ECON QUIZ is featured weekly in the business section of the Wisconsin State Journal. It is written by the staff of the Center for Community and Economic Development.
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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Wisconsin lost 22,300 jobs between February 2011 and February 2012. The BLS also reports that the official unemployment rate in Wisconsin improved from a seasonally adjusted 7.6 percent to 6.9 percent during the same period.
How can the unemployment rate and the number of jobs both decline?
Anyone who bought a lottery ticket last week probably spent a few minutes dreaming about how $640 million would change their life? Those dreams can now be realities for the three people who picked the winning numbers in last week’s biggest ever Mega Millions Lottery. Each winner will receive about $100 million after taxes.
Each winner will also receive plenty of advice about how to spend and invest their winnings. How much would the winner receive if the entire $100 million is simply invested in 10 year U.S. Treasury Bonds and only the interests is spent each year?
The first Wal-Mart Supercenter opened in 1988 in Missouri. By 1998, Wal-Mart had 441 Supercenters in the U.S.
Today, there are 2,907 Supercenters accounting for 77 percent of the 700 million square feet of Wal-Mart retail space in the U.S.
Adding groceries was a major factor driving the creation of Supercenters. The primary motivation was to increase the frequency that customers visit their local Wal-Mart. Ten years after the establishment of the first Supercenter, groceries accounted for 14 percent of total sales.
What percentage of Wal-Mart’s total U.S. sales of $264 billion did groceries contribute in FY 2011?
One again, Wal-Mart ranks #1 on the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations with total worldwide sales of $443.9 billion. That is more than the combined sales of Costco, Target, Walgreens, Sears, Kroger, Kohl’s and J.C. Penny.
During the same period, Wal-Mart’s sales in the U.S. (not including Sam’s Clubs) were $264 billion. The average Wal-Mart Supercenter had estimated annual sales of $87 million.
Although these results are impressive, it is difficult to comprehend such large numbers. Recalculating Wal-Mart’s results on a more familiar basis can provide a more useful benchmark.
How much does $264 billion equal when recalculated on a per capita basis?
Last week’s TGIF highlighted the fact that there are more single person households than households comprised of married couple families with children in sixty-six of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties.
Much of the attention on single person households focuses on people age 65 years and older. In 2010, what percentage of the 669,106 people living alone in Wisconsin were age 65 years or older?
It likely comes as no surprise that there are more single person households in the City of Madison than households comprised of married couples with children. According to the U.S. Census, 36 percent of Madison households had only one person in 2010. Only 21 percent of the 102,516 households in the City were comprised of a husband, wife, and at least one child under the age of 18 years old.
What about the rest of the state? How many of Wisconsin’s 72 counties have more single person households than households comprised of a married couple family and at least one child under the age of eighteen?
In 2011 Greece’s public debt (the cumulative net total of all government borrowing) was an estimated $515 billion. That is equal to less than 5 percent of the total $12 trillion in public debt of the seventeen EuroZone countries*
So, why is so much attention being paid to such a relatively small country’s debt problem? Greece’s 2011 public debt equaled 165 percent of the market value of all the final goods and services produced within Greece (Gross Domestic Product).
In how many other countries in the EuroZone was the country’s public debt equal to or greater than their Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?
Given recent events, it seems like the stock market, and perhaps the world economy, are dependent upon the health of Greece’s economy. The slightest bad news from Greece sends stock markets around the world plummeting and the pundits repeating their dire predictions of the end-of-the-world as we know it.
Certainly, the Greek economy may be the canary in the coal mine, warning us of impending economic problems elsewhere. However, a bit of perspective can provide some useful insight into how relevant the problems in Greece are to the rest of the world or the quarterly results and stock price of Procter and Gamble.
In 2011, Greece’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the market value of all the final goods and services produced within Greece, was an estimated $312 billion.
Which of the following has a GDP smaller than Greece?
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was passed in 1969 to prevent people with very high incomes from using special tax benefits to pay little or no tax.
The U.S. Congress enacted the AMT in response to the outrage generated when the Secretary of the Treasury testified before Congress that 155 people with adjusted gross annual incomes of over $200,000 (equivalent to $1.3 million today) had paid no federal income tax on their 1967 tax returns.
QUESTION: Today, almost 4 million U.S. taxpayers are subject to the AMT. In 2009, what percentage of U.S. Taxpayers subject to the AMT had Adjusted Gross Incomes (AGI) less than $1 million?
The ongoing national political debate includes proposals to increase the top federal marginal tax rate on the highest income taxpayers.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reports that less than one percent of all individual federal income tax returns were subject to the highest individual marginal tax rate of 35 percent. Taxes collected at the 35 percent marginal rate accounted for 17.8 percent of the $953 billion in individual federal income taxes in 2009.
QUESTION: Each one percent increase in the top individual marginal income tax rate would have generated how much additional federal income tax in 2009?
