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Thursday, June 30, 2005
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Is there an Arabic expression for "forked tongue?" |
MEMRI.ORG's most important contribution has been to make it harder for Middle East leaders to say one thing to their English-speaking audience while saying opposite and often contradictory things to their non-English-speaking constituents and allies.
It now seems MEMRI's mandate has extended itself to US Islamic leaders as well:
Dr. Ahmad Dewidar, imam of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan and a lecturer on Islamic studies at Manhattanville College, has recently been referred to as "the face of the next generation of Muslims in America" [1] and is considered a prominent Muslim leader in New York having met with President George W. Bush, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York State Governor George Pataki [2] and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. [3]
Recently, Dr. Dewidar, who is Egyptian-born, attended the annual Conference of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs [4] in Egypt and gave a series of media interviews. In an interview which aired on MBC TV on June 9, Dr. Dewidar discussed the spread of Islam in the U.S. He referred to sermons he had heard in 1995 that stated "We are going to the White House so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become Muslim House." (To view this MEMRI TV Clip, visit http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=730 )
On June 15, Dr. Dewidar was interviewed by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood website, www.ikhwanonline.com. In the interview, he said that before 9/11, Muslim preachers in America had often talked about the power and sovereignty of Islam, but that after the attacks, they began to exercise more caution in their sermons. Dr. Dewidar said that although the Taliban and bin Laden had claimed responsibility for the events of 9/11, many Americans believe that the events were fabricated in order to forge the so-called "New World Order." Dr. Dewidar also discussed "the Zionist… control of the government, politics, economy, and media in the U.S." (emphasis added) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:40 AM |
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
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I kept my mouth shut when they came for the farmers, then the vendors, and when they finally came for me nobody was left to help... |
I've been asked to post this on something of an emergency basis. The vendors and small businesses described below are for the most part "Hernando DeSoto-portable" operations that grow up in the absence of well defined property rights in urban land.
WRITE TO PROTEST ASSAULT AGAINST STREET VENDORS AND INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS IN ZIMBABWE
June 28, 2005
Dear Friend of Markets and Social Justice,
I urge you to join more than 200 international human rights and civic groups (including Amnesty International and the Canadian Labour Congress) in voicing protest to the government of Zimbabwe for their massive assault against thousands of street vendors and informal settlements across Zimbabwe.
Squashing the people and physical environments in Operation Murambatsvina (meaning "drive out the rubbish") violates basic Human Rights and due process of the law, and is misguided economic policy.
This sector is important as a safety net for the poor, business incubator, generator of economic benefits to the country as whole, and should be a part of any country's serious effort for sustainable development. Though humble and roughhewn, this sector is essential for achieving the goals of both social justice and efficient economic
growth, especially for developing nations.
Below is a sample short message to send to Zimbabwe's UN Ambassador. You can fax, postal mail, phone, or Email this. Ask your friends and colleagues in your various networks to do likewise. If you have time, also contact your local elected federal representatives to ask them to get involved.
Thank you.
Professor Steve Balkin,
Director of Openair Market Net
Roosevelt University
430 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
Ph: 312-341-3696
Fax: 312-341-3762
For more information on this issue see:
http://news.amnesty.org/pages/zwe-220605-news-eng (list of 200
organizations supporting this protest effort)
http://www.canadianlabour.ca/index.php/letterstozimbabwe/economy_zimbabwe
http://www.streetnet.org.za/Newsalerts.htm
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/24-june-2005/economy-shattered.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1513308,00.html
**
SAMPLE LETTER
Boniface Chidyausiku, Ambassador to the UN for Zimbabwe
128 E. 56th Street
New York, NY 10022
Tel: 212-980-9511
Fax: 212-308-6705
Email: Zimbabwe@un.int
Dear Ambassador Chidyausiku:
I urge the government of the Republic of Zimbabwe to cease trampling on
the Human Rights of thousands of street vendors and informal settlements
across Zimbabwe. Please stop Operation Murambatsvina.
Sincerely,
-00-
|
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:50 PM |
|
FLASH: President Bush's Speech in Total Viewers |
Via Drudge we have the following:
CBS 5.8 [million]
NBC 5.3
ABC 5.0
FOXNEWS 3.4
FOX 3.1
CNN 913,000
MSNBC 313,000
Now little as I would wish to be accused of massaging numbers, I can't resist doing a bit of work to obtain:
[millions]
FOX+FOXNEWS 6.5
CBS 5.8
NBC+MSNBC 5.6
ABC 5.0
CNN 0.9
Get my point? What do these numbers tell us? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:45 PM |
|
Wow. Oh Wow. |
Via Drudge, China (using vaguely threatening-sounding language) lectures the US on the evils of government interference in the free market.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that China National Offshore Oil Corporation's $18.5 billion offer for Unocal was "normal commercial activity between enterprises."
Liu said "economic cooperation between China and the U.S. serves the interests of both sides and commercial activities should not be interfered in or disturbed by political elements." (emphasis added) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:26 PM |
|
And my question is... |
Professor Robert A. Pape has rewritten this paper as an editorial appearing in today's Tribune.
The original paper's abstract states:
To advance our understanding of this growing phenomenon, this study collects the universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001, 188 in all. In contrast to the existing explanations, this study shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays. Suicide terrorists sought to compel American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983, Israeli forces to leave Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s. In all but the case of Turkey, the terrorist political cause made more gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had before.
The first phrase of the abstract's conclusion:
Thus, Western democracies should pursue policies that teach terrorists that the lesson of the 1980s and 1990s no longer holds...
And now the second phrase, seemingly an oxymoronic contradiction of the first:
[These policies are those] which in practice may have more to do with improving homeland security than with offensive military action.
The Tribune editorial concludes:
Our best strategy is to return to the policy that the United States had for decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. secured its crucial interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier in the Persian Gulf, instead relying on an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the presence of naval air power off the coast and land bases to rapidly deploy troops in a crisis. Offshore balancing worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy for securing our interest in oil, while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists coming at us.
Over the next year, the United States should transfer responsibility for Iraq's security and buildup and control of the Iraqi army to Iraq's government and begin a systematic withdrawal of ground troops from the region.
And I'd ask the simple question: if (a) suicide terrorism worked so well for them between 1980-2000 and (b) during those years we were almost universally condemned for underwriting dictatorship in the Middle East, how could anyone think it wise to adjust our policies so as to (1) allow suicide terrorism to once again work for them and (2) encourage renewed universal condemnation of our underwriting dictatorship in the Middle East?
What the heck am I missing here?
UPDATE: You can find a sympathetic review of the study here. As something of an unexpected bonus the review's closing lines add just the tiniest of ethno-tribal-nastiness twists:
All honor and praise to Professor Robert Pape and his colleagues at the University of Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism not only for solid and penetrating research, but for leaving the neoconservatives, the Israelis, and the world's other Wilsonian democracy-installers with the formidable task of finding a way to attribute "anti-Semitism" to the mass of data painstakingly accumulated and evenhandedly presented in the invaluable book, Dying to Win. (emphasis added)
UPDATE II: More here, showing the Tribune is running NYT smelly leftovers.
