JayB

I really liked your post. You totally hit the nail on the head and I couldn't have said it better. What it comes down to is A) it doesn't matter what the cause of the income disparity is. B) it doesn't matter if the poor are not worse off than they were. All that matters is the disparity itself and the PERCEIVED injustice. Hey - I couldn't disagree more. I think it matters tremendously what the cause of the changes are actually due to, as the only possible way in which to remedy the problem, if there is one, is to understand the true causes of the phenomena. To me it matters very little whether or not they constitute a perceived injustice on anyone's part, unless the "anyone" in question is in a position to influence economic policy, and their efforts to solve a perceived problem result in real economic damage to the economy, which will in turn result in real hardships sustained by those who the policies were intended to benefit.

Does it really matter how much money is made per worker in a family, or whether they're full-time or not? I don't think so. A family is the smallest unit for which measuring income makes sense. Measuring in real dollars makes sense, of course, but once you start "normalizing" for social changes (health care as compensation), it gets complicated. You'd have to adjust for the changing numbers of children per household, for instance, and soon your data are normalized to irrelevance. I mean, the number of children a family has also depends on income... and so on. Whether huge income disparity is a problem doesn't seem very debatable to me. Jealousy is a powerful human emotion, with far-reaching effects not easily quantified. It doesn't much matter to people whether they make more money every year if everyone else is making even more still. For example, people living in the US, with a TV in every room, two cars, a house, and food on the table every day still manage to complain that they are poor, yet their material means are hugely greater than most people in the world. The only comparisons people take seriously are those they can make based on what they see with their own eyes. Well, you can venture all you want, but where's your data? The NY Times ran a feature a while back on this very issue, income mobility. In general, people in the lower 3/5 were more likely than not to stay where they were or move down. People in the upper 2/5 were only barely more likely than not to stay put or move up. It was hardest to move up from middle class to upper-middle class (only 37.5% did so after 10 years). http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_01.html You'll have to show me which graph that you are referring too at the NYT. I do think that having a graph that attempts to compare something like income per family, yet does not attempt to define what exactly constitutes a family - warrants extra scrutiny at the very least, as broad demographic changes do have a very real impact on things like average income per family. Another demographic reality beyond the advent of the single-parent household that surely has an impact on things like income mobility is the average age of the population. The normal workers income trajectory normally involves an increase throughout the 20's and 30's, a plateu at midlife, and a decline in retirement. The fact that the population has been aging throughout the period under consideration surely has a real impact on income mobility. As a matter of fact, one could reasonably expect to see a greater portion of the population drop a quintile or two in the income classifications in the next decade or two, as boomers retire en-masse. My parents have just retired, and their cash-income has dropped precipitously, but since they've accumulated other assets and payed off their house, their standard or living really hasn't changed, and their quality of life has vastly improved.

If my real, inflation adjusted income stays fixed or increases at a slow rate, and yours increases rapidly - how does that harm me economically or otherwise?

In relative terms thats not true. vs. It would also be useful to see what those graphs look like in terms of the inflation adjusted dollar value of total compensation, including health and other benefits, then normalized to account for changing family composition over the duration of the time period under consideration, e.g. real wages per-hour per full time worker. The number of wage-earners per household is not consistent across the range of incomes, or the time-scale represented by the charts, and one of the frequent sources of distortion in such comparisons of family income is comparing intact families in which both parents are working versus single-parent households. The other factor to consider is how, exactly, someone else making more money than a given person affects the said person's well-being. Other than perhaps inspiring jealousy it's hard to see how this has any effect on them if their income has even stayed constant in inflation adjusted terms. If this graph is accurate, then even the least-skilled have seen an increase in their incomes over the time-scale represented in the lower graph. The other thing to recall is that income, whether earned by an individual or family is rarely static, and changes over the course of one's normal working life - and I would venture that except for those families in which the primary wage-earner is either terribly unskilled and has failed to acquire new skills over a 20 year period, or is blighted by a variety of personal problems, its unlikely that most families stay fixed in a given quintill for all of their lives.

Any luck on the replacement? I need one of those as well.

