Great Idea if You Can Afford It: Establish a Roth IRA for Your Kids

From William Baldwin via Forbes:

A youngster can put up to $5,000 a year in a tax-sheltered retirement account, but can fund it only with dollars earned working. You can help out with the dollars, but the child has to work in a real job… If your daughter earns $4,000 as a lifeguard, you let her spend that money as she normally would.  You come up with the $4,000 to put in the retirement account…

The Absurdity of ShadowStats Inflation Estimates

Lately I’ve seen John Williams and his “ShadowStats” website referenced repeatedly as if it’s a legitimate source for inflation data that’s in some way comparable to the data provided by the United States government.  It’s not.  And it’s very easy to see why.

The historical record provides an irrefutable set of data with which to determine inflation; we have actual sampled price data going back a number of years.  But we don’t even need that.  Each of us has recollections of what things cost at some point in the past.  To assess the relative accuracy of official data and Williams’ data, we can discount today’s prices by the inflation rate claimed by each to determine what each says prices were at some time in the past.  Simple enough, right?

Peter Ferrara’s Funhouse View of Reaganomics

Peter Ferrara’s May 12 Forbes.com posting entitled “Reaganomics Vs. Obamanomics: Fallacies Offered By The Left” provides a view of reality straight from the funhouse.  I don’t believe Ferrara’s a bad economist. But he is a raging partisan, and is perfectly willing to pick and choose information to support a worldview that leans quite far to the right.