It would seem the recent Bush/Rumsfeld insistence there's no opposition ideology in Iraq (e.g. "Where is their Ho Chi Minh?") hits Pape at another significant weak point: in this age of instant communication, if Pape were right wouldn't we be getting this news from the suicide bombers themselves? Why don't they openly say they're nationalists? Why, instead, do we need some statistically-significant University of Chicago database to figure this out? |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:38 AM |
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
|
Speech |
Lorie Byrd says the President hit on each of the 7 points she recommended -- in some cases using languange similar that what she suggested.
The high point of the evening, for me, came when a nervous and shy military wife apologetically and with great embarassment explained to Chris Matthews that we really do need to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes -- at which point the crowd broke into wild applause, leaving Chris looking uncomfortable, impatient, and borderline angry. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:57 PM |
|
And you should... |
If you don't subscribe to online WSJ you won't get very far by following this link to today's David Malpass article on the state of the current economy.
Malpass has been kind enough to forward the text, which we reproduce below in full:
So This Is a Weak Economy?
June 28, 2005; Page A14
The divisions over America's economic outlook are deep, causing indecision at a time when the U.S. should be pushing confidently forward with structural improvements. Whether on competitiveness, the future of the dollar, savings, China, or the meaning of the fiscal and trade deficits, we underestimate ourselves and the strength of our economic system. Abroad, this gives the harmful and undeserved impression of American economic weakness, even as we should be more actively encouraging foreign economic freedom and prosperity.
The U.S. expansion has been strong and steady despite the warnings of fragility, the repeated claims of a slowdown, and the fear of China (as intense as the Japan fears of the 1980s). U.S. growth has averaged a fast 3.9% pace since the initial 7.4% tax-cut-related growth celebration in the third quarter of 2003. Thanks in large part to smaller businesses, U.S. unemployment has fallen to 5.1%, with wage and salary income growing at a 10% annual rate in the revised fourth-quarter data. Beyond housing, household liquid assets have increased more than both total debt and foreign debt, helping build solid resources for the future. Add to that the nation's biggest unrecorded asset -- a robust system of innovation, market-based capital allocation, and decentralized decision-making.
Yet the litany against the U.S. economy is so ingrained and familiar that few disputed this spring's "slowdown." When strong data on income, employment, consumption and profits showed 3.5% first-quarter GDP growth and a continuation into the second quarter, the headlines shifted to other attacks -- adjustable-rate mortgages, a housing "bubble," the distribution of income -- rather than revising the slowdown story.
The recent decline in bond yields is being presented as a likely economic slowdown and a justification for the Fed to stop hiking rates. But similar yield declines gave way to solid growth and higher yields in both 2003 and 2004. Rather than a "conundrum," bond yields in the U.S. and abroad are probably being held down by the extraordinary U.S. monetary accommodation since the 9/11 attacks and an underestimate of its inflationary consequences.
* * *
Why the urge to look for weakness at every turn? Partly, bad news sells; even in business news, if it bleeds, it leads. Second, some of the search for weakness is pure politics -- the party in the opposition has an interest in criticizing the economy and economic management. In its latest variation, the plan seems to be to paint the U.S. as an unfair, dying economy with insufficient resources to care for the elderly even as the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. This may or may not win votes, but it is not an accurate depiction of the younger-than-elsewhere, hard-working, increasingly prosperous U.S. middle class. The data, and even the analysis of it from the sources used in the negative articles, clearly shows a different reality -- an upwardly mobile society at least as dynamic as 30 years ago even before factoring in immigrants, a society in which the median household is reaping large gains from rising income, flexible job skills, low unemployment, low mortgage rates, and assets increasing more than debt.
The overarching reason for the consistent underestimation of the economy is a misunderstanding of its strengths and vulnerabilities. U.S. economic success rests on market-based flexibility and self-reliance unmatched in major foreign economies. Though flaws exist, we enjoy a healthier system of capital allocation than elsewhere, as R. Glenn Hubbard has pointed out on this page. The biggest vulnerability is the risk of future federal government policy mistakes -- protectionism, tax increases, inflationary or deflationary swings in the dollar's value, the inability to restrain government spending growth, inattention to political problems in this hemisphere.
Recessions tend to follow government policy mistakes -- to name three, the strong-dollar, high-tax, deflation policies of the late 1990s, President Nixon's 1971 departure from the gold standard and imposition of wage-price controls, and the timeless lesson from the 1929 stock market crash following Senate progress on Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Otherwise, the economy tends to expand, the result of a generally healthy, decentralized system with a natural bias to grow and create.
This leaves America's economic prospects bright. The 1970s hyper-inflation was finally conquered in the 1990s, meaning neutral interest rates won't have to be as high as they were and future bouts of inflation should be mild by comparison. The value of the dollar, deflationary in 2000, has settled into a more constructive range, and the worst of the commodity and producer price inflation of 2004 is probably behind us. Yes, CPI inflation may bulge in 2005 due to dollar weakness in 2004, finally forcing nominal interest and mortgage rates up toward neutral. But the years of low rates caused a powerful infusion of capital to home owners, new businesses, and entrepreneurs. We're likely to see a perfect storm of innovation, with small businesses in the forefront. People are staying healthy longer and some may want to work more years, undoing the grim forecasts of collapsing output. Tax receipts are surging as people find new productive activities, often unrecorded by any part of the government except the tax collector.
For those worried about global imbalances and the decline of America, batten down the hatches -- the headlines may continue to accentuate the negative view even as the economy keeps thriving. The trade deficit will probably get even bigger as the U.S. outgrows and out-invests the shrinking labor forces in Europe and Japan. Debt of all kinds should push to new records in 2005, logical as real interest rates stay invitingly low by historical standards, assets grow, home ownership expands further, and the tax bias toward debt persists. The money supply may stop growing, driving monetarists into a tizzy, though the related recovery in monetary velocity after the 2001 deflation is actually pro-growth. The severely understated personal savings rate will probably stay low and might go negative as older Americans begin to spend decades of hard-earned gains in their pensions, 401(k)s, equities and homes, cash inflows that the government doesn't count in calculating the savings rate.
These headline fears are a diversion. Rather than responding to the trade deficit with protectionism and attempts to force currency instability on Asia, the goal should be to improve the quality of investment and savings in the U.S. and also rethink and rebuild the weak multilateral efforts to promote prosperity abroad. Growth would be faster with a simpler tax code and federal government spending restraint. The budget process would work better if the growth impact of tax rates were considered, not ignored, when Congress scores proposed tax reforms and if proposals to increase spending had to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. Rather than addressing the savings rate with tax increases and forced savings, policy makers should encourage an increase in usable savings and at least partial funding of the government's now-unfunded Social Security promises, recognizing that home ownership, mortgages and consumption have more powerful tax advantages than savings and retirement accounts.