I think that an object lesson in applied economics could ultimately do far more good than any US intervention on their behalf. It's time for the folks in SA and elsewhere to live with the consequences of their rhetoric IMO. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, they pose no strategic threat whatsoever to the US or the rest of the world, and there's really no need for us to expend capital - geopolitical or monetary - to intervene on their behalf. The prevailing lesson from our attempts to save SA from itself for decades can be summed up in one line: "Never attempt to liberate a fool from chains he adores."

The surest way to eliminate a socialist regime is to give it free reign to implement its agenda. The ensuing missallocation of productive assets that results from attempting to coordinate supply and demand by central committee will inevitably result in a massive depletion of capital and ultimately the complete implosion of the entire economy. Neither economic theory nor experience allow for any other outcome. Bon chance, Chavistas.

I'm grateful to those who share their routes and stories for a number of reasons - too many to cite here. As far as those who don't are concerned - I think it's kind of funny and ironic to publicly praise them for the fact that they strive to avoid both publicity and praise for their routes. Unless of course the motivation hinted at in the following: "To refuse praise is to seek praise twice," is what's actually at work here. Maybe the mythical, zen-like, anonymous-hardman actually exists, and spares no efforts in his zeal to conceal his talents and obscure evidence of his many first-ascents, but if such a person does exist, he would: 1) Never even let anyone know that he was a climber. 2) Never take the opportunity to publically remind the world that he eschewed both attention and praise by stating, over-and-over, "I climb for myself, man. For me. Not for you not the magazines - no one." Such an individual would certainly not make it a point to write letters or posts on internet sites in which he took pains to criticize the motivations of other people for letting the world know about their routes, and to remind everyone that his motivations are infinitely more pure and noble.

Let me know how it goes...

If you could get your hand on some small polystyrene beads you could use them as filler. Applying acetone to the surface would rapidly dissolve the beads on the surface - after which you could just live with the voids and treat them as part of the texture or "paint" the surface with a sand/resin mixture to fill in the voids.

You could try sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid - or any other acid for CO2 generation - but the presence of one or both reagents would probably inhibit the polymerization reaction to some extent. I think that most other reactions that yield a bunch of gas generate stuff that that's either toxic or explosive or both. Where is CBS on this one....

Where is Velvet Jones when you need him?

I hope someone links to a story revealing the terrible way that Walmart has treated its employees in the wake of the hurricane as well...

Dont' be such a downer, man. What you are talking about falls under the guise of "reform" rather than wholesale "revolution," no? The word "reform" doesn't inspire many people to strum guitars in coffee shops, but it's been a hell of a lot more effective in improving the lot of mankind. If the words "reform" and "revolution" could be morphed into actual persons, one would be Franklin, the other Rousseau - actually Robespierre, but I'm feeling generous. As far as the biking and all the rest of it goes - I've been commuting by bike for all but 3 years since 1992, where I decided to live and work were due in large part to my desire to continue doing so, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah - its not like it makes me some kind of a fucking eco-saint. Spare me the self-righteous bloviation unless you are out on the tundra in a yurt with the stone tools and the hand-woven clothing, and you've left the canned food, the antibiotics, and the radio in a pile at the end of the road. If it makes you feel better about yourself, and you want to delude yourself into thinking that you are some kind of low-impact hero for doing so -just ride the bike, recycle your shit, and STFU.

How fatuous of you JayB I'd have liked to have been on the '53 everest expedition though I know I'd have only shuttled loads. There are thousands of events that merely being a participant in would be astounding. If this example were applied in the context of most of the major political revolutions, you would have to have the leaders of the expedition order the porters kill and eat you in order to sustain them as they carried the loads for the climbers in order to obtain a historically authentic experience, but I think I see what you are getting at...

Sorry to inject a dose of reality into the utopawanking. Maybe the would "revolutionaries" amongst us could take after their mead guzzling brethren and and host similar gatherings around the countryside. Each KOA plot could be transformed into its own Ministry, every participant could pretend that they were members of The Central Committee and get their own portfolio to manage, everyone could collectively smirk at the "Hoover Insititution," and "Cato Institute" stickers on the port-a-potties, the folks on the security detail could pretend that they were members of The People's Army - who after successfully conquering Poverty, Inequality, and Injustice on the "Risk" board, could set about laying waste to the vegatarian casserole on the potluck table - sorry - I meant feasting on the record crops brought forward by the People's Organic Harvest Collective......

