Will the Supreme Court Define Love?

The NYT reports that during the arguments about gay marriage in the Supreme Court, Justice Roberts asked, “If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t.  The difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?” 

I think that this is a misleading question because of the word “love.”  Is the love between a man and a woman the same as the love between a man and a man?  At least that is a question that should not be dismissed as obvious.  Almost everyone loves their mother, but should they be allowed to marry their mother?  You can say, no, because their children would be the products of incest, and there is a public interest in preventing incest.  But what if it’s a daughter who wants to marry her mother, or what if the mother and son promise never to have sex.  Is there still a public interest in preventing this union?  There is, because the love between a mother and her children is different from the love between two unrelated people

People also talk about the fact that they”love” ice cream, they love sunny days, they love beautiful music.  People also talk about making love, when they mean that they are having sex.  These “loves” are obviously not the same.  Can the Supreme Court definitively rule that the love between two men is the same as the love between a man and a women?  Can they definitively say that this is love and not lust?  If it is all about finances and hospital visitation, aren’t there other ways to correct those problems without defining “love”? 

Poets, novelists and songwriters have been expounding on love for thousands of years.  Can the Supreme Court do a better job than they did.  Is it irrelevant that there is a lot less poetry about the love between a man and woman than there is about the love between two men?  Does the Supreme Court really know more about love than Shakespeare, John Donne, Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, Tolstoy or Danielle Steele.  Roberts should think hard before calling Shakespeare and Tolstoy fools.  

The Clintons and the Rothschilds

It’s interesting that this NYT article about the Clinton’s son-in-law, Mark Mezvinsky, discloses the role among the Clintons of the prominent European Jewish family, the Rothschilds, reputed to have been kingmakers and to have the power of inciting war or maintaining peace in Europe for centuries.  Mezvinsky is a partner in the hedge fund Eaglevale Partners.  The article says that many of the investors in the fund are longtime supporters of the Clintons, including a firm connected to the Rothschilds.  Another investor is the Rock Creek Group, chaired by Afsaneh Beschloss, the wife of historian Michael Beschloss.  Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs was also an early investor.  The article says that Bill Clinton spoke at a conference in Oxford sponsored by the Rothschilds, but that there was no connection to the investment.   

The Clintons are trying to form an alliance with rich Jews who support them, the Rothschilds, to offset the rich Jews like Sheldon Adelson who support the Republicans.  

More Welfare for the Rich

Working on income tax reminds one of all the welfare that the US government gives to the rich.  The biggest is probably the home mortgage deduction.  It's nice for average people, but the average person probably gets only a few thousand dollars.  On a mortgage in the $300,000 to $350,000 range, not too cheap, interest will be about $1,000 per month, or about $12,000 per year.  On a $1 million mortgage, monthly interest is about $3,300 per month or about $40,000 per year.  In addition the smaller homeowner will probably be paying taxes in something like the 20% range, which means that his deduction will be about $2,600.  The richer homeowner will probably be paying taxes at a higher rate, say 35%, so that his deduction will be around $13,800.  So, the government gives the richer person $11,000 more for living in his house than it gives the poorer person.  And of course, renters, who tend to be poorer than homeowners get no help from the government to keep a roof over their heads.

Another less obvious giveaway to rich people is the lower tax rate for capital gains and qualified dividends.  In this case the government basically rewards people for playing the stock market.  Arguably, the provisions discourage just playing the stock market like gambling in Las Vegas, because they make you hold stock for at least a year.  But if you do hold the stock for a year, the savings are enormous, cutting your taxes in half on stock market income, whether for trading stock or just collecting dividends.  The richer you are, the more the government gives you.  The government gives people like Mitt Romney millions and millions of dollars just because they are rich.  No wonder Mitt Romney despises poor people who get hundreds of dollars a month from the government, when he gets millions.  If poor people had any ambition, they would soak the government for millions, like he does.  Like most rich people, Mitt hates paying soldiers in Afghanistan or widows on Social Security.

Gifts to the Rich

Abolishing traditional defined benefit retirement plans has been a huge gift to wealthy investors.  In the old days, retirement funds invested in bonds, which returned something ike 4% annually, and which over a working life would provide the bulk of the funds needed for retiring employees.  Now most companies offer 401(k) plans, in which the employee has to invest part of his salary, and the company may or may not match his contributions.

Companies could hire experts to decide how much they needed to invest and how to invest it.  They weren't always right, but they had a better chance of being right than the average worker.  Investment companies can help with 401(k) plans, but often their fees are so high that they eat up a significant part of the earnings.

But the huge benefit for big investors is the influx of new money into the stock market.  This is partly due to low interest rates, which make it impossible to invest in bonds, but it is also due to the fact that small investors need rapid, big returns to cover their retirement.  This is often possible in the stock market, but it is the exception, not the rule.  In the meantime, the small investors create a huge pool of money for the rich to play in.  It's somewhat like bringing thousands of players into a poker game and creating a gigantic pot.  One of the small investors might theoretically win, but more likely one of the rich players who can keep anteing up will take the big pot.  The 401(k)s mean that there is more and more money flowing into the market, funding IPOs and bidding up stock prices.

Low interest rates mean that the wealthy can borrow for almost nothing to bet on the market, and with all the help of quants, hedge funds, etc., are more likely to win big.  The 401(k)s and IRAs will work out well mainly for the wealthy, like Mitt Romney, who had $102 million in an IRA.  Romney hates the low income takers from the Federal Government, but because of the tax breaks he gets, the government is shoveling money to Romney with both hands.  If he had to pay 40% tax on $100 million, that would be $40 million; so that is more or less what the government has given him, a lot more than if he collected food stamps.  Meanwhile the average investor in an IRA will save a few thousand in taxes.