High-cholesterol diets are 'not linked to increased risk of heart attack'

There go a million dietary warnings.  This has long been known but getting it generally accepted is the problem

Studies linked high-cholesterol with heart problems, the egg and other high-cholesterol foods were deemed dangerous, prompting doctors and dietitians to advise restricting egg consumption.

However, in 2000 the American Heart Association revised its recommendations, suggesting it is safe to eat an egg a day. And now, a new study has added weight to that advice.

Eating an egg a day doesn't increase a person's risk of heart attack, scientists have revealed. Eggs are high in dietary cholesterol - but don't have an effect on a person's blood cholesterol levels, a new study found

Thus, a high-cholesterol diet should not be associated with cardiovascular disease.

The findings even apply to people genetically predisposed to a greater effect of dietary cholesterol on their metabolism, researchers noted.

For most people, dietary cholesterol only has a minor effect on serum cholesterol – otherwise known as the cholesterol that is found in the blood stream.

SOURCE

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Social Security Hurts Working Americans

Most working Americans pay 12.4% towards Social Security; the employee pays 6.2% as does his or her employer. So, nearly one in eight dollars earned goes to the government for Social Security. Think about the magnitude of how this negatively impacts our hard-working Americans. Then think, would the American worker be more secure if they invested in a tax-free investment account, which they own and control with the help of an investment advisor? The answer is clearly yes! For 30 years, Chile has proven personal ownership and investment creates prosperity and freedom for its citizens.

Jose Pinera, a Harvard PhD in economics, created Chile's personal Social Security account system in 1980. Spectacularly, the private-ownership of retirement accounts by workers in Chile has greatly improved their lives as well as the economy of Chile. Recently, Jose Pinera revealed that in 1999 President Bill Clinton strongly supported private-ownership Social Security in America, and as early as 1996, Mack McLarty, Clinton's former Chief of Staff, went to Chile to observe the transition to ownership. In 1999, Clinton's State of the Union speech proposed "USA accounts" for every American worker.

“USA accounts,” universal savings accounts, funded by close to 11% of the then-Social Security surplus as a means of taking pressure off the Social Security program, which was approaching insolvency then. According to the plan, every American would have had a private savings account, funded by a portion of his or her payroll taxes.

“USA accounts will help all Americans to share in our nation’s wealth and to enjoy a more secure retirement,” Clinton said. He was right.

Clinton, the most-capable president since Reagan, recognized the value of owning the product of a person’s labor – property rights. Enormously beneficial, saving and investing promotes economic growth and the advancement of civilization. Unfortunately, Clinton wasn't able to make his vision come to life. Around the same time, Clinton and Monica Lewinsky's affair was exposed, and the Republican Party impeached Clinton for being dishonest under oath. He needed the Democrats to vote against being found guilty, and, as always, the Democrats oppose property rights and ownership. So, Clinton dropped his quest for USA accounts, and, harmfully, the Social Security continued to be a Ponzi scheme decreasing a worker’s income and the income of our next generation.

Worse and foreseeable, eighteen years later Social Security is insolvent. In 2014, it spent $63 billion more than it took in, and its future liabilities today exceed $26 trillion. Recently Investor’s Business Daily explains the benefits of the proposed savings accounts.

Again, the biggest negative impact is on the American worker. Instead of having 18 years of investment, we have an unpaid tax bill of $26 trillion while Chilean employees have their investments and a growth of 9.23 percent above inflation over the first 30 years. Plus, Chile has weathered the last 10 years of very difficult world-wide financial downturn better than almost every other country.

Its a huge lesson to the American worker. Public policy impacts everyone’s life. The Clinton/Lewinsky tryst destroyed excellent, public policy. Then a second opportunity appeared for Social Security reform with President Bush strongly supported personal accounts in 2005, which was thwarted Sen. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who bragged about defeating the “sweet man.” Immorally, her political gamesmanship has hurt millions of Americans.

Wake-up, Americans! Policy that promotes ownership of your work, promotes freedom and advances civilization. Government-ownership only creates debt and destruction. We need to listen to Jose Pinera.

    "They (worker in Chile) trust the private sector and prefer market risk to political risk. If you invest money in the market, it could go up or down. Over a 40-year period, though, a diversified portfolio will have very low risk and provide a positive rate of real return. But when the government runs the pension system, it can slash benefits at any time."

Workers arise. Demand ownership of the product of your labor.

SOURCE

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Economic Mobility, Class Warfare, and Poverty

The quality of economic analysis from politicians is never good, but it becomes even worse during election season.

