by Linda Beale Ian Ayres on the Brandeis Tax I’ve often argued here that vast inequality is harmful to democracy, and that the kind of unequal society that we have today, reflected the Gilded Age of yore, is especially worrisome. Much of what is happening in this country that threatens freedom and economic suffering […]
Update: Mike Konczal also takes a look at this question in Who are the one percent and what do they do for a living.Update 2: Another source for historical trends on inequality is at The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities by Taryn Hart Taryn Hart publishes at her blog Plutocracy files and has interviewed […]
by Linda Beale More on Romney’s Privileged Roots The New York Times ran a story on Rmoney on Sunday but with quite a different take than the Journal’s interview by Paul Gigot that I reported on yesterday. See, At Harvard, A Master’s in Problem Solving, New York Times, Dec. 25, 2011, at A1. The story […]
Based on the notions of economic efficiency that I laid out here, if I could do whatever I wanted I would make the following changes over a ten-year period. (Some faster, some slower, some phased in, some implemented instantly on a given date.) The appropriate amounts in each case require a better calculator than I […]
Romney’s Wall St. J. Interview with Gigot–Protecting the Rich [edited to rephrase and correct typos 12/26/11 5 pm] Joseph Rago and Paul Gigot interviewed Mitt Romney on his ‘vision’ for America–“On Taxes, ‘Modeling’, and the Vision Thing”, Wall St. J. Dec. 23-24, 2011, at A13. In it, Romney reveals the way patrician wealth has affected his […]
Joseph Stiglitz in an op-ed in Vanity Fair tells us about a more basic set of problems we face than actually discussed in public media. It is very long. The fact is the economy in the years before the current crisis was fundamentally weak, with the bubble, and the unsustainable consumption to which it gave […]
Casey Mulligan is curious: what could have caused the big uptick in the uptake on unemployment insurance in recent years? It’s a mystery. Or, maybe not: Sorry, the JOLTS data only goes back to 2001. Which directly addresses Mulligan’s basic assertion: People are lazy. They don’t like to work. Well yeah. (People especially don’t like […]
Dr. Black has already embedded one of the few worthwhile modern Xmas songs.* And I usually leave re-posting this story to Brad DeLong, but he appears to have gone all-in for Latin and skipped it this year. So, without further ado, Mark Evanier: I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed […]
Poking a little bit of fun at his own traditions and perhaps a bit also at the ‘war on Christmas’ that is becoming a tradition in our politics, my minister offered this ‘sermonette’ to his congregation last Sunday. I thought to put it up in a more prose form to remind us also to remember […]