j_b

lars (or whoever you are, probably GregW) you are one sick puppy. your morals are not very consistant but it hasn't stopped you before.

http://www.cbpp.org/9-23-03tax.htm "Finally, the CBO data show that although the share of federal taxes that those at the top pay rose from 1979 to 2000, this increase was primarily the result of the increased concentration of income among the very affluent, not of increases in tax rates imposed on high-income households. High-income households received a much larger share of the national income in 2000 than they did two decades ago, and that naturally resulted in their paying a larger percentage of the nation's taxes. As noted above, average tax rates on those at the top of the income scale were lower — not higher — in 2000 than in 1979."

things don't change: there is no lie or spin that is too outrageous for neocon shills. we all know where they stand on the subject of democracy: remember, they lie to us for our own good. moreover, we also know who cares for the little guy and it for sure isn't conservatives.

You assume that the rock is solid. It has to be solid for thousands of miles. What if it isn't? whether the rock is porous or not won't change the fact that the tunnel roof will feel the pressure of the overburden (including that of the water column).

just a few additional details for the so inclined: weak acids present in rain water (carbonic acid) through dissolution of atmospheric CO2 or decompostion of organic matter react with limestone (carbonation). as expected water flows from topo highs to lows where it tends to collect (water table, etc ..), picks up more acids (where soils and vegies are) and dissolves limestone. through this positive feedback, ever more dissolution of limestone occurs in the topo lows. karst landscapes thus result from differential erosion that initially arises from small perturbations in the topography.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040105&s=krugman The Death of Horatio Alger by Paul Krugman The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago. The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society. [...]

link to story Plants give off the smell of fear John Hooper in Rome Tuesday April 13, 2004 The Guardian The debate over whether plants have feelings is about to be reopened with the publication of research by scientists in Italy and Germany. Their findings suggest that plants under threat can marshal a positively devilish measure of cunning. Not only do they communicate the danger to plants nearby; they also call in help from other creatures. Biologists at the University of Turin and the Max Planck Institute in Jena were yesterday reported to have found evidence that plants sensed - and reacted to - the presence of hungry, leaf-chomping grubs. Their response was to emit an odour similar to that of lavender. This alerted other plants to the presence of a predator. But it also served to call in what modern military planners would term air support. Wasps, the natural enemies of grubs, were drawn by the odour to the plant where they either devoured the grub or injected it with eggs that later killed it. The bulk of the three-year project was devoted to studying the Lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus), a native of central and south America. But according to a report by the Italian daily La Repubblica the researchers elicited similar reactions from maize, from the plant that yields cranberry or borlotti beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) and from other species. The detailed findings of their joint project are to be published in Plant Physiology, a review of the American Society of Plant Biologists. Not the least intriguing question raised by the study is whether, at the start of the process they describe, there is something that can be termed fear. The debate began in 1966 when a lie detector expert, Cleve Backster, connected a plant to a polygraph. He said the machine registered changes as soon as he began to contemplate burning the plant's leaves.

many good points made but i am not sure i feel the same way jen does about area skiing. or at least, i don't feel that way anymore (and i haven't for quite a while). summed up in a few words, i think that in-area/groomers skiing is boring especially if i am alone. perhaps paradoxically, i still ski mostly for turns but skiing the backcountry even for a few 1000's feet is always more rewarding to me than logging vertical in a ski area (lift-served out of bound powder skiing is somewhat different of course). being able to make one's own decisions (i.e. i'll go over there that way, etc ...) adds a dimension that easily offset any amount of vertical. at some level, there is a paralell between skiing and climbing insofar i see alpine climbing as much more fullfilling than cragging even though crags have definiite advantages over alpine climbs of variable quality.

