Rick Kelo asks a question about Wall Street salaries

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Rick A Kelo

When Steve Jobs passed away there was a worldwide outpouring of grief.  The IPhone he created is adored by millions of loyal fans who would never consider switching to a different type of phone.  And never along the way did the mainstream media question whether Steve Jobs “deserved” the fortune he made creating Apple.

Every election cycle though political discourse is filled with challenges that investment bankers and other workers on Wall Street earn an undeserved wage.  That Wall Street bonuses are some how proof of theft or money laundering, whereas the bonus Steve Jobs paid himself each year was never questioned.  Rick Kelo points out this is an easy phenomenon to understand.

“We humans have a natural prejudice to favor things we understand. Since we tinker with our IPhone and understand its tangible value we’re sad when Steve Jobs passes away. The value we receive from financial instruments that we don’t understand is intangible and not something we interact with daily. So there does tend to, rightly or wrongly, be a predisposition to consider the products of these industries as less important than tangible goods.”
~ Rick A Kelo

This also implies that we should be very suspicious of politicians like Senators Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders when they build entire campaigns around criticizing the pay of Wall Street bankers.  As Rick Kelo points out favoring what we know more than what we don’t know is a natural human prejudice.  Politicians know this, and someone who intentionally exploits populist prejudice should be viewed with caution.

Rick Kelo on Forms vs. Functions of Government

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Rick Kelo is a Classic Liberal who, with an educational background in Economics from the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point, focuses on economic questions.  One of those questions is does the form of a government really matter, or does its function matter?  For instance is only a totalitarian regime dictatorial, or is it possible for a Democracy to be dictatorial too?

Americans have long believed their freedoms were safe because of the form of their government: a republic.  Most Americans are convinced that only dictatorships, like the one in Syria, can be autocratic but not a representative democracy where the voter decides.

When Rick Kelo considered that question he raised a distinction that almost everyone has overlooked.  We usually distinguish between the form of government but not the function.  What should matter to us is the extent the individual is free or oppressed, not the form of that oppression.  Is oppression from a powerful monarch any different than oppression from a powerful parliament?  As Richard Kelo points out, if the State functions by holding extensive power, and the citizen holds very little power over their own actions, then that government is tyrannical whether its form is a dictatorship or a republic.

How often do we consider what ultimately comprises a representative government: majority vote wins, but disregard the other half of what comprises a representative government: individual rights.  One example of this is the popular trope on the far political left of “Democratic Socialism.”  The savvy Socialist knows he must distance himself from dictatorial forms of government since Socialist dictators mass murdered 150,000,000 people last century.  So, the savvy Socialist aims to claim moral goodness as proved by getting a 51% vote to legitimize their immorality.

Of course, if we consider the powerful function of such a government – not its form of being democratically elected – then we see that even if you get the representative government Socialism cannot exist without oppressing the individual rights.

Even Hitler was elected.  Elections are no guarantee of freedom.

Rick Kelo

Rick Kelo

Rick Kelo Discusses Preventing Monopolies

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Rick A Kelo

If you could pass only one law, 50 words or less, to reduce the prevalence of monopolies what law be most effective?

Rick Kelo is a respected mind in the field of tax recruiting and of economics.  A graduate of West Point and a Finance MBA, Rick worked in the fields of economics and corporate finance before becoming a Chicago tax recruiter a decade ago.

When Rick Kelo was posed that same question his answer was easy and straight-forward: free trade and free markets.  Rick argues that competition is more effective at controlling monopolies than intervention by government.  When asked why Kelo noted that every monopoly in modern human history, which he defines as from Darcy v. Allen forward, has been caused by government intervention against the harsh competition of laissez-faire and free trade.

Rick Kelo goes as far as to point out that economic historians know of only two examples in all of human history of monopolies that do NOT appear to have been directly caused by government intervention and government grants of protection.  “When we study anti-trusts,” says Richard Kelo, “the two odd outlies are the monopolies of DeBeers Diamond and the New York Stock Exchange before 1900.  Those are the only two counter-factual examples where we see a monopoly that wasn’t directly created by government actions.”

