Articles for Today: Income Inequality
First, there is a classic article by Paul Krugman, originally published in 1992, about the stunning rise in income and wealth inequality in the period 1979-1989 and how conservatives tried to deny that it even happened, much less had any significance. Here are the last two paragraphs of the article:
The surprise lesson of the income distribution controversy, then, is what it says about today’s conservative mind-set. It turns out that many conservatives, for all their anti-totalitarian rhetoric, have Orwellian instincts: if the record doesn’t say what you wish it did, hide it or fudge it.
There are substantive issues about income distribution. Nobody really knows all the reasons why incomes at the top have soared while those at the bottom have plunged. Still less is there a consensus about what kinds of policies might limit or reverse the trend. But it seems that many conservatives not only don’t want to discuss substance: they prefer not to face reality, and to live in a fantasy world in which the 1980s turned out the way they were supposed to, not the way they did.
This article says a lot about the mind-sets of conservatives like those who publish the Wall Street Journal (now run by Rupert Murdoch, a toady of Don the Con.) If the facts are inconvenient, simply deny they exist.
Second is an article about the book by Thomas Pikketty called “Capital in the Twenty-first Century” which caused some terrible uproar when it was published a couple of years ago. The book laid out clearly how rich people have been screwing poor people out of the gains from their increases in productivity, partly with a regressive income tax system. The article is titled “Pikketty’s Triumph” and is worth reading, especially if you are unfamiliar with the book.
As a bonus, here is an article from the Guardian about how Rupert Murdoch and Don the Con have become “best friends forever” and how Murdoch is systematically slanting the Journal’s coverage to “normalize” Don (as if that were actually possible.)
Bill McGrath
Peregrinator at Large 9 minutes ago
I shudder to think of all the time I wasted on Facebook before throwing in the towel and closing my account last November. Endless vitriol, stolen identities, non-stop fake news, scientific disinformation, bigotry, transparently false advertising, and the occasional rational insight. All this so FB could mine my data and preferences, sell my info to advertisers, and leave me open to scams and malware. Such a deal!
joanna
arizona 9 minutes ago
I deleted my Facebook account after the election and haven’t missed it. In retrospect, I can’t believe I ever spent so much time on it. Why I voluntarily surrendered my autonomy to such a dark, deceptive and mindless diversion remains unanswered. Real life is infinitely bigger than the virtual dungeon that is Facebook with all of its fake friends, fake lives, fake people, fake entertainment, fake spin. Why allow these minions of deception to feed your head? Facebook is a living testament to how gullible Americans have become.
Hamlet
Chevy Chase, MD 9 minutes ago
Power is power. While companies like FB want to think of themselves as egalitarian, enlightened, liberal, there’s one bottom line, and we all know what it is. Facebook makes money playing off of people’s need to connect, creating the illusion that we’re actually connecting with one another through it when we are not. I deactivated my account in 2010 and this morning got an email from Facebook saying I had tried to log in and it hadn’t worked. At first I thought it was spam. Then I clicked the link and it opened my old page with no password, no login information. Creepy, big brother-ish. And we’re all handing ourselves over to it.
Jeb
Texas 11 minutes ago
I don’t use social media. It’s a vast waste of time, not to mention a vast disappointment for those who look at the site and leave ‘comments’. Most people who participate so heavily are not using Facebook, Twitter, and other such money-makers for the developers to communicate with friends or family. The focus of the users is Me. Me! Look at Me! See how wonderful my life is! There is no trading of information, no return of sympathy or joy, no cohesion of community. Social media is the obverse of friendship and concern, and for the most part, leaves a feeling of ashes in the heart.
Boregard
NYC 17 minutes ago
The real problem, the one not being addressed, is how much longer are we “The People” (remember us? The ones allegedly in charge!) going to allow these social media and other platforms to keep “profiling” us, all the way down to the way we like to cut our toenails? How long are we going to let these allegedly helpful and can’t live-without platforms to keep creeping (and I mean creep in the physical sense and the icky, yucky sense) around us, spying on us (it is spying when you analyze it) and then using it, and/or selling it (and making millions) so they can narrowly define us, and then narrow down our choices of everything from hair products to, snack foods, to the info in our news feeds.
