Fuck its silent in here.......

[Brownie]

The South: Still Butthurt Over the War of Northern Aggression.

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Tuesday, roughly one in four Americans said they sympathize more with the Confederacy than the Union, a figure that rises to nearly four in ten among white Southerners.

Why do they hate America?

The problem with the Civil War is that it was one of the few conflicts in which we allowed the history to be largely written by the losers. Jefferson Davis had written his memoirs and the myth of the Lost Cause was out long before anyone else presented a conflicting view. Southern historians dominated for years. Hell, even though the "Dunning School" has supposedly been discarded, I was taught (and I'm sure many of you were, too) that "THE CIVIL WAR WAS NOT FOUGHT OVER SLAVERY ORIGINALLY." Which is funny, if one ever reads South Carolina's justification for seceding, considering the entire thing (after a historical background of the Constitution that makes the case for secession being legal) revolves around slavery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/arts/15stampp.html

I took 12 units of Civil War and Reconstruction history from Kenneth M. Stampp at Cal.  He spent a lot of time teaching us about the Revisionists.

That's awesome, Stew. I've read his book. The man did the study of history a great service. Sad that it never occurred to anyone before him that the slaves might have a slightly different view of slavery than the slaveowners.

[Spills mint julep on white suit, pince-nez popping out of eyes] WHAAAAT?

#BayouMovie

#FuckYeah

[Brownie]

By the way, H/T Chuck.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

The South: Still Butthurt Over the War of Northern Aggression.

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Tuesday, roughly one in four Americans said they sympathize more with the Confederacy than the Union, a figure that rises to nearly four in ten among white Southerners.

Why do they hate America?

The problem with the Civil War is that it was one of the few conflicts in which we allowed the history to be largely written by the losers. Jefferson Davis had written his memoirs and the myth of the Lost Cause was out long before anyone else presented a conflicting view. Southern historians dominated for years. Hell, even though the "Dunning School" has supposedly been discarded, I was taught (and I'm sure many of you were, too) that "THE CIVIL WAR WAS NOT FOUGHT OVER SLAVERY ORIGINALLY." Which is funny, if one ever reads South Carolina's justification for seceding, considering the entire thing (after a historical background of the Constitution that makes the case for secession being legal) revolves around slavery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/arts/15stampp.html

I took 12 units of Civil War and Reconstruction history from Kenneth M. Stampp at Cal.  He spent a lot of time teaching us about the Revisionists.

That's awesome, Stew. I've read his book. The man did the study of history a great service. Sad that it never occurred to anyone before him that the slaves might have a slightly different view of slavery than the slaveowners.

[Spills mint julep on white suit, pince-nez popping out of eyes] WHAAAAT?

#BayouMovie

#FuckYeah

?

[J. Walter Weatherman]

By the way, H/T Chuck.

You should come by the Shoutbox sometime...

[R-V]

And Trump continues his fall from grace. Where is the sensible moderate we all knew and loved?

Trump: "I have a great relationship with the blacks."

[Slaky]

And Trump continues his fall from grace. Where is the sensible moderate we all knew and loved?

Trump: "I have a great relationship with the blacks."

Ah, the Blacks. Michael Ian Black and his family, I presume.

[Chuck to Chuck]

[Internet Apex]

Win.

[Bort]

And Trump continues his fall from grace. Where is the sensible moderate we all knew and loved?

Trump: "I have a great relationship with the blacks."

Ah, the Blacks. Michael Ian Black and his family, I presume.

Yeah, because he's probably great with jews too...

[Quality Start Machine]

And Trump continues his fall from grace. Where is the sensible moderate we all knew and loved?

Trump: "I have a great relationship with the blacks."

I have yet to hear a doorman complain.

[Eli]

This article mostly makes sense to me, but I'd invite Morph to tell me why it's wrong:

http://www.altweeklies.com/aan/9-things-the-rich-dont-want-you-to-know-about-taxes/Story?oid=3971382

[J. Walter Weatherman]

This article mostly makes sense to me, but I'd invite Morph to tell me why it's wrong:

http://www.altweeklies.com/aan/9-things-the-rich-dont-want-you-to-know-about-taxes/Story?oid=3971382

Intrepid Reader: Morph
Something something income mobility.


