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e same rate for everyone since the slowdown income growth for households in the middle and lower parts of the distribution slowed sharply while incomes at the top continued to grow strongly they don t say income growth at the top increased they say income growth continued at the top and slowed for the rest of us that supports my opening thought so does their graph here i added a dashed red line to their graph to suggest a linear trend for income at the top my dashed line is a pretty good fit to their top income data straight line trend no acceleration of income growth at the 95th percentile for the rest of us income growth slowed graph source a guide to statistics on historical trends in income inequality at cbpp art added the dashed red trend line by eye but who the hell is cbpp so i looked up what the economic policy institute epi has to say this is from their america s slow motion wage crisis four decades of slow and unequal growth from september 2018 from the end of world war ii through the late 1970s the u s economy generated rapid wage growth that was widely shared since 1979 however average wage growth has decelerated sharply with the biggest declines in wage growth at the bottom and the middle epi makes the same income comparison as cbpp and says the slowdown begins in the same decade the 1970s though epi and cbpp pick different slowdown start dates in the 1970s epi also says the biggest declines in wage growth have occurred at the bottom and the middle suggesting that even at the top wage growth declined they don t make this explicit but if the biggest declines were at the bottom and middle of the income scale then there must have been a smallest decline and it must have occurred at the top decline at the top not a big decline but decline the growth of income at the top did not accelerate according to epi it declined income growth lost ground even at the top of the income scale or at least it did not gain ground that doesn t make things better for those of us below the top of the income scale but it seems to be an accurate description of what happened and if we want to fix the economy we need to know what did happen and what didn t you can t fix what went wrong if you don t know what went wrong if my opening thought is true as it now appears to be then the solution is to boost economic growth enough to restore the growth of income for the lower 99 rather than reducing the growth of income at the top we need growth to boost income for the rest of us maybe we need some constraints on income at the top too it would seem so but reducing income at the top is not the solution increasing income where income is low this is the solution increasing income is the solution and that means economic growth is the solution from an old post of course it would be better if we reduce inequality better for some of us at least but you have to remember that the people who are doing well want their fair share just like the rest of us and the blue line 20 year trend growth of rgdp per capita has been going downhill so when they get theirs things are normal for them and bad for the rest of us eliminating inequality cannot work as long as the blue line is going down because when the blue line is going down eliminating inequality makes everybody poor the highest priority is not to eliminate inequality but to improve economic growth arthurian in economic growth and inequality at march 12 2020 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels income inequality tuesday march 10 2020 a fredgraph technique i created this graph from scratch modeled after one i did back in january it s a comparison of financial business red and nonfinancial business blue shares of corporate profits from 1929 to 2018 but what it s a graph of is not the point just now i wanted to get rid of the jiggy lines on the left there from 1929 to 1933 okay those jiggy lines at the left are gone then to test something i noticed fred doing i clicked max to restore the graph to its default 1929 start date and eliminated the years before 1933 by a different method notice the difference in the plot window all the whitespace above the 100 level is gone all the whitespace below the zero level is gone and the two plotted lines have expanded to use the available space so it s easier to read the wiggles in the lines now i m happy a useful technique thing to know at march 10 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday march 9 2020 ian hall on toynbee s time of troubles time of troubles arnold j toynbee s twentieth century by ian hall at researchgate and from there downloadable as a 15 page pdf i m fascinated by what toynbee wrote now having read ian hall s paper i m fascinated by toynbee the man as well here s a paragraph from hall s paper while toynbee worked away at narrating events on the world stage he was also at work on what he called his nonsense book a study of history a hugely ambitious sprawling book the study tried to put contemporary politics and international relations into context and to provide nothing less than a complete reinterpretation of the history of the modern west toynbee took aim at almost all the accepted verities of nineteenth and early twentieth century historiography that modern history was a story of unrelenting and unstoppable progress that the nation state was the highest political form to which humanity could aspire that the west had won and that its values ideas and institutions especially democracy and industrialism were thus superior to others he even attacked the way in which his fellow historians worked that industrialisation of historical thought which valued learned articles on ever more narrow and obscure topics more than bold broad and book length interpretations of the past if that doesn t fascinate you maybe you need to read some toynbee hall s last sentence above is footnoted the reference is to page 5 in volume i of toynbee s nonsense book a perfect place to start the beginning volume one of 12 unabridged is available online at archive org start at page one i m betting that by the time you get to page five you won t want to stop at march 09 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels arnold j toynbee sunday march 8 2020 how the oligarchy wins lessons from ancient greece put this one on your reading list how the oligarchy wins lessons from ancient greece by ganesh sitaraman at the guardian at march 08 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday march 6 2020 the fall of rome the psychohistorian hari seldon on the fall of trantor the feeling will pervade the galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back from foundation by isaac asimov the historian m i rostovtzeff on the fall of rome what happened was a slow and gradual change a shifting of values in the consciousness of men what seemed to be all important to a greek of the classical or hellenistic period or to an educated roman of the time of the republic and of the early empire was no longer regarded as vital by the majority of men who lived in the late roman empire and the early middle ages they had