Eat the Rich – the Poor are Tough and Stringy

James Surowiecki has a good article in The New Yorker, "Soak the Very, Very Rich": Between 2002 and 2007, for instance, the bottom ninety-nine per cent of incomes grew 1.3 per cent a year in real terms—while the incomes of the top one per cent grew ten per cent a year. That one per cent accounted for two-thirds of all income growth in those years. People in the ninety-fifth to the ninety-ninth

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Needy Wealthy?

Republican Senator Jim DeMint recently introduced an amendment to repeal the Estate Tax permanently. Not adjust it or improve it – repeal it entirely. Never mind that there's staggering wealth inequity in America. The amendment failed, but the GOP and some of the Blue Dogs voted for it. Like the Republicans, Blue Dogs Kent Conrad and Evan Bayh want to extend Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy,

Attack of the Plutocrats

Plutocracy and democracy don't mix.- Bill Moyers There’s class warfare, all right - but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.- Warren BuffetCheck out any mainstream news outlet, and before long you'll encounter some rich person claiming that extending unemployment benefits makes people lazy or that the social safety net needs to be slashed. Others will whine that (

All Your Prosperity Are Belong to Us

Via Tristero, here's a great letter in response to The New Yorker's portrait of Paul Krugman. The letter describes the different approaches of liberals and conservatives very sharply:Larissa MacFarquhar’s Profile of Paul Krugman suggests that the economists with whom Krugman does battle could use a little history of political philosophy mixed in with their economic prophesying (“The Deflationist

No Way to Run an Empire

"Caligula had to appoint that horse. Here they are nominated by acclamation." - Roy Edroso(This post was originally part of "American Political Insanity Explained," but I thought it might be better as a separate piece. So. Ahem.) While it's not a surprise that there are evil bastards in the world, and that plenty of people in power are selfish and/or flat-out idiotic, I'll admit to being