JayB

Global wealth equality is probably higher now than at any time since the stone age. Probably not true and definitely not true over the 200 years pictured in the animation you posted: in 1800, Cape Verde had the lowest GDP/capita ($340) and the UK had the highest at $2717 (less than order of magnitude difference between lowest and highest). Today, Congo has the lowest at $359 while Qatar has the most at $74,138/capita (more than 2 orders of magnitude difference). The spread of mean $GDP/capita is ~20 times greater today than 200 years ago. data Global. Not outlier vs outlier.

Global wealth equality is probably higher now than at any time since the stone age. [video:youtube] Global median wealth is also higher than it has ever been. Neither of the above has any meaningful connection with the rich world's debt crisis, other than making it possible for them to go begging to the likes of China, India, and Brazil for the first time in history.

Yeah, keep blaming the "welfare state" when your chosen brand of "modification" has been well underway since the 70's. Haven't we already been over this? Yup. Where's the chart that says that you can collectively consume more than you produce indefinitely with no consequences?

I can think of at least one country with a political system that has imploded to varying degrees for both fiscal and political reasons for ~2500 years and still makes world-class Ouzo. Having said that - the modern welfare state is a fairly recent innovation (patented by Otto von Bismark if I'm not mistaken)in the chronicle of civiliation and it's first big fiscal/demographic stress-test is just getting under way. The states and the people in them will persist, but whether or not the fiscal transfer mechanisms will go completely unmodified is much less certain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutes_of_the_Lawes_of_England

That's not really the problem. Biotech is fueled by investment. It's risky but with a blockbuster very lucrative for a long-term investor. During the dot com days tons of money flooded the biotech market with big hopes from the human genome project, lots of people got rich, and you know the story lots of people got killed in the aftermath. It has not recovered since. Part of it is due to people really getting burned. CTI, which at one point was the highest valued company in the world, has burned through several billion dollars in cash and has never had a drug approved. In the end though, the high risk money went somewhere else, into more dot coms and then into real estate, something that would fail or succeed quicker. I don't see the money returning without some fundamental changes. What needs to change? The drug approval process needs to be modernized. Certain classes of the newer designer therapies that are not chemotherapeutics (ie immuno and cell based therapies) need to be strictly excluded from any potential liabilities that are not the result of gross negligence. I'm sure many read the NYT article yesterday about a new therapy for CLL. While R&D is expensive, the approval process contains the bulk of the cost. That needs to be stripped away with a strict opt in process ie you will die without this therapy if it kills you that is the risk YOU took. That would provide access to experimental therapies quicker to the thousands being diagnosed with untreatable diseases every day. Let's be honest, many of these new therapies, including the one quoted in the NYT articles and Provenge, is really a couple days of lab work that isn't very expensive. Spot.On.

I completely agree – that’s just the way things have generally gone. If unions dedicated themselves to giving employers and consumers the best value for their money, bar none (if their production more than justified their wage premium), then their problems would be over. Employers would be competing to hire them, and consumers would be clamoring to buy whatever they made. You probably understand better than I do why unions haven’t done so.

I'm willing to posit that if you replace "Nazis" with "Koch Brothers" Godwin's Law holds in any thread where the discussion revolves around unions.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/09/14/whats-the-best-way-to-measure-poverty-income-or-consumption/

Whether or not people like unions has little or no effect on the percentage of the private sector workforce that’s unionized. The way that corporations feel about unions doesn’t matter all that much either in the long run. What does matter is whether or not consumers want to buy the stuff that unionized workers make. If the stuff that unionized workers make seems like the best deal to consumers, they’ll buy more of it than the stuff that non-unionized workers make. Then unionized production will increase, and so will the share of the private sector workforce that’s unionized. If the stuff that unionized workers make is overpriced or crappy, or both relative to what non-unionized workers make – then consumers will buy less of it and the percentage of the workforce that’s unionized will continuously decrease. It’s ultimately consumers that destroy unions, by refusing to buy what they make.* Ultimately unions understand that what people decide to buy determines whether or not they stick around. They also seem to understand that under conditions of open competition, people generally haven’t been willing to pay a premium to buy the stuff that they make. That’s why they’ve historically used whatever means are at their disposal to force people to buy their stuff – either through legislative rules that make their competitors products more expensive, or direct coercion to keep competitors out of their field and/or consumers from doing business with non-unionized competitors. I’m not sure if you were looking for a real answer or not, but those two activities account for the majority of the hostility to unions amongst the general public. *If you doubt that – just ask yourself how many of the pro-union posters on this board own products made by the UAW.

