Comments on: Inequality in America

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:14:07 +0000

Right on Dave, and continue to debase the dollar, driving up the cost of commodities and transportation costs, when coupled with taxes, greater investment in technical and vocational education, and government supports/subsidies for strategic industries would enable the US to top an overly mercantilist China. Why not simply put import taxes on every import that did not go toward developing the US’s productive capacity. Right on….For once we agree.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:01:02 +0000

The time is fast approaching when "conservative" will be a term of abuse, not praise. And when "socialist" ideas of income redistribution will be revived. I look forward to steep increases in taxes on the "rich" and more redistribution programs for the poor. The age of conservatism will to an end in the near future, in my view.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:53:04 +0000

Actually it was Microsoft Remote Desktop

that's why it was so slow

By: Farrar

Farrar — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:35:46 +0000

"But the one thing America can learn from China is to build up the domestic industrial economy, and stop interfering in foreign affairs of other civilizations which the US ultimately doesn't have any control over anyway."

Right on, Dave! I wouldn't be surprised if you had a near majority of Americans with you on that one.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:26:36 +0000

"My big gripe with economic predictions over the past five years, is that forecasters use the old closed economy simplifications that worked when the US was a unique capitalist economy, and international trade flows did not affect the total picture much… Today, I don’t try to analyze the US economy as a whole. I look at its sectors and try to analyze them in a global context… It is much richer to look at the sectors of the US economy, and look at them separately. They have varying exposure to the US and Global economies…" http://alephblog.com/?p=652

By: Stormy

Stormy — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:20:28 +0000

"How can we quantify the actual effect of rising trade on wages? The answer, given the current state of the data, is that we can’t. As I’ve said, it’s likely that the rapid growth of trade since the early 1990s has had significant distributional effects. To put numbers to these effects, however, we need a much better understanding of the increasingly fine-grained nature of international specialization and trade."--Krugman

The conclusion of the Krugman study. While he looks at wages, he does not look at jobs--or how the job market has been redistributed. Looking at the remaining manufacturing jobs may not answer the question.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:24:10 +0000

OPEC President de facto admits to pegging Oil price to the Euro so when the US Dollar devalues, the Oil price increases. How simple is that?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080420/bs_afp/worldenergyoiloutputopec_080420203355;_ylt=AmY0LBS22uWAmC6wx8sVKTGmOrgF

OPEC President Khelil, for his part, said the falling value of the US dollar was responsible for the surge in prices.

"When the dollar loses one percent, the price of a barrel of oil rises by four dollars," he said.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:00:53 +0000

To protect the lower-skilled inhabitants of rich countries, and prevent intolerable social strains through Latin American-style income differentials within society, it is thus necessary to restrict immigration. The barber in Boston makes ten times the wage of the barber providing an identical service in Lagos; it is appropriate that he should. Fantasizing that the low-skill worker should get an education making him superior to his immigrant competitor is Neo-liberal elitist nonsense; if he’d been able to get into Harvard he would have gone there, while further years of drudgery at a community college are not going to provide him with any significant extra competitive ability.

At the high skill level, the much lamented shortage of US engineers and surplus of lawyers is almost entirely due to the H1B visa system, which allows in competitors to graduate engineers, driving down their wages, while preventing easy qualification by foreign graduate lawyers, giving domestic lawyers a protected position.

http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/BearsLairHome

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:50:26 +0000

Alan Greenspan, the Ayn Rand loving currency assassin, once bragged during the go-go 1980’s that the American economy, as measured by the weight of cargo going out of the country was becoming ‘lighter.’ Who needs manufacturing, right? This weightlessness he reasoned was proof of the ‘New Economy.’ There was growth without inflation because of a new economic paradigm shifting America to a new permanent state of electronic Goldilocks. Greenspan wrongly thought that ‘financial services’ could permanently replace manufacturing in America. Imagine a nation of 100 million stock brokers trying to sell stocks and bonds to each other.

Americans think their financial collapse is going to take the whole world down with them. No way. Aside from the world benefiting from a bankrupt America that can no longer bomb people for sport and oil, the other major benefit of an evaporated U.S. is the removal of the globe’s no. 1 waste producer. The U.S. has only 4.5% of the world’s population yet generates 25% of its garbage. And Americans themselves might benefit too. As the price of food skyrockets America’s obesity problems should dissipate. Greenspan will write a new book; "From Turbulence to Starvation: Lose Weight and Money at the Same Time." The rest of world (the parts of it the U.S. isn’t bombing-for-dollars) doesn’t see any risk in a collapsed U.S. America as the brand that is America just isn’t cool any more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-keiser/us-dollar-euthanasia-whil_b_97371.html

By: bsetser

bsetser — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:12:14 +0000

anonymous --

table 1 of piketty and saez (link above) answers your question well:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Esaez/saez-UStopincomes-2006prel.pdf

for the bottom 99% (i.e. most of us), the clinton expansion produced larger income gains than the bush expansion. that data strips out the 01-02 recession. much as I prefer clinton's economic policies to bush's economic policies, i am not sure policies explain everything. something changed.

incidentally, the increase in the income going to the top 1% started in clinton and continued under bush; the main difference is that there was better income growth for all in the clinton years/