We're #1!...

[kalm]

Why?

Because.

I searched for a WSJ article but...

[Ivytalk]

Because.

I searched for a WSJ article but...

They reviewed the Picketty book last week. Surprised you missed it.

[BDKJMU]

Trickle up economics? According to Picketty and his exhaustive research, the numbers and historical data simply don't support what we've been doing since Reagan…

Balzac, who famously wrote that “behind every fortune lies a great crime,” lived in a world the vast majority of us would not want to see recur, a world in which merit and hard work mattered little.

Piketty argues that we are headed back in that direction, however, through misguided government policies that encourage dynastic wealth and favor returns to capital over income from labor. His dark vision is one in which even the strivers will have a tougher time, and more modest fortunes, than those whose primary basis for their riches is ancestry.

We need not return to the much greater wealth disparities of the Belle Époque, or what in America we call the Gilded Age, when industrialization and mass production produced fortunes unimaginable to those who had lived only a few decades before.

To make smarter choices, however, requires understanding the financial dynamics of the modern world and the legal structures that make them possible. Piketty’s new book is an important contribution to understanding what we need to do to produce more growth, wider economic opportunity and greater social stability.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2 ... omics.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Al Jazeera?

[houndawg]

A healthy economy MAKES things.

The problem is, we do make things, a lot of things. People keep repeating this weird notion that America is no longer a manufacturing nation when the opposite is true - we still make more than anyone else in the world. The problem is that with automation and innovation, we don't need the huge workforce that manufacturing had in America 20 and 30 years ago. We are so much more productive now because of engineered solutions and automation that we make exponentially more than we made 30 years ago but we do it with exponentially less of a workforce. And that problem isn't easy to fix and I would argue you don't want to fix it. You don't want to make the manufacturing processes so inefficient again that you require 10 guys to do the work that one guy can do today. In the long run, that's not a recipe for a healthy economy.

Yeah, that's kind of what the industrial revolution was about too.

[kalm]

Trickle up economics? According to Picketty and his exhaustive research, the numbers and historical data simply don't support what we've been doing since Reagan…



http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2 ... omics.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Al Jazeera?

David Cay Johnston is a fairly prominent financial writer, dorkwad. Besides, AJ is muslin and therefore should appeal to conservatives like yourself.

[JohnStOnge]

On the Thomas Piketty stuff:

To me, we can pretty much never really know which economists are right and which are wrong for sure because no economist can ever really prove that they're correct. It's not an experimental science. It's all educated speculation.

We can find economists who disagree with Piketty. The woman who wrote the article at http://www.realclearmarkets.com/article ... 01016.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, for instance. And yes I checked to see if she qualifies as an economist. She does.

She points out some factual errors made by PIketty in describing the history of the minimum wage then writes this:

One might overlook one isolated error as sloppiness to which we are all susceptible. But Professor Piketty's supposed history of changes in the minimum wage is not tarnished by a single error, but by a vast array of systematic errors.

His history is pure revisionist fiction, and revisionist fiction with a political purpose...

I guess how one feels going in will decide whether or not to believe this woman when she says Piketty is full of excrement. But in kind of Googling around I can see what Piketty wants to do and form my own opinion about it.

Basically, he is of the opinion that when someone does well and compiles wealth they should not be able to pass that on to their descendants. Also, he is one of those people that thinks a wealth gap is bad in and of itself. Just the fact that there is a gap is "bad" to him.

Case closed to me. I want no part of his philosophy.

[Baldy]

Al Jazeera?

David Cay Johnston is a fairly prominent financial writer, dorkwad. Besides, AJ is muslin and therefore should appeal to conservatives like yourself.

Of course, with titles of articles like, Family Planning for Climate Change, Government Regulations Saved My Life, and Time to Reign in Grossly Overpaid CEOs, it's nothing but Conk red meat material.

[kalm]

David Cay Johnston is a fairly prominent financial writer, dorkwad. Besides, AJ is muslin and therefore should appeal to conservatives like yourself.

Of course, with titles of articles like, Family Planning for Climate Change, Government Regulations Saved My Life, and Time to Reign in Grossly Overpaid CEOs, it's nothing but Conk red meat material.

[houndawg]

On the Thomas Piketty stuff:

To me, we can pretty much never really know which economists are right and which are wrong for sure because no economist can ever really prove that they're correct. It's not an experimental science. It's all educated speculation.

We can find economists who disagree with Piketty. The woman who wrote the article at http://www.realclearmarkets.com/article ... 01016.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, for instance. And yes I checked to see if she qualifies as an economist. She does.

She points out some factual errors made by PIketty in describing the history of the minimum wage then writes this:

One might overlook one isolated error as sloppiness to which we are all susceptible. But Professor Piketty's supposed history of changes in the minimum wage is not tarnished by a single error, but by a vast array of systematic errors.

His history is pure revisionist fiction, and revisionist fiction with a political purpose...

I guess how one feels going in will decide whether or not to believe this woman when she says Piketty is full of excrement. But in kind of Googling around I can see what Piketty wants to do and form my own opinion about it.

Basically, he is of the opinion that when someone does well and compiles wealth they should not be able to pass that on to their descendants. Also, he is one of those people that thinks a wealth gap is bad in and of itself. Just the fact that there is a gap is "bad" to him.

Case closed to me. I want no part of his philosophy.

So is astrology, but astrology has played a prominent role in our nation's foreign policy.

[Grizalltheway]

If you're a top earner, but not if you're middle class or the working poor. I think we can all agree that a thriving middle class raises all ships.

Supply side fail...

(The entire article is a good read.)




http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upsho ... .html?_r=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Article fail...

Let's see your analysis, Badly.

[Grizalltheway]

Gotta love Scandinavia. Hot women, solid middle class!

High taxes, profligate social spending, crappy cars.

Low poverty, low crime, happy people!

(We bought a 1999 Saab 900 new and it was truly a pile of shit so I agree on the car thing)

Volvos are great, and Ivytwat drives a Pontiac.

[Ivytalk]

Low poverty, low crime, happy people!

(We bought a 1999 Saab 900 new and it was truly a pile of **** so I agree on the car thing)

Volvos are great, and Ivytwat drives a Pontiac.

Fuck yourself, JIzzalltheway. I have 110K miles on my GXP, and it purrs like a kitten. Let me know when you pay off your '74 Gremlin.

[Grizalltheway]

Volvos are great, and Ivytwat drives a Pontiac.

Fuck yourself, JIzzalltheway. I have 110K miles on my GXP, and it purrs like a kitten. Let me know when you pay off your '74 Gremlin.

'97 Honda with 145k and I've spent a grand total of 60 bucks in repairs on it.
Pontiacs are so great, they don't even make them anymore!