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Recent Posts
- Ameena Matthews: Making a Peaceful Difference on the Streets of Chicago
- The environmental cost of eating shrimp is off the charts
- Woz Larry Summers who dunnit
- The “total return” for the broad stock market (S&P 500 Index) has declined by 30% in real terms since the March, 2000 peak
- Need help with your movie popcorn habit? Try eating it with your other hand
Archives
Top Posts & Pages
- Ameena Matthews: Making a Peaceful Difference on the Streets of Chicago
- The environmental cost of eating shrimp is off the charts
- Woz Larry Summers who dunnit
- The "total return" for the broad stock market (S&P 500 Index) has declined by 30% in real terms since the March, 2000 peak
- Need help with your movie popcorn habit? Try eating it with your other hand
- Steve Jobs on mortality as a gift
- Westboro Baptist Church to picket Steve Jobs' funeral
- Steve Jobs' grass stains -- John Gruber's salute
- Palin announces that she's not running. David Frum says amen. Andrew Sullivan grieves awkwardly.
- The new iPhone 4S camera seems to take much better photos -- not just more pixels, but sharper images, better dynamic range, more accurate colors
Categories
Category Archives: Income inequality
The GOP’s opposition to red tape does not seem to apply to their drive to make it more difficult for the young and the poor to vote
Andrew Sprung makes such a good point: The New York Times’ front-page review of efforts by Republican-controlled state governments to prevent “voter fraud” — i.e., voting by people who in the good old days would have failed to meet property … Continue reading
Posted in Income inequality, News, Politics, Voting
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Give this Wall Street protester a microphone !!!
Actually, Fox News did give him a microphone. But they didn’t air the interview. Can’t imagine why. (The New York Observer via Balloon Juice)
Posted in Business, Income inequality, Media, Politics, Protests
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The cost to a low-income family of having one child in high school band
According to my once-per-week housekeeper, Gloria — the single mother of one bright and hard-working kid who loves the clarinet and plays one in his high school marching band — during her son’s first year in the band she incurred these … Continue reading
Posted in Government social programs, Income inequality, Politics, Poverty, Voting
2 Comments
A famous Democrat once said . . . FDR on why widespread unemployment is a matter of highest national urgency
In his Fireside Chat of September 30, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said: Those who say that our expenditures for Public Works and other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that no country, however rich, … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, History, Income inequality, Politics, Presidential rhetoric
1 Comment
Photo: Scary Wall Street protester — no wonder the NYPD needs mace and pepper spray
Apart from the fact that she’s allegedly 13 years old, who could arrest someone wearing that adorable hat?
Posted in Culture, Income inequality, Law enforcement, Media, News, Photography, Protests
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Working man to Wall Street protesters: Get off my bridge!
The Occupy Wall Street group — which portrays itself as representing 99% of Americans against the 1% who are wealthiest — closed down the Brooklyn Bridge for 2 1/2 hours yesterday, stranding 100 cars and leading to the arrest of … Continue reading
Citizen videos: both cause and potential remedy for NYPD misconduct in pepper-spraying Wall Street protesters
James Fallows follows up on the NYPD officer who recently pepper-sprayed a peaceful Wall Street protester: To me it’s obvious that the abuse stories would have disappeared if not for the videos. Very much like the original Rodney King police-beating video, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Income inequality, Law enforcement, Media, News, Photography, Privacy, Protests
Tagged Law enforcement
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“Occupy Wall Street” protest: video of NYPD cop spraying unarmed, female, college-age protester in face with pepper spray
You will need to watch this twice to “get it,” because the camera angle is less than ideal. Pay attention to the white lettering and white arrows added via software. After watching the video, go to this blog for detailed still … Continue reading
The downturn is hitting renters especially hard. Landlords, not much.
If the Great Recession were hitting everyone equally hard, it would be much easier to bear it. But it’s not. Among the groups being squeezed the hardest are renters. USA Today: The share of renters paying 30% or more of … Continue reading
Posted in Income inequality, News, Politics, Poverty
1 Comment
Is tension between old and young becoming a problem?
It’s old news that when the pie ceases to grow larger, those around the table fight more over the pieces. While “class warfare” gets the press coverage, it may be that the real story is the tension between the young … Continue reading
Posted in Income inequality, News, Politics
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As middle class incomes have flattened, the costs to raise a child have risen 40%
Cory Doctorow: According to the US Dept of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child in a middle-income family has increased by 40 percent over the past ten years. Every major category of child-rearing expense has seen steep increase: day-care, … Continue reading
Posted in Income inequality, Inflation, News, Politics
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How “poor” are the poor: does the GOP claim that poverty is no big deal hold up?