One of the most needed steps in finding good policies is to marshal more understanding and confidence in our own economic system's strengths and weaknesses. The first issue facing policy makers (and investors) is whether current growth is a fragile interim between the deflation crisis of 2001 and a new crisis; or, more likely, a durable expansion in which each quarter's strong growth argues that we're on the right path, with an urgent need for more structural improvements.
Mr. Malpass is chief economist at Bear Stearns.
Copyright 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:59 PM |
|
"Everyone knows..." |
To many of my good friends it is self evident, requiring no proof whatsoever, that our great wealth fuels world discontent and generates terrorism. Or our brutality at Gitmo fuels world discontent and generates terrorism. Or...
It is time we examined the very phenomenon of the self-evident statement.
Via Milt Rosenberg. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:27 AM |
|
Can you go home again? |
| My nomination for the best movie ever made is King Kong (the original). The upcoming remake's trailer is available here. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:10 AM |
|
MTBE |
| Regarding the Conference Ccmmittee dispute over the additive in question: don't get upset, this isn't personal. It's business. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:48 AM |
|
...who's the leader of the club... |
Mickey Kaus:
isn't a bitter confirmation battle what Bush needs right about now? It would a) buy him some time on Iraq by helping push the daily carnage out of the lead position and by giving ambitious Dems something else to attack him for; and b) allow everyone forget about the Social Security/private accounts fight long enough to let it be abandoned without too much embarrassment. It's the perfect palate-cleanser! The longer and more dramatic the better. Law-schoolish reporters and direct-mailish interest groups, already well-rehearsed and ready for a months-long theatrical run, will help Bush achieve this goal. ... P.S.: Under this theory, Bush doesn't want to appoint someone so wildly conservative that he or she would be the judicial analogue of invading Iraq or privatizing Social Security. But he certainly doesn't want to appoint someone so moderate that Democrats won't mount a massive, cacophonous blocking effort. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:24 AM |
|
Why we may actually be running out... |
Someone, for a change, makes the point without hysterics:
First, Mr. Simmons notes, all Saudi claims exist behind a veil of secrecy. In 1982, the Saudi government took complete control of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Co.) after four decades of co-ownership with a consortium of major oil companies. Since then Aramco has never released field-by-field figures for its oil production. In fact, no OPEC member is very forthcoming. The cartel sets production quotas according to a country's reserves, so each member has reason to exaggerate. Meanwhile, OPEC nations are constantly cheating one another by overproducing, so none wants to publish official statistics.
As a result, the world's most reliable source for OPEC production is a little company called Petrologistics, located over a grocery store in Geneva. Conrad Gerber, the principal, claims to have spies in every OPEC port. For all we know, Mr. Gerber is making up his numbers, but everyone--including the Paris-based International Energy Agency--takes him seriously, since OPEC produces nothing better.
...The mystery of Saudi oil capacity bears an eerie resemblance to Saddam Hussein's apparent belief that his scientists had developed weapons of mass destruction. Who are the deceivers and who is the deceived? No one yet knows the answers. But at least Matthew Simmons is asking the questions.
UPDATE: More here, hat tip to Paul Engel. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:11 AM |
Monday, June 27, 2005
|
Drat! Lost another loan to Ditech dot Com! |
Those sneaky so-and-so's over at Truck and Barter have stolen Tino Sanandaji away from EconoPundit by offering him A.B.A (actual blogging access).
Tino is young and his head is easily turned by small favors. Eventually with the coming of age and wisdom I am sure he will understand the deeper meanings of things, but meanwhile, as we wait for him to mature, his writings can be found here and in future links, which we can only hope he will send. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:47 AM |
|
A sign of the end days? |
The US pundit class must finally and painfully lift its lumbering self out of the warm foamy comfort of easy phrases like "Big Oil" and "Petrochemical Giant" and start the painful process of actually learning something about the energy industry.
One sign the process has begun: this article actually conveys information without taking the opportunity to demonize the administration. Another sign: this editorial, after the usual self-important pissy to-and-fro, gives new and constructive information.
UPDATE: Tino sees Krugman's editorial from a different angle:
Oil is traded in a single global market, with in practice a single world price. Control of oil may have been important in WWII, but it simply means nothing today. To suggest that Iraq was invaded in order to gain “control” of oil is just nonsensical.
As there is an integrated work market in oil there are really only two things you can do with it: sell it or don’t sell it. And if you want to obtain oil you do not need “control”, you only need cash. America uses some 1-1.5% of it GDP annually to import all the oil she needs without needing to control any of it...Control of oil would only be relevant in the extremely unlikely situation of a prolonged global war. But in that case a Chinese company having legal ownership of an American oil company is completely meaningless!!! The beauty of knowing economics is that you will not make these kind of simple logical errors.
|
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:07 AM |
|
Why can't we compete with those doggone other countries? |
Diane Ravitch discusses social justice math:
In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 "contemporary mathematics" textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter "F" included factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions and functions. In the 1998 book, the index listed families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises and fund-raising carnival.
Those were the days of innocent dumbing-down. Now mathematics is being nudged into a specifically political direction by educators who call themselves "critical theorists." They advocate using mathematics as a tool to advance social justice. Social justice math relies on political and cultural relevance to guide math instruction. One of its precepts is "ethnomathematics," that is, the belief that different cultures have evolved different ways of using mathematics, and that students will learn best if taught in the ways that relate to their ancestral culture. From this perspective, traditional mathematics--the mathematics taught in universities around the world--is the property of Western civilization and is inexorably linked with the values of the oppressors and conquerors. The culturally attuned teacher will learn about the counting system of the ancient Mayans, ancient Africans, Papua New Guineans and other "nonmainstream" cultures. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:22 AM |
Sunday, June 26, 2005
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"...new American Class-Apartheid..." |
Our good friend and colleague Steve Balkin, who will be sending this to the Financial Times shortly, has been kind enough to forward this draft for comment and discussion.
Eminent Domain Decision Bad for USA, Good for Despots
by Steve Balkin, Professor of Economics, Roosevelt University
With the recent Supreme Court decision affirming use of eminent domain for "economic development" purposes, it seems the U.S. is in a real race to supplant the old Soviet Union as the major world trampler of individual rights. It's as if the Liberal judges are competing with the Conservative judges to see who can squash individual rights more. The Conservative judges want to take away our rights to privacy and due process while the Liberal judges want to take away our rights to property.
The term "Economic Development" is vague. As practiced by most local governments, it is confused with Real Estate Development and neighborhood turnover. The principles of Community Development (economic improvement for the existing residents in the area of change) are rarely considered. People are just shuffled around at great personal expense with no new net job or tax base creation at the larger regional level. Some municipalities or neighborhoods gain and others lose.
Real Estate developers and their corporate clients can afford to pay for studies that prove nothing but whose data can be arranged so a project looks like it is a "carefully considered Economic Development plan."Poor minority home and business owners do not have the resources to do a counter study; nor do politicians and bureaucrats have an understanding or a willingness to critically interpret these reports. Why would they? Increasing the local tax base, no matter what the consequences, will, in the short run, insure their salary is maintained and the pet projects their boss wants get implemented. Eminent domain becomes the hitman to maintain local kleptocracy. Not one of these "carefully considered" studies would ever pass the minimum methodological requirements to be published in a referred economics journal.
These "Economic Development" framework plans used to justify using Eminent Domain are mostly window dressing for an assault on America's poor and minorities in a land grab to create the new American Class-Apartheid. The poor are displaced usually in a place with worse transportation, fewer amenities, and accompanied by a decrease in social capital. These negative externalities are never figured in the calculations of the so called "Economic Development" plans; nor are they required to do so.
Worst of all, this decision gives momentum and encouragement to the worlds' despots who will use this decision to justify their own rights trampling policies. President Mugabe of Zimbabwe will reply to his Human Rights critics that destroying the homes of squatters and the businesses of poor street vendors is justified by the public purpose of economic modernization - "improving infrastructure in cities", he calls it. He will now say that the Supreme Court in the United States agrees with me. Similarly, General al-Bashir, President of Sudan, will reply to his critics that he is not doing genocide nor ethnic cleansing in Darfur. He will argue that he has a right to displace the people there for the public purpose of developing the Sudanese oil and livestock industries.
Every time a group anywhere in the world wants to stop a "development" project for taking their homes and destroying the local environment, or stop being pushed out of their land by a political opponent, they will be morally and politically blocked by this precedent decision. The economic and political lighthouse function of the world's only super power has gone dark.
UPDATE: More here.
UPDATE II: And there's this as well: while driving to the factory (we're late today, got in at 8:05) Sally asked "Will this be enough to pop the housing bubble?"
I answered: "Wow. Maybe." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:47 PM |
|
Today's Weird Analogy |
Economists sometimes sound like climatologists warning us of the perils of global warming.
I wonder why? (You know, every time I'm called by a newspaper or a TV station it makes me feel so doggone important.) |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:26 PM |
|
Too Rich for me... |
An aromatic brew of innuendo, analogy, and simile, this up-to-the-second analysis of the administration and PBS seems perfectly designed to generate talking points for weeks to come.
There's only one problem. The massive outcry predicted by the author will never be heard because nobody watches PBS or listens to NPR -- and the few who do can also watch this or this or this or this. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:58 AM |
Saturday, June 25, 2005
|
The Economic Anthropology Department on the Housing Bubble |
| In graduate school I hung out with anthropologists. True, I was somewhat younger then, but in those days this guy's name fascinated me like I was a six years old. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:42 AM |
Friday, June 24, 2005
|
The numbers -- they magically shrink or grow depending on context! |
Why isn't anyone questioning the numbers appearing in this article? We're normally told by certain health care reformers the number of uninsured nationally is roughly 15% of current U.S. population -- and those of us who question the number by pointing to such things as voluntary or temporary lack of insurance, undocumented immigration, and so on -- are called "mean spirited" (and worse).
But now, when a state administration needs to minimize the cost of reform, the statewide number magically shrinks to the 7% folks like me usually argue is more realistic. Wow.
UPDATE: Bill Magaletta writes with some concern:
[Regardless] of whether the claim of national 15% is correct, the claim of Massachusetts 7% is not some kind of switcheroo...There's a list by state on InfoPlease (sorry, I left the URL at work), and it shows something like national 15.2%, Massachusetts 9-point-something...I'm surprised...you'd assume...the 15% made the 7% unlikely! It would, if there weren't enough regional and state variation, but apparently there is. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:45 AM |
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
|
Mobility |
Using the method suggested by Tino Sanandaji in yesterday's EconoPundit I have calculated average expected income change by quintile for the decades 1969-79, 1979-89, and 1988-98 using data found online here and originally from Bradbury and Katz, "Women's Labor Market Involvement and Family Income Mobility", New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 2002:4. (Data are reproduced below. All dollar figures below are in 2003 prices.)
Let's start with the results:
With one glaring exception -- a second-lowest-quintile expected mobility decrease as between 79-89 and 88-98, shaded in green above -- mobility clearly increases for all quintiles except the top (where decline is to be expected because, frankly, there's nowhere to go but down). It is simply false to say that on average any household in any but the top quintile ever rationally expected income to decline at any point during the past thirty years. Even in the case of the green-shaded second-lowest-quintile between 79-89 and 88-98, the situation was one of slowdown of growth rather than absolute decline.
Mobility has not declined in America.
Here are the data used in these calculations.
The method of calculating expected income by quintile is the same as calculating any other mathematical expectation. In this case, using the average income numbers I've weighted each quintile's percent probability of moving (or not) by the gain in income experienced by the average household making the appropriate move. This can all be laid out mathematically for anyone impressed by such things. Let me know and I'll send you the paper.
UPDATE: I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the green-shaded numbers. It would make me sleep lots more soundly tonight if I could report something like a $16,000 in that second green box rather than the $11,421 that's there.
However, the results seem to clearly show it is rational to be optimistic in America so long as one's standard involves household economic improvement.
Please note the income figures used are straight 2003-price dollars, not after-tax/transfer/benefit dollars. Taking into account transfers, benefits, and taxes is the next step.
UPDATE II: I take full responsibility for any mistakes, but I want to thank Bruce Bartlett for encouraging this work by having composed an absolutely awesome paper on distribution/mobility which we will, hopefully, be able to link to soon. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:02 PM |
|
Some learn. Some don't. |
Jim Miller wants to know who still finds Doonesbury funny:
Trudeau favored the Communist victories in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Nothing that we have learned since, not even the genocide in Cambodia, has made him rethink his position on the war. There are phrases that describe Trudeau's failure to reconsider his position, but the "capacity for moral outrage" and "intellectual honesty" are not among them. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:46 AM |
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
|
Definitive Word on Mobility |
I received the following email early this morning. With my correspondent's permission I have rewritten it somewhat to (hopefully) make some of the technical material more clear. (I would invite my correspondent to send back corrections, additions, clarifications, and so on.)
==================================
Hi, My name is Tino Sanandaji, currently a economics PhD student at the University of Chicago. I read your blog often, one of the best economics sites in my opinion. Just a comment on inequality:
You write: "By now we should agree that mobility [is] slightly lower [than it was] in the 1970's."
I disagree.
Relative income mobility (probably owing to changed quintiles) has decreased slightly since the 1970s. However during the same period the same data show absolute income mobility has increased. By this I not only mean that the poor are on average better off (as pointed out by the WSJ) but also that those who were poor in 1988 had higher expected increases in income than their 1969 counterparts.
