The Workers Well-Being is Too Important to Trust to the Workers

Science, yes. But don't forget the poor

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

In a speech to the National Academy of Sciences shortly after taking office, President Obama, while faced with a teetering economy, vast numbers of unemployed and uninsured, and two seemingly endless wars, nonetheless paused to embrace a vision of the future.

This is how the left negates their failures: religion. First, they write their icons’ legacies beforehand as a prophesy…

He spoke of President Lincoln's

…Then they invoke the gods…

 commitment to science and innovation, even in the midst of great turmoil and uncertainty.

…Throw in some heroic rhetoric…

He said: "A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won,

…Establish an air of inevitability…

 before Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences. . . . Lincoln refused to accept that our nation's sole purpose was mere survival."

...thrust misrepresentations and shoddy analysis into historical context…

Lincoln was a believer in science,

Is there really anyone out there that’s not a believer in science? The notion of being a believer is rooted in the necessity of blind faith. Science is, by definition, replicable and therefore observable. Fire still burns you even if you don’t believe it’s hot. You want to know how I know that? Science. Plus I was a two year old once, and I learned that one wicked fast because of my enormous brain.

a believer in our capacity for innovation

Well that’s certainly not the same thing as being a believer in science. The first is a prerequisite for sanity; the second is an assertion that the products of our minds are gifts to the collective (aka, the liberal God) from the masses (aka, people who need to pay more taxes).

and the possibilities it represented.

Innovation isn’t about possibility. It’s about actuality. The possible is not an innovation; it’s an invention. Taking the possible and making it an actuality—that’s innovation. So really, she’s promoting invention.

He saw our future prosperity tied to our ability, as a nation, to create. So does Obama.

Mostly our ability to create new guns. I dare say that sounds more like Reagan than Obama.

In many areas, the president has matched the rhetoric of his (and Lincoln's) speech with concrete action.

In April 2009, Obama created a President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which he has turned to nearly every month since to ask hard questions

Journalists always seem to think that asking hard questions is meritorious. It’s astounding they never do it.

and demand science-based answers. He has fought for - and in a number of cases succeeded in - increasing science and new technology funding.

So you would agree that he is a big spender, no? Follow-up question…what makes Barack Obama better able to decide which technologies to invest in than the individual investor? Does he not believe in the efficiency of the market, or does he believe that the profit motive is not an effective motivator?

(Ms. Vanden Heuvel, feel free to take notes. I’m doing your job for you here.)

He has appointed highly credentialed, public-spirited

Public spirited? Jesus Christ, what the hell does that mean? Avowed communists?

 scientists to key agencies.

Seriously, we need Joe McCarthy back. There are Communists in the State Department!

So it came as no surprise, then, that a central theme of President Obama's State of the Union address last week was the modern extension of Lincoln's commitment to science and innovation and of his insistence that we add "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius."

It’s kind of disrespectful to override the President’s chosen hero to compare himself to. Just a random aside: being assassinated does not make a President worthy of praise. I have nothing but contempt for William McKinley. (If you can spell his assassin’s name by heart, you may have had a kick ass 7^th grade history teacher like me. Yes, I’ll take 20^th Century Assassin spelling for $800, Alex.  Leon Czolgosz, bitches.)

Cars that can run on sunlight and water.

Clouds that rain vegan cookies and jetpacks that run on pixy-dust.

A million electric cars on the road by 2015.

Simultaneously a pipe dream and something that isn’t worth aspiring to. Also, what happens if there aren’t a million people in the United States who want electric cars? How do we remedy that once we’ve made it the espoused goal of the federal government?

 High-speed rail.

Don’t we alredy have railroad companies?

 A faster, more accessible Internet.

Don’t we already have internet service providers?

Renewable technologies paid for by eliminating subsidies to oil and gas companies.

Shouldn’t we just remove subsidies to all companies? Isn’t that “equal protection under the law?” If we selectively give subsidies—federal revenue is known in flyover country as “our money”—or if we give tax breaks and credits to those who purchase what the government suggests, then how are we living our lives free from the yoke of government tyranny? What have we done with our birthright of liberty?

