Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Define rich!!!!!!!!

(I’m broadening the discussion now.)by Divorced one like Bush Define rich. Define rich! Define rich? That’s the come back every time the issue of raising the income tax on the rich come up. What is unsaid is: Go ahead. Define rich. I dare ya! (Triple dog dare at that.) Fine. I’ll accept the challenge. But, […]

Still KISSING income inequality

by divorced one like Bush Let’s talk jazz: Still cashing the income inequalityberries, clams, dough, heavy sugar, jack, kale, mazuma, rubes, simoelan, voot. It’s all money. I started this series to develop a simple model of income inequality so that I wouldn’t sound like I was chewing gum and people wouldn’t get all balled up […]

Inflation and interest groups in the Carter Years

Robert Waldmann Matthew Yglesias is very smart, but he is not omniscient. In particular he doesn’t remember things that happened before he was born and it appears that he has fallen for some Republican propaganda. He writes In the late 1970s, it just so happened to be the case that the structure of Great Society […]

Can we please broaden our thinking in this crisis?

by Divorced one like Bush February 26, 2008 I posted a question: How are we going to fix a money from money economy. Quoting that post: There is a nice chart. (A few actually). Especially this one.” And this: Total financial turnover went from $17,804 billion in 1980 to $508,456 billion in 2000. We’ve seen […]

The Race is on?

Will post-autistic economics review (who have, sadly imnvho, renamed themselves “real-world economic review) or The Economists’ [sic] Voice be the first to publish Robert Waldmann’s paper (a readable version of this blog post, which now also links to the paper)? Only Brad DeLong may know for certain. But you should read it now.

I’m converting dollars. (In order to save the rustbelt)

With all the discussion about our plight money wise I thought it would be interesting to see just how distorted our view can become depending on what factor we choose as a comparison. Also, I find this site fun. So, just how do we compare today to the fondly remembered yesterday? I am very grateful […]

Ain’t been no progressiveness since 1980

In this post, Bruno commented and posted this link to reference this statement: In 2005, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 39.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 21.2 percent of adjusted gross income, both of which are significantly higher than 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent […]

Opus : Finale’ A Discussion On Taxation

“Taxation is in fact the most difficult function of government – and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory” Thomas Jefferson First, I apologize for taking so long to get back to this. But….I needed to work on some leads/songs (it’s not really work), get a new singer up to speed […]

Opus 1, Second movement: On taxation

“Servers, labourers, and workmen of different kinds make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor […]