Archive for March, 2009

I think virtually everyone in the middle class or lower who pays taxes agrees on one thing: taxes seem to be too high. And in a real sense, they are, but not for the reason that most people think: excessive government.

And yes, we could argue all day about the things local, county, state and the federal government spends money on and some of it is just plain foolish. But that really isn’t what seems to be plaguing us these days — in fact government has always spent kind of badly, it is part of the meatgrinder of politics that leads to anything meaningful getting done. But this chart, from data from the National Taxpayers Union formatted by those amazing guys at FiveThirtyEight.com (as part of a worthy piece on extending the progressive tax into higher incomes) stumbles upon proof of the danger of concentration of wealth:

Top income tax rates were slashed in the 1920s and what happened? The Great Depression. Top income rates have been slowly eroded over the last 30 years and what happened? Sluggish economies with one recession followed by a job-growth-free recovery after another (a rare exception to this: when Clinton raised the top income tax rate and a boom happened in the 90s). Where are we now after eight years of such tax cuts? In the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Coincidence? Not likely. Read the rest of this entry »

The media is dying. Long live the media.

If, like I do, you watch the stock market continue to tank, as if nothing the Obama Administration does is enough to get things turned around and maybe stem some of the losses to your 401K and you feel a little frustrated, well, you’re not alone.

For a really long time, we’ve all been fed the argument that the Dow (and the S&P 500) are barometers of the economy in a real sense. Of course, those of us in the market for a while know the market tends to go south ahead of financial trouble and recover before the broader economy recovers. But Nate Silver, one of the brighter minds out there when it comes to statistical research, suggests that other factors might be causing the market to underperform the situation. Read the rest of this entry »