Re: Gibson raided
it could take something like 2 years to establish primary residency, and at 88YO that is likely out of the question. Probably an unintended pun but you typed "capitol" gains.. at least those folks in our nation's "capitol" are "gaining" from her circumstance. 
I am not accusing you of attacking the poor (we are on the same page), just that the whole, how much wealthy or poor pay is a "red herring" fallacy pushed by both sides to paralyze the middle and distract attention from the real issue. The government can only get enough revenue by taxing the productive segments of society, no matter how much wealth they claim is available from tapping the super rich, or taxing the poor for that matter, even though nobody is crass enough to suggest raising taxes on the poor. I'll be crass for a moment.. How about making long term unemployment benefits a loan, not a gift, that must be paid back in part or in full at some time in the future. Perhaps this would provide the safety net for the truly needy, but remove the incentive to not aggressively seek work. If unemployment got paid back we would also have more such funds available long term, not that I trust government to keep their hands out of that lock box, between recessions.
The real issue as I see it, is spending more than we can prudently afford to spend. This means we, or our children, or their children will be saddled with the negative unintended consequences.
Anybody who has ever run a business can see from a distance how wasteful and unproductive government activity is. I will avoid the cliche, "all government must be slashed" (even if I'm thinking that), but we need to thoughtfully separate the wheat (useful government functions), from the chaff (everything else), and both reduce the chaff while improving the effectiveness of the useful parts. I recall when government jobs were low paying but safe choices for people willing to trade job security for low pay, probably a fair exchange because most government work was not heavy lifting. But now government jobs are often higher paid than the private sector, and growing like topsy, while the persistent lack of economic growth may derail even this gravy train.
While there are IMO some areas of regulation that needed work after the financial meltdown, there are far more existing regulatory functions that needed to be fixed as they were asleep at the wheel, missing all kinds of fraud and bad behaviors ( Bernie Madhof and liar loan mortgages anybody?). I don't feel like the regulatory oversight of the stock market (SEC et al) is doing me much good, and the labor dept going after home builders over their labor practices, does not seem helpful to an industry already limping. Lets see how suing the banks that write mortgages, and attacking home builder's labor practices does to stabilize the housing market? It seems like the regulators are in a different world from the rest of us.
We need more adult behavior in our government. More of a long term perspective, instead of short term, "what can I be seen doing" in time for the next election cycle. If anybody thinks jobs suddenly became a problem one year before the election, need only look at the unemployment rate for the last several years, and what the legislators have been doing instead until very recently.
To fix jobs and hiring, the first (long term) step is to stop or at least reduce the uncertainty about future costs and regulatory overhead. Short term hiring incentives will only change the timing of marginal hiring (the business would have hired anyhow in the next 6 months to a year). No business is going to create a permanent position because of a temporary incentive. It's like that new car incentive, that mainly pulled in a bunch of future sales into the current period and depressed sales later. It didn't make people buy a car that didn't need a car, and after they bought one they didn't need another.
In fact I will go further and give government a partial pass because they can't create private sector jobs, so why pretend they can? However they sure can muddy the water and slow down job growth with all their arm waving. I think Bernanke kind of gets it (the negative consequences of uncertainty). His recent announcement of a fixed two year interest rate target, is pretty much unbelievable. I sure expect him to change it if the economy changes before 2 years are up (and it better), but he is trying to telegraph some stability from the government, while all around him are creating more uncertainty about the future.
I suspect my personal opinions will sound partisan to some, so I will stop tilting at windmills for now.
JR