How long?
Till even non-social media users cant access good content, because the data compiled from all the addicted users, tells their browsers that because Person A might have clicked on Advert 23burblerZ, six months ago, “We” (the almighty Algorithm deity) decree that he/she can only see information from this predetermined, narrowed down (often dumbed down) data packet. “Don’t let them access anything we don’t deem part of that profile.”
How much longer are we going to allow these platforms to denigrate us, define us, sell-off our quirky data, and in the end deny us the very freedoms to choose what we want when we want it that this great nation was founded upon?
Facebook, et al – didnt earn the free-pass they allege they deserve. So why do we give it to them?
This comment comes from an article in the Guardian about Don the Con and his response to a letter that Barry left on his desk when he vacated the Oval Office:
103104“it was about him” what Trump did say, on another occasion, about himself, was:
“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”Try to get your head around that Trump free-association:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4546796/donald-trump-sentence
Got that quote from workshy_freeloader
If you can figure out what Don was trying to say (or mean) with that long free-associational monologue, please email me with an explanation. Twenty-five words or less, please.
Harry Reid, the now-retired Democratic Senator, sent a letter a week before the election last November. The letter was supposed to be secret, and it was a plea to release secret information. The letter was addressed to James Comey, then head of the FBI. It stated, in part [from this article in the BBC posted on 12 January 2017:
“In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and co-ordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government – a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Mr Trump praises at every opportunity.
“The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.”
At the time of the election, the FBI had a secret investigation going into precisely this subject, an investigation that was prompted by a warning from the CIA back in May that had caused an inter-agency committee of six of the spy agencies that the United States maintains to be formed. At the time of the election, the investigation had not made any conclusions, but it was obvious that the allegations involved– the existence of not one, but two compromising video tapes of Don the Con involved in sexual activities– were explosive. The FBI had also uncovered Don’s close associations with Russians who were in the service of Vlad “the Impaler” Putin.
So why wasn’t the American public informed? Partly because of a conservative bias in the FBI and their fear of being seen as trying to influence the election. A whole mix of reasons, none of them adequate to counter the over-the-top evil that Don the Con represents, an evil that trumps every other ethical consideration and makes it necessary to stop him as soon as possible, by whatever means necessary. They just didn’t realize what would happen if and when Don got elected. They didn’t realize that he saw it and would treat it as his personal Empire to be mercilessly exploited for all it is worth.
The current situation is rapidly approaching a disturbing similarity to the events that occurred in Germany starting with Hitler’s being named Chancellor in 1933. A lot of people claimed that they didn’t know beforehand what Hitler was going to do; yet if they had bothered to read “Mein Kampf”, they could have seen that his plans were all spelled out, in detail. If you want to know what Don the Con is going to do to this country, all you have to do is listen to one of his speeches. He doesn’t hold back, and he doesn’t have any pity for any of the people he is going to destroy. You have been warned.
[this comment was retrieved from an ancient thread, actually dated March 12, 2016, and it points out that Don the Con is already showing unmistakable signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder which is likely to lead to impaired judgement and decision-making– potentially affecting his eligibility to be a candidate for President.]
Thank you for this gracious comment. While I am a physician, I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. During the course of my career I had many opportunities to work with patients with mental illness and personality disorders, but I certainly am not qualified to assign a specific mental health diagnosis. Even more to the point, it’s always hazardous, and inappropriate, for anyone or any physician, including psychiatrists, to diagnose anyone who is not their patient.
HOWEVER, I strongly believe that it is not only appropriate but incumbent on those who understand the warning signs of significant mental illness or impaired mental health, to raise questions when a person in a position of power and authority, whose actions may affect the lives of others, continues to exercise or seeks to increase that power and authority, while showing unmistakable evidence of those warning signs.