Since the average income difference between quintiles has increased dramatically it is hardly surprising the probability of changing quintiles has gone down. But this does not mean that the most relevant figure -- value of increased income owing to mobility -- has gone down. People carry money in their wallets, after all, not their "relative share of GDP."
I have calculated the money value of mobility in 2001 dollars between 1969-1979 and 1988-1998 for the lowest quintiles. (For lack of data I will limit the discussion to quintiles, largely what the NYT did as well. Hardly perfect, but it gives the large picture.) A person starting in the lowest quintile in 1969 would have had an average income of $8,098. His expected income in 1979 (calculated using Bradbury and Katz's probabilities of changing quintiles as weights) would have been $23,462.
Contrast this with the average poor person starting in 1988 with $9,352, whose expected 1998 income is $26,663. Even though this person would have faced a slightly lower probability of entering higher quintiles, the income of the higher quintiles had gone up by enough to raise the expected value of mobility.
To be fair, some of the rise in expected income for the 1979-1988 poor is due to an increase in their average income. After all, on average this person had a larger chance of remaining in his original quintile. I have therefore also calculated the monetary value of upward mobility only. This is the share of expected arising from the possibility of moving up and excluding the 49% or 53% chance of remaining poor.
Again this shows absolute mobility has increased. Even though the person in 1988 has a slightly lower probability of increasing in rank, the value of ramk increase has gone up so much it fully compensates the former. The expected value of upward mobility is $21,332 compared with only $18,870 for the person starting in 1969.
For both, the expected value of higher mobility comprises about 80% of total income! The current income of today's average poor person today is hardly indicative of their medium-term well being owing to income mobility. Contrary to what the Times says this was more true during 1988-1998 than two decades earlier. The average poor person starting in 1969 would have enjoyed an income increase of $15,364 on average through 1979, while the average person starting in 1988 would have enjoyed a $17,311 increase.
Also by counting this way the NYT and others suggest the social fabric of the US has changed, whereas the more likely explanation is that small and stochastic changes in income are less likely to change one's quintile. You need to increase your average income by about $73,000 to jump from second to first quintile in 1998, whereas $42,000 was enough to do this in 1979.
I would guess the large increase in income needed to enter a higher US quintiles is the reason you guys get lower relative mobility compared to Sweden, where even a small random wage increase is enough to put you in another quintile in another year.
================================= |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:58 PM |
|
Class and Race |
As I look over this summary I'm even more firmly conviced "class" simply doesn't exist.
Imagine the New York Times ran a series called "Race Matters" with elaborate interactive graphics enabling you to enter your skin tone, hair texture, nasal width, lip thickness -- you get the idea -- and then find exactly where you stand racially.
The angry response would be immediate and unequivocal. Modern DNA studies reveal there's no such thing as "race," just a complex history of which populations mated with each other one hundred, thousand, or ten-thousand years ago. Race itself, we'd be angrily lectured, is nothing more than an ideological construct.
And this hypothetical angry lecturer would be absolutely correct.
Now consider "class." They seldom admit it, but modern social thinkers' views on class are based on those of Karl Marx. And though Marx wouldn't admit it, his views on class were based on a cursory historical study of the medieval guilds.
Those colorful guilds enjoyed a near-perfect unification of economic, political, and religious considerations. Knowing their best economic interests they organized in a political fashion accordingly. Then they easily constructed socio-religious justifications for all. Marx saw nineteenth century early-industrial capitalists as operating along similar lines. Capitalists knew exactly how they related to society's productive apparatus (they owned it) and they crafted laws, regulations, and statutes to protect their interests. In Marx's terminology they had genuine class consciousness, and they passed this consciousness on to their children through the culture of capitalism itself.
Now consider how the New York Times presents "class" in the modern sense of the word:
[I]magine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class. Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class...At first, a person's class is his parents' class. Later, he may pick up a new hand of his own; it is likely to resemble that of his parents, but not always.
What exactly is class from this point of view, then? Why, it must be a complex mix of skin tone, hair texture, no, wait -- uh,I guess I got confused there! What exactly happened to Marx's easy, simple scheme?
The answer is it was mugged by reality. There's no single "business interest" in modern capitalism. What benefits one business or one sector more often than not hurts another. "Big Oil," when you look closely, becomes exploration firms, construction, drillers, developers, financers, refiners, transporters, and retailers. Each has its own interest. Help one, you may hurt another.
And modern capitalism has grown too complicated to claim the easy relationship Marx saw between "ownership" and everything else. It is now all too easy, for example, to find business owners whose wealth and income position is way below that of, say, an airline mechanic with a nice house in the suburbs, a boat, and a summer cottage on some upstate lake that's now got lots of new subdivisions.
Add another complication: modern capitalism embodies a phenomenon Marx would have judged impossible, but which his most-visionary disciple, Joan Robinson, actually predicted: workers can buy and subsequently own, operate, and/or sell shares of their own or others' businesses. Just ask the folks at United Airlines or United Parcel Service. Or check out any of the more-secure union pension funds.
The New York Times has to present class as some complex metaphoric "hand" dealt by some game of life so as to avoid the obvious: it is not talking about anything resembling what Marx meant. It uses Marx's term as misdirection, to keep the reader from noticing what's really being talked about -- nothing more complicated than simple advantage.
And face it, like rectums, we all have them. (One or more advantages, I mean.)
Our parents were richer, or poorer, or nicer, or taller, trim or fat, or less/more fertile, or Jewish/Methodist, or smart/incredibly dumb, loving, visciously hateful, whatever, bla, bla, bla, yadda yadda yadda.
Yes, rich parents may have an advantage which they may pass on to their children who may (if they're really lucky) pass along to theirs. So do tall parents. So do ones with strong work ethics. And onward it goes.
But the numerical evidence of "class" advantage in terms of growing inequality and diminishing mobility could not be weaker. There is nothing in the numbers, it appears, that cannot be explained by the aging of the huge baby boom generation (now nearing the peak of its members' lifetime earnings) and the recent rise in undocumented immigration (which artifically exacerbates "poverty" as measured by the Census).
To summarize: "class," whatever validity it may have had in the past, is now as much an ideological construct as "race." And it is best, perhaps, to simply forget about it.
UPDATE: As my son's maternal grandmother used to say, great minds usually travel in the same rut.
UPDATE II: Tim Lundeen sends these links:
Re the existence of race, there is a good short article here and a more detailed article here.
The popular article on this is at this address, and of course Steve Sailor's site has much more stuff, starting here. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:49 AM |
|
"...for the rest of her life..." |
Edward Kline, June 20, 2005:
The health-care disaster knocked Hillary out of the box and out of a position of day-to-day power in the White House for nearly four years. It was the biggest defeat in her history.
