Income Inequality is Still Rising

Brad DeLong brings us the latest on inequality from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez:

Emmanuel Saez Writes in About American Income Inequality Rising Rapidly in 2005: He says:

The IRS has released yesterday the preliminary stats for year 2005 which I have used to extend my [and Thomas Piketty's] series [on the top income share by tax return unit] to 2005, posted at: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/TabFig2005prel.xls

2005 shows a very large increase in income concentration: the top 1% gains 14% in real terms from 2004 while the bottom 99% gains less than 1% (when including capital gains). The [previous] record peak of 2000 is surpassed even though 2005 is less of a high capital gains, high stock option year than 2000. By 2005, it looks like top incomes are showing strongly along all components: wages, business income, dividends, and capital gains.

The striking thing about 2003-2005 is the huge increase at the top with quasi-stagnation below the top 1%. In the late Clinton years, the top gained enormously but at least the bottom was also making progress (something you can see on Fig A2)...

Market income excluding capital gains

And in a second post, Brad adds:

Two Ways of Looking at Data on Income Inequality..., by Brad DeLong: A correspondent reminds me of this from Greg Mankiw, which at the time seemed to me to indicate that Greg was still high on the Bush administration koolaid he had drunk:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: New Data on Income Inequality: Paul Krugman calls attention to the update of the Piketty-Saez data on income inequality, although Paul describes the data differently than I would. Here is what I see: After rising substantially from 1986 to 2000, income inequality is essentially the same in 2004 (the most recent year of data) as it was in 2000.

Greg wrote this last year, before the IRS issued the data underlying the 2005 data point [shown in the graph above].

I expect the usual cast of characters will show up on the op-ed pages in predictable places with the same old tired attempts to rebut this evidence. But the question is not about whether inequality exists, or whether it is rising. The data are clear on this point - inequality is increasing. To me, the question is why inequality has been rising, i.e. the source of the increasing wealth accumulation and what, if anything, we ought to do about it.

Comments

[anne]

All that needs to be done, as I have argued, is to look to tax structure and investment markets to understand that income and wealth divergence for the wealthiest has grown these last years, and as was necessarily the case in 2005 the divergence will increase as 2006 is analyzed.

[real person from the real world]

Credit cards can charge up to 32%, bankruptcy laws have been tightened, subprime mortgage lending is collapsing, banks pay only 2 or 3% on money (so if you end up on a fixed income, you'll be eating cat food), energy is getting transformed into a market to entice investors, gas is going up (whatever the reason), and employees are treated as comodities, NOT as a human RESOURCE, and comodities don't rate health care because they either over consume it or should be punished for not living a healthy lifestyle (all that mac & cheese, since they couldn't afford the fruit and veggies). No wonder so many of us are going down the toilet.

[anne]

Remember that the capital gain and dividend tax is a maximum of 15%, and capital gains need not be realized indefinitely and should not in general be realized in the largest of portfolios. Also, we have passed through a profound international bull market from 2002 that has especially swollen portfolios of the wealthiest.

[evagrius]

Hmmm.

Seems a little ethical examination is needed here.

We're done with the theory.

Where's the application?

[ken melvin]

How else become third world?

[maria]

Hey these guys again. Didn't what's his name (bosom buddy of Friedman) tell us this was all hooey? And since he is at the Hudson Institute he must know what he is talking about. I saw today that a restaurant in New York City has put a $1000 pizza on its menu. Since income inequality is a myth, I think I'll just go have one of those the next time I am in New York. I can afford it just as well as a banker from Lehman Bros., can't I?

[maria]

Here's the restaurant for those of you who like pizza.

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_073150337.html

[anne]

[Hillary Clinton has announced she will keep troops in Iraq indefinitely if elected. I am astounded and saddened.]

[anne]

So, there we have the supposedly leading Democratic candidate pledging American empire. How can this possibly be? Death and physical and psychological and moral wounding, material devastation. A $2 trillion dollar war and occupation that will much more.

[TJM]

anne, I would note that this is IRS data. Unrealized capital gains aren't reflected here. What you say may be so, but it's an inference not a fact from these figures. Also, plenty of people are paying tax on realized capital gains they never see. Many mutual funds include capital gains for tax purposes that are not distributed.

