Tag Archives: Perverse Incentives

French Study Investigates Danger Of Speed Limit Fixation

Posted on by

“In jurisdictions with automated speed enforcement, cruise control can save drivers from receiving a nasty surprise in the mail. A study released July 30 from the Vinci Autoroutes Foundation concluded that this reliance on cruise control can actually make driving more dangerous.  These findings are consistent with those of the late Paul Smith, founder of the Safe Speed road safety campaign, who calculated that each time a driver looked down to check his speedometer in a 200 yard speed camera zone — each glance takes about 1.1 seconds — he loses 13 percent of the time available to observe the road for hazards. The UK Department for Transport lists driver inattention as the cause of 25% of accidents.”

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/42/4212.asp

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Home Depot Sending 20,000 Part-Timers to Health Exchanges

Posted on by

“Home Depot Inc. (HD), the world’s largest home improvement retailer, plans to end medical coverage for about 20,000 part-time employees and direct them to government-sponsored exchanges scheduled to open next month as companies revamp benefits to fit the U.S. Affordable Care Act.  Employees with fewer than 30 hours a week will no longer be offered limited liability medical coverage, Stephen Holmes, a spokesman, said today by telephone. About 5 percent of Atlanta-based Home Depot’s 340,000 employees are enrolled in that plan.  United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS), Trader Joe’s Co. and other employers have been cutting benefits ahead of next month’s roll-out.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-19/home-depot-sending-20-000-part-timers-to-health-exchanges.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Private Probation Firm Illegally Extended Sentences, Judge Finds

Posted on by

“Last week, a Georgia county judge ruled that Sentinel Offender Service had illegally extended the sentence of Mantooth and potentially thousands of others who were required to pay the firm monthly probation fees, and was illegally ordering electronic monitoring for misdemeanor offenders — prohibited by state law — while charging probationers for their own monitoring.  Other named plaintiffs in the pair of cases were hauled off to jail and/or subjected to electronic monitoring for alleged probation violations six years after their probation had ended for minor offenses like possession of marijuana and no proof of insurance.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/24/2666401/private-proba/tion-firm-illegally-extended-sentences-judge-finds/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

End Civil Asset Forfeiture

Posted on by

“A recent New Yorker article has awakened many Americans to the scourge of civil asset forfeiture in which police can seize property without charging anyone with a crime and pocket the proceeds. Many police organizations call the proceeds of civil asset forfeiture a vital source of funding. Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, describes the practice and the best avenues for reform.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUxeWKGU06o

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Obamacare’s ‘Cool Calculator: Work Disincentives Like Never Before

Posted on by

“Look at what happens once a single person who is 50 or older hits annual earnings of $45,961. At that point, what remains of those wonderful “tax credits” goes up in smoke. For a 50 year-old single person, dollar number 45,961 causes their annual exchange premium (i.e., ‘tax’) to increase from $4,366 to $5,390. That’s because what Kaiser calls Obamacare’s ‘government tax credit subsidy’ (they’re also having a hard time with the language) goes from $1,024 to zero. For a 64 year old, a ‘tax credit subsidy’ of $4,688 gets zeroed out. The marginal tax rate on dollar number 45,961 for that person is a whopping 468,800%.”

http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamacares-cool-calculator-work-disincentives-like-weve-never-seen-before/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Slave Dollars: State Guarantee Private Prisons 96% Occupancy

Posted on by

“If the governments don’t maintain the specified number of people behind bars, they have to pay penalties to the companies that operate private prisons. The state of Colorado paid $2 million to companies because the rate of crime and the number of convicts in the state fell by a third in the last 10 years.  The profit driven prisons put pressure on law enforcement and prosecutors to try to charge and convict individuals of more serious crimes just to fill prison beds. It also encourages authorities to send prisoners to private penitentiaries rather than state facilities even if they are cheaper. The number of prisoners in private verses public prisons has increased by 1,664% over the last 19 years.”

http://www.storyleak.com/states-guarantee-private-prisons-96-occupancy/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Where Prisoners Are Guaranteed To Private Prisons

Posted on by

“Most quotas require at least 90 percent of the beds in a prison to be filled, according to a new report by the advocacy group In the Public Interest, and quotas were part of nearly two-thirds of the contracts the group analyzed. Prison companies use the profits to expand, effectively pulling the strings on state prison populations as lawmakers must incarcerate a certain number of people — or pay. The state of Arizona recently paid the prison company Management & Training Corp. $3 million for empty beds when a 97 percent quota wasn’t met, reported HuffPost’s Chris Kirkham. The U.S. leads the world in incarcerating its residents, with one in 100 adults behind bars.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/private-prisons_n_3955686.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

How Private Prison Companies Make Millions Even When Crime Rates Fall

Posted on by

“The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA’s pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling. Occupancy requirements, as it turns out, are common practice within the private prison industry.”

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

The Big-Picture Economy, Part 3: Scarcity, Risk and Debt

Posted on by

CHS9a1

“Scarcity of credit is the source of sound risk assessment and the discipline of aligning interest rates to risk and inflation. Manipulating rates to near-zero and opening the credit floodgates has incentivized everything sound economic policy avoids: moral hazard, speculation, leverage and reliance on marginal credit expansion for profits and ‘growth.’  ‘Growth’ that depends on manipulated interest rates and easy credit is a sand castle awaiting the rising tide; its destruction is assured.”

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-big-picture-economy-part-3-scarcity.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

And the money trail leads to…

Posted on by

“A case in point is the Dodd-Frank Act. Wall Street was officially horrified by this law, which officially sought to end some of the practices that led to the financial collapse and big bailouts of leading U.S. investment firms in 2008-2009. But buried in the bowels of this 2,319-page law was a provision targeted squarely at ‘foreign investment managers.’  Simply put, the new rule forced every foreign bank, brokerage, or financial advisor with 15 more U.S. clients to register with the Securities & Exchange Commission. One Swiss-based investment manager who went through the process told me he spent more than $100,000 in legal fees to do it – not to mention hundreds of hours.”

http://www.nestmann.com/and-the-money-trail-leads-to

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet