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I don't see a problem with the people who make around $70k and up holding 85% of the country's wealth.

But the top 1% hold fully 34.6% of the wealth. The curve gets very, very steep above the top 5%. That's where increased taxation needs to be aimed.

The demarcation point to *be* in those groups is low, and attainable

Actually, class mobility in the United States is terrible. "By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark." Source. European social democracies are better at the American dream than America is.

And yes, many people may be able to achieve that level of income, but these days that often requires taking on significant educational debt. Their real income is much lower than the raw figures would suggest. Furthermore, inflation-adjusted income growth in the middle class has been virtually flat for years, whereas the rich have seen their income growth vastly outpace inflation. Source.

Should we propose that we take the wealth held by people making $70k a year and up because those people hold 85% of it?

You'll note that I said "If anything [the rich] should be taxed more at the high end." There should be new tax brackets at very high end (e.g. $500,000 or $1 million). This would be consistent with the post WWII income tax, which had a high marginal rate of ~90%. Source. That didn't seem to hurt the massive post WWII economic boom.

What would be the point of doing the work to get above that level?

Do you understand marginal taxation? It's always better to make more money.

There was a recent study that showed that less than one-third of American millionaires inherited their wealth. How have the other two-thirds achieved this status by "luck"?

Yes very much by luck. Being born into wealth gives people all kinds of opportunities that the average-born do not have. I should know since I grew up in exactly that kind of environment and I am one of those millionaires who did not inherit as I haven't taken a dime from my parents since college. I know plenty of people who are smarter and harder working than I am but just didn't have the good fortune of making the right connections. Plus, I say your numbers are skewed. My numbers say that being born into the top quintile of wealth gives one a 22% chance of ending up in the top 5% - that leaves practically nothing for the other 80% of the population.

If you're from Europe, where everything is left or far left, America does indeed look like it is right or far right. It all depends upon where you stand on the "left vs right" line. But America has always had a strong individual streak compared to old Europe, and its perpetual caste system.

America's caste system is stronger than most European nations -- we have lower intergenerational economic mobility than France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, or and Denmark; another source has us even lower then the U.K.

I know that this data does not fit with American mythology, and so will probably be discarded by most of my fellow Americans.

Being leftist -- that is, in favor of the interests of working people as opposed to aristocrats or capitalists -- is far more compatible with a strong individualist streak than right-wing thought. There's nothing "individualist" about favoring a system that leaves most individuals few degrees of freedom, enthralled to their corporate masters.

We don't have a strong left in the U.S. because for much of the 20th century we deported socialists, or outright criminalized talking about leftism, for the years of "Red Scares", and because the flow of information remains dominated by right-wing corporate media.

EPA wants new tax for superfund

Subsidies for superfund increased from 300 million in 1995 to 1.2 billion in 2005

President bush shift costs of superfunds to taxpayers

and just because no one seem to know this

Oil among most subsidized industry in the US

Elimiating major subsidies saves 45 billion over 10 years

Faith based debate is ineffective. Facts are what counts. Just because all the documentation is not listed does not mean that one's faith based opinion is correct. Sometimes one has to read something other than the approved texts.

Of course the insurance companies did not want this. They posted record profits in 2009, even while record numbers of people lost coverage. They were making money off of Americans getting screwed out of their health coverage. Why would they want that gravy train to stop? But, the bigger question is why do you want to give that gravy train back to them?

Excuse me? I quote "the deluded SUV drivers of the world" unquote? Maybe if somebody was proposing REAL solutions instead of cap and trade, which BTW just FYI the big spokesman pushing for cap and trade is a hypocrite who will make out like a robber baron if crap and trade is passed.

Let me enlighten you as to what will happen if crap and trade is passed: The USA, which has already lost 42 THOUSAND factories since 2001, and that ain't a typo folks, that's not factory jobs, that is total FACTORIES just since 2001, will have NO way at all to compete in a global market because India and China, and rightly so, will tell you where to stick your credits and thus what few jobs not being a CEO, lawyer, or working at MickyD, will be gone. Now is Rev Al demanding we close off trade with India and China? Nope because he and his pals are making out like robber barons on cheap labor, not to mention taking bribes in the past from China. Meanwhile the "green economy" they keep blowing up our collective butts? That will be in ASIA, NOT the USA. The #1 selling low power computing device is the smart phone, which looks to replace the PC for many. Guess how many of those are made in the USA? Why zero of course!

So when I see some REAL solutions proposed, ones that will actually allow us to have a functional industry and not hamstring the USA or turn us into a third world hellhole, well then I'll be happy to sign up. More nuclear, solar and wind powerplants? ALL for it. But cap and trade is a scam, being run by the the same group that destroyed our economy. I'm sure I'll be modded to hell for daring to say anything other than "go green" but I frankly don't care. I can see first hand what these same bozo the clowns have done to our economy by simply looking out my window at the boarded up store fronts. And whether those here at /. care to admit it or not AGW has become political, with those that dare to say anything other than "the consensus agrees" getting treated like a nut.

If all the AGWers supported REAL change, like refusing to trade with massive polluters like India and China until they cleaned up their acts? Like putting Americans to work building new nuclear plants so we can kill the coal ones? Again ALL for it. Instead what we get is BS like "clean coal" and "green economy" with no actual numbers to back them up. If you support real change then it is time to put our foot down. Demand nuclear plants replace the coal plants, demand we stop trading with countries that poison the air and water, demand realistic caps NOT cap and trade BS. Because frankly all we are getting from the self appointed "guardians of the planet" is a ponzi scheme which will make them billions off the poor. Oh and if you think cap and trade will get rid of coal plants? Think Again.

from http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/gulf_oil_exports.html

GOM region produces 2.7M bbl/day. 43% of this is from offshore drilling (1.2M bbl/day). Of this 40% is exported to foreigners, leaving 697K bbl/day.

The US uses 20.68M bbl/day

This means that this "essential" GOM offshore drilling quenches 3.3% of our oil thirst. Essential? No. It is your dietary equivalent of something that provides you with 50 calories daily.

I know it's tangential, but you write: "Don't build nuclear power plants at all? People die from lack of energy."

Arguably, nuclear is one of the more expensive options available. Also, if you like Alex Jones, then you might consider the high level of centralization, government involvement, and billions of dollars in financial capital needed to make a nuclear power plant viable. You simply can't have your own personal home power generation with nuclear power, the way you can with solar panels, wind, or geothermal.

I do think that if our current coal infrastructure was magically replaced by nuclear power plants, we'd be better off. I think if the third world magically got nuclear power plants and a reliable grid, they'd be better off. But the cost of new nuclear is -- if not entirely prohibitive -- too expensive to justify equating a moratorium on nuclear power to a death sentence.

The cost of solar power has been cut in half every six years since the 1970s, wind energy is nearly as cheap as coal already, and at the moment adding "effective capacity" to the grid by investing in energy efficiency is akin to putting new generation on the grid for 1 to 3 cents per kwh.

I know it's even more off topic, but re: your sig:

1) Google is a corporation, not a branch of government. Since when have libertarians been in favor of using the government to force companies to carry products they don't approve of?

2) Alex Jones calls Google "the biggest corporation in the world, the most wealthy corporation in the world." They're not even in the top 188.

3) Alex Jones has made a career of conspiracy-mongering. No surprise that every little obstacle that arises as he tries to promote his film somehow fits into the grand conspiracy.

Everyone knows facts have a liberal bias anyway.

Depends on who's picking the facts ...

... and how they're presented ...

... and who's doing the presenting ...

Example (poll results below): More people feel that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the military than homosexuals. Same survey. The only difference between the two questions was the word "homosexual" vs the term "gays and lesbians."

Why do you think that opponents keep saying "homosexual rights" and "homosexual agenda"? It's because "homosexual" is a dirty word because of centuries of religious meddling.

And let's not forget stupidity. These poll results also show that more than 10% of the population (the ones who think it's okay to deny homosexuals rights but not gays and lesbians) depend on someone else to tell them how to think. (FauxNews, the Church, etc).

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/02/dadt_poll.html/print.html

* A February 2010 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 59 percent of Americans favor "homosexuals" serving in the military (up from 42 percent in February 1993), but 70 percent favor "gay men and lesbians" serving in the military.

* The same poll found that 44 percent of Americans favor allowing "homosexuals to serve openly" and that 58 percent favor allowing "gay men and lesbians to serve openly."

1. USA

2. Europe

3. Japan

Here, "relative" means dividing (1) the annual income of the chief executive officer by (2) the average annual income of the employees who are not part of the management structure.

