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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

News The Tuesday Morning News

Posted by Dominic Holden on Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 9:00 AM

Conservative Economic Theory Officially Wrong: The 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a report finding that the income gap is at its highest point since the 1980s. On average the richest 10 percent have nine times the wealth as the bottom 10 percent:

In the United States, Turkey and Israel, the ratio is even greater — 14 to 1. Germany, Denmark and Sweden — “the Old Europe” as ex-U.S. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld called it — have a somewhat lower 6 to 1 ratio.

“This study dispels the assumptions that the benefits of economic growth will automatically trickle down to the disadvantaged and that the greater inequality fosters greater social mobility.” According to the study, inequality among working Americans is up 25 percent since 1980, the year in which Ronald Reagan was elected president.

Pork-Wrapped Boondoggle: The state is getting defensive about its half-million-dollar-museum to honor the deep-bore tunnel. Highway officials sent reporters a defensive email last night with "The rest of the story," explaining that the state's environmental review had long included plans to honor the yet-unbuilt freeeway with a new museum. KOMO quotes Linea Laird, who's in charge of the entire viaduct replacement project, saying, "It wasn't just something we dreamed up to spend money on."

Gerry Pollet, swearing in the council chamber.

Courtesy King County Council
Gerry Pollet, swearing in the council chamber.

Northeast Seattle Has a New Man in the Legislature: The King County Council unanimously appointed Gerry Pollet, a Hanford clean-up activst as head of Heart of America Northwest, to the vacant House seat in the 46th Legislative District. That position was held by Rep. David Frockt, who took Sen. Scott White's seat in the same district after he died last month. We'll miss you, Mr. White. Welcome aboard, Mr. Pollet.

You GUYZ! A Class M Planet! Only 600 light years away...

Low Standard: School board member fails standardized test for 10th graders.

Muppets and Frye Apartments: Are communists.

Monstanto Uprising: From rootworms!

What Docs Aren't Saying: Your kids are overweight:

Ten years of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) showed that among parents of children with body mass index values in the 85th percentile or higher, only 22% had reported being told by a doctor or other health professional that their children were overweight, reported Eliana M. Perrin, MD, MPH, and colleagues at the University of North Carolina.

Horrible Crimes: A 12-year-old girl was reportedly raped in Shoreline while her mom was out of the house. The Woodland Park Zoo tried, once again, to artificially inseminate that poor elephant Chai. Woman stabbed in an anger management class.

Great Achievement: Man survives for three days on beer.

Comments (26) RSS

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Under Horrible Crimes: I don't know what a gild is, much less a 21-year-old one, but the headline on the PI page says a 12-year-old girl.

Posted by starsandgarters on December 6, 2011 at 9:06 AM

@1) Blogging with the flu here. Got it fixed now. Thanks.

Posted by Dominic Holden on December 6, 2011 at 9:15 AM

Won't somebody save that poor elephant? Hasn't she suffered enough?

Posted by Vince on December 6, 2011 at 9:15 AM

They only have enough funding for 2 more barrels of K-Y.

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on December 6, 2011 at 9:21 AM

Surviving for three days on beer is an achievement? I guess I'm more accomplished that I thought.

Posted by throxus on December 6, 2011 at 9:22 AM

Nope. We demand more suffering. More I say!

Posted by Foghorn Leghorn on December 6, 2011 at 9:22 AM

Get better Dominic!

Posted by Vince on December 6, 2011 at 9:23 AM

@6 So your kiddies can say "Look mommy, that sad elephant is crying"?

Posted by Vince on December 6, 2011 at 9:25 AM

I don't think trickle down economics ever promised less income inequality. The theory is that less government regulation leads to more wealth overall, some of which trickles down to the poor.

Posted by Ken Mehlman on December 6, 2011 at 9:27 AM

@9: and stagnant income levels for the middle & working classes over the last 30 years show that it remains a theory.

Posted by Max Solomon on December 6, 2011 at 9:35 AM

For the record, I've never survived for three days on beer. Beer and pizza, though - well, that's another story entirely.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty

on December 6, 2011 at 9:35 AM

@7) Thanks, Vince. I'm gonna go chug some Dayquil.

