Tim McMahon

Work by editor and author, Tim McMahon, has been featured in Bloomberg, CBS News, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Forbes, Washington Post, Drudge Report, The Atlantic, Business Insider, American Thinker, Lew Rockwell, Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, Oakland Press, Free Republic, Education World, Realty Trac, Reason, Coin News, and Council for Economic Education.

How's the Middle Class Doing

How is the Middle Class in the U.S. Doing? (Infographic)

2 Comments / Economic Trends / By

In the United States we consider a family with a household income of less than $100,000 to be “Middle Class”. But how well are families really doing? Let’s look at middle class income, net worth, taxes, etc since the recession of 2008. According to the 2010 census, the median household income was $51,371. Which means that half the households earn more and half earn less.
If we break the population up into 5 segments of 20% each we can get a closer look at how the population as a whole is doing. Based on the $100,000 definition, the “middle class” probably comprises segments 3 and 4 of the total population. Households in the top 20% earned about $239,100 per household and those in the bottom 20% earned about $24,100 before taxes. But that doesn’t tell the whole story…

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Golden Oldies

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There is an old saying, “Those who do not study the past are condemned to repeat it” and another that goes along with it which says, “History may not repeat itself but it does rhyme.”
Recently I came across some articles that we published quite a few years ago but I thought they were worth mentioning again in an effort to learn from the past. So here they are:

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Closing Costs

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Closing Costs and Refinancing

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The simplest way to include the closing costs in your refinancing calculations is to simply calculate the overall savings you expect to make when refinancing and deduct the estimated closing costs sum from the savings. If you don’t break even, you’ll be losing money on the refinancing, so maybe sticking to the old terms for a while longer is more advantageous.

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Energy Trends- Deregulation (or Not)

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Is Energy Deregulation Just a Fad? In the late 1990’s, individual states began trying to introduce more competition into the energy marketplace. As we know, competition tends to drive down prices and improves choice and service. Without competition businesses get lazy and they add layers of bureaucracy and then simply tack the additional costs on to

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Hyperinflation-1967-2011

Surviving a Hyperinflation

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The most notorious recent case was in Zimbabwe and ran from 1998 – 2008. But North Korea experienced less severe hyperinflation in 2010 -2011. Other recent examples include Belarus 1994-2002, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1993, and Angola 1991-1999. You can see a list of 26 examples of Hyperinflation beginning with Egypt in 276 AD which had 1 million percent inflation over 58 years and ending with Zimbabwe. And lest we Americans get too smug we need to realize that we are the only ones on the list twice. Once in 1779 and again in 1861-1865. The result of the Revolutionary and Civil wars.

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