The inimitable @DeanBaker13 on my sister #AdelleWaldman's new book, "Help Wanted". https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6371119899
I think I’ve found the compromise that will end America’s culture wars. You can thank me later.
We should all just agree that 2nd Amendment rights under the Constitution begin at the moment of conception.
@dpp and once you’re gone you can never come back, when you’re out of the blue and into the black.
@rst i hope so. if the US is simultaneously involved in a major middle east war while also deterring russia in europe, a third front would be rather difficult to sustain.
i would take announcements about readiness with boulders of salt. i certainly don’t claim to know anything about China’s current capacity, but if you were ready today and your intention is to act, not to deter, dissembling your unpreparedness helps you achieve an element of surprise.
rust never leaks.
@djc (i think in wealth rather than income stats, it’s mostly due to the roughly third of the bottom 50% of households that owns a home enjoying a bit of the asset price boom. but note a real estate price boom is largely at the expense of the roughly 2/3 of bottom 50% households that do not own a home, and so are short a perpetual stream of future shelter.)
@djc again, there’s a lot of mischief in the denominators here. what is the wealth of the bottom 50%? roughly 3% of total wealth. you can argue that if trends in that chart continue indefinitely — continue indefinitely as a multiplicative process, in percentage rather than dollar terms — eventually we’d meaningfully equalize. that’s quite a conjecture. 1/
@djc but in fact what this chart shows is a 52% increase on roughly 3% against (top 1%) 8% on 31%. Work that out and you get like 60% more dollars flowing to the top 1% than to the bottom 50%.
( i’m taking my rough figures from here. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wealth-distribution-in-america/ ) /fin
@djc no, i don’t think wealth levels have evened out at all. on the contrary. the effect of booming asset values to make the rich richer dramatically outstrips relatively high percentage gains in wages against tiny bases of low wage earners. wealth is a cumulation of income (including unrealized gains/losses) net of consumption. when asset values boom, given the initial distribution of marketable assets, so too does wealth inequality.
you can’t meaningfully address inequality without addressing inequality of nonlabor income.
if israel provokes a broader war i wonder what happens to taiwan.
@petrillic you are not alone, but i promise i’ll leave you in peace and not insist on chatting from the middle seat.
@skye do electrons dream android skies?
there are things i’d like to say, but
april 1st may be not the very best day.
@22 (i thought it was a great piece!)
should we screencap great posts here over to other hellsites?
i feel like there's a counterproductive asymmetry: we tend to see really clever their-stuff (which, besides the really clever, is a reminder we are segregated away from interesting action), while they tend not to (and so can presume they live in the metropole and are missing nothing that matters).
(ceci n'est pas un post du 1er avril.)
some people celebrate today like it’s special, but i am a fool every day of the year.
@jik correctly or incorrectly, what the piece seems to me to claim is that under the current status quo mass starvation won't happen in southern Gaza, though it will in northern Gaza unless one of the three changes you point to occurs.
@jik i don't think there's any dispute that there's a starvation crisis. its scale is what's at issue. i was under the (mis?)impression that trucks were entering at such a trickle that mass famine, under which a substantial fraction of the population would die, is already inevitable. i think it worth understanding whether that's right or not.
even if it's not, that doesn't imply more aid (esp to N Gaza) isn't urgent. if people take the piece as apology for Israel's actions that's bad.
@Alon Whether it's Israeli military or sub-rosa PA, Israel has to take responsibility for ensuring aid gets through.