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thinkahol *

IT'S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Eve... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/s-are-dangerous-maniacs-2011-7

IT'S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Everyone

shared by thinkahol * on 16 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 16 Jul 11
     
    Yes, the rest of the world is watching this embarrassing debt ceiling nonsense, and it is growing dismayed. Der Spiegel has a roundup of commentary in German newspapers about the fight, and the universal message is this: The US is holding the entire world hostage, and it's the Republicans that are playing with fire. Hard to accuse the Germans (who are no fans of fiscal profligacy) of being motivated by politics, or of having some inherent reason to attack Republicans. This is just the reality of what they're doing.
thinkahol *

Philly Sacrifices 26 School Kitchens to the Austerity Gods | Mother Jones - 0 views

motherjones.com/...school-kitchens-austerity-gods

Philly Sacrifices 26 School Kitchens to the Austerity Gods | Mother Jones

shared by thinkahol * on 07 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 07 Jul 11
     
    As the "debt ceiling" fight drags on, the true costs of deficit hysteria are coming due.
thinkahol *

On the News With Thom Hartmann: TSA Agents Working With Radiation Machines Develop Canc... - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...1309449287

On the News With Thom Hartmann: TSA Agents Working Radiation Machines Develop Cancer and More | Truthout

shared by thinkahol * on 30 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 30 Jun 11
     
    In today's On the News segment, Thom Hartmann discusses a letter sent by 248 economists demanding a "clean vote" on raising the debt ceiling, new evidence that the body scanners at airports are giving people cancer, new US drone strikes in Somalia, Ohio's ongoing war on organized labor, and more. Scroll down to watch the newscast.
Sarah Eeee

Income Inequality and the 'Superstar Effect' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...26excerpt.html

inequality capitalism economics

shared by Sarah Eeee on 27 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Yet the increasingly outsize rewards accruing to the nation’s elite clutch of superstars threaten to gum up this incentive mechanism. If only a very lucky few can aspire to a big reward, most workers are likely to conclude that it is not worth the effort to try.
  • It is true that the nation grew quite fast as inequality soared over the last three decades. Since 1980, the country’s gross domestic product per person has increased about 69 percent, even as the share of income accruing to the richest 1 percent of the population jumped to 36 percent from 22 percent. But the economy grew even faster — 83 percent per capita — from 1951 to 1980, when inequality declined when measured as the share of national income going to the very top of the population.
  • The cost for this tonic seems to be a drastic decline in Americans’ economic mobility. Since 1980, the weekly wage of the average worker on the factory floor has increased little more than 3 percent, after inflation. The United States is the rich country with the most skewed income distribution. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average earnings of the richest 10 percent of Americans are 16 times those for the 10 percent at the bottom of the pile. That compares with a multiple of 8 in Britain and 5 in Sweden.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Not coincidentally, Americans are less economically mobile than people in other developed countries. There is a 42 percent chance that the son of an American man in the bottom fifth of the income distribution will be stuck in the same economic slot. The equivalent odds for a British man are 30 percent, and 25 percent for a Swede.
  • Just as technology gave pop stars a bigger fan base that could buy their CDs, download their singles and snap up their concert tickets, the combination of information technology and deregulation gave bankers an unprecedented opportunity to reap huge rewards. Investors piled into the top-rated funds that generated the highest returns. Rewards flowed in abundance to the most “productive” financiers, those that took the bigger risks and generated the biggest profits. Finance wasn’t always so richly paid. Financiers had a great time in the early decades of the 20th century: from 1909 to the mid-1930s, they typically made about 50 percent to 60 percent more than workers in other industries. But the stock market collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression changed all that. In 1934, corporate profits in the financial sector shrank to $236 million, one-eighth what they were five years earlier. Wages followed. From 1950 through about 1980, bankers and insurers made only 10 percent more than workers outside of finance, on average.
  • Then, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration unleashed a surge of deregulation. By 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act lay repealed. Banks could commingle with insurance companies at will. Ceilings on interest rates vanished. Banks could open branches anywhere. Unsurprisingly, the most highly educated returned to banking and finance. By 2005, the share of workers in the finance industry with a college education exceeded that of other industries by nearly 20 percentage points. By 2006, pay in the financial sector was again 70 percent higher than wages elsewhere in the private sector. A third of the 2009 Princeton graduates who got jobs after graduation went into finance; 6.3 percent took jobs in government.
  • Then the financial industry blew up, taking out a good chunk of the world economy. Finance will not be tamed by tweaking the way bankers are paid. But bankers’ pay could be structured to discourage wanton risk taking
  • Sarah Eeee on 27 Dec 10
     
    (Part 2 of 2 - see first part below) What impact do the incredible salaries of superstars have on the rest of us? What has changed, technologically and socially, to precipitate these inequities? This article also offers a brief look at the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, comparing the US throughout its history and the US vis a vis several European countries.
thinkahol *

So This Is Despair | Truthout - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...1311620664

So This Is Despair | Truthout debt ceiling obama

shared by thinkahol * on 27 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 27 Jul 11
     
    It is difficult to describe this emotion. I'm used to disappointment, fairly comfortable with heartbreak, and am well acquainted with rage. Over the course of my lifetime, my presidents have been Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama…and each, in his own way, has been worse than the last.
Michael Haltman

If a picture paints a thousand words, here are fifteen thousand about President Obama! ... - 15 views

politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/...l-record-15-pictures-that.html

debt ceiling obama administration political humor president obama

shared by Michael Haltman on 24 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Michael Haltman on 24 Jul 11
     
    If you like pictures and politics plus you want to learn more about the real President Obama and his administration, these 15 pictures are priceless!
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