The class-warfare rhetoric being spewed by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is profoundly anti-empirical. Our leftist friends genuinely seem to think the economy is a fixed pie and that it’s their job to use coercive government power to reallocate the slices.

The only real quandary is whether Bernie’s sincere demagoguery is more disturbing or less disturbing than Hillary’s hypocritical attacks on the top 1 percent.

Since I mentioned that the left’s rhetoric is anti-empirical, let’s look at the evidence.obama soak the rich

I’ve previously shared very detailed IRS data showing that the so-called rich pay a hugely disproportionate share of the tax burden.

Let’s augment that analysis by perusing some data on income mobility.

Writing for Money, Chris Taylor explains that America is not a land of dynastic wealth.

…70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and a stunning 90% by the third, according to the Williams Group wealth consultancy. …When I asked financial planners why…second- and third-generation heirs turn out to be so ham-handed, the answers were surprisingly frank. A sampling: “Most of them have no clue as to the value of money or how to handle it.” “Generation Threes are usually doomed.” “It takes the average recipient of an inheritance 19 days until they buy a new car.”

But you don’t have to examine several generations to recognize that American society still has a lot of income mobility.

Tami Luhby looks at how people move up and down the income ladder during their lives.

The Top 1% is often considered an exclusive, monolithic group, but folks actually rise up into it and fall out of it quite often. …Some 11% of Americans will join the Top 1% for at least one year during their prime working lives (age 25 to 60), according to research done by Thomas Hirschl, a sociology professor at Cornell University. But only 5.8% will be in it for two years or more. As for holding onto this status for at least 10 years? Only a miniscule 1.1% of Americans are this fortunate. “Affluence is dynamic, said Hirschl… “The 1% really isn’t the 1%. People move around a lot.”

The same is true for the super-rich, the upper-middle class, and the poor.

The IRS looked at how frequently the same Top 400 taxpayers appeared on the list over a 22-year period ending in 2013. Some 72% ranked that high for just one year. Only 3% were listed for a decade or more. …While just over half of Americans reach the Top 10% at least once in their careers, only 14% stay in it for a decade or more, Hirschl found. …On the flip side, it’s not uncommon for Americans to spend some time at the bottom of the heap. Some 54% of Americans will be in or near poverty for at least one year by their 60th birthday, Hirschl said.

Now let’s shift back toward public policy.

The good news (relatively speaking) is that the politics of envy don’t seem to work very well. This polling data finds that most Americans do not support higher taxes (presumably from the rich) to impose more equality.

And when you combine these numbers with the polling data I shared back in 2012, I’m somewhat comforted that the American people aren’t too susceptible to the poison of class warfare.

Let’s close with some ideological bridge building.

I certainly don’t share the same perspective on public policy as Cass Sunstein since the well-known Harvard law professor leans to the left.

But I think he makes an excellent observation in his column for Bloomberg. Smart leftists should focus on how to help the poor, not demonize the rich.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have been operating within the terms set by Top 1 Percent progressivism. …For Top 1 Percent progressives, the accumulation of riches at the very top is what gets the juices flowing. They prioritize much higher taxes on top-earners, more aggressive regulation of Wall Street, restrictions on the compensation of chief executives, and criminal prosecution of those responsible for the financial crisis. Top 1 Percent progressivism emphasizes the idea of fairness — but it’s nevertheless a politics of outrage, animated by at least a trace of envy. It’s as if “millionaires and billionaires” were the principal problem facing America today.

Bottom 10 Percent progressives are not enthusiastic about concentrations of wealth. But that’s not what keeps them up at night. Their focus is on deprivation and lack of opportunity. They’re motivated by empathy for people who are suffering, rather than outrage over unjustified wealth. They want higher floors for living standards, and do not much care about lower ceilings.

So far, so good.

I’ve also argued that our goal should be reducing poverty, not punishing success.

This is why I want pro-growth tax reform, a smaller government, and less suffocating red tape.

Unfortunately, Prof. Sunstein then wanders into very strange territory when it comes to actual policy. He actually endorses the utterly awful economic “bill of rights” proposed by one of America’s worst presidents.

Their defining document is one of the 20th century’s greatest speeches, delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944, in which he called for a Second Bill of Rights, including the right to a decent education, the right to adequate medical care and food, and the right to “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.”

If you think I’m exaggerating about FDR being an awful President, click here.

And if you want more information about FDR’s terrible “bill of rights,” click here.

So I like his diagnosis of why the left is wrong to fixate on hating success.

But he needs to look at real-world evidence so he can understand that free markets and small government are the right prescription for prosperity.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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