28 July 2011: Yves Smith on th' Real News, etc
note: update below
video: "Yves Smith: Debt Ceiling Extortion"
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is a lady? Apparently so! The name Yves makes me think of Yves Montand, so all this time I pictured a middle aged French guy who put himself through grad school making WWII movies featuring him smoking Gauloises and shrugging a lot.
Forbes, "There Is Rage At The Rich Paying Only 18% Taxes"
www.quickanded.com: "Effective Tax Rates of the Richest 400 Americans"
The IRS has just released an analysis of the richest 400 American tax filers (pdf link). The top-line finding drawing the most attention is that these 400 earned about $138 billion, collectively, in 2007, the most recent year of data...
BBC, Arundhati Roy: India's success a 'lie'
Novelist Arundhati Roy speaks about how India's apparent economic success hides growing poverty and oppression
CNN, "Poll: 52 percent approve of God’s job performance"
(pdf link)
Mark Thoma, "Why Taxpayers Are So Angry and So Wrong About Spending"
"The real reason that the U.S. public is so dead set against tax increases and so apoplectic about government spending is growing income inequality. In addition, many taxpayers underestimate their consumption of government services..."
I don't know. It's getting harder to say "the public feels x" and feel confident that you've made an accurate observation, whatever thing x may be. The public is both atomized and polarized. Yes, many people are angry about wealth inequality, but when some people say they want the government to cut spending they're talking about vague, amorphous 'social programs', while others are talking about our massive military expenditures, etc. And I don't think 'the public' is all that against increased taxes. Most people do believe in progressive taxation, even if they have never heard of the phrase. (Yes, there I go making a sweeping statement about the public mood.)
update: see also Duncan's post about the Mark Thoma article.
Labels: blogging, economics, journalism
posted by Jonathan Versen @ 11:46 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
SON OF A BITCH! May these lying, thieving political whores be condemned for eternity to roam the earth begging for bread! They're spending TRILLIONS on systematically killing people and they want to fix the economy on the backs of the elderly and the poor. Why isn't everybody furious? Why don't they rise up? Because they understand, in a dim, numb way, that THERE IS NO HOPE. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. With "leaders" like this, we might as well just surrender now and fall on our swords.
(How do you really feel about it, Rosemary?)
Like she says, "Wall Street has a plan B, the government doesn't seem to have one."
I think a lot of people ARE furious, but then so many see it all through a tribal prism, blaming the crazy republicans or the spendthrift democrats, ad nauseum, rather than seeing the collusion. I don't know what else to call it, apart from collusion.
I've often felt like this about the people who run my former workplace. Either they are lying, in which case they shouldn't be running things; or they don't know what they're doing, in which case they shouldn't be running things. Of course, both options could be correct, and I think they are in this case.
Yves Smith = Eve's Myth
Oh, silly me. Thanks KFO. It occurred to me it might be a pseudonym, but not that particular construction. (I've just been meaning to use that bit of would-be cleverness for a while.)
I'm reminded of the blogger at Notes on the Atrocities who used to call himself Emma than revealed he was actually Jeff something or other; don't remember his last name. Of course lots of people used to think Digby was a man.
And yes, I realize it shouldn't matter. No one ever told somebody they were too tall to be a Marxist, or that they couldn't enjoy watching sitcoms because they were left-handed, etc.
Jonathan, I've used so many toobz names and identities that name deconstruction/fabrication is reflexive.
Besides that, she says her real name in fine print somewhere... something I found before mocking her recently at mt place. ;)
KFO,
You used to have another name? No way!
All my comforting illusions, shattered. Next I suppose the Promiscuous Reader is going to tell me that he just buys second hand Reader's Digest abridged editions at yard sales so people think he's well read when they visit 'cause he leaves them lying around, and his only actual reading is the occasional People magazine article at the dentist's office. I can't take this.
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