[another commenter] points out that Trump may have NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), and that personality disorders are not considered to be mental illnesses. My understanding is that the characterization of personality disorders has evolved considerably over time and not without some controversy. In any case, NPD is a specific diagnosis. Whether or not that’s correct as applied to Trump, it’s fair and appropriate to raise the question of whether he suffers from a significant mental health impairment, not to assign stigma, but because it’s quite likely that some of the worst tyrants in history had such disorders, and because we know that people with personality disorders are not only prone to grandiosity but significant impairments of judgment.
What I’m suggesting, and I believe that [another commenter] was suggesting as well, in a political sense, is that the distinction between a major medical illness and a significant personality disorder does not provide any reassurance that the person in question should be considered competent to be handed the reigns of power.
And I’m further suggesting that the leading GOP candidate for the President of the United States and Commander in Chief, is showing some very, very troubling warning signs that we ignore at our great peril.
[I think it’s only fair to add my assent to his notion that we are already at “great peril” as a cohesive country at the present time, and I would like to leave his name out of this discussion.]
Comments of the Day: “What do We Have Government For?”– To Provide Material for Comedy Shows
gemli
is a trusted commenter Boston
Today, the primary value of government in the U.S. is to provide material for Saturday Night Live. Alec Baldwin’s career is being revitalized, although Melissa McCarthy is losing a bit now that Sean Spicer has been permanently stationed behind a bush.
Aside from that, government seems to exist in order to justify why people can’t get adequate health care. Left to ourselves, we’d do everything we could to help someone who was sick. Left to the current administration, it’s all about who doesn’t make the cut. Thinning the herd works just fine on the Serengeti. No reason the Republican lions can’t treat the poor like limping wildebeest.
The travel ban seems unnecessary, unless it banned sensible citizens from fleeing to Canada. There are weather extremes making the news every day, and the political climate is stultifying. Crazy people with guns are filling people with lead, and so are municipal water supplies. Adios, America!
Amid all of this, the thing we’re most worried about is the discourse. We’re supposed to talk in low, soothing tones about our whackadoodle government so that we can pretend everything is normal. The problem is not that the country has lost its mind, but that sensible people are complaining loudly about it. So I, for one, welcome our psychotic, science-denying, wealth-hoarding grope-fest of an administration, and hope that it gets everything it deserves.
Bruce Rozenblit
is a trusted commenter Kansas City, MO 14 hours ago [actually two months ago]
Of all of the terrible things Donald Trump is doing to this nation including the nativism, racism, and his all out assault on the truth, the rule of law, the LGBT community, immigrants and healthcare, his war against climate science scares me the most.
By waging war against the investigation and understanding of how and why carbon emissions are causing global warming, he threatens the continuation of life itself. I am not being an alarmist. If the planet heats up to the tripping point, animals, plants and people, yes even white people, will die. Sources of fresh water will disappear. Crops will fail. Coastal regions and islands will flood.
The oceans provide a major source of protein for humanity. If the tiny critters die, the food chain will collapse and the bigger critters that we eat will vanish.
Wars will break out for water and farmable land. The Dept. of Defence is actively studying these scenarios. We will be killing each other to grow food and in fact, that has already begun.
But Trump says it’s a hoax. The EPA must be shut down. Bad for business he says. Well, I’m in the business of living and Donald Trump is killing me.
Joanna Stasia
Brooklyn, NY11 hours ago
The inability of the President and his communications staff to handle live questions from the press may well have something to do with his total ignorance in so many areas and their dread of again and again have to lie about it or cover it up.
questionmark
Conway, NH 22 hours ago
So I guess it’s elitist to have a brain, and actually engage that brain now and again? And just forget about critical thinking….that’s apparently a crime against humanity.
How is it EVER ok to body-slam a reporter? I don’t care which side of the aisle the slammer is from.
