j_b

Of course, it is dated. It became dated within a generation just because it didn't acknowledge that freedom is fleeting without some modicum of equality as is shown today with freedom of speech and corporate media control, or one man, one vote and the flood of corporate money in politics.

how eloquent ...

Remember j_b: "don't be a dick" Pretty much everything I ever said about JayB and co has been based on the position they defended here. If you don't want your rhetoric to be taken at face value, don't post it.

piss off wanker You'd have to be anti-war for at least a couple electoral cycles before I gave somebody who supported Bush policies the benefit of the doubt.

If you paid attention to news outfits other than the corporate and right wing media, you'd know there are other candidates like Jill Stein (Green party) or Rocky Anderson (Justice party) who are resolutely anti-war, but who also happen to not advocate policies that favor the 1% like Ron Paul does. It's particularly rich to read from you that warmongers and islamophobes like JayB give a shit about ethical foreign policies. I guess coming from someone who discovered his conscience late during Bush's 2nd term, it shouldn't be too surprising.

Soaking the Poor, State by State By Kevin Drum [..] The Corporation for Enterprise Development recently released a scorecard for all 50 states, and it has boatloads of useful information. That includes overall tax rates, where data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent. Lucky duckies indeed. There's not one single state with a tax system that's progressive. http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/soaking-poor-state-state

Cool. I am curious as it is something I have wondered for a long time (although, unfortunately, my kids didn't evolve into climbing phenoms) but are there any special consideration for someone that age to start cranking on small holds?

That must be why you acknowledged up thread not knowing where one of your figures came from, or didn’t acknowledge that you presented suspiciously truncated GINI time series that disappeared more than ½ the increase in GINI since the beginning of the neoliberal era, or claimed that since total compensation on paper had increased by some ungodly amount, real pay had in fact increased. The GINI is nothing more than a normalized cumulative frequency distribution and there is little reason to suspect it would behave in some peculiar way. Your graph shows that whereas ~36% of families made more than $50k in 1967, in 2006 ~55% are above this threshold. In turn, a smaller fraction of families are in each of the mid and lowest 2 quintiles. None of this suggests that an increasing GINI would result. Now, discrete representation of income brackets such as in your plot obscures what’s going on at the edges, as we now all too well from witnessing the sky-rocketing income of the 0.01%, which could explain the apparent discrepancy whereas increasing median family income is likely explained by massive entry of women in the workforce since the 70’s. It is also interesting how according to you dislocated families explain some decrease in household earning, yet the rise of the 2 incomes household isn’t a blip on your radar to explain the rise in household income … I didn’t mention households. I said people’s income had gone down or been stagnant such as the male median income (note this goes only through 2002 as it is surely worse today): you couldn’t file a graph that showed the lowest quintile to substantiate your claim that all quintile incomes had increased? What about showing a graph through 2010, such as this one: Indeed, you keep showing us how “entirely possible” it is for someone to explain just about anything.

So, if you make $50,000 per year and health care inflation made your premium go up by $2000 (and your boss decided he'd split the difference), JayB thinks you are doing better since total compensation on paper is now $51,000. Never mind that your income hasn't budged and that you get to spend $1000 more on health insurance.

Huge disparity in share of total wealth gain since 1983 By Lawrence Mishel | September 15, 2011 It is widely acknowledged that wealth declined substantially between 2007 and 2009 as the housing bubble burst and stock prices fell. This wealth shrinkage was especially hard on the middle class and those groups (such as African Americans) whose house is their primary source of wealth. It is far less appreciated that this is a long-term trend, and that wealth is now lower for the typical household than it was a generation ago in 1983, while the wealth at the upper end expanded a great deal. [..] the richest 5 percent of households obtained roughly 82 percent of all the nation’s gains in wealth between 1983 and 2009. The bottom 60 percent of households actually had less wealth in 2009 than in 1983, meaning they did not participate at all in the growth of wealth over this period. http://www.epi.org/publication/large-disparity-share-total-wealth-gain/

Hey, I could do that too if I weighted 60lbs. Totally.

and? In any case, good to know that you now think suburban sprawl is a disaster. Let's see how well you apply this learning to public transit and sustainable transportation (like CAFE standards), renewable energy, codes and regulations (that get in the way of developers and "free" market) next time these topics come up.

You are not making up the data analysis implied by these graphs but you don't know what goes into it and you are misrepresenting it. You are implying that people who work for a living are seeing an increase in compensation when in fact everything points to most people getting less compensation beginning in the early 80's (stagnant or decreasing income, good bye legacy pensions, fewer people getting less health care coverage, most paying a greater share of their health coverage and pension, etc). Employers pay more for some benefits today, which is entirely consistent with non-discretionary spending like health care getting out of hand and thus effective total compensation going down, but it doesn't change that the share of national income captured by the 1% has sharply increased.