The bull market has,in fact swollen the portfolios of everyone invested in stocks. Whether they're paying tax on all those gains is unlikely but as in 2000,the IRS will get a share as people bail out of stocks as they fall. In 2000,a budget surplus, government expenditures went up more than $80 billion; but revenues increased as stocks were sold to avoid further declines in value.

[anne]

Please, in 2004 the top 1% of households controlled 57.5% of shares held. The point of portfolio management is always to avoid realizing gains when possible, and has long been possible and has become more so for the wealthiest. But, wealth and income are highly concentrated and becoming more so.

The important point, in 2004 the top 1% of households controlled 57.5% of shares held.

[John J. Xenakis]

For heaven's sakes, the only Kool-aid is the fatuous political interpretation of everything. This has nothing to do with politics. We haven't yet paid for the stock market bubble that began in 1995, or it's subsequent variations -- the housing bubble, the credit bubble, the commodity bubble, etc. We're now very close to a 1929-style stock market crash, except that it will be worldwide. There'll be massive bankruptcy, homelessness, starvation and war. It'll be the worst time that mankind has ever seen in its entire history. So please cut out this truly moronic political crap and focus on what's going on.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

[TJM]

anne, the right way to say it is Puh-leeze.Nonetheless,unrealized gains aren't taxed.And that's a fact. Tax data and tax policy have little to do with wealth aggrandizement. In addition,wealth in shares is paper only.
Oddly, the chart also shows that when taxes and tax rates increased under Clinton, the share of income at the top also increased. Seems like something else is at work here.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Tough to follow John J.....

We cannot trade away much of blue collar America, and offshore a big chunk of white collar America, and not expect income inequality to grow for a generation or two.

Working at a big box store or distribution warehouse will never equal manufacturing jobs, and we have given about 1 million construction jobs to illegals.

So just how do we have a middle class? How do we acheive income mobility.

We probably won't for a generation or two. Maybe longer.

But come to the rustbelt, we have a lot of real estate that is really cheap. If you don't need a job, that is.

[anne]

Agreed; the are many elements from decline in union strength to lack of medical insurance to stock options and executive pay. But, tax structure is critical and has been.

No matter, I am busily writing to friends about the betrayal of Hillary Clinton and that is as or more important for Iraq is a continual nightmare for this country.

[anne]

By the way, why are we not looking at New Deal ways to keep people in homes in Ohio and Michigan and other areas where the housing problems are most severe? Heck, anywhere? Why are we not thinking New Deal?

[dissent]

On the topic of Hillary:
Hillary Clinton was asked if she thought homosexuality was immoral and she refused to answer.

How's that for a principled stand!

[anne]

There is no principle to Hillary Clinton, only cruel deceitful calculation. Beginning as a Goldwater "girl," back to a Goldwater "girl." The New York Times pointed out that she conveniently forgot this in Selma.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/us/politics/05selma.html?ex=1330750800&en=78148817bfb23ae8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

March 5, 2007

Clinton and Obama Unite in Pleas to Blacks
By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY

Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, recalled going with her church youth minister as a teenager in 1963 to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Chicago. Yet, in her autobiography and elsewhere, Mrs. Clinton has described growing up Republican and being a "Goldwater Girl" in 1964 — in other words, a supporter of the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry M. Goldwater, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act....

[maria]

Anne:

Re Hillary's willingness to keep troops in Iraq and her backdoor endorsment of the US empire: she and Obama have recently danced in front of the AIPAC asking for its blessing. It is determined to keep the US "empire" in the Middle East. No candidate who wants its (essential) support dares to advocate US withdrawl from the Middle East. To put it in a nutshell: if we stay there, as we likely will, it is because Israel wants us there and we have to do what Israel wants. Has us by the cojones.

[maria]

And here is at hand an article right smack on the topic of my previous post:

http://amconmag.com/2007/2007_03_12/article.html

[maria]

And another on the same topic:

http://tonykaron.com/2007/03/14/
yes-barack-but-how-much-do-you-hate-the-palestinians/

[anne]

Barack Obama and John Edwards are not Hillary Clinton in any way, and what Clinton believes is Clinton's belief and not the fault of any lobbyists.

[maria]

Anne: I do beg to disagree. Clinton believes anything that she thinks will get her to the Presidency, such is her overriding ambition. And if a powerful monied political lobby tells her to believe X, X is what she will believe. Particularly when the opposite has no lobby or money at all.