I for one am getting tired of the corporate media promoting negative stereotypes of the ILWU, and am thankful that there are folks like Ronald who are doing what they can to counter them. "A Kelso man was arrested Monday on suspicion of four felony charges in connection with last Thursday's vandalism of the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview, Cowlitz County Sheriff Mark Nelson announced Tuesday. A Longview woman also was arrested and released Monday on suspicion of misdemeanor charges as part of a longshore union effort to block an incoming train outside the terminal last Wednesday, Nelson said. More arrests are expected in the next few days, Nelson said. Ronald Patrick Stavas, 45, of Kelso was arrested Monday night on suspicion of first-degree burglary, second-degree assault, intimidating a witness and sabotage, according to the sheriff's office. His bail was set at $50,000. Stavas was identified as one of the hundreds of people who stormed the EGT terminal about 4:30 a.m. Sept. 8 and damaged a security shack, assaulted guards and spilled corn product from a mile-long train parked inside the terminal, according to the sheriff's office. Stavas was identified by a witness at the terminal who later saw a video of him confronting a television news crew outside the longshore union hall on 14th Avenue in Longview, according to Nelson. In the video, which has gone viral online, a man is seen swearing profusely and threatening a Portland news crew..." [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzoMNgDMELo

My response is that: 1)It's a disgusting slaughter. 2)The guy who did the slaughtering was clearly inspired by arguments that have been advanced by people on the political right for the past ~20 years or so. 3)We'll likely have different thoughts on the significance of point 2. (The most robust) Liberal democracies have been dealing with violent fanatics inspired by particular religions, political ideologies, etc for hundreds of years without instituting any formal constraints on political or religious expression beyond laws against libel, incitement, etc. As tragic as these events are, liberal societies can survive them much more readily, and with far less damage than the attempts to constrain speech, political expression, and the interchange of ideas that inevitably follow in their wake.

Ditto.

Ugh, what a load of tripe. What difference do personal approach, "philosophy", negotiating skills, and methods mean when the end results are exactly the same? The partisan illusion is wearing thin... Now there's the steely eyed dialectical materialist I remember.

Interesting how when one sees Labor, Socialist, and Democrat parties in Europe and the US imposing austerity, wage depression, and cuts to the social safety net in order to keep corrupt credit-ratings agencies happy and pay off gangbanksters and asset stripping campaign contributors, the logical conclusion would be "the bastards are all the same". For you, it's some sort of heroic validation of your rotten ideology. Guess we just have to wait for another round of I told you so's... Didn't quite follow the connection between the political systems coping with a structural fiscal crisis and any particular validation of my despicable ideology - but let me know if an early-90's Canada style restructuring happens anywhere anytime soon. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903554904576457880527361612.html I quite agree that the taxpayers are getting a gold plated reaming in order to bail out the retarded creditors that made bad loans, and it would be much better to let them take the punishing losses that they're owed.

What is the actual difference between the constraints on tax increases, spending cuts, and public employee union concessions under Christy in NJ and Cuomo in NJ - other than party affiliation? I for one am eagerly awaiting for the left to call out Cuomo for his devastating attacks on workers and the middle class.... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/nyregion/new-york-labor-leaders-urge-members-to-approve-contracts.html?_r=1 See below for physical manifestation of virtue..