These, all mentioned by the president in his address, are just a small sampling of what awaits an America that rededicates itself to scientific pursuit over the next decade.

An inefficient, market-free energy policy, a rapidly depreciating transit infrastructure that no one uses, and a taxed and regulated internet…the future sure is bright.

The goal - "to win the future" as the president put it

That line was outright stolen from about 5 people, including Newt Gingrich.

 - is, indeed, a worthy one,

Keep in mind that these are the people who objected to “War on Terror” because it was ambiguous and murky.

 especially when you consider how poorly we have handled the recent past. Largely because of trade policies that place profits ahead of working people, more than 40,000 factories have been shuttered in less than a decade.

I’m at a complete loss. Democrats used to pretend like they believed in free trade, until they decided that advocating that demanding that firms remain unprofitable to maintain jobs was sound fiscal policy with 10% unemployment.

Meanwhile, American 15-year-olds rank 25th in the world in math, and 21st in science,

In high school. High schoolers would suck even if they were great at math and science.

and we are haunted by a skills shortage that makes it harder to compete.

Yes. Skills like welding, carpentry, electric wiring, and masonry. Instead of sending the dullards of society to vocational schools, where they would learn an effective career, recent administrations have poured billions of dollars into the notion that everyone in America should have a college education, regardless of whether it confers any more economic earning power on its graduates. Meanwhile, we have thousands upon thousands of aspiring writer who can’t figure out how to use a semicolon to save their lives, but we have a dearth of employable workers doing jobs that don’t even require an 80 IQ.

All the while, we spent the better part of a decade with a president who scorned science,

This is a veiled reference to fetal stem-cell research. There is a difference between scorning science and having principled ethical objections to methodologies. There’s a reason Tuskegee doesn’t happen anymore, and it’s not because the experiment didn’t yield results. It’s because it’s morally atrocious. Saying so doesn’t make anyone scornful of science.

 and a federal government that always let politics trump scientific progress.

Three questions would need to be resolved before I could get on board with this:

1)     From where does the federal government derive its authority to regulate and monitor “scientific progress?”

2)     Does any non-military department in the federal bureaucracy have a history of developing marketable ideas or products?

3)     Assuming that the federal government has both the right to regulate and a history of effectively regulating scientific progress, does this government function make us more or less prosperous and free?

But while Lincoln was committing himself to the advancement of science and innovation, he remained focused on ending the nation's more immediate and immobilizing crises.

One might say he was “focused like a laser beam” on preserving the Union.

President Obama must do the same; it is today's job market, not tomorrow's, and the victims of our historic chasm between great wealth and deep poverty, that deserve his primary focus now.

Are you seriously putting income inequality up as a national tragedy equivalent to centuries of slavery and the atrocities of one of the dead and wounded in what is still to date our nation’s bloodiest war?

We live in a country with nearly 15 million unemployed, and many millions more underemployed.

This was supposed to be a column on science, no?

 A country where job creation can barely keep pace with population growth, where for a staggering number of people, the pain of recession continues without any real relief. These are people who cannot wait for a decade-long economic transformation; they need relief - and jobs - now.

No argument here.

And yet, with more Americans now mired in poverty than at any time in the last 40 years -a record 47 million - the president did not include a single mention of poverty or the plight of the poor in his speech.

Do the poor need to be reminded that their lives are desolate and empty?

Ironically,

Seriously, I haven’t read the end of this sentence. Scout’s honor. I’m willing to bet ten dollars that there is absolutely no irony in this sentence. No one ever got rich betting on the competence of the American media.

 Republican Paul Ryan's response did acknowledge that government still has the responsibility "to help provide a safety net for those who cannot provide for themselves."

You owe me $10.

Of course, the programs that the most vulnerable

I’m not allowing this euphemism to continue. Poverty and vulnerability are not interchangeable. You’re talking about the poor. Say so.

depend on are the very ones that Ryan, new chairman of the House Budget Committee, has committed to defund and dismantle.

I knew there was a reason I mancrush on that dude.