[maria]

I might add that since High School Clinton has shifted her beliefs from right to left to up to down, all depending upon the advantage of the moment. She is very bright, but without principle or integrity, in my opinion. And that is why the outlook is gloomy for the Democrat party: Obama will never succeed because he is black, and who else is there at the moment? We need Gore desperately.

[anne]

http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/03/perpetual_war/index.php

Perpetual War
By Matthew Yglesias

Hillary Clinton is, I think, to be congratulated for stating reasonably clearly that her vision of "bringing the troops home" from Iraq after she becomes president doesn't actually entail our troops not being in Iraq. Instead, The New York Times reports, "she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military." The troops will be brought home only in the sense that "Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence -- even if it descended into ethnic cleansing."

If Clinton really lived up to her reputation as an unusually "calculating" politician, I think she would have simply kept this under wraps until after the primaries (or maybe even after the general election) but most of the time she's pretty clear about where she stands. It's just not where I stand. I'd be interested in hearing what Edwards, Obama, and Richardson think about this. My impression is that most of what passes for the Democratic national security establishment agrees with Clinton.

[anne]

Maria, I understand completely. Hillary Clinton's stance is destructive for America and for Iraq and for Hillary Clinton. There are other Democrats, however, to support. I understand.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/opinion/l03iraq.html

Is It Time to Leave Iraq?

To the Editor:

"Empty Words on Iraq":

My son, a 19-year-old American marine, is scheduled to be sent on the "deadly fool's errand" to Iraq in September. I live with constant fear that he, too, will be pointlessly injured, maimed or killed in this "obvious quagmire."

Unspeakable horrors, as in the town of Haditha, are creating victims of both innocent Iraqis and young Americans being exploited for their patriotic ideals by leaders who support the war but don't, in fact, support the troops.

I have opposed the war since its beginning. Now, three years on, with my own son's participation in it looming, I'm living the ultimate nightmare where I'm screaming and no one — but no one — is listening.

Donna J. Anton
Hayle, England, June 2, 2006

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/opinion/l12herbert.html

Is This 'Supporting the Troops'?

To the Editor:

My 20-year-old son is nearing the end of his first deployment to Iraq with the United States Marines. Only a few days ago, we learned that he received a commendation for initiative and bravery for pulling wounded and dead Iraqi soldiers out of a bus hit by a roadside bomb during a recent midnight convoy.

Specifically, he was recognized for "tirelessly moving multiple wounded Iraqis to the casualty collection point and loading them on the medivac helicopters ... and also volunteering to help collect the dead and ensuring that they were evaluated."

It's bad enough that my son is risking his life fighting a war that was waged on lies and deception. How infinitely more galling it is to realize that his value to the Bush administration wouldn't even merit decent care at Walter Reed if he were wounded or disabled.

Bob Herbert is right about the troops being shortchanged: it's something I never thought that America would do either.

My son has been commended for extending a degree of professionalism, respect and devotion to duty in aiding wounded Iraqi soldiers that the United States government doesn't extend to its own troops.

The horror, the horror.

Donna J. Anton
Hayle, England, March 8, 2007

[Callahan]

Scheems that Jorges ownerschip schoschity is schufering some forecloschers. Could be related to income inequality, or maybe it's just that mistakes were made.

[Callahan]

Maybe we should just be good little Americans and tighten our belts and shut up.

Our great leaders in Washington will see that the economy "continues to grow". Whoops, mistakes were made, in the statement above, forgot to mention that our leaders are supporting the Chinese economy, not ours.

However, do not be girly men bout a little income inequality. Those dirt poor illegals that come here and work for next to nothing are willing to live in a house with 20 or 30 others. Can't we do the same?

[owen paine]

maria
"To put it in a nutshell: if we stay there, as we likely will, it is because Israel wants us there and we have to do what Israel wants. Has us by the cojones"

no maria
the fact is
the elite core
of both dem and rep outfits
want empire want a globe safe
for trans border private profiteering

attacking the zionics
discovering their lobby power
is the key to dem foreign policy
is to strike fool's gold

st hill is a power whore
but a power whore among power whores

the core elite dems
are obviously not the solution
to the horrors of empire
they are its nice cops

and breck edwards and obey one
are both
also
party boss condidates

[Scott Ferguson]

Okay! I'll bite.

What the hell happened in 1986? That discontinuity is staggering. If it were my chart, I would have been tempted to throw it out under the assumption that the data had to be tainted.