Table 2 on page 6 of an interesting document analyzing the financial compensation of American CEOs is instructive. For the sake of this discussion, we can reasonably assume that figure in the aformentioned category #2 is approximately the same throughout the West.

Table 2 then, in effect, gives us the relative compensation of the CEOs in the West. The typical American CEO in 2003 received annual compensation that is worth $2.2 million. The typical European CEO received $700,000. The typical Japanese CEO received $460,000.

Was the American CEO worth his pay? American neoconservatives answer, "Yes." They say that such compensation enables American companies to be top-notch competitors in high-technology.

On 2009 November 5, "The Economist" issued a startling report. It asserts, with plenty of evidence, that Japanese companies are the sole manufacturers of numerous components that are critical to the operation of high-technology devices ranging from tiny disk drives to huge nuclear reactors.

So, who is telling the truth? American neoconservatives or the "The Economist"?

Supply side economics doesn't work.

Yes, there's some multiplier effect even for luxury goods. But you get more bang for your buck with ordinary goods, as both experience and honest theorizing.

Do you realise that it only costs "big oil" around $10 per barrel extracted from the ground. And they are currently selling said barrels of oil on at $79 per barrel. That looks like a healthy $70 a barrel profit right there, before you get to forecourt pricing. In 2007, ExxonMobil made a net profit of $40.6 billion. Shell made $31.3 billion, Chevron made $18.7 billion, ConocoPhillips made $11.9 billion and BP made $20.8 billion.

Yeah, big oil is the middle man, and they're getting fat. Capitalism at its finest, buy low, sell high. What was your point ?

You are ignoring the facts. Research shows that today, there is very little upward mobility in the US. For instance, if you are born poor, there is only a 1 percent chance you end up in the top 5% of incomes. For those born into wealth, it is a 22 percent chance. You cannot pin that difference on laziness.

Some other facts:
- People who worked long hours were more upwardly mobile in 1990-91 and 1997-98 than households who worked fewer hours. Yet this was not true in 2003-04, suggesting that people who work long hours on a consistent basis no longer appear to be able to generate much upward mobility for their families.
- Over the last decades, an increasing percentage of households had a large short-term reduction in income. It are these set-backs that make it very hard for hardworking poor people to advance.
- The median household was no more upwardly mobile in 2003-04, a year when GDP grew strongly, than it was it was during the recession of 1990-91. This suggests that upward mobility has actually slowed a great deal, since you'd expect far more upward mobility during boom times.
- There is far more upward (and downward) mobility in more socialist countries like Canada and Denmark, than in the US and the UK. This shows that the American Dream is a lie and that more capitalism doesn't necessarily mean that you get a merit-based society.

PS. See http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html
PS. And also http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E5D61238F934A35755C0A9639C8B63

The vast majority of American capital is owned by the middle class.

No. First, the top 5 percent own more than half -- i.e., the majority -- of all wealth. Second, most of those stocks in middle-class retirement funds are not owned by those middle-class people, they're owned by the Wall Street financial services corporations, and so are controlled by the boards of those corporations. The account holders are customers, not owners.

Nobody controls "economic resources" except the forces of supply and demand.

Uh, no. The resources used for economic production -- land, natural resources, factories, money, ideas (copyrights and patents) -- all are privately owned and controlled.

Presumably, you are whining that only a small minority of people are responsible for very large investments. But nothing is stopping you from joining them.

I'm not "whining" about anything, I'm pointing out that a system of centralized power is good for those who have the power, and not for the rest of us.

But several things are stopping me from being ultra-rich. First, I cannot afford to waste my time collecting dollars: I have little desire to be rich. (Prosperous, yes, of course.) But more than that, as a person of strong ethical character I see few ways to accumulate large amounts of wealth that don't involve unethical behavior. Finally, to become rich in our society it's pretty much necessary to start that way -- the U.S. has very poor intergenerational class mobility.

All they ask is that they get a cut, for their trouble.

What trouble? They provide no labor. They take some risk of not getting their money back, but so do people at the blackjack table. We don't consider them virtuous.

And they take more than a cut: in our capitalist system, the majority of the value created by labor is skimmed off by the investment class.

