The US is no longer the land of opportunity. If you want that, move to the Nordic countries. The vertical axis on this chart is a measure of how likely you are to have an income that differs from that of your parents. The horizontal line is the usual measure of income inequality. So if [...]
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Over the years i’ve spent a lot of time thinking, reading, etc. about economic inequality. This talk (ted) is amazing, and in a sense it comes down to this chart, which answers a key question: what is income inequality correlated with? So we now know that income inequality has high social costs, or to say it [...]
A useful chart: Income is never distributed uniformly. What matters is how severe that becomes. Since what the top 10% want from their tax payments is fundamentally different from what the other 90% want this leads directly to class warfare. Denying that isn’t insane. The top 10% don’t need the government to provide: health, [...]
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Oh man that is ugly, and as the column on the right shows household net worth is even worse.
Some nice illustration of income inequality pulled together at Visualizing Economics. For example this shows a fine grain map of US income inequality. Oh I’d love to see a video of that over time! Or this scatter plot nations showing the height of inequality v.s. their per-capital GDP. The US, an outlier, is [...]
I’ve not read this paper yet, but I’ve thought about the issues it raises a lot since the very beginning of the housing bubble’s collapse. To summarize the summary this paper is about the different ethical frames around mortgage holders v.s. mortgage lenders. The lender is expected to act in a purely rational – [...]
Thursday, October 15, 2009
I enjoyed this video (ht Brad) of Professor R.C. Allen outline the theory he presents in his recent book. The question at hand is what triggered the Industrial Revolution. Why Britian and associated questions. To hear him tell it the existing theory seems to be that they finally stumbled into the right institutional frameworks; reasonably [...]
Monday, September 7, 2009
Since the end of World War II each time the business cycle throws a lot of people out of work it has taken longer and longer for them get back into the work force. Six months at the present time. When the economic engine slows you get a recession. It’s shocking how much labor is [...]
I suspect a lot of people believe that their state has a progressive tax structure, i.e. that the well off pay a larger percentage of their income and wealth than to the poor. That belief is wrong. There are a very few exceptions, Delaware for example – at least in 2002. Here’s what it really [...]
We have known about these charts for a while now; i.e. there is a sharp difference between how the economy changes under Democratic v.s. Republican presidents. The economists have apparently made no real progress on explaining why. Note how the cartoon Republican, i.e. the cigar smoking plutocrat, apparently votes against his interests.
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