Quantifying poverty is a harder problem than it ought to be, in that there are at least eight different Census Bureau poverty measurements, all yielding different answers. The imperfections behind the “15.1 percent in poverty” have led the conservative Heritage Foundation … Continue reading
Posted in Economic policy, Economics, Income inequality, News, Politics, Poverty, Unemployment
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Mark Cuban on wealth, patriotism, and taxes
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks: . . . Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have … Continue reading
Congressman Ryan calls the proposed Buffet tax rule “class warfare.” How rich.
The New York Times reports that President Obama will propose the “Buffett Rule,” named after Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than … Continue reading
Why do CEOs of Japanese car makers earn less than their American counterparts, even though they’ve outperformed the U.S. for decades?
From Yochai Benkler’s The Penguin and the Leviathan a story about CEO compensation in the US and Japan (quoted by Matt Yglesias): At GM, CEO pay on any given year could be as much as two hundred times what an … Continue reading
101 year old woman evicted from house she’d lived in for 58 years
This should not happen to my mother or yours. From WXYZ TV in Detroit: At 101-years-old, Texana Hollis is completely broken hearted. She has good reason to be. She was evicted from her Southwest Detroit home where she has lived for the … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Government social programs, Income inequality, News
3 Comments
Assessing the value of an Ivy League education
In an exposé of the sad history of college admissions strategies in the Ivy League, Malcolm Gladwell explains how an Ivy League university is like a modeling agency and unlike the Marine Corps (via The New Yorker): Social scientists distinguish between what … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Education, Income inequality
2 Comments
Non-hispanic white people get disproportionate share of college scholarships
I would not have guessed this, from Matt Yglesias: Via Kay Steiger and Jorge Rivas a study (PDF) shows that 75 percent of college scholarships go to non-hispanic white students even though such students are only 62 percent of the … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Income inequality, News
1 Comment
U.S. poverty rises to 15.1% – highest since 1983
The new U.S. Census Bureau report, summarized here, shows that the U.S. poverty rate has risen to 15.1%, the highest since 1983. About 46.2 million people, or nearly one in six, were in poverty, compared with 43.6 million, or 14.3%, in 2009. … Continue reading
Posted in Economic policy, Economics, Income inequality, News
1 Comment
Moody’s Economist: Obama jobs proposal would create 1.9 million jobs
Brad Plumer: Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is frequently the go-to guy for both parties when it comes to analysis of various jobs proposals. So, what did he think of President Obama’s speech last night? Here’s the report: … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Income inequality, News, Politics, Presidential rhetoric
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Why is GOP magnate Charles Koch telling his donors that the 2012 election will be the “mother of all wars”?
Charles Koch commenced a recent meeting of GOP fundraising magnates by announcing that the 2012 election will be the “mother of all wars.” Why this election, as opposed to the last one, or the one in 2016? One explanation is … Continue reading
Posted in Civil Rights, Culture, Government social programs, Income inequality, Law, News, Politics
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Increase in health care costs wiped out virtually all middle class income gains in the past decade
Ezra Klein: A new study in the journal Health Affairs games out how steep health cost growths have decimated a full decade of increased earnings. It focuses on a middle-income family of four with employer-sponsored health insurance. Overall, that middle-income … Continue reading
Posted in Budget, Economics, Healthcare, Income inequality, News, Presidential rhetoric
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Vouching for Michael Lofgren’s essay on why he left the GOP
Michael Tomasky applauds the Lofgren piece I called “must read” four days ago: Many people are buzzing about an article at truthout.org by one Mike Lofgren, a longtime Republican staff aide on Capitol Hill who just couldn’t take the crazy anymore, … Continue reading
Posted in Income inequality, Media, News, Politics, Writing
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GOP financier Charles Koch’s comment about the 2012 election is remarkably candid
ABC News: “We have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months,” Koch said in comments at a private gathering in Colorado in June, first reported by the progressive Brad Blog and … Continue reading
Wisconsin instructs its DMV employees to charge poor people applying for voter IDs $28 each, unless they say certain magic words. How is this not a “poll tax”?
An individual calling himself “conservative” recently compared registering a poor person to vote to “handing out burglary tools to criminals.” Another has blamed the “depravity of the poor” — rather than the depressed economy — for their plight. I have … Continue reading
Posted in Human Rights, Income inequality, Law, News, Politics
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Notes and Rests Make Music 