Related:

http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/07/06/can-mobility-offset-an-increase-in-inequality/
http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/07/13/rising-inequality-has-not-been-offset-by-mobility/

(I suppose the URL slug of the latter is a bit of a spoiler for the question in that of the former.)

More still:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/kopczuk-saez-songSSA07short.pdf
http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Egsolon/workingpapers/trends.pdf
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf
http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/PEW_EMP_UPS_AND_DOWNS.pdf
http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/PEW_EMP_AMERICAN_DREAM.pdf
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2009/wp0907.htm

My general take-away from skimming the above (for the most part reading introductions and then scrolling to conclusions) is that intergenerational income mobility in the US:

a) has not substantially increased or decreased over the past several decades (even as income inequality has increased dramatically)
b) is relatively low compared to that seen in countries such as Canada, Germany, France and those socialists in the Nordics

I also gather that our intergenerational income mobility is hampered in no small part by inequality in educational opportunity due to inequalities in income...

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/05/education_and_i.html
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/goldin/files/GoldinKatz_Brookings.pdf

[Quality Start Machine]

This article mostly makes sense to me, but I'd invite Morph to tell me why it's wrong:

http://www.altweeklies.com/aan/9-things-the-rich-dont-want-you-to-know-about-taxes/Story?oid=3971382

Intrepid Reader: Morph
Something something income mobility.


Related:

http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/07/06/can-mobility-offset-an-increase-in-inequality/
http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/07/13/rising-inequality-has-not-been-offset-by-mobility/

(I suppose the URL slug of the latter is a bit of a spoiler for the question in that of the former.)

More still:

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/kopczuk-saez-songSSA07short.pdf
http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Egsolon/workingpapers/trends.pdf
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf
http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/PEW_EMP_UPS_AND_DOWNS.pdf
http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/PEW_EMP_AMERICAN_DREAM.pdf
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2009/wp0907.htm

My general take-away from skimming the above (for the most part reading introductions and then scrolling to conclusions) is that intergenerational income mobility in the US:

a) has not substantially increased or decreased over the past several decades (even as income inequality has increased dramatically)
b) is relatively low compared to that seen in countries such as Canada, Germany, France and those socialists in the Nordics

I also gather that our intergenerational income mobility is hampered in no small part by inequality in educational opportunity due to inequalities in income...

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/05/education_and_i.html
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/goldin/files/GoldinKatz_Brookings.pdf

Thrill is still asshurt over not winning the caddy scholarship.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Obama takes a cue from the West Wing and "accidentally" leaves his mic on...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/04/obama-uncensored.html

[morpheus]

This article mostly makes sense to me, but I'd invite Morph to tell me why it's wrong:

http://www.altweeklies.com/aan/9-things-the-rich-dont-want-you-to-know-about-taxes/Story?oid=3971382

Well, for starters, it confuses "wealth" and "income" as most class warrior articles do.  And it does the same old cross-sectional "The top quintile of wage earners in 1975 earned x% of income, while the bottom earned y%, and in 2005 it was x1% and y1%" which is a horribly flawed comparison, since people don't stay in the same income brackets over time.  Moreover, such a framework carries the fatally flawed assumption that income is some sort of pie that we can just divide up, free of consequences intended and unintended.

Sowell has written entire books on this subject, but I think this article sums up some of his major arguments pretty well.

Tank's links to "Consider the Evidence" below contain the same general flaw - that somehow the starting point is that "income inequality" is a problem to be offset by something else (in this case income mobility).  The broader question , I suppose, is: what is the correct or optimal distribution of incomes over tax brackets in a single year?  There is no right answer to that question, and moreover attempts to coerce it from above (which is really the point, isn't it?) will have consequences far beyond its intentions.  If you shrink the pie but divide it more "evenly" or "fairly" then is the society better off?  Depends on how much you shrink the pie in your efforts to force what you consider equality.

And don't get me started on the corporate tax rate, a major reason why corporations shift their business and jobs elsewhere.  The U.S. has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.  You want to create jobs through fiscal policy?  Lowering the corporate tax rate is one of the surest ways to do it, as it will make the US more competitive versus other countries as far as where businesses locate their operations.