Income Inequality is Not the Problem

by Rich Beckman on January 13, 2012

Now Mitt Rom­ney is get­ting a lot of crit­i­cism for say­ing that income inequal­ity should be dis­cussed in “quiet rooms” instead of in our pub­lic debates. Mitt deserves this crit­i­cism. It is absurd to say this does not belong in the pub­lic debate.

Appar­ently, the Obama re-​election cam­paign is going to talk about income inequal­ity a lot. They may or may not be talk­ing about it correctly.

Here is a chart I stole from TPM:

The chart shows that the prob­lem is not income inequal­ity. The prob­lem is income growth inequal­ity. From 1947 to 1979, all income groups saw roughly equal per­cent­age growths in their incomes. This still results in an increase in income inequal­ity. If you are mak­ing one mil­lion dol­lars, a 2.5% increase is $25,000. If you are mak­ing $25,000, a 2.5% increase is only $625. But that’s OK.

Income inequal­ity, in and of itself, is not the prob­lem. In fact, it is an impor­tant fea­ture of our eco­nomic sys­tem. Incen­tive does mat­ter. Yes, many of the wealthy got that way by sheer luck or hap­pen­stance or acci­dent of birth. But I’m bet­ting (will­ing to believe…willing to delude myself…too lazy to research it) most of them achieved their wealth through hard work that con­tributed pos­i­tively to the over­all econ­omy and that most of them did so because of the incen­tive of wealth (though I think many just were hav­ing fun and the wealth was sim­ply bonus).

The prob­lem is income growth inequal­ity. There is going to be a lot of dis­con­tent when the wealth­i­est con­tinue to get even richer while the bulk of the pop­u­la­tion is tread­ing water (espe­cially rel­a­tive to infla­tion) or get­ting poorer.

Note that the wealthy did bet­ter when every­one did better.

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Romney’s Bain, Part 1

by Rich Beckman on January 13, 2012

It seems like all the news is talk­ing about what Rom­ney did at Bain Cap­i­tal and whether it was good for the econ­omy or not.

I feel like I have a lot of dif­fer­ent things to say about this, but if I try to put them all in one post, well, it would prob­a­bly never get finished.

So to begin with, some­thing simple.

Newt Gin­grich has lately decided that what Mitt did at Bain was bad for the coun­try. This is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing given that just a few weeks before, Newt was tak­ing credit for help­ing Rom­ney get rich.

“I was part of (the late Rep.) Jack Kemp’s lit­tle cabal of supply-​siders who, largely by help­ing con­vince (Pres­i­dent Ronald) Rea­gan and then work­ing with Rea­gan, pro­foundly changed the entire tra­jec­tory of the Amer­i­can econ­omy in the nineteen-​eighties,” Gin­grich said. “You could make the argu­ment that I helped Mitt Rom­ney get rich because I helped pass the legislation.”

So there it is, Newt flip flop­ping about the mas­ter of flip flopping.

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The Great Blizzard of 1978

by Rich Beckman on January 1, 2012

One of my favorite inter­net stops is the Cubby-​Blue blog by Tim Souers. Tim is an excel­lent artist, a pas­sion­ate Cubs fan, and a cre­ative genius. Three days ago he posted illus­trated instruc­tions for mak­ing Banof­fee pie. Part of the process calls for whip­ping your own whipped cream. This led to my post­ing the fol­low­ing story in the comments.

A long time ago…it was my first year out of Indi­ana U., liv­ing in mar­ried hous­ing (my bride still being in school) and work­ing as a super­vi­sor in one of the dorm cafeterias.

The Great Bliz­zard of ’78 arrived. I walked to work through snow up to my armpits. Given the weather few (if any) other full time employ­ees made it in. But the stu­dent work­ers were avail­able. My job was to trim the menu to what the stu­dent work­ers could pre­pare with­out the help of full time staff.