J. Bradford DeLong, June 6, 2003:
My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.
UPDATE: Douglas Turner:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan [was a] brilliant and voluble college professor [who] began his [Senate] tenure by holding weekly meetings with reporters.
The sessions were mostly on the record. Under his then chief of staff, Tim Russert, now host of NBC's "Meet the Press," reporters were encouraged to call any member of the Moynihan staff for information.
Moynihan's briefings were seminars on history and the future. His office was an ocean of information.
Clinton has met with the New York press corps only a couple of times since 2000. By contrast with the Moynihan regimen, where the reporters had a share in the agenda, Clinton totally controls it.
One technique is the "conference call" open to Washington reporters, and radio and television stations across the state. They are very brief, focused on an issue of her choosing. Sometimes she declines to take questions on any other topic, or closes off the session with a cheerful, "Gotta go."
UPDATE II: Daily Kos is running an internet poll -- "Who would you like to see as our '08 nominee?" As this is written the results are as follows:
Evan Bayh 330 votes - 2 %
Joe Biden 501 votes - 3 %
Wesley Clark 3507 votes - 26 %
Hillary Clinton 1468 votes - 10 %
John Edwards 1086 votes - 8 %
Russ Feingold 1440 votes - 10 %
John Kerry 343 votes - 2 %
Bill Richardson 662 votes - 4 %
Mark Warner 692 votes - 5 %
Tom Vilsack 88 votes - 0 %
Other 1015 votes - 7 %
No Frickin' Clue 2326 votes - 17 % |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:20 AM |
|
A brand new me... |
Dale Franks has some interesting questions for Robert Samuelson.
Nope. Won't do it. I'm not going to answer them. At least not today. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:16 AM |
Monday, June 20, 2005
|
Iraq and Vietnam |
Bruce Kesler shows the valid parallels with Vietnam aren't with the war, but rather with the left's arguments against the war. In particular:
1. "They're not ready for democracy"
In 1966, I attended an anti-war teach-in where Bettina Aptheker...spoke. She stressed that America was imposing Western ideas of democracy on the South Vietnamese, who couldn't care less. I commented this was a racist assertion, creating an uproar at challenging the supposed egalitarian purity of the left.
2. "They won't fight"
President Johnson...largely brush[ed] aside the South Vietnamese army for several years before President Nixon poured resources and training into Vietnamization...By late 1972, only about 5% of the U.S.'s former force levels remained in South Vietnam. However, when faced with a massive Soviet-armed invasion from the North in 1975, the U.S. Congress defaulted on U.S. pledges of arms and air support, and effectively disarmed the South Vietnamese. Even the North Vietnamese were surprised at their own success.
3. "We're too culturally-blind to plan for peaceful conditions; the enemy isn't"
Despite the war, the economy of South Vietnam grew, infrastructure was developed, and social services spread. A UPI reporter, Alan Dawson, critical of the U.S. and South Vietnamese...remained behind in South Vietnam [and] wrote: "Although it is a cliche that the Communists were well organized when they entered Saigon, I found the reverse to be true, especially in fields affecting the people in general."
4. "Our military machine is one of brutal oppression"
[The] U.S. anti-war movement delighted in calling U.S. military personnel "baby killers," without a murmur about North Vietnamese behavior either during the war or after[, just as] they are silent today about the innocents slaughtered by terrorist car bombs, beheadings and tortures. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:45 AM |
|
Open letter to Senator Durbin |
On the streets of Chicago certain people soil themselves regularly.
People soil themselves in Illinois prisons all the time.
Grow up. Sometimes people soil themselves.
UPDATE: I suppose I have to admit I thought up this little ironic gem and posted it without noticing how absolutely disgusting it is perched above the post immediately below. Sorry. A really dumb move on my part. No pun intended. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:38 AM |
|
In this case... |
CAPITALISM + THE INTERNET + THE WAR = THE GITMO COOKBOOK
"It contains the actual recipes and menus for the food served to the Gitmo detainees, along with interesting facts about how American soldiers are working every day to treat prisoners humanely while still getting the information we need to protect ourselves.
Baked Tandouri Chicken Breast, Mustard-Dill Baked Fish, Lyonnaise Rice, and Fish Amandine are just a few of the recipes you'll find in the Gitmo Cookbook. We've tested them, and they are inexpensive, easy to make, and delicious." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:15 AM |
Sunday, June 19, 2005
|
More on Inequality and Growth |
The following correspondence (pertaining to this recent post) arrived at 8:13 am this morning:
Mr. Antler:
Below you will find the letter I sent to Brad. In light of the post I recently noticed on your blog, I thought you might want to see it as well.
Greg Mankiw
_____
From: N. Gregory Mankiw
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 7:39 PM
To: 'delong@econ.berkeley.edu'
Subject: some info on inequality
Brad,
I believe you can find the data the NY Times plotted here[.]
It seems that they used data in column 5 of table A3.
If you look at these data, you will find four episodes when the share going to the top 0.1 percent changed substantially over a five year period (where I somewhat arbitrarily define "substantial" as more than 4 percentage points): the periods ending in 1921, 1928-29, 1933-34, and 2000. The share going to the rich decreased in the first and third episodes, and increased in the second and fourth.
As an economic historian, you will surely recognize these dates. The first and third are associated with economic turmoil and financial market panic, while the second and fourth are associated with a booming economy and stock market.
It is an interesting question what the right time-series model is to explain the dynamics of inequality and the macroeconomy. But the simple scatterplots you posted on your blog don't seem to capture what is clearly in the data.
Greg
_____
So, while we all sit perched on the edge of our chairs waiting for Brad DeLong's response, let's graph and examine Professor Mankiw's argument:
We're invited to isolate a sample of four five-year periods (above I implement six year periods instead) and see how the growth-distribution relationship holds during this sample.
Sure enough, if you look at these years alone, economic growth is mildly and positively correlated with increasing inequality:
For very few who might be interested here's the TSP output:
Yes I know these aren't particularly persuasive statistical results but raw scatterplots and regressions are crude, first-approximation-only tools.
One might object that Mankiw has derived a principle of income distribution by sampling only years supporting the principle, but surely his point isn't that other years should be completely disregarded. Rather, I think he's saying a credible model would have to distinguish periods of extreme growth/contraction from the more ordinary years. It is reasonable to think one set of "distribution rules" would apply to the former, and another to the latter.
Another potential objection has to do with the "mobility problem," the principle that genuine distribution of income doesn't following percentile distribution when people are moving into and out of the various brackets. On how this relates to time series models of distribution we'd have to think long and hard. For the time being just keep these two words in mind: "simplifying assumptions." |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:25 PM |
|
Ordinary folk need not apply... |
Via Captain's Quarter's and Little Green Footballs we learn the Downing Street Memos aren't originals. Whoops!