How is it EVER ok to promote violence against anyone? Journalists or not, the NRA quote is out there and is unconscionable.
How is it EVER ok that when Trump claims he never said or did this or that, and the evidence is right there on video, and the press is blamed for making it up and reporting it??? Oh yes, fake news….when it came out of his own mouth for all the world to see and hear???
Happy Birthday America, and kiss your healthcare, freedoms, and sanity goodbye….solipsism has just swallowed up the government.
Everything is fake. Except the weapons. They’re real, and kill real people in the real world.
sherm
lee ny 1 day ago
There are probably many more who get their news from right wing radio, online right wing propaganda sites, and Fox News, than from the NYT, WP, and CNN. But Trump has not included these (predominantly fake) news sources in his attacks.
I’m sure that if the NYT did an in depth analysis of right wing radio and concluded it was mainly fake, Trump would would Twitter thunder and lightning accusations that the NYT was attacking freedom of the press. Every media outlet is “incorrigible”, by someone’s particular judgement.
Unless the NYT, WP, and other serious members of the press decide to switch to really fake news, they will be increasingly villainized by Trump and his supporters. Lucky for us they have thick skins.
andrew
new york 1 day ago
And yet, Trump has spent a lifetime honing the skills he is now employing on social media and the bully pulpit to turn reality on its head and gull the gullible. As P.T. Barnum is reported to have said, there is a sucker born every day.
What is so appalling is the willingness of otherwise powerful people to politely titter at Trump’s rambling, nonsensical bantering at official WH meetings. You would think that his obvious vacuous ignorance would be more alarming than humorous to these people. Apparently not as the hypnotic power of proximity to the President clouds their judgment and makes fools of them.
Only Trump can bring down Trump.
[I think PT Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute” but whatever the rate, they seem to be long lived and numerous.]
Civil War a Risk in the United States
There exists a significant risk of civil war in this country, between the forty percent who still support Don the Con and the sixty percent who think he’s unfit and illegitimate because he was elected with Russian help. Combined with the presence of three hundred million guns, or nearly one for every person in the country, the volatile and vituperative atmosphere surrounding the controversy in Washington over political power makes the risk of overt violence high.
Once a contested event occurs in which double digit mortality is seen, events will begin to spiral out of control.
It is to be expected that the police and sheriffs will support Don and the Army will support the “deep state” consisting of all the Democratic Senators and Congresspeople. Urban areas will be controlled by the “blue” (Democratic) paramilitary and rural areas will be controlled by the “reds” (Republican and/or Trumpian.)
This has been a service of the “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s nobody after you” paranoia service.
[I regret to inform you that this warning comes two weeks too late for Charlottesville.]
[I regret the delayed reporting of this letter but it seems that human error has caused drafts of posts to be mistaken for actual posts… therefore, there will be many posts for a few hours…]
Henry
Boston 18 hours ago [+2 months]
Everyday the media reports on a new study that blames anything from avocados to video games to parents for low wages and unemployment, but never once actually experimentally controlling for employment opportunities. Every single one of these studies relies on the same obfuscation: confusing correlation for causation, like blaming cancer on chemotherapy because a majority of cancer patients do chemo.
These articles are all begging the question. They blame unemployment on people doing things that unemployed people do; they say, in effect, “you are unemployed and lazy because you are unemployed and lazy. Stop being unemployed and lazy!”
These studies are not published to persuade academics, but to be reported on and tweeted by politicians, thereby impeding scientific literacy while pushing a political agenda.
It seems that the mainstream media will stop at no length to avoid acknowledging the real problems: rampant deregulation that dangerously erodes working conditions and lowers wages; an evermore self-serving mainstream media and elite socio-economic class that exploits the values of truth, honesty, and science to the extent that Americans are losing the ability to distinguished reality from fantasy; a political and economic modus operandi that rewards automation and outsourcing while eroding work opportunities and safety nets for its citizens.
New York Times, when will you wake up to the nightmare you have helped create?
