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 – [...]
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 [...]
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 believe 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.
Interesting chart (By way of some nice ranting by Dr. Traven.): I didn’t click around enough to see the data sources. I presume that’s Japan up there on the left. I’d not seen this before, so I’m suspicious. Also, given how hard it is to pull a meaningful average out of a highly skewed distribution, [...]
This is an interesting post on income inequality across the nation’s states. What it adds to his prior posting is a brief synopsis of Jamie Galbraith’s model of what’s going on for the folks at both ends of the spectrum. I find it notable that both groups live on a raft. The rich raft is [...]
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