Those sound reasons supporting external warfare. A huge group o f pissed off poor horny men. Amusingly there are currently thousands of Americans risking punishment to illegally work in China. It's easier to entire legally and stay illegally in China; thanks to the W regime the US wastes billions and generally makes life a pita to enter legally for visitors from many countries. Course like every Lynette failed wasteful policy jay never supported that -Might also make things interesting domestically. -Yes. Engineers flying to China in 747 wide-bodies = paying organized crime syndicates tens of thousands of dollars to pack you into shipping containers for weeks of overseas transit. How 'bout we turn our attention to Cuba so that we can find more ludicrous equivalents where none actually exist. "What about all of the people risking everything to flee Cuba by boat? "I don't know about you, but the last time I was in West Palm Beach and the Keys I saw *tons* of people out in boats, and there are multiple drownings in yachting accidents every year, not to mention the close calls in all of the charity regattas, so....

Talk about a security blanket, Steve Wynn is lovin' it! Don't forget this retard: "China vs. America: Which Is the Developing Country? From new roads to wise leadership, sound financials and five-year plans, Beijing has the winning approach. Recently I flew from Los Angeles to China to attend a corporate board-of-directors meeting in Shanghai, as well as customer and government visits there and in Beijing. After the trip was over, in thinking about the United States and China, it was not clear to me which is the developed, and which is the developing, country. Infrastructure: Let's face it, Los Angeles is decaying. Its airport is cramped and dirty, too small for the volume it tries to handle and in a state of disrepair. In contrast, the airports in Beijing and Shanghai are brand new, clean and incredibly spacious, with friendly, courteous staff galore. They are extremely well-designed to handle the large volume of air traffic needed to carry out global business these days ...Human Rights/Free Speech: In this area, our American view is that China has a ton of work to do. Their view is that we are nuts for not blocking pornography and antigovernment points-of-view from our youth and citizens..." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576430162195057084.html Blah, blah, blah. Reads like a LeMonde Editorial from the 30's heaping praise on Stalinist Russia. "Centralizing all decision making and resource-allocating power in the hands of a few technocrats made a lot of sense to me when I was running Microsoft. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we ran all of society this way. Just look at China!..." Nauseating. Nauseating or otherwise, it's pretty clear that when comparing America's 30-year experiment with neoclassical economics with countries with even mild industrial policies, it's failed both to "deliver the goods" and maintain a vibrant democratic political culture. But hey, we do have really nice platinum-level facilities for millionaires and up! -Clear to whom? How have I missed the stories about the Americans risking death by packaging themselves in shipping containers to seek out a better life for themselves in China? -It must be interesting to anyone who lived through the 70's to hear them expounded as the high-water mark of American civilization.

Love the fact that whomever put that picture together chucked plastic surgery and McDonald's consumption and rape/crime/imprisonment into the same general basket of societal defects.

Seems like the leverage is at least partly on our side. The reason that they've accumulated so many dollar-denominated assets is to keep the value of their currency depressed relative to ours, so that the stuff that they make their will be cheaper in dollar terms. Say what you will about that strategy, but even if you assume it's got more pro's than cons, if they stop buying these assets then the value of their currency will skyrocket vs the dollar, and they'll quickly have an unemployment problem that worsens as their currency appreciates - since people will stop buying the stuff that they make if it costs more than alternatives made elsewhere. They're also rapidly losing their cost advantage in production, which makes them even more sensitive to the effects of appreciation vs the dollar. Given the structural basis for government spending growth here, it's also worth asking what would happen if they hadn't bought so many bonds. The cuts being contemplated now would be even worse if we'd had to finance all of that debt at higher rates. Not sure that having trillions of dollar denominated debts issued by the US government gives the Chinese quite as much leverage as is commonly thought, particularly when they have little choice but to keep buying unless they want to see what a rapid contraction in their exports does to the "harmonious society" that they're trying to create.