Fortunately Piketty and Saez are better economists than I am and know their data.

Can anyone explain the jump?

[anne]

What happened from 1982, was the beginning of a profound bull market in stocks and bonds; a bull market that accelerated from September 1985 with the Plaza Accord weakening the dollar and spurring especially large gains in international holdings while domestic holdings continued to gain.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Scott:

Tax Reform Act of 1986 - massive changes - maybe?

[anne]

International gains in stocks in 1986, by the way, were considerably above 50%. Gains in 1985 were terrific, and gains to September 1987 were terrific while the severe market drop in October still left investors with healthy gains for 1987 alone let alone past years.

[evagrius]

the core elite dems
are obviously not the solution
to the horrors of empire
they are its nice cops

At the core of this is "the will to power", the foundation of nihilism.
Because the U.S. can, it will act.
It will act for "the good of the world".
It will act for "God" and "democracy".
It's just nihilism with a "religious" face.

[save_the_rustbelt]

DETROIT (Reuters) - Job losses in the U.S. industrial heartland have left states like Michigan and Ohio more vulnerable to mortgage defaults, as home finance costs rise amid often moribund real-estate markets.

On a combined basis, Michigan and Ohio accounted for an out-sized 15 percent of foreclosures across the United States in January, the most recent month for which data is available from tracking service RealtyTrac.

Some 546,000 jobs have been lost in the two states since 2000, according to U.S. government figures, as shutdowns and layoffs at auto plants rippled through the economy.

More hardship is expected as announced job cuts take effect and unionized auto workers begin to leave the area or risk running through recent severance packages in the absence of new jobs, analysts said.

In addition, many homeowners who put their houses on the market months ago and refinanced or bought houses elsewhere with adjustable-rate mortgages are now trapped between a soft real-estate market and their own escalating monthly payments.

"A lot of people had visions of selling their homes, but that's not happening," said Hunt Gersin, president of Troy, Michigan-based mortgage broker Interactive Financial Corp. "Personally, I know dozens of people with houses for sale and no offers. There's not a bottom in sight.............

[maria]

Owen P: I think you are very wrong. It is Israel and the AIPAC and other Zionist lobbies and thinktanks that are keeping the US in the Middle East. Absent their influence, the whole issue could be discussed and debated and good sense be heard. But these organizations make it unthinkable to discuss our relationship to Israel and by extension to the Muslim world objectively. Meansheimer and Walt have it all in a nutshell. Israel wants us to think our interests are theirs; but that is not the case, and that is why AIPAC works so tirelessly and energetically to make us think it is. Your view is, I submit, a bit naive. Most of our problems could be solved by simply exiting the Middle East. We would still be buying the oil, along with the rest of the world. We don't need, and should not, think we must steal it by force.

[maria]

I might add that Japan and China, who are vast consumers of Middle East oil, don't think they need to invade the area and colonize it to get the oil. Why should we?

[maria]

China gets about 60% of its oil from the Middle East and Japan gets around 75% of its. I wonder why they don't think it necessary to colonize the area. Perhaps because AIPAC doesn't agitate in China and Japan. LOL.

[TJM]

anne, thanks for channeling Robert Novak wholly fallacious story (replicated in the NYT) about Hillary. It should make you think about so blithely copying and pasting newspaper articles.

But it won't.

[anne]

Duh; the excerpt I posted was from the New York Times account of the Selma memorial from the day of the memorial and I have no idea what Robert Novak might have written subsequently, nor can I remember ever having read Novak for any reason, nor can I imagine I will ever read Novak. I will post whatever I wish to post, and the post is entirely accurate and fair; duh.

Should I try for David Geffin's comments on Hillary Clinton?

[Mark Thoma]

On 1986, Robert Waldeman says:

[There are] tax shelters in which overstated depreciation of structures hides true income, and then when the structure is sold the hidden income appears as a capital gain. The amount of this activity fluctuated enormously.... When accelerated depreciation was introduced in 1981... it became huge... tax rates were cut and the practice was specifically banned in 1986.... The period after tax reform shows a huge spike in reported personal income of the richest 1%....

I would guess that true inequality increased even more than inequality of reported personal income in the period 1979-1986 as increasingly massive amounts were hidden from the IRS in this period. Similarly, I would guess that the huge increase in the share of the top 1% from 86 through 89 is largely the effect of a reduction in such sheltering...

see http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/03/income_inequali.html and http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/

[anne]

Robert Waldmann is awfully sharp and this is an excellent explanation which assumes there was actually more income concentration before 1983 than recorded. I like the explanation, but the international bull market from 1983 had to have a significant impact. For 1985 and 1986, international stocks doubled.