And the news comes just in time for this elegant, dense, rich (pun intended) and tortured (again) comparison:
Such is the overload of faked reality for Americans at this point that it will be far more difficult for the Bush administration than it was for F.D.R. to persuade the nation of an imminent threat without appearing to cry wolf. Nor can it easily get the country to believe that success in Iraq is just around the corner. Too many still remember that marvelous aircraft-carrier spectacle marking the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq - a fake reality show adapted, no less, from a Tom Cruise classic, "Top Gun." Some 25 months and 1,500 American deaths later, nothing short of a collaboration by Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg could make this war fly in America now.
The world of antiwar opposition is peopled by the most rarified of intellectual elites, those smart enough to distinguish genuine faked realities (manufactured but still-genuine documents) from imposters (wars that only look like they replaced mass-murderer-dictators with democracies).
UPDATE: More here from Kevin Drum, who says give up, they're real.
UPDATE II: More on the authenticity question. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:17 AM |
Saturday, June 18, 2005
|
Which side are you on? |
Now Howard Dean must decide. All he's done is bring a small aspect of this rather mundane story (another report here) to the front page with his latest statement. This issue will not go away for him, and it is good for the US if the McGovern position is finally brought out in the open and fought out within the Democratic Party. Here's some vintage Ray McGovern for you to consider:
Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.
Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy...Nor can the most carefully crafted messages, themes, and words persuade when the messenger lacks credibility.
In the world of post 50's US progressive politics, the middle is perpertually squeezed by the left. Howard Dean's inept response is going to facilitate the process.
UPDATE: More here and here.
UPDATE: With rich, chewy text and as many yummy little links as there are chips in a Mrs. Fields cookie, this post tells the whole story. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:36 AM |
Friday, June 17, 2005
Thursday, June 16, 2005
|
30 Days -- Minimum Wage |
This show is apparently being broadcast once again on FX tonight at 11:05 central. I've TIVO'd as much as I had time for, and on the basis of what I've seen I'd recommend it.
What's up on the screen is a simple, hard truth: it is possible for two healthy young Americans (a) to virtually immediately find living quarters and work in an unfamiliar city (b) at or around minimum wage, and (c) to live on same with certain hardships for 30 days thereafter.
Spurlock (Super Size Me) and his producers designed the show as propaganda for minimum wage hikes, socialized child care, and expanded social insurance. The realities of the situation dilute the purity of the intended message in interesting ways.
First and foremost all those minimum wage jobs are scarcer than the producers apparently thought. All the easily-found jobs pay more than minimum wage. Spurlock signs on with a temp agency at $7/hr; his companion Jamieson dickers her wage down to minimum so as to not cheat the show's premise. (Spurlock quits when he finds deductions bring his take home down to a measly $4.26. This is important. We return to the puzzle of his deductions shortly.)
Second, the artifice of moving the action to Columbus Ohio -- a city with which the Spurlock and Jamieson aren't familiar -- seems to mask a certain level of dishonesty. The purpose of the move, says the show's script, is frankly political. Ohio's voting patterns shifted the presidential election to Bush, and Ohio remains a swing state. How bad things are for the working poor in Ohio may, presumably, decide the next election. But this simplistic political background serves to misdirect the viewer's attention. In real life arrival at a new city and finding a minimum wage job is unusual, typically a one-time event. This artificial situation all-too-conveniently gives the filmmakers plausible deniability of certain facts on the ground. Were their accidental discoveries (in fairly short order) of local charity-based food, furniture, and medical providers possibilities they anticipated but hoped they might avoid?
Yet more-serious questions arise in connection with the all important medical issues. Jamieson wakes up with urinary tract pain and announces she has a bladder infection. After some time and difficulty she obtains and fills a $26 prescription. Real world people, when they wake up and find it hurts when they pee, worry like crazy they've got a serious illness. They don't simply announce to the world they have a bladder infection unless they've had it before -- unless the condition is chronic, in other words. Did Jamieson initiate filming knowing a chronic infection would worsten at one point or another during the shoot?
And there are of course Spurlock's varying medical issues. Many temp agencies provide health insurance -- with, normally, some degree of worker participation and payroll deduction. Spurlock's 39% temp agency payroll deduction can't have been just basic social security, medicare, and so on. Was he getting health benefits with the temp agency job? Did he dump his $7/hr job because he knew the benefits would interfere with the predetermined story of health care and the working poor?
For whatever reason he moves "up" the ladder and easily finds higher-paying work landscaping. And then his wrist immediately starts hurting, allowing the script to once again show the horrors of the American health care system as seen by the working poor.
But two important words are left out: "worker's compensation." The first thing you're asked in any emergency room is whether the injury is work-related. (I know not only because I'm an educated economist but also because I've been there myself a few times.)
One can only conclude it interfered with the script's political message so it was omitted, but the simple fact is even in his second, no-benefits job, Spurlock's wrist injury was fully covered by his employer's worker's compensation policy.
So what can we say about the documentary? You should watch it. You may find it enjoyable despite its flaws.
For my part, I was distracted by Roger Ebert's basic dictum that if it makes you feel the real events upon which it is based would have been more interesting, a movie can only be judged a failure.
For all the nobility of their message Spurlock and Jamieson seem to learn nothing new about minimum wage Columbus Ohio. It is far from unusual for real-world low wage earners to speculate on the worth of what they do. You don't have to be a Ph.D -- or a New York TV personality -- to wonder whether you're making a difference, much less whether your paycheck measures that difference. But for our filmmaking adventurers Spurlock and Jamieson the whole daytime world of work exists only so they can mug at the videocam as they show off the paltry sums on their paychecks. What did they actually do during the work hours? For whom? And really -- is it certain it was worth more than they were paid?
UPDATE: Reviews can be found here and here and here and here.
As I look these reviews over I wonder whether the entire US literary class is so out of touch with normal life that EconoPundit is the only one to notice the relevance of worker's compensation? Do the people who composed these reviews even know worker's compensation exists?
UPDATE: Bruce Bartlett sends this:
Can I assume that there was no mention of the earned income tax credit, food stamps or any other government benefits to which someone living only on the minimum wage might [be] entitled? If so, it is typical of much of the left's attacks on inequality -- they simply ignore much of what we already do as a society to improve it.
UPDATE II: Lesley, a new reader of EconoPundit, sends the following thoughts on economics and biology:
As a two-time college drop-out who worked low skilled, low paying jobs for several years to eventually gain the skills and experience for decent paying work which I love, I'm always interested when people like Spurlock or Barbara Ehrenreich make claims about what can or can't be done on low or minimum wages. The first year I supported myself (1994, at age 18) my gross income was less than $8000.00, with no credit cards and no car, and the only times I ever went hungry were when I decided to buy a novel or CD instead of dinner. I lived "paycheck to paycheck" only because I blew money on stupid crap like collectible card games. I missed Murdock's show, but I'll have to be sure to catch it if it airs again. There's no way you lose 39% of a $7/hour paycheck on just taxes and FICA. He must have taken every single benefit they offered.