Posted by Dominic Holden on December 6, 2011 at 9:39 AM

I wonder if you can survive for three days on Dayquil?

Posted by Vince on December 6, 2011 at 9:41 AM

The bottom 10% are Officially Lazy Worthless Fucks
so Boo-Fucking-Hoo......

Posted by RealAmerica on December 6, 2011 at 9:43 AM

I'm not sure if 6:1 is fair or not, but if we could adjust the rules of capitalism a little so we got a 6:1 instead of a 14:1, that would be a good thing. And those in the "6" group -- the 1% -- are still going to work just as hard to grow wealth.

Posted by in-frequent on December 6, 2011 at 9:44 AM

@11: You think that's bad! I once had to make it through an evening with only gin and capers!

Posted by Phoebe on NE 79th on December 6, 2011 at 10:06 AM

@5 It was quite common back in the day for Monks to fast throughout Lent (40 days) on beer and water.

Certainly, getting enough calories from Coors Light to keep warm for 3 days in a snowdrift stranded Toyota is something, but hardly notable as a beer fast.

Posted by Used Religious Arguments For Beer Fasts In College on December 6, 2011 at 10:07 AM

Re: School board member fails standardized test for 10th graders. News articles like this bug the crap out of me because they never include the actual tests. "Standardized tests are bad; adults fail them; oh, but we're not going to show you the actual questions so you can make an informed decision." (I'm not defending standardized tests; I pretty much blew them off when I took them and ended up in the lower reading / math levels and was put on the non-college secretarial school track. Those three years of typing class have really paid off.)

Posted by mdurango on December 6, 2011 at 10:09 AM

@15 I don't think a drastic disparity in wealth is that great even for rich people. What fun is it to have a lot of money if you can't leave the house for fear of being robbed at gun point? Making the poor a bit less poor usually causes them to be less prone to criminality.

Posted by Ken Mehlman on December 6, 2011 at 10:10 AM

@16: Oops, used my old proflie. I moved to Wallingford.

Posted by Phoebe in Wallingford on December 6, 2011 at 10:12 AM

@8 It's ok, I just tell them that elephant tears help cure cancer. They're the real heroes!

Posted by Foghorn Leghorn on December 6, 2011 at 10:29 AM

@15,

I don't know if I agree that they'll work just as hard. My impression of countries with lower disparities between rich and poor is that most people there have much more reasonable attitudes toward work. They work to live; they don't live to work. But if decreasing the disparity makes even rich people less willing to spend all their time working, I can't say that's a bad thing.

Posted by keshmeshi on December 6, 2011 at 10:34 AM

@22 my experience has been that if you tighten the screws, if you make it more difficult to make a profit, people work just as hard. You don't see millionaires working less in a down economy, where the profits are shrunk by the economic situation. You may be right about people working to live. And I should add that I would hope the solution would only apply to the theorhetical 1% and not the theorhetical "small business owner" who is not making sixteentimes what his two employees are making.

I really view it like the forty hour work week, safety standards anD child labor laws. These laws cut into profits, but not so much that people stopped working so hard. There needs to be new regulations to ensure workers are not taken advantage of to tHe detriment of an otherwise fairly successful system. Capitalism only works with the proper regulations.

Posted by in-frequent on December 6, 2011 at 10:44 AM

Happy to see you're now facing left, @20.

Posted by rob!

on December 6, 2011 at 10:50 AM

That income inequality article is horribly written.

Posted by doceb on December 6, 2011 at 11:01 AM

There's a big difference between "disparity in wealth" and "disparity in income". Dominic refers to the former, but in fact the linked article is about the latter. The disparity in wealth is much much larger than the disparity in income. For the math geeks, income minus expenses is the time derivative of wealth (ok, plus there's appreciation, and the biggie, inheritance). For the people with the lowest incomes, subtracting out basic-living expenses means their accumulated wealth actually goes down every year. A disturbingly large fraction of Americans (and not just young adults with e.g. student debts) have negative wealth.

Posted by Eric from Boulder on December 6, 2011 at 12:50 PM