Rick Kelo Speaks About Evolution of Taxation

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A Tour of the Taxation World with Rick Kelo

 

Rick Kelo works as the Head Recruiter of TaxScout.  He caters to the figure out the lower future turn over, increase in the retention rate, compensation programs, challenging top performers and market evaluation of a particular company. The company specializes in career level searches and has top rated experience in searching for a hiring requirement. TaxScout specialize in Federal tax, state and local taxes and international taxes. It is a tax-only recruiting company. The company caters to the different hiring needs and ensures that a company gets a secure success quotient.

 

Rick Kelo has commendable knowledge in the field of finance. He has obtained his graduation degree in General engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has completed his post-graduation in finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has worked as a corporate recruiter for many companies. He looks after the financial requirements of the various companies, and creates candidate databases to sync with OFFCCP. Rick Kelo has detailed knowledge about the history of taxation, since he has spent considerable time in the finance sector.

 

The British had levied many unjust taxes during their reign in the colonies. The Stamp act requires all legal documents, wills, permits, in the colonies to carry s tax stamp. The Stamp Tax was issued in 1785 and was withdrawn after severe protests. The Tea Act which led to the occurrence of the Boston Tea Party in 1773 was also an unjust act imposed by the British. The people were furious because of the extra taxes which were imposed on tea and they dropped several cartons of tea were dropped into the sea at Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party invited the outbreak of Revolutionary War in 1775.

 

Rick Kelo

The inhabitants of America were represented in the government by their congressmen and senators. The residents of Washington D.C were not represented in the government. The license plates of the residents of Washington D.C portrayed that they were paying taxes without being represented in the government. The war between north and South Congress broke out in 1861 and income taxes were levied to fund the war. The income tax was placed under the Revenue Act of 1861 and the Tariff Act was also given the status of income tax.

 

Rick Kelo has obtained a sound knowledge about the economic conditions of his country. He also has the knowledge about personal finances and is aware of the methods involved in managing the personal finances.

Richard Kelo and Capital vs. Use Value

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One of the central tenets of Karl Marx’s entire theory of Socialism was that the things worker’s create had a use value, and if they were sold an exchange value.  Richard Kelo has launched a new criticism of that though.  In his book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy  he noted that:

“A use-value has value only in use, and is realized only in the process of consumption. One and the same use-value can be used in various ways.”

In other words the same steel could be consumed to make a hammer or a nail.  It’s ironic that Marx (and all the lesser Socialist philosophers who followed him) made use value so central a concept to why Socialism would work.

A prominent Classic Liberal thinker – Rick Kelo – points out a great hypocrisy about Use Value.  In a Socialist economy, says Kelo, in order for a means of production to be “socialized” it must be seized by the State from it’s rightful owners and appropriated according to the preferences of the State.  How the State redistributes it doesn’t matter:

  • If the State keeps the resource for itself (what modern day Socialists call Communism)
  • If the State has the use of the resources dictated by central planners
  • Or even if the State assigns the appropriated resources to the workers that use it.

Rick Kelo

Suppose, as in the best case scenario cited of many Socialist advocates, the State benevolently gifts the stolen (factory, warehouse, machinery, whatever) to a worker co-op.  As Richard Kelo notes, in that case the workers never own the asset given to them. They can own the use value of it, but never the capital value just as the citizen can own the use value of a public school but can never exercise actual ownership over it.

 

Rick Kelo’s Quick Thought on the Minimum Wage

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As someone who has vigorously advocated peaceful & voluntary economic cooperation as superior to coercive, State-mandates it comes as no surprise that Richard Kelo has an opinion on the minimum wage.

