A post over at DeLong’s blog made me think of this:
“Just a quiet peaceful dance for the things we’ll never have.”
Category Archives: Economics
Charlie Pierce, A Startling Discovery
There was an article in today’s NY Times, “The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World.” (See also related articles on spending by teenagers and twentysomethings.) An excerpt:
As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away.
“Those consumers who have capital like real estate and stocks and are in the top 20 percent are feeling pretty good,” said John G. Maxwell, head of the global retail and consumer practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“As a retailer or restaurant chain, if you’re not at the really high level or the low level, that’s a tough place to be,” Mr. Maxwell said. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle.”
In 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995, the researchers found.
Even more striking, the current recovery has been driven almost entirely by the upper crust, according to Mr. Fazzari and Mr. Cynamon. Since 2009, the year the recession ended, inflation-adjusted spending by this top echelon has risen 17 percent, compared with just 1 percent among the bottom 95 percent.
I read the article over lunch and noted it for next week’s Digest. Charlie Pierce was on it today though and no sense waiting until next weekend to share:
[After] almost 40 years of retrograde economic policy that [has] shoved the nation’s wealth into a smaller and smaller place at the very toppermost of the poppermost… Suddenly, lo and behold, the blog’s First Law Of Economics — Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money — kicks in and, unless, you’re selling yachts, business goes sour because…wait for it…nobody can afford to buy anything! Hoocodanode?
This may be the first country to die of the incredibly obvious.
Hoocodanode.
The American Ruling Class
A clip from The American Ruling Class by former Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis Lapham:
See the whole film on Vimeo here.
Reality Check: SOTU Edition
Outsourced to Dean Baker (emphasis mine):
The NYT had a peculiar account of the state of the economy in its lead up to the state of the union address. At one point it told readers that:
“several indicators show that the economy is in its best shape since he took office in 2009.”
This is peculiar since it would have been true in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 also. In effect, the recession could be seen as throwing the economy into a big hole. We have been climbing out of the hole ever since. It would take an extraordinary turn of events to throw us back down to the bottom of the hole so the real question is the rate at which we get out of the hole. Thus far the rate has been quite slow. Even if we sustain the somewhat faster growth rate projected for 2014 we would not be getting out of the hole (measured as returning to full employment) until the end of the decade.
Sure, things could be much much worse but they aren’t great. The employment-to-population ratio has been flat for the past four years:
See here for employment-to-population ratio data.
Thought for the Day: 25 January 2014
[Then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)] proposal was essentially the last, unaired episode of Beavis and Butthead, with the three pages of script just containing a single scene in which Butthead walks into the U.S. Senate and says, “Can you, uh, like, give us 700 billion dollars? Uh-huh-huh.”
– from Matt Taibbi, Bailout Architect Runs for California Governor; World Laughs
Most important reads of 2013
In the spirit of the Must Read section of my Weekly Digests, I looked through my posts and reading list from 2013 and found what I thought were the most important reads. My main selection criterion was that the piece motivated thinking about bigger issues. With that in mind, there was one important subject where I didn’t note an exemplar article: domestic surveillance by the NSA. Recently there’s been a fair amount of reporting on the NSA being slapped down in the courts – see, e.g., this – but nothing I’ve read has struck me as a “must read” piece which captures the significance of the whole. That noted, here’s my list of most important reads and listens from 2013 (in no particular order):
John Scalzi, Tax Frenzies and How to Hose Them Down
His whole post is worth reading but I particularly enjoyed this paragraph. John Scalzi (via Brad DeLong):
I really don’t know what you do about the “taxes are theft” crowd, except possibly enter a gambling pool regarding just how long after their no-tax utopia comes true that their generally white, generally entitled, generally soft and pudgy asses are turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people’s fondest desires. Sorry, guys. I know you all thought you were going to be one of those paying a nickel for your cigarettes in Galt Gulch. That’ll be a fine last thought for you as the starving remnants of the society of takers closes in with their flensing tools.
(The rest of the post is much more sedate. The bottom line is that he recommends you hire an accountant to do your taxes.)
Lydon is back!
Christopher Lydon will be back on WBUR Thursday nights starting tonight! Years ago he hosted a morning program on BUR, The Connection, which was the best radio show I’ve ever listened to. The show covered just about every topic you could imagine and Lydon was a great host – got good guests and actually did his homework before the show so that he and his guest could have an intelligent on-air conversation. He took the job very seriously. The Connection started off as a local program then went national after a few years – still had a Boston focus though. Anyhow, Lydon was let go after he and the station couldn’t negotiate a new contract. The new host was decent but the show wasn’t nearly as good as when Lydon was host. Lydon went off to create Radio Open Source, which is what BUR will be broadcasting on Thursday nights. I listened to a number of episodes when it was internet only – all good – but tuning in required I go a bit “off the beaten path” so I didn’t listen often. In contrast, BUR is my default station. I’ll be glad to hear Lydon and I’m glad he’ll be getting a wider audience again. He’s an excellent journalist.
Archive of The Connection broadcasts here. (I think Lydon’s last broadcast was March 9, 2001.)
The recession has resulted in a shortfall of 8 million jobs
Related reading: Mike Konczal, It’s still too early for Congress to stop worring about unemployment
Noteworthy blogs
Two Three sites I recently became aware of:
- Washington Center for Equitable Growth
- Project on Government Oversight
- Wonkblog: Health Reform Watch