Wal-Mart Financial Data 2008-2012

Five–Year Financial Summary

http://www.walmartstores.com/sites/annual-report/2012/financials.aspx

(Dollar amounts in millions, except per share and unit count data)	As of and for the Fiscal Years Ended January 31,
	2012	2011	2010	2009	2008
Operating Results
Net sales	$443,854	$418,952	$405,132	$401,087	$373,821
Net sales increase	5.9 %	3.4 %	1.0 %	7.3 %	8.4 %
Comparable sales in the United States (1)	1.6 %	-0.6 %	-0.8 %	3.5 %	1.6 %
Walmart U.S.	0.3 %	-1.5 %	-0.7 %	3.2 %	1.0 %
Sam's Club	8.4 %	3.9 %	-1.4 %	4.9 %	4.9 %
Gross profit margin	24.5 %	24.8 %	24.9 %	24.3 %	24.1 %
Operating, selling, general and administrative expenses, as a percentage of net sales	19.2 %	19.4 %	19.7 %	19.4 %	19.1 %
Operating income	$ 26,558	$ 25,542	$ 24,002	$ 22,767	$ 21,916
Income from continuing operations attributable to Walmart	15,766	15,355	14,449	13,235	12,841
Net income per share of common stock:
Diluted net income per common share from continuing operations attributable to Walmart	$ 4.54	$ 4.18	$ 3.73	$ 3.35	$ 3.15
Dividends declared per common share	1.46	1.21	1.09	0.95	0.88

The Pros and Cons of Debt Ceiling on Economy

It increases the debt ceiling enough so that this all-consuming debate does not completely resurface for a significant amount of time (until after 2012 elections). This lends some much-needed stability to the circus that is Wall Street. It also frees up the political arena for a discussion of more meaningful issues, like jobs. Congress has been neglecting our stagnating economy and its bleak recovery for months, instead captivated by the spell of these circuitous negotiations. Just how bad is the economy? The unemployment rate is 9.2%. According to the latest report, manufacturing growth fell to its lowest in years. All increases in the GDP since the recession began have been pocketed by the wealthiest in America: the owners. The middle and working classes continue to struggle financially, and the amount of wealth owned by employees is plummeting when expressed as a percentage of the total economy. Meanwhile, the gap between the median household wealth of whites and minorities is expanding. White families own goods and savings that are worth (on average) 18 times the possessions of Hispanic households and 20 times the possessions of black households. That's a disparity that needs to change, and one that is sadly neglected by decision-makers in Washington.

Second, the bill cuts big chunks of fat out of the bloated defense budget. Our military industrial complex spends so much that it dwarfs the defense spending of the next dozen nations combined. The bill could lead to approximately $1 trillion in Pentagon cuts spread over a decade, which represent an annual trimming of 15% from the base budget. The only downside is that many of these cuts are relatively uncertain.

http://www.politicalmusingsfrommonterey.com/2011/08/more-pros-than-cons-in-debt-ceiling.html

Several recent polls have shown that the American people appear to be significantly opposed to raising the debt ceiling.

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll showed that people opposed raising the debt ceiling, even after being given pros and cons of it, by a 62 to 32% margin. Quinnipiac showed in February that on the question of whether failing to raise the debt ceiling was a good or bad thing, people were evenly split, with 46% saying it would be a good thing and 44% saying it would be bad. Ipsos/Reuters did a poll where people opposed raising the debt ceiling 71% to 17%.

These are numbers which very few policy positions get. It's in the range where even many Democrats must oppose raising the debt ceiling. But why is that?

The first problem might be a misunderstanding of what the debt ceiling is. I'm just conjecturing here, but the term "debt ceiling" isn't exactly clear, and in a time when people are increasingly concerned about the deficit, it is also scary sounding. It could sound like permission to increase our yearly deficit even more beyond the $1.5 trillion it already is. If that's what people think it means, then one could clearly see why people would oppose it, even many Democrats.

Other people might not understand what it is there for - that, even though Congress has appropriated money, the treasury still can't borrow more than Congress allows it to do. If the credit limit Congress has set on itself is less than the amount of deficit spending Congress has authorized, then we'll bump into the ceiling.

Others, again, may just have this nebulous thing about how debt is "bad" and therefore, of course we shouldn't have more of it.

The second problem is that people just aren't aware of the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling. The consequences are so dire than even people like John Boehner and Paul Ryan have said that there is no question we must raise it.

Some recent poll questions have tried to solve this problem, but frankly, have largely been lacking in their explanations.

http://www.bluewavenews.com/2011/04/why-are-people-opposed-to-raising-debt.html




 

Romney-Ryan Medicare Voucher System Hoaxs Hey Republicans! Stop Misusing My Medicare Study!