That Obama was silent on poverty is troubling. But the real challenge for Obama, who through his work as a community organizer has seen poverty as close up as any president,

Washing their feet, perhaps?

 will come when Ryan and his reactionary colleagues pass a budget in the House. It will be in that moment that the president will have to stand and fight to preserve the safety net,

Lincoln fought to preserve the Union; Obama fights to preserve the safety net. See what she’s doing there by using the same verbiage?

 to defend those who may never see the benefit of a retooled economy.

Have you ever heard the expression “a rising tide lifts all boats?” Everyone sees the benefits of a strong economy.

Obama could bury the word "stimulus"

I bet Lincoln knew when a word didn’t do well in focus groups too.

but still find innovative initiatives (such as a National Infrastructure Bank or large-scale public-private partnerships) to prop up cities and states and frugal pension funds.

Is that frugal used as a pejorative?

 And he could push for a 21st-century Works Progress Administration-style program, one that would give those able and willing to work the stability - and dignity - of employment.

And yet, provide absolutely no economic benefit to the economy. Brilliant.

Lincoln said that "the legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves - in their separate, and individual capacities."

In other words, Lincoln didn’t recognize the limitations on government put in place by the Constitution, so we can throw it away too.

Even if this were the standard by which the government derived its authority, provide an argument that the government can run a train line better than private industry. Provide an argument that the government can provide heathcare better than the private sector. Provide an argument that the government can produce new goods and services with the frantic energy of a free economy. I dare you to make the argument that statism and central planning through government is the most efficient economic model. I triple dog dare you.

The president must remember that there are some things that need to be done now, things that no leap of science of technological innovation can cure.

Herpes?

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation. She writes a weekly online column for The Post.

Truth and Preaching; Falsehood and Blaspheming

Well this is going to be fun. Deprived for neigh on four days of the prattling sycophancy and screeching disdain that I have become accustomed to, I have branched out to more reliable outlets of leftist thinking: The Huffington Post. Screeching and prattling abound.

The Big Lie

This is a particularly audacious title. This “Big Lie”—which I capitalize in deference to an assumed specificity—now has quite the billing to live up to. Besides simply being a Big Lie, it is The Big Lie. I’m expecting the solution to all of our political problems.

By Robert Reich

Published: Huffington Post, January 3, 2011

Republicans are telling Americans a big lie,

What? You can’t just backtrack like that. I was promised The Big Lie: the singular Big Lie that belies all of our social upheaval. I was promised a diagnosis for the loose thread that we continue to pull to unweave the proverbial sweater. Now he’s telling me that it’s just a lie? It’s not the lie. It’s not even a specific lie. It is just a lie as mundane as any other lie, like parents loving their children equally or Nancy Pelosi professing that she’s never had plastic surgery.

and Obama and the Democrats are letting them.

You know Obama; always coddling Republicans.

The Big Lie

Now it’s The Big Lie again? Make up your fucking mind.

is that our economic problems are due to a government that's too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.

Why is this a lie?

Reich slightly misstates the conservative position, which those on the other side of the aisle confuse as the Republican position, so I’ll clarify:

Our economic problems are due to regulations tinkering with the free markets. They were compounded in magnitude by poor judgment on behalf of private corporations, which exacerbated the natural downturn in the business cycle. By expanding the government, we have ensured that unsound economic circumstances like this will continue. By propping up corporations that have made bad decisions, we have enshrined moral hazard and progressed very far down a path of consolidating all of the economy’s risk within the federal government. Without invoking established mechanisms to address market failure, we have eliminated the incentive for risk-averse behavior. These incursions into the free market system are neither morally justified nor productive to their stated goals.

The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928,

Why is this the truth?

This is somewhat baffling to me. The depression started in the late 20’s, but not until 1929. The actual data that I searched for (42 seconds, thank you, Google) showed that 1916 was more inequitable with regards to the top 1% of wage earners. Similarly, 1935 was the highest year for the top 10% of wage earners. So why choose a minor peak in 1928 before a precipitous fall? Because there wasn’t a peak in 1929. All of this is, of course, irrelevant to social equality, because income and wealth are inherently different things, but then, I’m arguing data against a flippant off-hander from a political hack, so I’ll simply say: state your sources. FYI, mine comes from Berkeley: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/berkeleysympo2.pdf (Further disclaimer, I only looked at the graphs. There’s no point to Google if I still have to read through a 20 page economics paper.)

combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us.

