! Shoulda got some puts.

[an]

[quote=SK in CV]No, and here’s why. The proposed changes (and the changes I’ve been discussing) are related to taxpayers with income over $250K a year. As we’ve discussed, this is a pretty decent income, and it allows for a nice, if not extravagant lifestyle. The further under that income level, the more likely most, if not all income will be spent and not saved. [/quote]Not true. As you’ve stated, you had plenty of saving while making well under $250k. I’m also making well under $250k and I have no problem saving.

[quote=SK in CV]As far as evidence for some of the things I’ve said, see the link below. The guys who write there are both academics and working economists. Some of it is pretty wonky, but they do some serious data crunching, with regression analyses (something I haven’t done for decades), that support their conclusions. Most of all, I like their stuff because they almost always show their work, and readily accept criticism.

http://www.angrybearblog.com/search?q=higher+tax+rates%5B/quote%5D
With the chart in this blog, it doesn’t really agree with the statement that increase top marginal tax rate and you have a stimulative effect. Unless I’m reading the chart wrong. 37.5-42.4% have higher GDP growth than 42.5-62.4%. The only ones that are higher is 62.5%-67.4% and 77.5%-92.4%. But like you said, causation vs correlation. Could it be that the GDP was growing for other reason and the top marginal tax rate doesn’t really affect GDP? I’m simply disputing the point that higher top marginal is stimulative. I’m sure, if you did this exact same study for over tax brackets, you probably see similar result. Would that mean that higher taxes on the lower tax brackets would be stimulative? So, let me go back to what I said before. You can’t look at one variable in a massive equation in isolation and say, look, variable A was x% and GDP grew, so if we change A to x%, we’ll have growth. That’s a folly argument since you’re ignoring the many other variables that attributes to the GDP growth.

[Author]

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