Archive for February 24th, 2010

Pivoting away from jobs (again) … let’s raise taxes (a lot).

February 24, 2010

HomaFiles was all over this earlier this year: “Uh-oh. New Dem idea: Extending the Medicare tax to interest, dividends, and cap gains”
https://kenhoma.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/uh-oh-new-dem-idea-extending-the-medicare-tax-to-interest-dividends-and-cap-gains/

Bottom line: Not only will the tax rates on dividends and capital gains go up when the Bush tax cuts expire, but a funding source for ObamaCare will be application of MediCare payroll taxes to so-called “unearned income” — i.e. dividend and capital gains.

Here’s a point the WSJ missed: Many seniors live off of their retirement savings — English translation: dividends and capital gains.  Let’s gig the Seniors by extending their contributions’ stream for MediCare, but cutting the benefits. Nice.

Also, note that individuals will be responsible for both the “employee contribution” and the “employer contribution” since there’s no employer. Huh?

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Excerpted from WSJ: Obama’s New Investment Tax – A sneaky Medicare levy on dividends and capital gains, Feb. 24, 2010

The White House’s new health-care proposal’s fine print goes describes one of the largest tax increases in history.

This new ObamaCare bargain would for the first time apply the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to “interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents,” so-called passive income that we are told includes capital gains.

This antigrowth investment tax … comes on top of the Senate’s 0.9-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax, which would bring the combined employee-employer share to a capital and jobs stiffling 3.8%.

The rate hike on investment income would presumably take effect at the same time the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts are due to expire next year, bringing the top rate to 22.9% as the current top capital gains rate would also rise to 20% from 15%. That’s a 52% jump … and the rate can always be inched up later once the tax is already in place.

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The White House levy muddies up both the tax code and Medicare financing.

The Medicare payroll levy was designed as a social insurance program with some connection, however attenuated, between taxes paid and benefits received.

When Medicare passed in 1965 it was modeled after Social Security and the tax was supposed to be equivalent to a “premium” for guaranteed health-care insurance for seniors; everyone “contributed” at the same rate.

Until 1993, the payroll tax was assessed only on the first $135,000 of wages … then the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Congress lifted the Medicare cap entirely.

The Clinton move was bad enough but Mr. Obama’s plan fundamentally changes the nature of the government’s health-care financing.

Medicare’s liabilities mean that it must receive injections of general revenue, but never before have Medicare’s own “dedicated” revenues been siphoned off to fund another entitlement.

Essentially, it turns Medicare financing into a wealth transfer program at a stroke.

Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083520811873704.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

Posted in Health Care / Medical Insurance, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

Losing confidence? … You’re not alone.

February 24, 2010

Maybe the pivot off of jobs and back to healthcare will rev people up again …

P.S. A score of 90 is considered ‘passing’.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had increased in January, declined sharply in February.

The Index now stands at 46.0 (1985=100), down from 56.5 in January. The Present Situation Index decreased to 19.4 from 25.2. The Expectations Index declined to 63.8 from 77.3 last month.

“Concerns about current business conditions and the job market pushed the Present Situation Index down to its lowest level in 27 years (Feb. 1983, 17.5). There are fewer consumers anticipating an improvement in business conditions and the job market over the next six months. Consumers also remain extremely pessimistic about their income prospects. This combination of earnings and job anxieties is likely to continue to curb spending.”

 

http://www.conference-board.org/economics/ConsumerConfidence.cfm

Posted in Consumer Confidence | Leave a Comment »

Intel finds sometimes a click is more than just a click

February 24, 2010

Takeaway: Online marketers have long struggled to decipher meaning behind browsers’ online behaviors. Intel has now abandoned traditional web metrics, such as total number of impressions or cost per click, and has adopted a point system whereby activities that are aligned with deep engagement are valued higher than more passive activities.

Intel’s point system has allowed the company to gear its site toward the needs of highly involved users and more precisely measure its returns on its online investments.

With this in mind, marketers should assess if a metric makeover would help them to better focus their efforts and increase online profitability

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Excerpt from AdvertisingAge, “Inside Intel’s Effectiveness System for Web Marketing” by Beth Snyder Bulik, January 25, 2010.

A click is just click, and most sophisticated online marketers have realized that click counts are really poor indications of whether their online marketing programs are working.

But if you can start to understand the value behind certain online behaviors, you move much closer to making sense of the efficacy of your spending. That’s why Intel has launched an internally developed program it calls the Value Point System to measure marketing effectiveness online.

The system assigns a pre-determined number of points for every action consumers do online with Intel. Watching a certain online video may garner 40 points, while a site visit is worth only two points. As the online visitor moves about the site, they accumulate points, which Intel uses to evaluate its marketing.

This kind of information is especially important to Intel, because as an ingredient brand that doesn’t sell products directly to consumers, it doesn’t have databases of loyal customers, sales data or even casual shoppers’ e-mail addresses to use for marketing. “It’s really critical that we’re getting maximum impact out of our investment, and measuring what matters is a really important part of that,” said Intel’s director of marketing strategies and campaigns. 

Intel has been a marketing pioneer before, launching the first and arguably most successful ingredient-branding program with “Intel Inside” advertising and marketing partnerships, aggressively adopting in-game advertising and, at one point two years ago, dropping TV advertising altogether. While not every marketing gambit has worked — Intel is back on TV, for instance, having discovered that a mix of online and offline media is necessary to achieve different goals — that doesn’t stop it from pushing the edge.

Ad Age: Why did you decide to institute the Value Point System?

Intel: The opportunity that online represents for us is to be able to really take a look at numbers and data to help evaluate the value we’re getting. What we realized early on was that traditional methods really fell short of our expectations and weren’t as meaningful a method as we were looking for.

A good example of how I describe it is by using the analogy of sending out invitations to a party. Advertisers evaluate whether their party is successful by how many people accept the invitation and knock on their front door. But that really isn’t giving you a meaningful level of information and knowledge around whether that truly was a good party.

What you want to know is, did they knock on the door and did they come inside? What did they do once they came inside? Did they mingle? Did they talk to other people? Did they laugh? Or did they stand in the corner with their arms folded?

Understanding different levels of interaction and engagement helps you evaluate your online activity.

Ad Age: What process did you use before this?

Intel: We looked at the way I think every advertiser out there does: total number of impressions, costs per click, click-through rates. Those are all standard and they’re not bad, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the level of information we need to truly measure effectiveness.

In the past, for example, when we would evaluate online activity in China vs. another country, it was always skewed in China’s favor just because of the sheer numbers and the huge population. But when you then start using the same Value Point System and measure the activity, you’re creating a nice even scale, so it becomes an apples-to-apples comparison, where before it wasn’t possible.

Ad Age: Has it yielded any cost savings?

Intel: When you look at a 35% or higher percentage of our media spend going into online, if we can acquire even 10% additional savings through the use of better metrics and information, that’s sizeable for us. It helps us drive down rates, it helps us optimize the value of each dollar spent, and just like any other company we’re under a lot of pressure with our marketing investment to get as much as possible out of it.

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Full Article:
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=141711

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Posted in Internet - Soc Networking, Internet Marketing - eCommerce - | Leave a Comment »