Two issues: 1) As a member of the ruling class elite, Robert Reich is decidedly not the “rest of us,” with regards to income or any other relevant characteristic. The attempt at camaraderie rings false. 2) The metrics showing stagnation in the lower classes are specifically designed to be support an income inequality skew. How? Because success is what distinguishes the upper-class from—to borrow Reich’s forced attempt at a connection—“the rest of us,” is income. Of course the lower class has stagnant incomes; any precipitous rise in the outliers that skew the averages would be assimilated into the upper class. Similarly, formerly high-wealth individuals (think failed sole-proprietors) skew the figures at the low end of the spectrum, because their downward trend gets caught in the lower bucket, because individuals are constantly shuffled between the high and the low income classes. The relevant metrics, which Mr. Reich blithely ignores, involve class fluidity, which is still very high in the United States.

The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity.

Production, not spending, stimulates the American economy. (That’s a bit misleading, as production, not spending, stimulates any economy, but I prefer to permit digressions into my own jingoistic fervor.)

Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can't borrow as before, and must save for retirement.

As though these were  not pertinent issues before the recession. We’ve been hearing for decades that Americans don’t save enough, haven’t funded their retirement, and generally embraced high-risk behavior that jeopardized credit-worthiness.

The short-term solution is for government to counteract this shortfall

No! The shortfall is a natural course-correction for an economy that hasn’t been purely capitalistic in far too long.

by spending more, not less. The long-term solution is to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely

Economic classes dispassionately examine means of distributing resources. There’s the market, which is usually given a little gold star as the optimal means to distribute resources, but there are other means examined: command, force, lottery, personal characteristics, or first-come first-serve.

Keep in mind that when someone advocates tweeking the market, he is advocating the use of one of these methods. All of these methods are brutal and arbitrary. None of these methods is moral.

(for example, through a more progressive income tax, a larger EITC, an exemption on the first $20K of income from payroll taxes and application of payroll taxes to incomes over $250K,

Why $20K of exempted income? Why a tax increase on incomes over $250K? What part of this isn’t arbitrary?

stronger unions, and more and better investments in education and infrastructure.)

How the hell do unions promote economic growth in the short term? Stronger unions make companies less profitable and depress hiring. Increasing regulations on fluidity in the labor market discourages firms from taking on new people. Unions are notoriously inflexible and hobble a company’s agility in the marketplace. Nothing that unions do promotes short-term economic health or hiring. There’s a legitimate argument that strong unions promote economic well-being long-term by making exploitation of the labor force more difficult. In abstract, it makes sense. That said, this is more of a bone thrown to a key political constituency as opposed to reasoned economic policy.

But instead of telling the truth,

Again, why is this “the truth?” Is this an economic argument or a sermon?

Obama has legitimized the Big Lie

Again, WHY is this a lie, let along the “Big Lie.”

by freezing non-defense discretionary spending, freezing federal pay, touting his deficit commission co-chairs' recommended $3 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase, and agreeing to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

The American people did that by forcing the President’s hand. The progressive agenda has failed, and the American people are thirsty for a return to conservative values. These weren’t Obama’s ideas; he had to be dragged to them.

Will Obama stand up to the Big Lie? Will he use his State of the Union address to rebut it

He might, if you would take the time to even attempt to rebut it right now.

and tell the truth? Maybe, but so far there's no evidence.

How is it that progressives whine so much? No president in recent history has been as successful at enacting his agenda as President Obama. In his mind, however, it’s a cruel trick of history that it isn’t succeeding.

In his weekly address yesterday,

Which only journalists, lobbyists, and political insiders listen to.

the president restated his "commitment" for 2011 "to do everything I can to make sure our economy is growing, creating jobs, and strengthening our middle class."

That is, before he headed out to the back nine.

He added that it's important "to look ahead -- not just to this year, but to the next 10 years, and the next 20 years"

It’s hard to believe that a political insider can’t recognize fluff from a presidential address. Maybe he has a word count he has to hit before Arianna’s check clears.

to find ways to stimulate the economy through innovation. And that it is critical that the U.S. discover ways to "out-compete other countries around the world."

