Reverie

Comparing the figures for 2017 to those for 1980 – the year Ronald Reagan was first elected president – we find that in 2017 smaller percentages of American households earned lower- and middle-incomes than earned such incomes in 1980. But we find also that the percentages of American households earning high incomes in 2017 were much larger than in 1980. For all annual-income categories of $100,000 or more, the percentages of American households earning these high annual incomes are greater than were the percentages earning these high incomes in 1980. (Remember, these figures are adjusted for inflation.)

So,we cannot listen to Michael Jackson music but we can wear Che Guevara shirts?

https://babylonbee.com/news/nations-wealthy-privileged-lecture-nation-on-evils-of-wealth-privilege/



The ruling group attempts, to the extent that it is possible, to create fiscal illusions, and these have the effect of making taxpayers think that the taxes to which they are subjected are less burdensome than they actually are. At the same time, other illusions are created that make beneficiaries consider the values of public goods and services provided them to be larger than may actually be the case. The various institutions of taxing and spending are so organized as to create this set of illusions.--Buchannan


Higher marginal tax rates on profits and investment would reduce savings, lower rates of investment, and thereby reduce the stock of productive capital, and therefore wage growth.Capital investment and total factor productivity (TFP) growth are essential components of the productive potential of the economy. Robert Barro decomposed the growth rate of real GDP from the growth rates of capital, labor, and TFP and found that for the period 1947–1973, TFP growth accounted for 34 percent of GDP growth, while capital accounted for 43 percent of GDP growth. (deRugy)


It's tough to find references to the "Covington" story now. It's just too revealing about the culture and the culture can't stand the mirror. Remarkable that adults could be placed in such relief. Almost a metaphor for problems in the culture. This is an interesting effort at analyzing it: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/media-must-learn-covington-catholic-story/581035/


Another arrest for lying to investigators. If there is any lesson that Americans did not learn from Martha Stewart, it should be learned now: Never, ever talk to a law official without a lawyer.

Very good women's Australian final. Osaka is a beast, Kvitka's recovery from her savage injury is a real tribute to the human spirit.

The Republicans assess themselves: “We’re in a demographic death spiral,” said Republican consultant John Weaver, a top aide to former Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich. “If we were Coca-Cola or Delta or any product on the market, would you be happy that your customers, your base of support, were old, white and closed-minded?”

On the other side of the aisle, Congresswoman Maxine Waters is the new head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. She will be able to influence our financial decisions. Waters announced this week that the Committee will form a new subcommittee on diversity and inclusion. Committee members Carolyn Maloney and Gregory Meeks are pushing for legislation forcing all public companies to annually disclose the racial, ethnic and gender composition of their boards. Probably the first step toward quotas. Maxine Waters!

Notre Dame is covering up its Columbus murals. Don't ask why. A commentator writes, " In what is now Peru, children were sacrificed by the Incas in a practice known as Capacocha. Should any positive depictions of the Incas be covered up, in light of this heinous practice?"
\

The Japanese Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that transgender people must be sterilized before filing gender changes on official documents. The 4-0 ruling backs the law as constitutional as its initial intention was to curtail confusion among society. Are these leaders becoming frightened?






"Jupiter Ascending" makes "Godzilla" look like "King Lear."


On the Parkway East, a Good Samaritan stopped for a disabled car near the Oakland exit. Two men looking at the car were then hit by a third car and knocked over the railing to the roadway below where they were hit and killed by a fourth car.


There is an 85% 5 year survival rate in pediatric cancer in the U.S., with a 1% annual decline in deaths. There is a 30% infertility rate in kids after therapy. There are remarkable fertility efforts at work.

https://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/04/square-man-in-round-nature.html

Should Prince Philip should be allowed to continue to drive? Is that a closed-minded view reached through a small sample size?

29 Trillion dollars are in retirement plans hungrily viewed by government thieves.


A new study thinks they have found some really important information: "But even as two new surveys confirm the public’s growing awareness of global warming, they also indicate that the issue is still not a front-burner concern and that taxpayers don’t want to pay very much to rein in the greenhouse gases that are at the root of the problem." The conclusion is that people are concerned abut global warming but do not want to pay for it's cure. But there are certainly other interpretations. People may not believe the problem is as severe as advertised, they may be cynical about the government's ability to do anything meaningful, like Margaret Meade's subjects they might hate the pollster. Narrative is all.