their own notion of what was important and most of what was essential in the classical period among the constituent parts of ancient civilization was discarded by them as futile and often detrimental from the decay of the ancient world and its economic explanations by m i rostovtzeff in the fall of rome can it be explained edited by mortimer chambers at march 06 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday march 5 2020 the fall of trantor the fall of trantor said seldon cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort it can be hastened easily however the tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the galaxy frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy they will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase the feeling will pervade the galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back by their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds have me killed and trantor will fall not within three centuries but within fifty years and you yourself within a single year from the first book of asimov s foundation trilogy 30 june 2021 or try this link at march 05 2020 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday march 4 2020 history s not done yet william manchester the glory and the dream while looking for the keynes quote i came upon an article by william ecenbarger in the baltimore sun from 1991 depressing times recession recalls the bad old days of the 1930s this paragraph floored me men really did sell apples on the street people did actually starve to death there were entire towns where not a single person had a job good health was a luxury indeed there were so many deaths in logan w va that coffin making was established as a work relief project some two decades ago historian arthur m schlesinger jr lamented i don t know what is to be done to persuade people that the great depression took place so far as i can tell more and more americans are coming to believe that it never occurred the whole thought of widespread economic collapse a generation ago in a nation as spectacularly opulent as ours is now has for many perhaps for most of us no more reality any longer than a bad dream worse the actualities of the depression bread lines soup kitchens hoovervilles etc have become cliches rejected by the sophisticated as corny and by the unsophisticated as communistic you find that depressing okay but at least the focus is on the problem on the economy i m more put off by thoughts like those in a wednesday editorial from 2018 from the florida times union history shows amercia overcomes its challenges i m pretty sure they meant america but they wrote amercia i m troubled by their apparent belief in history as a problem solver in ancient rome they doubtless thought the same thing history shows we can overcome any challenge but as toynbee showed it s not just a matter of challenge it s a matter of challenge and response if we respond successfully we overcome the challenge if we don t we don t when the florida times union tells me history shows that america overcomes its challenges my response is history s not done yet i m gonna quote the whole wednesday editorial by times union editorial board posted jul 4 2018 at 2 01 am americans have survived periods of intense division when the nation took a step back but eventually recovered its bearings author jon meacham reminds us of this in his new book the soul of america the battle for our better angels as he notes history shows us that we are frequently vulnerable to fear bitterness and strife the good news is that we have come through such darkness before klansmen held office during the 1920s members of the ku klux klan held 11 governorships 16 u s senate seats and seats in the house the kkk had about 2 million members in 1925 and 30 000 klansmen took part in a march in washington d c overcome by fear of immigrants the national origins act of 1924 set immigration quotas reducing the number of immigrants from 805 000 in 1921 to 164 000 by 1929 darkness of the great depression asked whether history had ever seen something like the great depression economist john maynard keynes said yes it was called the dark ages and it lasted 400 years mccarthyism fueled intolerance journalist william shirer who covered nazi germany said about america during the mccarthy era of the 1950s there was an atmosphere throughout the land of suspicion intolerance and fear that puzzled me leadership has been key one reason why america has been able to move beyond the virulent racism of the 1920s the crushing economic weight of the great depression the red baiting 1950s and much more is because at critical points america s leaders showed true leadership so it s worth reflecting on some insightful observations made by our past leaders president lyndon johnson i recognized that the moral force of the presidency is often stronger than the political force i knew that a president can appeal to the best in our people or the worst he can call for action or live with inaction johnson in a speech to congress after the assassination of president john f kennedy america must move forward let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and far right from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation s bloodstream president dwight eisenhower i ll tell you what leadership is it s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience it s long slow tough work that s the only kind of leadership i know president theodore roosevelt americanism is a question of spirit conviction and purpose not of creed or birthplace president harry truman you can never tell what s going to happen to a man until he gets to a place of responsibility let us resolve in his book meacham aptly sums up the challenge both our leaders and citizens face today we cannot guarantee equal outcomes but we must do all we can to ensure equal opportunity hence a love of fair play of generosity of spirit of reaping the reward of hard work and of faith in the future meacham writes in our finest hours the soul of the country manifests itself in an inclination to open our arms rather than to clench our fists so on this july fourth let us resolve to listen to each other let us resolve to look for the best in each other let us resolve to work with each other let us resolve to take to heart the stirring words of another great american robert f kennedy whose name might have been among the list of presidents quoted above were it not for an assassin s bullet 50 years ago in april 1968 less than two months before he was killed during his surging campaign for the presidency robert f kennedy said this to an audience in cleveland we must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land you probably like it it s hopeful i feel it too but there s nothing there except faith in the future there s no hint of a solution other than that we should resolve to be better people and what does that mean that we should complain less that s not gonna solve the problem that s not gonna fix the economy that whole big section in the middle there on leadership there s really not much there moral force persuasion...