Novel concept: we can out-compete by actually allowing competition. The United States is officially one of the most business unfriendly places in the industrialized world. How do we keep the American Dream alive when a gluttonous leviathan insists on ransacking our surpluses?

Become more innovative? Out-compete? Who or what is he talking about? Big American corporations are innovating like mad all over the world, with research and development centers in China and India.

::Sit back and waits for author to acknowledge the manifestly obvious point that I just so eloquently made::

And their profits are soaring.

Swing and a miss.

They're sitting on almost $1 trillion of cash.

Does anyone else get the feeling the Reich feels that it is their patriotic duty to be unprofitable?

But they won't create jobs in America because there's not enough demand here to justify them.

Demand for what? Jobs? There’s plenty of demand for jobs. The reason is because taxes and regulations overseas are far friendlier, even when political officials are corrupt.

In the Republican address in response, U.S. Senator-elect Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) restated the Big Lie. "The American people sent us to Congress with clear instructions: make government smaller, not bigger,"

That’s a statistically provable truth, The American people sent conservatives like Ayotte to congress in droves to rebuke the progressive Big Government agenda. If you didn’t hear that message loud and clear, you have to have ear muffs on.

she said. Deficit reduction "isn't a Republican problem or a Democrat problem -- it's an American problem that will require tough decision-making from both parties."

I can understand the argument that the deficit is not an immediate problem, but I can find no conceivable way to square the idea that a deficit out-pacing economic growth isn’t going to be a problem eventually. If I were a liberal, I’d compare deficit hawks to premillennial dispensationalists from Revival-era America who thought they could, through intensive study of scripture, mathematically calculate the time of Christ’s second coming. But then, you have to explain premillennialism and everyone gets bogged down in a theological analogy.

And the way to shrink the deficit is to cut government.

There are two ways to reduce a deficit: increase revenues or cut costs. Since federal revenues have been a roughly constant 18.5% of GDP since, well, practically forever, any dispassionate observer will conclude that the only area in which politics can impact the deficit is spending cuts.

The extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts over the next two years, she said, was an "important first step" to jump-start the economy. Starting Wednesday, when the 112th Congress convenes with a Republican majority in the House, we'll be hearing far more of the Big Lie.

How do tax cuts hurt the economy. The only rational argument against tax cuts has been that they impact the deficit. While Republicans have been playing defense against charges of deficit hypocrisy by arguing that it doesn’t really impact the deficit that much, or that the benefits out-weighed the costs, (both valid arguments) no one has put the progressive counter-argument’s feet to the fire:

If you don’t see a problem with federal deficits—indeed, if you deride deficit alarmism “The Big Lie,” foisted upon us by anti-governmental lunatics on the right-wing fringe—then how do you argue against the provable economic stimulus of tax cuts by raging that it will add to the deficit?

George Orwell once explained that when a public is stressed and confused, a Big Lie told repeatedly can become the accepted truth.

Generally, this is meant to apply to those who merely assert an opinion, rather than those who convincingly argue it. I have asked repeatedly, why is what you call “The Big Lie” a lie. Why is it what you call “the truth” the truth? The failure to address these basic rebukes is the very nature of an assertion. These citations Reich includes for peripheral support serve only to undercut a rant based only on assertion.

Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that "the size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed" and that members of the public are "more easily prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones."

Does a guy named Reich quoting Mein Kampf perturb anyone else?

Only the president has the bully pulpit.

Excellent point. With the monumental power afforded the President of the United States, how did this “Big Lie” come into being? How was it disseminated? How has it not been rebuked?

But will he use it to tell the Big Truth?

Was that supposed to be the reveal? He finally calls “the truth” “the Big Truth,” lending weight to my original thesis that this man does not understand proper nouns. “The Big Lebowski”. That’s a proper Noun. BigGovernment.com: proper noun, even if the rules for websites are a little screwy. “Deficit spending is unfairly demonized and income redistribution is the key to economic growth” is not a proper noun. 