Supporters for the Romney-Ryan approach to Medicare have a new talking point. They say a new study by “three liberal Harvard economists” proves that the plan’s competition will reduce health care costs without harming beneficiaries. But the study doesn’t say that.
And I should know. I’m one of the economists who wrote it.
Both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have said they would like to convert Medicare into a "premium support" (nee voucher) system. Their plans are different, and Ryan himself has proposed several versions. But they share a basic architecture. Starting ten years from now, new retirees would not receive a Medicare card, as they would today. Instead, they would receive a voucher and shop for an insurance policy in a specially regulated market.

The voucher would equal the price of the second-cheapest plan in the market, although its value would be less if insurance prices rose faster than a pre-determined spending cap (of gross domestic product plus half a percentage point)—as they are projected to do. Both Romney and Ryan now say that traditional Medicare, the government-run insurance program, would be among the options in the marketplace. But they would not guarantee that voucher can pay for it. In fact, that’s very much the point of the proposal: To create more competition between Medicare and private plans, even if that means Medicare ends up costing more than the vouchers are worth.
How would this affect seniors? In particular, how many seniors would end up paying more to stay in traditional Medicare?
That’s the question that Zirui Song, Michael Chernew, and I set out to answer in the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. To do this, we examined what would have happened if, today, something like the Romney-Ryan plan were in place: In other words, if today’s seniors were getting vouchers, how much would those vouchers be worth?
We found that 24 million seniors, or about two-thirds of the people presently enrolled in the traditional Medicare program, would have to pay more—specifically, an average of $64 per month or $768 per year. Some seniors already enroll in private plans, as part of the “Medicare Advantage” option that has existed, in one form or another, for many years. About 7 million seniors or more than 90 percent of that group would have to pay more.
Supporters of voucher schemes have taken this to be vindication. Among them are James Capretta and Yuval Levin, writing for the Weekly Standard. After all, hadn’t we found that the private plans were cheaper than old-fashioned, government-run Medicare? Doesn’t that prove competition can really lower costs?
Here’s how Capretta and Levin put it:

The Harvard researchers looked at the (limited and constricted) private-plan option already operating in Medicare today—a program called Medicare Advantage … and found that, on average, the Medicare Advantage plans cost far, far less than federally run fee-for-service Medicare.

This is the opposite of what Democrats were saying a year ago. Then, they were touting a Congressional Budget Office study that estimated the private plans offered to Medicare beneficiaries in the system Ryan envisions would cost much more than traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and thus require higher premiums—$6,400 higher in 2022—to be paid by beneficiaries. This new study shows otherwise, and proves the very point that champions of premium support have been making for years.

The $64-per-month estimate is based on the study’s finding that private plans can deliver the full Medicare package of benefits at a significantly lower cost—nearly 10 percent lower, on average—than the government-administered fee-for-service program. That’s precisely the win-win proposition Paul Ryan has been touting: Beneficiaries could get their comprehensive Medicare benefits for no additional premium if they selected the less expensive private plans, and taxpayers would spend 10 percent less on the subsidies for the Medicare program.

But this is a distortion of our findings, for several reasons. First, it confuses costs and payments. Medicare Advantage plans bid less than traditional Medicare, but they are paid more. The plans are officially supposed to use these higher payments to sweeten the pot—add additional benefits, reduce cost sharing, and the like—though some likely go for profit as well. This is why the Affordable Care Act reduced the amount that the government pays to managed care plans, over howls of protest from conservatives. Bidding less does no good for the program if the government then overpays relative to what was bid.
Second, they miss a key part of the reason why the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Ryan’s voucher proposal would cost seniors more. Medicare Advantage plans can only cost what they do because the traditional Medicare program is in place to help them. Specifically, Medicare sets very low payment rates to providers, and Medicare Advantage plans bargain up a bit from those rates. Get rid of the traditional Medicare program, or even reduce its enrollment substantially, and the estimated cost of Medicare Advantage premiums skyrockets.
Third, determining whether the private plans are really more efficient than traditional Medicare requires more than just knowing that they bid less. The question is why private plans come in cheaper. We take a cautious, nuanced view:

Private plans can cost less than traditional Medicare because: (1) they may use medical resources more efficiently; (2) they may enroll healthier patients relative to the risk-adjusted payment; or (3) their negotiated prices may not fully reflect the costs of indirect medical education or payments for disadvantaged hospitals, which traditional Medicare explicitly pays. The magnitudes of efficiency, selection, and avoided add-on payments are unclear... To the extent that the 9% cost advantage reflects efficiency, it suggests there are better ways to provide the traditional Medicare benefit.”