People think minimum wage will raise the living standards of the most vulnerable workers.  It will, slightly.  But, as Rick Kelo points out often on Twitter, only for those who don’t become unemployed by it.   In his formal education as an economist before becoming a tax recruiter, Rick discovered that minimum wages are not truly a wage increase at all.  They are actually a wage transfer.  Those workers who are forced out of work have their wage transferred to those minimum wage workers who are fortunate enough to keep their job under the new, higher, minimum wage.

If our real belief is that we want to help the most vulnerable, then we should oppose increasing these arbitrary wage laws by remembering how much harm they do to the living standards of the newly unemployed they create.

Rick Kelo & James Galbraith after sparring on economics

Rick Kelo on the Incentive to Excel

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The central way that societies coordinate to best meet the needs of everyone is with the incentive to produce.  People who prefer to work as an employee receive a paycheck as the incentive to produce goods & services the company makes.  People who are willing to assume the waiting that others don’t want to do become entrepreneurs and forgo a paycheck in the present for the incentive of a possibly larger reward in the far future.  People who prefer to save receive interest as the incentive for loaning money to others who don’t prefer to save, or did not begin saving as far back in time as the lender.

Have you ever considered what happens though when you severe the link between production and consumption?  If you must produce something in order to earn the money you use to buy the things you need (to “consume”) then you have a strong incentive to produce whatever thing you can earn the highest wage making.  But, if you’re given someone else’s money without having to first produce, then that gift destroys the incentive to produce.

Think of it like this: would Steve Jobs have worked 80 hours weeks all those years building Apple if he could have earned the same purchasing power slacking off in a cubicle for 40 hours/week with 2 hour lunches in between each day like the workers on Office Space?  It was the incentive of possible reward that ultimately created jobs for hundreds of thousands and products that millions of people love.

Rick Kelo has long advocated the peaceful, voluntary cooperation that takes place when people find the best possible trade for their labor in exchange for whatever incentive they prefer, say a paycheck.  As a tax recruiter Rick Kelo helps tax professionals locate jobs that better match their skills with a tax department’s needs, thus offering them a higher wage.

The Effect of Trump on Small Business and Economy

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What impacts are Trump’s economic reforms expected to cause?    

Rick Kelo, a resident of Kansas has seen various changes and reform in the American economy over the years. From the various reform policies that have been introduced by Obama’s administration and how Trump has proposed to deal with the persistent issues, there is a lot happening on the current economic horizon.

The major question right now is how Trump stands to affect the economy and what that means for various types of businesses. In the following paragraphs, Trump’s potential impact on the economy in general and small businesses in particular has been discussed.cropped-news.png

When it comes to Kansas, Rick Arthur Kelo says that things don’t look so good from the economic angle, at least at the moment. About a month back, Stephen Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, two of Trump’s important economic allies revealed the basic structure of the much-awaited tax plan. These reforms have been ambitiously called the biggest tax cuts in all of history. These are supposed to slash taxes paid by businesses and make the entire tax filing and return process easier for everyone.

Mnuchin and Gary claimed that these new taxes will stimulate further economic growth where everyone will pay for themselves. However, some members from the Kansas administration like Duane Goossen have expressed their concern at the similarities between this economic plan and the one for which Kansas reached this delirious state in the first place.

Arthur Laffer, an expert on supply-side economics since the time of Raegan is the “economic spirit” behind Trump’s economic plan. Laffer is also one of the architects behind the tax plan proposed by Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. The former member of the economic policy advisory board that assisted Reagan is widely known for the Laffer curve.

In simple words, this is derived from a theory which states that economic activity is directly tied to taxation. If the taxes are lowered, up to a certain point, it will mean more revenue. However, tax reforms based on this tax slashing theory is what is said to have brought Kansas where it is in the first place.

Therefore, while some business owners are positive about the coming change and believe that it will bring benefits for the business, there is no lack of administrators who feel that the entire country will soon be affected exactly how Kansas was. The state has been struggling to balance its books, and the tax breaks have been blamed for the situation.