The Vast Gulf between Reason and Gibberish

Nichloas Kristof really hates rich people. Instead of showing the great divide between the rich and the poor, Kristof merely shows that vast gulf between sober thoughtfulness and wild-eyed radicalism; between logic and gibberish.

A Hedge Fund Republic?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Earlier this month, I offended a number of readers

We weren’t offended, Nick. We were laughing at you.

with a column suggesting

It was more like a verbal bludgeoning.

that if you want to see rapacious income inequality,

And really, why wouldn’t you be looking for rapacious income inequality? What a warped world view.

you no longer need to visit a banana republic.

But I’ve had my vacation to California planned since August!

You can just look around.

My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie

Plutocrats have invested heavily in the pie industry in recent years due to widespread declines in pumpkin prices. Warren Buffet says that it’s a wise investment.

in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

I’m just spit-balling here, but that would seem to indicate that income equality is a feature of instability.

But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point.

A concession! How magnanimous! Should I start a slow-clap?

That’s right: I may have wronged the banana republics.

Read: “I hate America now more than ever!”

You see, some Latin Americans were indignant at what they saw as an invidious and hurtful comparison. The truth is that Latin America has matured

Economically and politically, no, they haven’t matured. Narco-terrorism is spreading from South to Central America. The failed ideology of Communism is on the rise in the region and Brazil just elected a former militant guerilla. What’s more, in a period marked by the rise in China and India, Latin America, with a wealth of cheap labor, has seen only modest growth. In short, Latin America has the maturity of an election for sixth grade treasurer.

and become more equal in recent decades, even as the distribution in the United States has become steadily more unequal.

The best data series I could find is for Argentina.

FYI, That link has absolutely nothing to do, specifically, with Argentina. Indeed the graphica trends (because I can’t be bothered to actually read this nonsense) are remarkably mundane. There isn’t a clear trend anywhere.

In the 1940s, the top 1 percent there controlled more than 20 percent of incomes.

In the 1940’s, Argentina was also a prosperous nation.

That was roughly double the share at that time in the United States.

Since then, we’ve reversed places.

America has continued growing to unprecedented historical prosperity while Argentina has whimpered its way through hyperinflation and political instability to become the peer of economic powerhouses like Greece, Iran, and Thailand.

The share controlled by the top 1 percent in Argentina has fallen to a bit more than 15 percent. Meanwhile, inequality in the United States has soared to levels comparable to those in Argentina six decades ago — with 1 percent controlling 24 percent of American income in 2007.

And yet, the top 1 percent of Americans pay roughly a third of income taxes.

At a time of such stunning inequality, should Congress put priority on spending $700 billion on extending the Bush tax cuts to those with incomes above $250,000 a year?

Yes.

Or should it extend unemployment benefits for Americans who otherwise will lose them beginning next month?

God, no.

One way to examine that decision is to put aside all ethical considerations and simply look at where tax dollars will do more to stimulate the economy.

I can’t imagine anything more economically inefficient than paying people not to work.

There the conclusion is clear: You get much more bang for the buck putting money in the hands of unemployed people because they will promptly spend it.

Except consumption does not drive growth; production drives growth.

In contrast, tax cuts for the wealthy are partly saved — that’s both basic economic theory and recent history — so they are much less effective in creating jobs. For example, Republicans would give the richest 0.1 percent of Americans an average tax cut of $370,000.

Those evil Republicans want to give $370,000 of rich people’s money to those same rich people! It’s almost like…freedom.

Does anybody really think that those taxpayers are going to rush out and buy Porsches and yachts, start new businesses, and hire more groundskeepers and chauffeurs?

More to the point, does anybody think that the government should redistribute wealth based solely on the criterion of who will spend it most quickly?

In contrast, a study commissioned by the Labor Department during the Bush administration makes clear the job-creation power of unemployment benefits because that money is immediately spent.

Yet more evidence that, despite popular belief, Bush was a markedly moderate conservative.

The study suggested that the current recession would have been 18 percent worse without unemployment insurance and that this spending preserved 1.6 million jobs in each quarter.

