Mind-Boggling Stats on Wealth Inequality

When I first accidentally ran into a video of Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman explaining the trend in wealth inequality in America, and how among industrialized nations, this trend was unqiue to America (meaning, the usual suspects like globalization and immigration couldn't be so easily scapegoated), there seemed to be very few other sources talking about these trands. I just ran into this piece in the SF gate, which compiles several of these trends and provides easy-to-understand graphs, along with their sources. This one on the right pretty much explains the fallacy behind the assumption that tax decreases on the top earners will have a trickle-down effect, and make everyone better off.

Here is the article;
15 Mind-Blowing Facts about Wealth and Ineqiality in America

This is the Paul Krugman video I was referring to.

The Small Government Movement

I have posted several times about much of the rhetorical firepower for small government/lasseiz faire capitalism movement coming from think tanks which exist for the sole sake or arguing for small government/laissez faire capitalism as opposed to objectively crunching data and returning unbiased results. A recent firing from such an institution certainly drives the point;

David Frum and the Closing of the Conservative Mind

As some readers of this blog may know, I was fired by a right wing think tank called the National Center for Policy Analysis in 2005 for writing a book critical of George W. Bush's policies, especially his support for Medicare Part D. In the years since, I have lost a great many friends and been shunned by conservative society in Washington, DC.

Now the same thing has happened to David Frum, who has been fired by the American Enterprise Institute. I don't know all the details, but I presume that his Waterloo post on Sunday condemning Republicans for failing to work with Democrats on healthcare reform was the final straw.

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

The Liberal Mainstream Media?

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