There has been a shift away from minimum wage hikes to tax credits as a poverty reduction policy tool because policy wonks became convinced that in-work top-ups were better targeted and encouraged work, while minimum wage hikes risked rendering low-skilled workers unemployable. Despite a major academic back-and-forth in the literature, many academic economics still believe that. A study of the federal minimum wage hike from $5.15 to $7.25 in 2009 by economists Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Wither estimated the hike cost 800,000 low-paid jobs.
Thus, policies that have debatable outcomes are confidently implemented.



There is some academic debate over the value of parental leave. The overwhelming majority of employers find that paid leave has no effect or a positive effect on productivity, profitability, turnover, and morale. See above


The recent 70% tax suggestion has been defended by being, in the context of history, not so extreme. So we defend a bad idea by claiming we have had bad ideas before.


What economists call rent-seeking, in the context of politics, means bending government power for private advantage, either by conferring advantages on oneself or imposing disadvantages on competitors. This is not capitalism, it is influence-peddling.


"There is excellent health care on Cuba — just not for ordinary Cubans. …there is not just one system, or even two: There are three. The first is for foreigners who come to Cuba specifically for medical care. This is known as “medical tourism.” The tourists pay in hard currency… The second health-care system is for Cuban elites — the Party, the military, official artists and writers, and so on. In the Soviet Union, these people were called the “nomenklatura.” And their system, like the one for medical tourists, is top-notch. Then there is the real Cuban system, the one that ordinary people must use".--from Nordlinger's 2007 study


Sullivan on the grown-up failure in D.C.: "What was so depressing to me about the Covington incident was how so many liberals felt comfortable taking a random teenager and, purely because of his race and gender, projected onto him all their resentments and hatred of “white men” in general. If you ignore or downplay the nastiest adult bigotry imaginable and focus on a teen boy’s silent face as the real manifestation of evil, you are well on your way to creating a new racism that mirrors aspects of the old. This is the abyss of hate versus hate, tribe versus tribe. This is a moment when we can look at ourselves in the mirror of social media and see what we have become. Liberal democracy is being dismantled before our eyes — by all of us. This process is greater than one president. It is bottom-up as well as top-down. Tyranny, as Damon Linker reminded us this week, is not just political but psychological, and the tyrannical impulse, ratcheted up by social media, is in all of us. It infects the soul of the entire body politic. It destroys good people. It slowly strangles liberal democracy. This is the ongoing extinction level event."

A financial article called Facebook "the Digital Age’s Enron."

More than 200 prominent men have lost their jobs in the recent #MeToo movement, and nearly half of them were succeeded by women. But companies seeking to minimize the risk of sexual harassment or misconduct appear to be simply minimizing contact between female employees and senior male executives. Last February, two online surveys by Lean In and SurveyMonkey on the effects of #MeToo in the workplace found that almost half of male managers were uncomfortable engaging in one or more common work activities with women, such as working one on one or socializing.


Only four industrialized countries — France, Norway, Spain and Switzerland — currently levy a "wealth tax" on their citizens. One reason it is unusual is that it is confiscatory, a quality that most people recognize as and associate with tyrannical governments.


Saez and Zucman supported the AOC high tax proposal in the NYT and offered a novel justification for their proposal. They do not seek additional revenue; they seek to discourage and penalize the accumulation of wealth itself. They actually admit the destructive, ineffective and regressive nature of taxation, touting it instead as a moral tool, beyond judgment.


In the past 17 years, Pew Research has found, the percentage of Democrats who described themselves as liberal jumped from 30% to 50%. This is reflected in issue positions. In 2008, the percentage of Democrats who agreed that immigrants here illegally should be permitted to become citizens was 29%. That increased to 51% in 2018. Between 2010 and 2017, the portion who said "racial discrimination is the main reason many blacks can't get ahead these days" rose from 28% to 64%.


The New York Times' Walter Duranty was given a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 even though he lied in his reports to promote Stalin’s homicidal regime. He even covered up Stalin’s holocaust of the Ukrainian people. Even though Duranty’s acts are now public knowledge, the Pulitzer Prize Board has not revoked the award. The New York Times at least has acknowledged that Duranty lied to promote Stalin’s savage dictatorship. In our new age of retrograde reassessment, we all await the Pulitzer retraction.

In 1948, the unemployment rate for 17-year-old black males was just under 10%, and no higher than the unemployment rate among white male 17-year-olds. The rates soon diverged; Sowell says because of minimum wage.


Murray Kempton said that the similarity between American politics and professional wrestling is the absence of honest emotion. These new politicians seem to be bringing honest, if stupid, emotions to the arena.