I call bullshit. Without unemployment insurance, people would have taken inferior jobs. Businesses would have benefitted from superior labor for less and swung to profitability more quickly. By subsidizing unemployment, the government has effectively dampened the downward market forces on labor that would have spurred the jump in profitability that markets so desperately need. This is how markets course-correct.

But there is also a larger question: What kind of a country do we aspire to be? Would we really want to be the kind of plutocracy where the richest 1 percent possesses more net worth than the bottom 90 percent?

We want to be the country where anyone can aspire to wealth beyond their wildest dreams, and where only their own failings prevent them from achieving it. This—poor, (and I mean that figuratively, because I’m sure Kristof makes five times what I make) pitiable fellow—is freedom.

Oops! That’s already us. The top 1 percent of Americans owns 34 percent of America’s private net worth, according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The bottom 90 percent owns just 29 percent.

Fantastic! My fellow 90-percenters have something to aspire towards.

That also means that the top 10 percent controls more than 70 percent of Americans’ total net worth.

Thanks for running through the arithmetic for me, champ. 100-29=?

Emmanuel Saez,

Who wrote the article linked to above about Argentina. (The only link in this entire article.) If you’re only going to use one source, why not just get Professor Saez to write this nonsense?

 an economist at the University of California at Berkeley

Known for its sober, fair-minded worldview.

who is one of the world’s leading experts on inequality,

What the fuck does one do to become an expert in inequality?

notes that for most of American history, income distribution was significantly more equal than today. And other capitalist countries do not suffer disparities as great as ours.

“There has been an increase in inequality in most industrialized countries, but not as extreme as in the U.S.,” Professor Saez said.

Until recently, wealth was seen as a mark of good character. In a country without an enforced aristocracy or caste system, it has to be.

One of America’s greatest features has been its economic mobility, in contrast to Europe’s class system. This mobility may explain why many working-class Americans oppose inheritance taxes and high marginal tax rates.

Also, because Americans have a built-in compass that always points towards freedom.

But researchers

All researchers?

find that today

After a twenty-year lurch to the left, including the massive expansion of government in private life.

this rags-to-riches intergenerational mobility is no more common in America than in Europe — and possibly less common.

How can freedom function when government chokes off risk-takers? How can entrepreneurship function when the government entrenches the market shares of the major players with bailouts, tax breaks, and legal exemptions (read: Obamacare)? How can businesses grow when we cap the collective wealth of the rich? How can we become rich beyond our wildest dreams if we are propagandized to despise the fat cats?

I’m appalled by our growing wealth gaps because in my travels I see what happens in dysfunctional countries where the rich just don’t care about those below the decks.

That’s not why they’re dysfunctional. They’re dysfunctional because the society fails to acknowledge that wealth must correlate with merit.

The result is nations without a social fabric or sense of national unity.

Chicken and the egg. Most historians and anthropologists would say that unsuccessful nations don’t have cohesion because the national boundaries in the postcolonial era were drawn along arbitrary lines. The social discord predated the income inequality.

Huge concentrations of wealth corrode the soul of any nation.

Since you’ve already made the argument that America is now, and has been for a while, more prone to concentrations of wealth, you must also argue that the “soul” of the country is corroding faster. Yet riots are happening in France and Britain, not here. Mexicans have given up on their government. Not here. Here, we just want the government to have more faith in us. We just want to be free.

And then I see members of Congress in my own country who argue that it would be financially reckless to extend unemployment benefits during a terrible recession,

It would. Unemployment insurance destroys the market forces that get people back to work faster.

yet they insist on granting $370,000 tax breaks to the richest Americans.

Granting? Fuck that. I make my own money. The government doesn’t GRANT that I can keep any portion of it. I elect a representative to decide how much of it they can confiscate, that doesn’t mean that any portion of my post-tax income is a magnanimous grant from the government. That’s mine, and I earned it.

I don’t know if that makes us a banana republic or a hedge fund republic,

Hedge funds are a way of engaging in risky investments that are, through other investment vehicles, discouraged or prohibited by government regulation. Hedge funds are the last vestige of freedom left on Wall Street. If you want to impugn that by reducing them to icons of wealth, then so be it. You’ve already shown yourself to be without worth.

but it’s not healthy in any republic.