Talk about a security blanket, Steve Wynn is lovin' it! Don't forget this retard: "China vs. America: Which Is the Developing Country? From new roads to wise leadership, sound financials and five-year plans, Beijing has the winning approach. Recently I flew from Los Angeles to China to attend a corporate board-of-directors meeting in Shanghai, as well as customer and government visits there and in Beijing. After the trip was over, in thinking about the United States and China, it was not clear to me which is the developed, and which is the developing, country. Infrastructure: Let's face it, Los Angeles is decaying. Its airport is cramped and dirty, too small for the volume it tries to handle and in a state of disrepair. In contrast, the airports in Beijing and Shanghai are brand new, clean and incredibly spacious, with friendly, courteous staff galore. They are extremely well-designed to handle the large volume of air traffic needed to carry out global business these days ...Human Rights/Free Speech: In this area, our American view is that China has a ton of work to do. Their view is that we are nuts for not blocking pornography and antigovernment points-of-view from our youth and citizens..." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576430162195057084.html Blah, blah, blah. Reads like a LeMonde Editorial from the 30's heaping praise on Stalinist Russia. "Centralizing all decision making and resource-allocating power in the hands of a few technocrats made a lot of sense to me when I was running Microsoft. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we ran all of society this way. Just look at China!..." Nauseating.

Oh, we're soon to be the anvil. And not because our military prowess has been usurped. It will be by those countries that have invested in technology, education, infrastructure, and implemented their global economic vision. And not flushing their treasure into the global military dominance black hole. India and China are coming on. [1980's]Don't forget about Japan![/1980's] All things being equal, people living in the US should be far less concerned with a relative military decline of the US than people who have collectively lived under the security blanket that the US has provided since WWII. Export driven growth is quite a bit easier when you don't have to worry about secure shipping lanes, etc, etc, etc... We'll be fine. 80s Japan - effectively banned from having a military, democratic, interested in engaging with the west 00s China - largest standing army in the world rapidly militarising with technology stolen from the West, bizarre cleptocratic/communist system of government, interested in dominating the west Yeah, it'll work out great. At least well get some shitty copies of climbing gear along the way so we can't even trust that. Oh, and they'll rip off everything else along the way: http://birdabroad.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/are-you-listening-steve-jobs/ They're way poorer than us and probably will be for decades, they're aging rapidly, there's going to be something like 130-million mathematical bachelors cruising around the Chinese interior, and their power structure is a net long-term liability, rather than an asset. They've got more than enough going on inside their borders to pre-occupy them, and even if they harbor fantasies about dominating the West their capacity to do anything more than sell us a bunch of stuff for lower prices than we can produce it here will be next to zero. Great. What are they going to do with their military that would enable them to dominate us? Blockade their own exports to the US?

I think the party line is that if we decide we're no longer interested in projecting power around the globe, we'll still be quite secure at least in the sense that the odds of anyone in China seriously contemplating any kind of invasion/domination of the anywhere Americas are literally zero. Countries like Taiwan, Korea, and Japan and various countries in the Middle East would probably notice that we're gone. If we said a final goodbye and they had to assume 100% responsibility for their own defense, that would presumably affect their national priorities, sense of security, etc way more than it would affect ours. I'm not even sure the Euros would notice we're gone unless there's another round of ethnic slaughter a' la the ex Yugoslavia that erupts somewhere nearby that they have zero will/capacity to do anything about.

Oh, we're soon to be the anvil. And not because our military prowess has been usurped. It will be by those countries that have invested in technology, education, infrastructure, and implemented their global economic vision. And not flushing their treasure into the global military dominance black hole. India and China are coming on. [1980's]Don't forget about Japan![/1980's] All things being equal, people living in the US should be far less concerned with a relative military decline of the US than people who have collectively lived under the security blanket that the US has provided since WWII. Export driven growth is quite a bit easier when you don't have to worry about secure shipping lanes, etc, etc, etc... We'll be fine.

Great resource - thanks for putting it together and sharing. "Sky Sjue" is clearly a pseudonym shared by multiple parties.