hey, how come you have not told us the number of iraqi schools that were painted since last week? what's going on, lost the initiative? i suspect you can now revel in your "success": http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=511001

pretty much a life-long academic pursuit in arabic studies http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/jcpers.htm

http://www.fair.org/extra/0403/iraq-study.html

quality blog on iraq by a middle east expert: http://www.juancole.com/

it is indeed particularly telling but first let's not forget that excise tax on gasoline is greater than alcohol and tobacco combined (or are you suggesting that the lowest quintile should not drive, smoke, drink, take airplanes, etc ...?). it is telling because it shows that more and more of the income of the lowest quintile is taken away by notoriously regressive taxation. especially since state excise taxes are not accounted for in these calculations. are you know disagreeing with the cbo data? let me quote johnston : "The figures Piketty and Saez used were pretax incomes. But changes in the tax system had vastly expanded the ability of the megarich to save while those making less than $72,000 had their ability to save stripped away by rising Social Security taxes. In 1970, the top income tax bracket was 70 percent. By 2000 it had fallen to 39.6 percent-and it is now just 35 percent. Over those same years, however, the maximum Social Security soared from $327 to $4,724, figures that double if one counts the employer contribution. Internal Revenue Service reports show that from 1973 to 2000, when the Democrats were mostly in control of Congress, Social Security and Medicare taxes grew 82 percent faster than incomes. Because Social Security taxes applied only to the first $76,200 of wages in 2000 (and lesser amounts in previous years), this rising burden fell mostly on the middle class and the upper middle class. The rich got a tax break beginning when their wages passed the maximum subject to Social Security. On dollars above the Social Security ceiling an individual pays 6.2 percent less tax because Social Security is no longer deducted from paychecks. Employers get the same tax break. For the rich, the top 1.3 million households, the Social Security tax was inconsequential. The tax rate on capital gains, the source of more than half of income for the super rich, was 28 percent starting in 1987, fell to 20 percent in 1998 and then was lowered again in 2003 to 15 percent. Over the last three decades of the twentieth century the average income grew modestly, but the share of earnings going to income and Social Security taxes rose. At the same time the super rich saw their incomes skyrocket and, because their tax rates fell, they kept an even higher percentage than before. In addition, the rates at which state and local governments levied sales, property and income taxes all rose in those last three decades, eating into incomes. Those taxes tend to be regressive; that is, they tend to hit harder the lower one's income." johnston nyt article

ok i mispoke. i meant collectively earns as much as the bottom 1/3 (actually 40%). would you dismiss the earnings of the bottom 40% of americans to discuss the evolution of the tax system in america? obviously not. so why would you not specifically consider the one percent that earns as much as the bottom 40%? it does not sink my argument. on the contrary it makes it stronger, because even though they pay a greater fraction of absolute tax revenues, their tax rate is still decreasing at a faster pace than anybody else. which of course points further to growing income inequalities.

wtf? are you always this clueless? "The percentage-point decline in the federal tax rate for the top one percent of households exceeded the decline for all other income groups" btw i came up with my own observations and only found the link above 30minutes ago. lo-and-behold they arrived at the same conclusion i did: the upper 1% (who, collectively, earn as much as the bottom 40% of americans) saw the greatest decrease in tax rate between 1979 and 2001 which implies a less progressive system in 2001 than in 1979. now if you have evidence to refute the above please share but don't attempt to distort what i say.

"In 1979, the share of the nation’s after-tax income flowing to the top one percent of the population was less than half the share received by the bottom 40 percent of the population. But in 2000, the share of income received by the top one percent exceeded that of the bottom 40 percent. As a result, the 2.8 million people who made up the top one percent of the population received more after-tax income in 2000 than did the 110 million Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the population." "Among the top one percent of taxpayers, the federal tax rate was much lower in 1989 than in 1979, and then rose part of the way back between 1989 and 2000. Still, in 2000, the average tax rate for this group was 3.8 percentage points below its 1979 level. This drop in the average tax rate for the top one percent of households between 1979 and 2000 reduced the average tax bill for this high-income group by about $50,000 per household in 2000.[4] The percentage-point decline in the federal tax rate for the top one percent of households exceeded the decline for all other income groups." http://www.cbpp.org/9-23-03tax.htm

have the top earners received the greatest decrease in tax rate since 1979? yes, so how could their tax burden have increased? but whatever. this conversation defies logic. i am done here.

this argument is obviously getting pretty old at this stage but i'd like to hear why you think i am being desingenuous.

once again, it appears your delusion impairs your reading comprehension. the irony resides in your using reagan mostly lowering taxes for the upper brackets only to pretend that only the upper bracket has a positive trend. is there something you understand in the above?

will: yes i did look at it. thanks. i could not find data to back it up (even though it's a well known fact). do you think pp will continue claiming our tax system is more and more progressive? sorry to belabor the point but isn't it ironic to note that the major reason pp gets a positive trending linear fit only for the upper quintile is because reagan mostly decreased the tax rate for the upper quintile.