[maria]

TJM: What precisely is "fallacious" about the story? Did she not present herself in Selma as a great admirer of Martin Luther King when she was in High School, while in fact she was a Goldwater Girl through and through? Novak merely pointed out the hypocrisy involved in being a rabid Goldwater Girl and later pretending she admired Martin Luther King.

[dale]

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200703130011
Tucker repeated MLK-"Goldwater girl" falsehood about Clinton

Summary:
On the March 12 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson misrepresented Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) reference to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a March 4 civil rights speech in Selma, Alabama, and then falsely suggested that Clinton's description of having seen King speak in Chicago when she was a teenager is contradicted by her description of herself as a "Goldwater girl" in her memoir, Living History (Simon & Schuster, 2003). As Media Matters for America documented, Clinton wrote in Living History both that she heard King speak when she was a teenager and that she was a "Goldwater girl."...

[dale]

http://www.maxspeak.org/mt/index.html
NOVAKULA BITES BLOGGERS
Silly me. When I read assertions that can be easily verified or disproven, I often assume they are accurate. Nobody would be brazen enough to make stuff up out of whole cloth, would they? Of course, they would.

Which brings me to this Bob Novak column, wherein he reports that in her Selma speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed a teenage affinity with MLK Jr. and civil rights, notwithstanding her stint as a Goldwater girl.

As Greg Sargent points out, HC made no such claim. She only said that as a high school student she was excited over the prospect of attending a speech by King. Her Selma speech is a paean to King from the vantage point of the present.

[anne]

The original observation about Hillary Clinton in 1964, was made in the New York Times report from the Selma memorial and was matter of fact. No doubt Clinton is an entirely different person now, but as with selective memory on support for the war and occupation which continued long in the occupation and evidently continues still and will continue through a Clinton presidency I find the observation fair. How the observation might have been otherwise used was not known to me.

Interestingly, several friends noticed the NYTimes reference immediately as did I.

[anne]

Yes; Dale and TJM, you are likely both right but I remain thoroughly shocked and angered by what I consider the callousness of Hillary Clinton. Was the New York Times report unfair? I will consider again when I am less angered. This is no Eleanor Roosevelt to me, however.

[dale]

Anne,
Max http://www.maxspeak.org/mt/index.html has done a good job of modeling how we might righfully react to HRC issues. Attack her for her stance on the war and empire. Defend her against malicious and deceitful rightwing and media smears. Those smears will be ongoing part of the effort to demean all Democratic candidates.

But I agree that we must condemn and critique calls to stay in Iraq and beligerency towards Iran.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/opinion/04rich.html

March 4, 2007

Bring Back the Politics of Personal Destruction
By FRANK RICH

The issue is not that Mrs. Clinton voted for the war authorization in 2002 or that she refuses to call it a mistake in 2007. Those are footnotes. The larger issue is judgment, then and now. Take her most persistent current formulation on Iraq: "Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way." It's fair to ask: Knew what then? Not everyone was so easily misled by the White House's manipulated intelligence and propaganda campaign. Some of her fellow leaders in Washington — not just Mr. Obama out in Illinois, not just Al Gore out of power — knew plenty in the fall of 2002. Why didn't she? ...

[anne]

Dale and TJM; you are right and I am wrong. I should not have used the passage to criticize Hillary Clinton. Absolutely, you are both right and thank you for arguing sense into me. I was wrong.

[owen paine]

maria writes

"Your view is, I submit, a bit naive "

at my age i can take that as flattery

would that I were naive MARIA

[dd]

owen paine/js paine
sometimes slink maybe?
i am here to thank you
as your understandings
have informed my own
sorry view of this very
sorry situation and
it seems u r correct
and that in turn has
forced me to rethink
everything and see
the world as it is
rather than imposing
my poor sorry hopes
so now i am off
to achieve retirement
in that investor world
of inflation bubbling
equities that are not
equitable at all
if only i was not
an egalitarian all
would equal out

[dd]

Ps
i especially loved
"and breck edwards and obey one
are both
also
party boss condidates"
as yes indeed
the obey one
must prove
his personable teeth
is real.