Listening to people bemoan the absence of revolutionary sentiment in this society - because the average person is too well off, of all things - is rather like listening to a pasty, overweight, staff-wielding, mead-chugging technogeek at a Renaissance Fest weep all over his his ersatz armor on account of the cruel fate that landed him in the modern world, thus depriving him of his trusty steed, his squire, estate, his fair damsel, and his noble crusade. Of course, the reality is, that had he survived childbirth and not been orphaned in the process, gone onto win the immune-system lottery and made it through several bouts of plague, dysentary, and worked out some kind of a long-lasting symbiosis will all manner of parasites, managed not to succumb to the odd famine or other catastrophe - the lot in life that awaited him would be something much more along the lines of "toothless, illiterate, malnourished, chamber-pot-bearer" for the said knight. Unfortunately, everyone who gets misty eyed when fantasizing the next revolution tends to be looking through the same distorted prism. This could probably be remedied by reading up on what actually happened in the course of the "real" revolutions that have occured over the past couple of centuries - but that's not likely to happen. So I'll summarize the plot for you - at best you'll play Trotsky to someone else's Stalin, and on average - you are much likely to contemplate the glories of the revolution from the gulag or from beneath the turf. Carry on...

Has Arrived: Here If this has been announced elsewhere, I haven't noticed -so maybe this is old news. In any event - I just wanted to pass along thanks for and congratulations on another fantastic issue.

Give us the link, E.

not growing. Money neither created nor destroyed, economic homeostasis. Sorry, I'm too out of my element to know how to say this is economic terms. I think I understand what you are saying now, but I'm not sure where one could actually find evidence that the economy is no longer growing. One thing to consider is that unless economic growth at least equals the rate of population growth for a given population, the standard of living for all occupants will decrease - and this decline will hit the poorest hardest of all. And a lower standard of living will not only cut into conveniences and luxuries, but also essentials. The other factor to consider is that even in the event of an ecoonmy which is not growing, and the allocation of productive assets in the economy would not remain fixed - there'd still be growing industries, declinining industries and all of the social dislocations that this process is normally attended with. In short, it would have all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits of a growing economy. Last question - by unearned money are you referring to interest, dividends, and capital gains? In general - it sounds as though you have come across materials that descend directly from Malthus's original treatise, which spawned an argument that's been ongoing since his time. I think the most famous modern incarnation manifested itself in the famous wager between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. If you plug their names into Google you will probably come across some interesting reading.

What do you mean by "stable" economy?

I think you might be able to get just below Panorama Point, which may be somewhere in the vicinity of 7,500' or so, on paved trails. I'm sure there's enough Rainier junkies around here to give you a definitive idea answer.

I love how some of you are pretending not to know the difference between real and nominal wages, and how you can arbitrarily raise one but not the other without either increasing unemployment or loosening monetary policy to the extent that any increase in real wages is ultimately inflated away. Good stuff. I was actually serious when I said that I hoped that Seattle would implement this policy. Not only that, I'd also like to see the wholesale adoption of price controls on everything else. I can't imagine a better applied economics tutorial.

Given the level of economic literacy that prevails in Seattle, I would be astonished if this proposition doesn't receive widespread support. However, if it's appropriate to determine wages by popular vote, rather than by the economic value that a given individual is capable of generating with the skills, training, equipment, etc that he has at his disposal, in conjunction with the effective demand for whatever it is that he's producing - then I am not sure why a minimum wage of $17 per hour is any less unreasonable than $100 per hour. Utopia is just a city-council vote away.... I actually hope whoever it is that proposed this gets elected and his or her suggestion is implemented - it'd be a great lesson in applied economics.

Bellingham Herald Article on MrE & Layton's Ascent... Just wanted to add my congratulations to you guys as well. Incredible. I'm glad you're both alive and well after this outing. I loved this bit at the end of the article: "Michael Layton's report of his and Erik Wolfe's ascent of the big wall on Southeast Mox Peak is online at www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Number/496593. Some language in the report is not suitable for children." I hope that one or both of you will write down a longer version of this adventure for posterity, while the memories are still fresh in your minds.