Rick Kelo- Internet Information Communities

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The Internet Has Provided the Perfect Platform for Intellectual Minds to Come Together and Provide Support for Those Looking For Answers

What is an internet information community? In short, it is a community of online users dedicated to helping each other find information however pertinent or trivial, and use their skills and education to help others. There is perhaps no greater example of this than the famous question and answers forum Quora. Quora allows users to create profiles of themselves also listing their education and qualifications. Then, when questions are posted on the site, regarding literature, economics, philosophy or sport for example, experts in the field can come back with answers. It is, in some ways, like the intellectual version of Yahoo Answers.Richard Arthur Kelo

Rick Kelo is one such thinker who has taken to the forum to offer his advise and wisdom to members of the community. Today, Rick Kelo works as a tax consultant in a large American firm. His interest and studies in economics, and political history, make him an authoritative voice on such matters, where he has answered questions ranging from labor economics to socialism. For Rick Kelo, forums like Quora are important in helping to disseminate unbiased, neutral and professional ideas and opinion.

A good example of this is a recent question, which asked why there was so much wealth disparity say, between a janitor in America and a Janitor in a third World Country. Rick Kelo’s answer was ”There’s more accumulated capital per worker in the American economy (where the U.S. janitor works) than in Nigeria’s economy (where the Nigerian janitor works). This is also the same reason why the American janitor of 2016 earns a higher wage than the American janitor of 1950 even though they’re no more productive.”

An answer like this is typical of Rick Kelo’s style- succinct, to-the-point and informative. He also tackled another pressing question, about the possible effects of reducing corporate tax rates, ”The answer to your question must be considered along three lines. The first line is the impact to the individual firm that now has a lower tax burden. The second line is the impact to the overall US economy, by which is meant the 60% of GDP comprised from the private sector. The third line is the impact on the US federal government in terms of tax receipts and the programs funded by those tax revenues.” For Rick Kelo, using his education to make important intellectual contributions to forums such as Quora, is an important duty of an educated American citizen.

Rick Kelo – What Is Happening With the Estate Tax?

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The Current Estate Tax Rules

Rick Kelo notes that the US Congress is considering a wide range of tax reform proposals currently. One of the many reform proposals deals with the US Estate Tax and its possible repeal. As per statistics, the Estate Tax in its current form has an impact on only 0.2% of all US estates.

According to the current legislation in place, an American citizen gets to enjoy a life-time exclusion amount of $5.5 at the moment. As a result, a married couple can leave behind $11 to their family and/or friends without the need for any Estate Tax. Of course, both of them need to be American citizens.

The effect of Estate Tax has been considered by Rick Kelo. As per the current law, any property that has been passed at death will get a step-up in terms of tax for determining the future capital gains that occur when the property has been sold.Rick Kelo

Illustrating the Effect

Consider an asset that has been purchased for $1,000. When this property is sold for $2,000, the taxpayer will have enjoyed a capital gain of $1,000. Now, if this asset was instead passed after the death of the taxpayer, the recipient’s tax basis will be increased to match the asset’s value at the date of the decedent’s death.

Continuing with the example, the first taxpayer will have bought the asset at $1,000. At his or her death, consider the value of the asset to be $1,500. The taxpayer who inherits the asset ends up selling the asset for $2,000. Now, for this taxpayer, the tax basis was increased to $1,500. As a result his or her capital gain after the sale is just $500.

 What Does the Repeal Bring?

The repeal of the estate tax can affect this transaction. Its repeal may actually cause the step up in the tax basis to be removed as well. Instead, it might be replaced by the carry over basis. In the case of the previous example, the taxpayer inheriting the asset will have a tax basis of $1,000 which was the original basis. As a result, the sale of the asset at $2,000 will bring a profit of $1,000.

While possibly welcome, Rick Kelo believes that repealing the Estate Tax might not actually be that much of a benefit. In fact, there is a chance that the repeal will lead to an increase in the taxes that must be paid than what is currently required.