[Noni Mausa]

Maria said: "And that is why the outlook is gloomy for the Democrat party..."

In the off chance that you are not being sardonic -- I recommend caution about adopting Dubya's language; it could leave you open for a takeover by the Dubyabrain, a great pulsing engine of malapropisms determined to reduce the thinking world to grey goo.

Noni
always on guard

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/opinion/26herbert.html

February 26, 2007

Mud, Dust, Whatever
By BOB HERBERT

If Bill and Hillary Clinton were the stars of a reality TV show, it would be a weekly series called "The Connivers." The Clintons, the most powerful of power couples, are always scheming at something, and they're good at it.

Their latest project is to contrive ways to knock Barack Obama off his white horse and muddy him up a little. A lot, actually.

Most of the analyses after last week's dust-up over David Geffen's comments to Maureen Dowd have focused on whether the Clintons succeeded in tarnishing the junior senator from Illinois. What I found interesting was that no one questioned whether the Clintons would be willing to get down in the muck and start flinging it around. That was a given.

When Senator Obama talks about bringing a new kind of politics to the national scene, he's talking about something that would differ radically from the relentlessly vicious, sleazy, mendacious politics that have plagued the country throughout the Bush-Clinton years. Whether he can pull that off is an open question. But there's no doubt the Clintons want to stop him from succeeding.

Senator Obama has come riding out of the wilderness (all right, Chicago) to stand between the Clintons and their dream of returning to the White House and resuming what they will always see as the glory years of the 1990s.

He hurts Senator Clinton in myriad ways. In all the uproar over Mr. Geffen's comments, hardly anyone has said they were wildly off the mark. There would be no Obama phenomenon if an awful lot of people weren't fed up with just the sort of mean-spirited, take-no-prisoners politics that the Clintons and the Bush crowd represent. Senator Obama — at least for the time being — is an extremely attractive alternative.

Right behind that as a factor is the distinct possibility that Mr. Obama will ride off with the black vote, without which the Clintons are doomed. Those who joked that Bill Clinton was the first black president are now confronted with someone who might be the real deal.

Senator Obama is also much freer to take fresh stands on the issues. His camp has been delighted, for example, to watch Senator Clinton twist herself into a pretzel on Iraq....

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/opinion/21dowd.html

February 21, 2007

Obama's Big Screen Test
By MAUREEN DOWD

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.

Hillary is not David Geffen's dreamgirl.

"Whoever is the nominee is going to win, so the stakes are very high," says Mr. Geffen, the Hollywood mogul and sultan of "Dreamgirls," as he sits by a crackling fire beneath a Jasper Johns flag and a matched pair of de Koonings in the house that Jack Warner built (which old-time Hollywood stars joked was the house that God would have built). "Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don't think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? — can bring the country together.

"Obama is inspirational, and he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Americans are dying every day in Iraq. And I'm tired of hearing James Carville on television."

Barack Obama has made an entrance in Hollywood unmatched since Scarlett O'Hara swept into the Twelve Oaks barbecue....

"Hillary is livid that Obama's getting the first big fund-raiser here," one friend of hers said....

She is overproduced and overscripted. "It's not a very big thing to say, 'I made a mistake' on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can't," Mr. Geffen says....

[anne]

http://www.juancole.com/2007/03/clinton-would-keep-troops-in-iraq.html

March 16, 2007

Clinton Would Keep Troops in Iraq
By Juan Cole

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that she would keep some US troops in Iraq to fight al-Qaeda, curb Iranian influence, protect the Kurds and assist the Iraqi military.

The elements of this plan will not work or are unnecessary.

1. The Kurds don't need protecting....

2. There is no al-Qaeda in Iraq in the technical sense of the word, of fighters who have sworn fealty to Usama Bin Laden. There are a small number, probably less than a thousand, of foreign volunteers fighting in the country, mainly from other Arab states but also from Europe. They are mostly Salafi Jihadis (revivalist militants) and act as adjuncts to local Iraqi guerrilla cells, all of which are much bigger and more important. They are there to fight US occupation and would probably just go home if it ended....

3. There are no Iranian units in Iraq. There are no Iranian prisoners to speak of in US custody in Iraq, even though 12,000 prisoners are being detained....

4. Leaving small numbers of US troops in Iraq to assist the Iraqi military over the short term might be desirable and might be practicable, though I've been advised that it might not work. Over the medium to long term it would be most unwise because it would set up a strong risk of the US being pulled back into the civil war....

