Every once in a while there are posts that should just be allowed to stand for themselves--worth reading, for anybody that enjoys my posts. I'll list a few here. A wealth of riches to greet us in the New Year, I guess.
Tough Times in Chicago, The Economist, Jan 5, 2010 (hat tip to Brad DeLong who listed this in his ten posts not to miss)--this post covers the John Cassidy piece in the latest New Yorker on the impact of the economic crisis on freshwater economics (and economists), in which Cassidy pulls some amazing and "not very pretty" statements from current Chicago School adherents and then goes on to look at the Wall STreet Journal op-ed by Gary Becker et al, which is "pretty lame" in suggesting that uncertainty created by the government is the major problem in the recovery from the recession.
The Rich *Are* Different, Tom Bozzo, Angry Bear, Jan. 5, 2010--this post deals with the question of just who is "rich". Bozzo notes a "key factor of a qualitative change in the structure of income" and illustrates it with a great graph showing sharp decline in wage income at the same time of a steep increase in capital gains and interest/dividends income--around $200,000. He concludes that "if you can provide yourself with a better-than-average living without working, a very rare luxury indeed, you are in fact rich."
A Tax Policy Determination Clue, Mauled Again, Jan. 6, 2010--Jim Maule takes off on the issue of wealth and the fact that Congress isn't exactly representational on that score (something I've noted in several postings myself). 44% of Congress members are millionaires, compared to about 1% of the American population. Bad news for ordinary Americans.
Does IRS Notice Allowing TARP Recipients to Save Billions in Taxes Cost Ordinary Americans?, Citizens for Tax Justice, Dec. 18, 2009--this is an older post, but an important one. The Obama Treasury is doing the same old stuff the Bush Treasury did--voluntarily refuse to apply the statutory law to "too big to fail" banks, letting them save millions in taxes as a result. As he says "Though we do have taxation with representation, it surely isn’t taxation with representation of all. It’s taxation with representation of those who can afford to pay for the influencing of legislation, including tax legislation, and especially tax legislation." Read and weep.
Krugman has a post on metro area density "Desert Bubbles", following a post on Bernanke and the Bubble (Jan 6, 2010) that has one line dripping with post-crisis free-marketarian humor that must be repeated for the smile of the day: "On one side, we’re supposed to believe that markets are efficient and wonderful; on the other, we’re supposed to believe that anything which constrains buildable land — which, you know, sometimes happens for entirely natural reasons — will send markets into wild irrational swings. Those poor, fragile, omnipotent markets, able to handle anything except mild government intervention …"
Recent Comments