The desert menu called for zebra pud­ding which is choco­late gra­ham crack­ers lined up on edge with whipped cream in between and then cut on a diag­o­nal. The whipped cream was made on site. I gave the stu­dent the go ahead to make it and a bit of instruc­tion (not quite the blind lead­ing the blind…a few gal­lons of whip­ping cream and a bunch of sugar in the floor mixer and whip til it peaks).

A few min­utes later I returned to see how it was going. We shut the mixer off and checked if it peaked and it just about did and I said “another minute” and we turned it on and I turned around from that huge bowl full of white fluffy whipped cream to some paper on a clip­board on a stain­less steel table and talked about some­thing or other.

I turned back around and the bowl was no longer full of white fluffy whipped cream. No, it had col­lapsed and was now a smaller (but still large) quan­tity of butter.

No zebra pud­ding was served that day and the desert/​pastry chef had less need of but­ter or sugar for a cou­ple of weeks.

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Sendak on Blake

by Rich Beckman on January 1, 2012

I have never been a fan of Mau­rice Sendak. I was eight when Where the Wild Things Are was pub­lished, but I do not think I ever heard of it or Sendak until I was in col­lege. I am not sure I have ever read any Sendak, but I know I have at least paged through Wild Things and looked at the pic­tures (the only way to read a book, right?). The pic­tures never did any­thing for me. Clips from the movie do noth­ing to make me want to see it.

Over the past year, I have come to under­stand that Mr. Sendak, what­ever his tal­ents as a writer, is quite a char­ac­ter. There is a won­der­ful inter­view with NPR’s Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Now I notice this bit of video on YouTube in which he says some­thing that makes me feel bet­ter about myself. At just around the 1:54 mark, he dis­cusses the poet William Blake. He has a whole shelf devoted to Blake and has read a lot of and about Blake. He loves Blake, espe­cially as an illus­tra­tor (which makes sense). But the part I love is

I don’t under­stand him. I still can’t read through one of his illu­mi­nated ma…I can’t. I don’t know what the hell he’s talk­ing about.

I have tried read­ing Blake on many occa­sions, but I have never got­ten very far. I do not under­stand him. It is good to know that it is not just me.

I have, as I have aged, begun to sense that much poetry does not yield under­stand­ing with­out repeated read­ing. But who wants to read with­out under­stand­ing? I sup­pose that is what the rhythm and lan­guage is for, to pro­vide plea­sure while wait­ing for under­stand­ing. I just made that up, but I can’t believe that (hav­ing majored in Eng­lish Lit) I have never been told it.

At some point I plan to read Blake again. And I will read him aloud and will plow through even when I’m lost.

Maybe that plan should apply to read­ing Sendak.….

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The Universe and You and I

by Rich Beckman on January 1, 2012

It seems that all of my life I have read about peo­ple look­ing up into the night sky and feel­ing small. I have never under­stood this. There has never been a time in my life that look­ing upon the night sky did not make me feel large. There is that immense space and I am part of it. I can, at least, vaguely com­pre­hend it. Those moments are the most spir­i­tual moments of my life.

There is a mar­velous video of the physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson mak­ing a few remarks about the uni­verse and our place in it. He doesn’t say much I don’t already know, and a lot of it I have said myself. He prob­a­bly says it bet­ter (and with more authority!)

We are star­dust. Life is noth­ing more than com­mon chem­i­cals “doing” chem­istry. Life is inevitable and the uni­verse is full of life scat­tered all around. This is not sci­ence fic­tion, it is sim­ply the odds. You and I are a part of it.*

Happy New Year world!

*Peo­ple who do not read this blog may or may not be part of it.… :)

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2012 Prediction

by Rich Beckman on December 11, 2011

I have been mean­ing to post this for awhile now. I con­fi­dently pre­dict that Barack Obama will win a sec­ond term in 2012. I also pre­dict that the Demo­c­ra­tic Party will gain seats in the sen­ate and the house.

I would not put money on this, but I do not put money on any­thing (well, some­times on my dresser).

