Ethersnap
Interests:
Current events, yoga, economics, food, travel, and all things cute.
Interests:
Current events, yoga, economics, food, travel, and all things cute.
Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?
This graphic answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year.
Read more here.
Even if they didn’t agree with Obama on everything in 2008, many in the financial industry looked at him then and saw a reflection of their imagined best selves: brainy, self-made, above the mewlings and histrionics of partisan politics. He seemed like the kind of Democrat even white-shoe Republican bankers and libertarian hedge-funders could get behind, and many of them did.
Currently reading Coming Apart: The State of White America by Charles Murray. Can’t decide if doing so is best classified as navel-gazing, hilariously meta, or both.
In a way, the United States is becoming like Old Europe, which is very strange in historical perspective,” Mr. Piketty said. “The United States used to be very egalitarian, not just in spirit but in actuality. Inequality of wealth and income used to be much larger in France. And very high taxes on the very rich — that was invented in the United States,” he said.
For Economists Saez and Piketty, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start - NYTimes.com
We read some of Piketty and Saez’s work the other week in POL 352!
hahahahahaha love this blog
It doesn’t make us weaker when we guarantee basic security for the elderly or the sick or those who are actively looking for work. What makes us weaker is when fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the goods and services our businesses sell, or when entrepreneurs don’t have the financial security to take a chance and start a new business. What drags down our entire economy is when there’s an ever-widening chasm between the ultra-rich and everybody else.
Remarks by the President at the Associated Press Luncheon
What the New York Times called a “thunderclap of a speech.”
Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up (feat. Eminem) (by hmatkin)
Willard’s sick flow…
The conceit that poverty is a problem suffered by other — often less deserving — people was an essential part of suburban self-identity that was reflected in its politics. Better-heeled suburban schools, sports teams and private recreation contributed to an ethos that emphasized family residential security, individual meritocracy and private life. Its inhabitants conveniently forgot that their cherished neighborhoods were in fact dependent on the programs of the New Deal state, not to mention the federal residential security maps that privileged white Americans.
![theatlantic:
How Occupy Wall Street Spent $700,000 in Six Months
Of the $737,000 or so Occupy Wall Street reports it has raised in donations since its inception nearly six months ago, it’s managed to spend or earmark more than $700,000 of that, according to its latest finance report. Amid the staples, copies, computers, and materials for its direct actions, it paid for tea, cigarettes, and lots of Metrocards. For the group that occupied Wall Street in the first place, a financial hangover is at hand.
At its peak, Occupy had around $500,000 in the bank as donations poured in thanks to the national exposure of its Zuccotti Park encampment. Now, aside from the $89,029 that remains of its $100,000 bail fund, it has $30,537 to work with, according to last week’s report. So where did all that money go? A sampling of some of some of line items in the Occupy budget:
$45,000 on Metrocards The movement moves by New York subway. (Though it’s a little hard to tally because some of those are reported as one of a few bundled expenses, such as $87 for “metrocards and earplugs” for the security detail on Nov. 9).
$9,900 on legal expenses Almost all of that going to bail out activists arrested during Occupy actions.
$6,000 on tea and herbs And do not forget the equipment to prepare them, as documented in expenditures slated for the Tea and Herbal and Herbalist working groups.
$7,196 on laundry People living in the Zuccotti encampment needed clean drawers.
Read more. [Image: AP]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0u5nlUFUm1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
How Occupy Wall Street Spent $700,000 in Six Months
Of the $737,000 or so Occupy Wall Street reports it has raised in donations since its inception nearly six months ago, it’s managed to spend or earmark more than $700,000 of that, according to its latest finance report. Amid the staples, copies, computers, and materials for its direct actions, it paid for tea, cigarettes, and lots of Metrocards. For the group that occupied Wall Street in the first place, a financial hangover is at hand.
At its peak, Occupy had around $500,000 in the bank as donations poured in thanks to the national exposure of its Zuccotti Park encampment. Now, aside from the $89,029 that remains of its $100,000 bail fund, it has $30,537 to work with, according to last week’s report. So where did all that money go? A sampling of some of some of line items in the Occupy budget:
Read more. [Image: AP]$45,000 on Metrocards The movement moves by New York subway. (Though it’s a little hard to tally because some of those are reported as one of a few bundled expenses, such as $87 for “metrocards and earplugs” for the security detail on Nov. 9).
$9,900 on legal expenses Almost all of that going to bail out activists arrested during Occupy actions.
$6,000 on tea and herbs And do not forget the equipment to prepare them, as documented in expenditures slated for the Tea and Herbal and Herbalist working groups.
$7,196 on laundry People living in the Zuccotti encampment needed clean drawers.
Politicians are people who’ve made a career of being puffed-up with self-importance. Self-awareness is practically a liability in this business — it punctures the suspension of disbelief necessary to take seriously all the pomp and ceremony and manufactured gravitas. How refreshing, then, was Romney’s quip upon taking the stage with glitter in his hair, thanks to an ambush from a gay activist: “That’s not all that’s in my hair, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “I glue it on every morning, whether I need to or not.”