Well, there is essentially no private flood control so it is easy to blame government, especially when your side of the aisle has done everything it could to prevent sensible development that accounts for natural hazard in flood plains or coastal areas. This is pretty much equivalent to someone with your political leaning, in 50 years from now, blaming government for not acting on climate change while there was still time to prevent its major consequences.

How can you believe both this chart and the chart above showing an increasing family GINI coefficient over the same period? I think that in the future you should spend more time on what goes into the charts you post (or present what they are showing) rather than posting more of them because they raise more questions about your methods than anything.

So according to you, compensation beside income has increased by nearly 200% in 50 years? I hope that you vet the charts that you are posting because this one isn't making much sense considering that Legacy pensions are gone, benefits have been chopped as most everyone can witness, and the number with health insurance has decreased over the last 30 years: "The percentage of persons under age 65 years with private coverage rose between 1959 and 1968, to 79%, remained stable until 1980, and then declined to 67% by 2007. During the 1980s, the percentage of persons with no coverage increased, while the percentage with private coverage declined and the percentage with Medicaid remained stable. Since 1990, the percentage of nonelderly persons without coverage has remained stable, but the number has increased by more than 6 million persons, to 43.3 million in 2007. During this period, the percentage with private coverage has continued to decline, while the percentage with Medicaid has increased. Recent trends in coverage based on the NHIS and CPS are similar." http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr017.pdf Health care costs have gone up but it is also in great part to pad the accounts of the health care industry, while the coverage of most working people has decreased.

Of course that was your point, and I am not denying that it might play a part in it but it doesn't change that median male income is lower than it was 30 years ago, female median income has increased in great part due to increased working hours, and that non-discretionary spending have sky-rocketed to the point where many can't afford them anymore.

Unfortunately for you and your weak attempts at spin, Brzezinski himself acknowledges that financial assistance to the Mujahedin was "mostly for the acquisition presumably of weapons" around 2:40 mark: [video:youtube]v=RGjAsQJh7OM Bonus. A series of article by a respected author that blows apart the conservative myth of "Carter the dove": http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174814/roger_morris_the_cia_and_the_gates_legacy

If true, why did you and other so-called "fiscal conservatives" argue for attacking Iraq, and defended intervention for years after that? Don't you remember that left wingers were telling you in 2003 that cost estimates for the war were grossly understated? Why did you, as late as 2010, argue for continuing to give tax breaks to the wealthy? You're making stuff up again. I have other things to do than digging out your posts but I see that you are trying to run away from your record, AGAIN!

That's an interesting take on history. Better check your facts. Straight from the horse's mouth: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

I don't think it's nitpicking as using tractor tracks seems to change the nature of the traverse significantly. What was the purpose of a track from South Pole to Hercules Inlet? Isn't it much shorter from McMurdo to bring supplies?

If true, why did you and other so-called "fiscal conservatives" argue for attacking Iraq, and defended intervention for years after that? Don't you remember that left wingers were telling you in 2003 that cost estimates for the war were grossly understated? Why did you, as late as 2010, argue for continuing to give tax breaks to the wealthy?

carter was certainly a dove on iran - jesus christ in a jump suit, what do you think either of our last 2 presidents would have done w/ something like the iran hostage crisis? obama woulda used drones to kill everyman on the street in tehran, and bush would have gotten so excited he'd accidentally invade iraq Dovishness and its opposite, like political leanings, aren't measured on a moving scale. The Carter Doctrine viz the Middle East ("Don't touch our oil under their sand or we'll kill you") combined with Brzezinski's handy work in Afghanistan (arming the Taliban and other Mujahedin to provoke Soviet intervention) shows very well that the Carter admin was anything but dovish. A full scale military intervention in Iran would have been a total quagmire, which points more to Carter not being a moron rather than a dove.

Witness JayB's usual denialist cherry-picking techniques in all their splendor. First, the GINI coefficient has increased by 20% since its low in the early 70's, yet you decided to show us a plot starting in 1994 when the rate of increase in coefficient decreased (coincidence? I think not) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient Second, the GINI index for income inequalities doesn't account for the cost of non-discretionary spending like health care, housing and schooling, transportation, regressive taxation, etc ... that have gone through the roof in the last 30 years. But, we have gone over this so many times and you still refuse to acknowledge it. Your tone-deafness is staggering. Even though, time series of income by brackets tell part of the story pretty well by themselves (no need to obfuscate furhter what is plainly obvious):

Someone's ability to pay taxes compared to that of a plutocrat like Romney isn't a relevant consideration in the context of whether 14% of $21 million is sufficient taxation while inequalities and deficits are at record levels. Pretending otherwise is a stupid argument. Donations to a church aren't taxation and shouldn't be compared to it, unless you believe there shouldn't be separation between church and state.