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Newt Jumps Onto Romney’s Anti-​Jobs Bus

by Rich Beckman on December 11, 2011

Mitt Romney’s suc­cess in the pri­vate sec­tor was at Bain Cap­i­tal where he made lots of money by buy­ing and break­ing up com­pa­nies, destroy­ing jobs in the process. Now Newt wants us to know that he was part of the effort to change the laws to allow Mitt to do what he did.

So nei­ther of them care a whit about jobs.

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Keeping the Process Legitimate

by Rich Beckman on November 18, 2011

I have not been read­ing Kevin Drum for long, but I enjoy his blog. His post on the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court’s rul­ing on Prop 8 is an excel­lent exam­ple. Yes, Prop 8, which bans same sex mar­riage, is loath­some, but it needs to be thrown out on the basis of being uncon­sti­tu­tional, not on a technicality.

I appre­ci­ate Kevin’s will­ing­ness to cheer a proper result that is good for a ter­ri­ble law, at least (hope­fully!) in the short term.

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Carl Kasell

by Rich Beckman on November 17, 2011

Debby and I attended a talk by Carl Kasell at IPFW last night. Kasell was the news announcer for NPR’s Morn­ing Edi­tion for 30 years. He has been the offi­cial judge and score­keeper for Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! since 1998. Being a late sleeper* and hardly ever hear­ing Morn­ing Edi­tion, I mostly know him from Wait Wait. It was clear that this was true for most of the audience.

Kasell spent a period of time talk­ing before tak­ing ques­tions. Much of his talk was based on a few notes or just given off the top of his head. Now and then he would return to a pre­pared speech from which he’d read a para­graph or two and then find a hook off of which to ad lib. The pre­pared speech was long ver­sion of the virtues of pub­lic radio and the impor­tance of the public’s sup­port. His read­ing of this was not all that good for a man who has been read­ing for a liv­ing for over thirty years. So that was strange.

I’m guess­ing he talked for thirty min­utes or more and answered ques­tions for awhile, but he really did not have all that much to say. A few anec­dotes and talk about how this or that hap­pened, but only in the most super­fi­cial aspects.

When dis­cussing 9/​11, he said that he said that the first plane hit the north tower at 8:46 and a few moments later he saw the replay of hit on the tele­vi­sion. This can not pos­si­bly be right, video of the first hit did not come to light for sev­eral hours (maybe even a day or two). The man is 77 years old, so I guess I can for­give a mis­taken memory.

Later in the talk he started to tell us who would be on the panel of the up com­ing Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! He men­tioned Roy Blount, Jr. and Faith See­ley (sp?) but then he could not remem­ber the third name. I thought he was mock­ing Gov­er­nor Perry and started to laugh (I believe you can hear me in the audio just after the 25 minute mark, but only for a moment). I imme­di­ately per­ceived that he was not inten­tion­ally being funny and that I seemed to be the only mem­ber of the audi­ence who was amused, so I sti­fled myself.

He answered all ques­tions before he wrapped things up.

*At one point, Kasell related how he once told some­one he awoke at 1:05 in the morn­ing. When asked why 1:05 as opposed to 1:00 he answered “I like to sleep in.”

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And It Always Will

by Rich Beckman on November 10, 2011

Over at the Mata­dor Net­work, there is a post­ing on 23 incred­i­ble new tech­nolo­gies you’ll see by 2021. Included in the out­look for 2013 is the “Eye of Gaia, a billion-​pixel tele­scope.” Eye of Gaia

will look far beyond our own galaxy, even as far as the end of the (observ­able) universe.

I believe that as long as there has been sight on the planet earth, the pos­ses­sor of the best sight has been able to see as far as the end of the (observ­able) uni­verse. Once tele­scopes came into exis­tence, the best tele­scope was able to “see” as far as the end of the (observ­able) universe.

And it will always be so.

Hat tip to my son who liked the post­ing on Face­book (if my mem­ory serves).

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