Monday, January 7, 2019
Barry Ritholtz doesn't live in Realville, calls recent wage gains "decent" when they are peanuts
Decent wage gains are showing up in paychecks. That should continue for a while. Workers had an average gain in hourly wages of 3.2 percent in December, well above the average of 2.4 percent during the past five years . . ..
There's nothing wrong with his facts, just his perspective, which isn't long-term. He's content to compare his data to the Obama era, which sucked big-time. Note how he doesn't say that, however, big New York liberal that he is.
Year over year, the average gain in 2018 isn't even Bush-league let alone Clinton-league. And certainly not pre-Reagan-league, when workers in this country got much bigger raises on average than they do in this supposedly booming economy.
Barry likes charts. Here's the only one that counts, showing that raises for 80% of workers on average can't hold a candle to the late 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s (when Democrats couldn't stop complaining about George W. Bush's horrible economy).
Employers remain stingy, and there is no employment boom, or else they'd be hiring all the old people the greedy bastards fired in 2009 because they made too much money.
I KNOW.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Actually record numbers of us WANT you to leave
[M]ost of the recent surge in Americans' desire to migrate has come among groups that typically lean Democratic . . ..
Saturday, January 5, 2019
Trouble already in the freshman Democrat club: Rashida Tlaib, MI-13, wants to erase Israel
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY-14, has come out as a Jew.
Must see video: Tucker Carlson says socialism is exactly what we're going to get unless we stop worshipping at the altar of (capitalist) materialism
Pretty smart coming from a guy who eschews intellectualism.
For example, I wish he had said that you can't have limited government without individuals composing it who first limit themselves. He says that, and more, just not in a lapidary way. Tucker is revolting against the reductionism of Conservatism Inc. to mere materialism. He is revolting against ideology, and it's amazing.
Here.
Bons mots:
Republicans see it as their duty to make the world safe for banking.
Questioning markets feels like apostasy to social conservatives.
Economics and culture are not separable one from the other.
Rural America now looks like Detroit.
Putting corporations first is bondage.
We tax capital at half the rate we tax labor.
Divided countries are easier to rule.
Market capitalism is not a religion. It's a tool.
Libertarians tell a lie when they say any deviation from market fundamentalism is socialism.
Ann Coulter says she agrees with AOC: Raise taxes on the rich
Ann just wants to punish the Koch Brothers in the process, but there's a better reason to agree.
Good government acts like a curb on a street, steering behavior. That's what taxing the rich used to be all about.
How so?
Once enacted in 1916, high taxation of ordinary income didn't result in high revenues for government. That's why the income tax was extended to almost all earners instead of just the rich when it became clear within a few years that government wouldn't have enough money to play in the international sandbox without more dough. For their part the rich won long term tax concessions through diverting derivation of income from capitalist enterprises, the latter benefiting not just themselves as owners but also individuals with jobs, the country with productivity, and the government with additional multiple streams of revenue. It was an intricate but effective way of benefiting all concerned.
The mistake with the Reagan Revolution was that it misunderstood human nature. It thought lots of new untaxed ordinary income would end up getting invested just the same way, and turn America into something never before seen. But the money didn't get invested the same way. It fled abroad where the cost of doing business was cheaper. It helped create middle classes wherever it went, but ours withered on the vine. Meanwhile the number of US billionaires mushroomed, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay went ballistic, and general income inequality increased dramatically. Real incomes for most people have barely moved up since the 1970s.
And now here we are with an America never before seen indeed, where libertarian advocates of this destructive system tell us with a straight face that this is patriotism.
Unfortunately, none of this is in the pea brain of AOC, let alone in Ann Coulter's, Kevin McCarthy's or Donald Trump's.
Michael Savage calls AOC "Alexandria Occasional Cortex", which is just . . . savage
I suppose of all the talkers I've listened to over the years, Savage has been my favorite. For his general positions on borders, language and culture, yes, but more so because he's an independent thinker. It's not just that he's independent. It's that he thinks. No thinking man is a party man. Which is probably why he's out the door.
Not sure I'm a podcast guy, but there's that for those who are more active than passive listeners. I like the radio because it's (mostly) live. Anything big which could happen you hear about almost instantly. And anyone could call in. It's more spontaneous and more exciting. I like to listen while I'm cooking dinner.
Radio certainly is changing. Laura Ingraham hung up the headset in November after many years carrying the baton on immigration. Burning the candle at both ends she was. Chris Plante out of DC is a very welcome alternative to Laura in the mornings. He's very quick upstairs, trenchant and funny.
It would be nice if Mark Steyn replaced Rush Limbaugh one of these days, but somehow I think the Rush Limbaugh show goes away when Rush goes away.
But all of them need to take more callers, and let them talk, dammit. Which is probably too much to ask. Most of the callers aren't any good.
But there was that guy, Geno from The Bronx . . ..
Yep, you guessed it, the inventor of sliced bread was white . . . and German-American . . . and from Iowa
Ve haf vays ov makinck your lunch qvicker.
The horror. The horror.
Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960)
Friday, January 4, 2019
Ann Coulter: The media are trying to convince Trump that if he abandons the wall, he’ll be a statesman . . .
Bush 41 accepted the Profiles in Courage award from Democrats for abandoning his Read My Lips No New Taxes pledge, many years later of course, proof that the voters were right to turn out the bum in 1992 for his betrayal.
Will Trump follow in his footsteps?
Nearly every Republican presidential candidate tried to con voters with these meaningless catchphrases about “border security.”
Here are The Des Moines Register’s summaries of some of the candidates’ positions on immigration a few weeks before the 2016 Iowa caucus:
Jeb Bush: “has called for enhanced border security.”
Marco Rubio: “proposes … improved security on the border.”
John Kasich: “believes border security should be strengthened.”
Chris Christie: “urges … using technology to improve border surveillance …”
Rand Paul: “would secure the border immediately.”
Carly Fiorina: “would secure the border, which she says requires only money and manpower.”
They all lost.
The guy who won: “Trump has said many illegal immigrants are rapists and are bringing drugs and crime to the United States. He has called for building a wall along the southern border, and has said he would make Mexico pay for it. He said he would immediately terminate President Barack Obama’s ‘illegal executive order on immigration.'”
Trump got more votes than any other Republican in the history of presidential primaries. No one was falling for “border security” then, and they aren’t now.
But instead of doing what he said and building a wall, Trump has hired people who don’t even grasp that the point is to make it unattractive to break into our country.
Start with your father Rashida, eldest of 14 children
Another Cooley Law School graduate rises to the level of her incompetence. Michael Cohen will keep a cot warm for you, Rashida.
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