5. Small units of US troops are not going to agree to stay in Iraq because they will lack security. Only a big army in the country can provide that security....

6. Some day Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is going to get up in the morning and give a fatwa or formal legal ruling that there must be no foreign troops stationed on Iraqi soil. When that happens, the US will not be able to stay in Iraq. It will be over with....

[anne]

There was more terrible sadness for Americans and Iraqis yesterday, and the day before and the day before.... When the leading Democratic candidate for president will turn from the tragedy of Iraq and imagine an American occupation through another presidency, there is reason for thorough-going criticism.

[anne]

Ah, there we have the result, suddenly "even" Hillary Clinton is being cited and lauded on National Public Radio as coming to understand why we must forever and a day remain in Iraq. Clinton has foolishly and callously harmed the movement for peace. Fine, I understand.

[anne]

What has happened is that if Hillary Clinton were to become the Democratic candidate for president, there will be no choice on Iraq for voters. A Republican and a pretend-Republican will be agreed on why we must remain in Iraq forever. There would be no choice on so fundamental, so crticial, an issue for millions of Americans.

[anne]

Here then we understand who Hillary Clinton is; a supporter of the war before the war, a supporter of the occupation before the occupation and after the occupation and still and forever. No understanding of the critical mistake she made, no apology for the mistake because there is no understanding, and a determination to occupy Iraq forever. Shall we all become warrior princesses together?

[evagrius]

Getting back to income inequality.

Alan Greenspan has some things to say;

from http://www.chippewa.com/articles/2007/03/14/news/business/biz980h.txt

Greenspan did put forward a proposal on how to reduce the growing inequality of incomes in the United States — admit more skilled immigrants into the country.

The former Fed chief said that increasing the number of immigrants with sought-after skills would increase the labor supply of these workers in the United States and hold down the wage gains of all workers with these skills.

In that way, Greenspan said, the gap between skilled and unskilled workers would be lowered. He said it was critical to find ways to address growing income inequality in the United States.

Income inequality ``is where the capitalist system is most vulnerable,'' Greenspan said. ``You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.''

[Callahan]

Damn, and I thought it was just CEO pay that was rising.

[fiskhus jim]

It's not just "inequality", it's a system of economic feudalism, for what matter do civil rights make if you can't afford to pursue their enforcement?

Most of these changes were intended to take place in the 1930's - viz the NAZI treason of Harriman, Bush, farish, Nelson Rockefeller, DuPont, etc; nolt to mention their attempts to violently, militarily overthrow FDR - but the New Deal not only stopped them but also did more to concretize, to reify, the Constitutional promise of equality of opportunity.

Only now, however, with a pet fascist whose only duty is to his investors occupying the White House, have the rich elite really made strides toward their ultimate goal of realizing this system of feudal economics. Not even Reagan, whose experience betraying his constituency to the rapacious dreams of Lew Wasserman and his chats about the desperate needs of the rich with Nancy's father informed his limited world-view, had the courage to act as brazenly -- the exception to this is, of course, his surrendering of the savings of the poor to Neil Bush.

[fiskhusjim]

Another way to look at what inequality hath wrought is to compare productivity and GDP versus imports during the recent period of rising inequality with the period from approximately 1946 to 1976.

When we do that we see that when society (income) was more equal (or at least not as unequal), the US was a net importer of raw materials and a net exporter of finished goods.

Now, however, as the rich successfully transfer income away from the poor to themselves, America has become a net exporter of raw materials and a net importer of finished goods - the very definition of a "banana republic."

[Callahan]

Fiskhusjim, I wouldn't feel so bad about being a banana republic if I could only get those damned little seeds and/or those peels to grow a banana tree for me.

I do like em, ... bananas that is.

[Walter Wessels]

At little history: from 1963 to 1965, the maximum tax rate fell from 91% to 70%. It fell to 50% in 1982, to 28% in 1988, and then back up to 40% in 1993. This does not match the inequality series, which appears to start rising around 1977 and take off after 1987. Nor does the increase in global trade, or just about any of the above "explanations", including the stock market. We know only a little about the cause of "inequality". It would be better to focus increasing the growth rate in wages and the family income of those in the lower end of the income distribution. Taxing the rich may not do this. Increasing the size of the government is very unlikely to do this, given the propensity for "earmarks".