To put it a bit more plainly, it’s possible that the private plans are cheaper because they really do offer the same benefits at a lower cost. It’s also possible that the private plans are cheaper because the insurers are very good at attracting the best risks—that is, the healthiest seniors least likely to run up medical bills—or because they don’t also subsidize other parts of our health care system, such as medical education. In effect, they may be gaming the system. At this point, we really don’t know which answer is correct, although it’s entirely possible all three are true, to an extent.
Making the wrong assumption here could be fatal, particularly to those seniors with the gravest health needs. If managed care plans are able to select healthier enrollees—by skimping on benefits in ways that get around whatever regulations (if any) the Romney-Ryan plan put in place—traditional Medicare will end up with less healthy seniors, driving up its costs. The system will spiral out of control. The costs will proportionately rise and the guarantee of benefits that is the core of the Medicare program would erode. That is why many economists are wary of a pure premiums support model.
At the very least, it makes sense to see how premium-support works in the non-elderly population, since their health needs overall are less severe. The Affordable Care Act does that, by creating “exchanges” for people who don’t have employer-sponsored coverage. Watching and learning from that initiative would help in designing a workable system for the elderly. That is why, on many counts, the biggest lesson is that allowing the Affordable Care Act to work—rather than trying to take it off the books—might be the best way for premium support to succeed.
David Cutler is Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University. In 2008, he was senior health care advisor to the Obama Presidential campaign.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106324/cutler-chernew-medicare-study-ryan-voucher-premium-support-competition

http://www.tnr.com/

Mother Jones on the Myth of Tax Cuts

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/charts-economic-myths-jobs-deficit-taxes

US Debt Economy Clock Web

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

United States GDP Growth Rate

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/

The Myth of Tax Cuts and Growing the Economy

VARNEY: The central question on the economic side of the debate is which tax policy will grow the economy and cut the deficit. Paul Ryan was very clear -- he said, look, you cut tax rates, and that gives you growth. Listen to this exchange.
[begin video clip]
RYAN: You can cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve these important preferences for middle-class taxpayers --
BIDEN: Not mathematically possible.
RYAN: It is mathematically possible. It's been done before. It's precisely what we're proposing.
BIDEN: It has never been done before.
RYAN: It's been done a couple of times, actually.
BIDEN: It has never been done before.
RYAN: Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates, increased growth. Ronald Reagan --
BIDEN: Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy?
RYAN: Ronald Reagan --
[end video clip]
VARNEY: Well, that was an interruption. That was also a put-down. And Vice President Biden was factually wrong. JFK, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush -- all of them cut tax rates, and the end result was in increase in money flowing to the Treasury. Revenues went up when tax rates went down. Joe Biden was wrong. [Fox News, America's Newsroom, 10/12/12]

The Economy At Mid-1983
Recovery started in December 1982 from the deepest postwar recession, the second of two since 1980. Both recessions were brought on by monetary restriction aimed at bringing inflation under control. Lower interest rates after mid-1982 permitted the recovery to begin. Real GNP grew at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the first quarter and at an 8.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 1983. [Congressional Budget Office, 8/1/83]



The upshot was that Kennedy entered office with the nation's finances in good shape. Yes, the debt-GDP ratio would fall further until it hit its low point of 32.6 percent at the end of the Carter administration. But with a deficit of only 0.6 percent of GDP for the 1961 fiscal year in which JFK took the oath of office, there was room for additional spending or for tax cuts.
[...]
Individual income tax revenues stumbled for one year, but then continued up. Corporate tax revenues rose, without interruption, along with the economy.
But other things were happening. The federal government was spending a lot of money on interstate highway construction, military hardware, the space race and education. Much of this -- especially infrastructure, science, engineering and education -- boosted productivity for the overall economy. And the Federal Reserve let the money supply grow faster than it had in the 1950s. These factors all helped foster fast-growing output and, hence, growing tax revenues. [Bismarck Tribune, 10/10/10]


Advocates of lower tax rates argue that reduced rates would increase economic growth, increase saving and investment, and boost productivity (increase the economic pie).
[...]
The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.
However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. [Congressional Research Service, 9/14/12]

I used the phrase "charlatans and cranks" in the first edition of my principles textbook to describe some of the economic advisers to Ronald Reagan, who told him that broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue. I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don't.
[...]
My other work has remained consistent with this view. In a paper on dynamic scoring, written while I was working at the White House, Matthew Weinzierl and I estimated that a broad-based income tax cut (applying to both capital and labor income) would recoup only about a quarter of the lost revenue through supply-side growth effects. For a cut in capital income taxes, the feedback is larger--about 50 percent--but still well under 100 percent. A chapter on dynamic scoring in the 2004 Economic Report of the President says about the the [sic] same thing. [Greg Mankiw, 7/2/07]

You [in the Bush administration] are smart people. You know that the tax cuts have not fueled record revenues. You know what it takes to establish causality. You know that the first order effect of cutting taxes is to lower tax revenues. We all agree that the ultimate reduction in tax revenues can be less than this first order effect, because lower tax rates encourage greater economic activity and thus expand the tax base. No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one. [Vox Baby, 1/3/07]




http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/10/12/fox-uses-vp-debate-to-revive-myth-that-tax-rate/190590

Mother Jones on the myth of Tax Cuts and Economy Growth

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/charts-economic-myths-jobs-deficit-taxes