i agree. it should also be noted that the declared defense budget does not include nuclear expenditures of a military nature by d.o.e., much military foreign aid, homeland security expenditure, etc ... actual defense budget is said to be around 600 billion $.

i certainly don't. i said your trend is positive which as explained previously demonstrate the poor use of regression analysis. you used a limited data set, misrepresented its meaning, and drew unwarranted conclusions. just answer these questions: is the tax rate of the upper one-percentile (and all quintiles) in 2001 less than it was in 1979? answer: yes. is your best fit regression totally conditioned by the 1980's data points that are anomalous for the last 50 years? answer: yes they occrurred when reagan slashed taxes for the upper bracket. a first since the new deal. what long term trend in tax rate would clearly emerge if prior and subsequent years were included in the analysis? answer: negative of course. Has the upper percentile seen the largest decrease in tax rate since 1979? answer: yes. yet, despite all the evidence, this is what you said: "the progresssive nature of our tax system has in fact increased". when in fact it has clearly decreased. looking at the beginning and end points of the sampling is not inappropriate since we know that the trend between the 2 end points (negative) is in agreement with the long term trend (since 2nd world war). which cannot be said for your linear best fit of a truncated sample. of course i insist on considering what happened to the tax rate of the upper 1% that earns a full 1/3 of all income in america today. anyone with a little math sense and/or honesty would realize that a) 1/3 of all income is not cherry-picking and b)ignoring the taxation history of 1/3 of the national income while concluding that the tax system is more progressive is a flawed exercise. to me it is pretty clear you have no idea what you are looking at; but of course, in true form, this does not prevent you from drawing self-serving conclusions. Self serving conclusions? Heck I even posted some projections from JEC on periods after 2001 that seem to show a different trend. Self serving ? NO. nice dodge but pretty transparent. you want to exclude the one-percentile trend from your analysis even though the upper one percent earned 1/3 of all income in america in 2001. it is obviously self-serving since the one-percentile trend clearly shows they got the largest decrease in tax rate of all americans which implies: a less progressive tax system.

no. not honest and straightforward because you know that tax rates were consistently high from the new deal to the early 80's when reagan slashed taxes for the upper brackets. so in fact the low tax rates of the eighties (data points which entirely condition your positive trend) are an anomaly w.r.t. the last 50 years. you know as well that said tax rates decreased even further in 2002-2003. so saying that including more data "might" deliver a different trend is not an accurate statement. "almost certainly" deliver a negative trend would definitely be more accurate. moreover and please stop ignoring this aspect of the matter: the upper 1% has seen the largets decrease in tax rate of all income brackets. in fact -4% from 1979 to 2001, i don't think anyone would call this a positive trend, no matter how much spin they put on it. of course i insist on considering what happened to the tax rate of the upper 1% that earns a full 1/3 of all income in america today. anyone with a little math sense and/or honesty would realize that a) 1/3 of all income is not cherry-picking and b)ignoring the taxation history of 1/3 of the national income while concluding that the tax system is more progressive is a flawed exercise. to me it is pretty clear you have no idea what you are looking at; but of course, in true form, this does not prevent you from drawing self-serving conclusions.

don't mention it to pp, he does not want to know about it. especially since this growing discrepancy is in great part due to a nearly flat tax system.

classic pp for you: talk trash and banalities but certainly don't provide arguments to support your claim. i am not surprised you claim to be bored, since you certainly don't provide any minutia in your posts which to me indicate either sloppy thinking or evasion of the argument at hand. i may not be an economist but my math is pretty good (although we are taking pretty basic stuff here). your drawing a positive-trending best fit (linear i assume since i can't see the graphs) through the data from 1979-2001 certainly does not mean what you want it to mean. if you added a few years before and after the sample used (1979-2001), the trend would be totally different (since 1979 had the highest tax rate of the sample and the trend has been negative since 1995 (note 2002-2003 not in sample). the decrease in tax rate is greatest (-4%) for the top percentile (reminder the top percent earns as much as the bottom 100million americans). in fact, the data you provided shows precisely that the tax system is less progressive now than 25 years ago. whether you can draw a positive best fit is irrelevant and certainlly does not reflect both overall trend and the trend of the recent past. it is a perfect illustration of the poor use of a best fit to reflect trend.