I do have one nit to pick, though, where I think you jumped to an unwarranted conclusion:
"Real world people, when they wake up and find it hurts when they pee, worry like crazy they've got a serious illness. They don't simply announce to the world they have a bladder infection unless they've had it before -- unless the condition is chronic, in other words."
Perhaps this is the case for real world men, however bladder infections are much more common in women than in men. For instance, if you ask around, I think you'll find that most women know that drinking cranberry juice is a good way to prevent or help cure bladder infections. A Google search for "bladder infections" and "cranberry juice" produces more than 10,000 hits. For a young, healthy woman, the most likely cause of painful urination is an STD (which a woman in a long term monogamous relationship probably won't consider) a yeast infection (but when that's the case there's usually no doubt), or a bladder infection, none of which is particularly serious if treated promptly. Perhaps men would worry like crazy, but I believe a lot of women would make the assumption of a bladder infection even if they had never had one. If Jamieson did have a problem with chronic bladder infections, she would very likely be drinking cranberry juice daily on a doctor's recommendation, something which may or may not be possible to confirm by watching the television show. Certainly it's possible that she was dishonestly manipulating the circumstances, but I don't think that conclusion is warranted based solely on her assuming she had a bladder infection.
I've been fascinated by economics ever since I first read several of Thomas Sowell's books 8 years ago, and I was pleased to discover your site today to add to my daily reading. Thanks!
EconoPundit responds: Mentioning the words "your site" and "Thomas Sowell" in the same sentence makes my morning! Thanks, and welcome.
UPDATE III: Reader Bruce Stram has been brooding about the NYT series, and sends in these thoughts:
[Social critics] dramatize income inequality and tax burdens with inaccurate, incomplete and/or highly selective results...One of the worst offenses is [lumping] the payroll tax with income tax to...boost the impression of unfair tax burden. [Also ignored is that] payroll tax payments create [a progressive] entitlement [that is] never [completely] offset against the tax burden.
Logically [critics] might be expected to favor simply ending the program. But...they are typically those who most vehemently favor [it, insisting instead that it] be kept in its present form.
[T]he only sensible interpretation [is] that [these social critics] want to make [Social Security] more progressive -- [but] they...never say this directly. Rather they...argue for more [even more] progressive payroll taxes without adjusting the entitlement. Maybe they just assume...more progressive is so [much to be] preferred that they may remain silent. Yet the balanced nature of the payin-payout features of [Social Security] are widely believed to be a key to its widespread support...
Even more egregious is that no one even mentions Medicare. This...seemingly evenhanded program...is in fact wildly progressive. Payroll payments are about 40% of [Social Security,] but there is no cap. [Higher] earnings always pay proportionately more[, yet] everyone gets the same Medicare benefits. [The rich] end up paying...far more [than they]...receive. [T]his [extremely progressive] characteristic is never...factored into [critics'] tax incidence calculations. [S]ince these and [Social Security] are...larger than incomes taxes for lower [incomes], we have a wildly progressive program in overall effect being used to bolster claims of regressive taxation.
The point is...never take...the NYT...at face value [on this issue].
UPDATE IV: More (on the TV show) here.
UPDATE V: More here as well. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:04 AM |
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
|
Schadenfreude, schoner Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elisium... |
| To a businessman who has on a number of occasions purchased advertising from this newspaper at numbingly overpriced rates, this news generates a certain level of quiet satisfaction. |
| Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:57 PM |
|
On inequality and mobility... |
Jon Henke, who has been in correspondence with David Cay Johnston, has asked us to comment on this excellent, comprehensive, and well-documented post by Dale Franks.
What can I add? Please don't get me wrong here, Dale's work is important and I'm glad he had the energy to put together the post. But all this has been said, said again, and again, and yet again, many times over.
By now it should go without saying comparison of income deciles over time is as foolish as studying a neighborhood's buildings and thinking you're talking about the people who live in them.
By now we should agree inequality has probably increased, but by an amount so slight a reasonable person might call it negligible.
By now we should agree that mobility, though slightly lower than in the 1970's (just as it was lower in the 50's than in the 1920's, when we were a developing nation with impoverished rural people moving to industrialized cities), remains a significant reality for the majority of American families.
By now we should agree undocumented immigration taints the data by perpetually expanding the number of families in the lowest income decile.
By now we should agree a numerical ratio of lowest to highest incomes is a rigged datum, because there is no upper limit on the "highest" income. (There's a perpetual tendency for the gap between the highest and lowest incomes to be "greater than ever before" because top incomes, almost always rising, are almost always "greater than ever before.")
By now it should be apparent Americans' generally optimistic attitude evidences genuine understanding of "the system" rather than false class consciousness.
By now it should be apparent "the system" is one in which income is earned, not "distributed."
To repeat: by now it should be apparent the very expression "income distribution" is an ideological construct.
The political aim of the NYT series is clear: this is yet another attempt to place the Bush Tax Cut at the center of political discourse. My experience -- based on years of class discussion of income, its "distribution" (sorry for using the term) and tax burdens -- leads me to think this is a losing strategy.
You can easily generate righteous indigation in a class by showing the size distribution of income and how it has changed over time. The rich are richer, and they seem to get richer, and the top 5% owns 60%, and so on, and so on, and so on. Ten minutes or so of all this and the class is ready for the revolution.
But hold on; far more righteous indigation can be generated in the very same class by showing the percentage distribution of tax burden by income decile. The same instinct that angers Americans when they see the very few earning very much, in other words, shames them when they see the very few paying an even more-disproportionate share of the total taxes. This basic, consistent American instinct for fairness is something the Democratic party seems unable to comprehend.
UPDATE: Long ago there may have been an EconoPundit name for the following principle: if the current percentile size distribution of income seems unfair to a given audience, a progressive income tax based upon this distribution can only seem more unfair.
UPDATE II: Chris Lehman writes:
Even as the paper takes hits for its alleged liberal bias, it retains a supremely undeviating affinity for the cultural habits of the rich and celebrated -- most obviously in its Sunday Vows section, which features short celebratory biographies of newly consummated mateships from the overclass. The Sunday Styles section -- along with the Home and Dining sections, the T: Style magazine, and the recently added Thursday Styles -- delivers breathless dispatches on the mores, tastes, status worries, and modes of pecuniary display favored by the coming generation of anxious downtown arrivistes.
So the many installments of "Class Matters" -- a now nearly completed work in progress -- come across less like an authoritative exercise in social criticism than like an oddly anxious series of Tourette's-style asides, desperately sidestepping the core economic inequities that the Times can never quite afford to mention outright. Getting the New York Times to explain the real operation of social class in America is, at the end of the day, a lot like granting your parents exclusive license to explain sex to you: there are simply far too many conflicts that run far too deep to result in any reliable account of how the thing works. |
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