The U.S. GDP is about $14 trillion. Our workforce is about 150 million people. The average American worker creates about $93,000 worth of value a year. Do they receive a salary that reflects that? Nope. Most of that amount goes to interest, dividends, and rents paid to various investors, people who didn't do the work but reap the benefit -- and most of it goes to the aristocracy.

skyrocketing healthcare and insurance costs plus economic contraction has led to less people with health insurance year over year this decade.

Correlation may not be causality, but you tell me if you think having health insurance affects your longevity. Some think so.

Your understanding is wrong. The US has less economic mobility than most developed nations.

Read this for more.

Oddly enough, generous funding for higher education and universal health care are two of the reasons for higher economic mobility elsewhere. At the time of the report, you were techinically right - the UK was about as bad as the US (and both lagged behind other European societies). Since then, the US has actually fallen even lower in mobility.

1. After cutting the upper-class taxes there was a recession. Regan did it in the 80s and Bush did it in the last decade. Each time the economy stagnated. Progressive policies are very good for the economy as Poor people spend money. That money revs up the economy and keeps it going. People saving money or investing money does not actually rev the economy in the same way but they get all the benefits (see link on growth of economy later in this post)

2. I agree that there is some problem in American school systems. But most of the problem is that American culture of apathy and short attention spans. Kids don't have the attention span to finis...

3. You talk abut how socialism is such a weak systems but Russia had essentially 3rd world infrastructure and yet was a superpower on par with the US for most of our lifes. I don't think we could have done the same given the same infrastructure as them with government that we have. Also most of Europe does quite well with higher standards of living. Also I grew up on welfare. None of my family is on welfare anymore but it was a critical service when dad walked off and refused to pay child support. Since my family has worked directly with the poor (Health services and counseling) I think I have a better idea of who receives welfare than you do. It is often those with medical problems, mental problems, or even drug problems. Drug problems you say? Well let them rot! Well that is the problem. You have a drug conviction and suddenly you can't get many jobs, or and you can't get funding for college. How and the hell do you handle these people? You either put them on welfare or you throw them in jail which is still state funded living. But yay you are still hard on crime and the war on drugs goes on! Rah rah!

But what really incensed me with your post was your assertion that people have an easier time getting ahead in America. BZZZT! Nice try the US is harder to advance out of poverty and it is getting harder all the time. For all our vaunted freedom you can move around in the middle class, but if you want to be an executive you really NEED be in the right class or society to get your funding or to land that job due to your uncle's connection. There are some people who manage to found a company and build it to that level, but what are we talking about one in ten million? I get better odds at the lottery.... Every company founder I personally have known has gotten kicked out when the company stabilized and an interm CEO (who gets along with the VC and board) has been appointed to manage the continued growth of the company. I have yet to personally meet someone who actually manages to fight off the wolves and make it past upper middle class. But hey, they exist, I mean we see them on TV.

And before you rip on my liberal ideal with no real world backing let me drop some links. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_03.html I see those darn Scandinavian countries are more upward mobile despite their socialist trends and higher standard of living! Yes click around on that link and you will see the US is actually HARDER to climb out of poverty. But don't worry your capitalistic master are having a great time jerking your leash. You know that when the economy is growing rapidly the middle class still shows no upward mobility? http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html but I guess the upper class sees great returns on their investments.

Basically the American dream is a great PR piece to help insure there is cheap labor to fill factories. But Rah Rah for Capitalism. The idea that giving the money to private companies is also fallacious they tend to be very good at maximizing profit. (FOR

No, because there are economically very successful people from these lower classes who also exert themselves and create businesses, etc., yet do not change their diets and lifestyle. Also, social mobility isn't as common as you might think. (And "self-motivation" and "ambition" aren't straightforward either; what they mean, and where they come from, has a lot to do with socioeconomic and cultural origins as well.)

Most of the people in the upper-middle class started off there, and absorbed its values and ethos.

You may want to look at the realities of social mobility, as well. The wikipedia article on social mobility is a good place to start. This article is helpful, as well.

Although data is not the plural of anecdote, I have to note that most of the few people I know who did rise in social status are actually in poorer physical shape than the people who were already there: they have less spare time, work under more stress, and have poorer lifestyle habits, even though they are hard-working and ambitious.

Many towns and cities have been burned by spending millions on a proprietary system only to discover they can't talk to the next town over.

It would be nice if the DHS actually did something useful and put an end to that kind of crap.

This article http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/09/b1029179.html from 2005 stresses the importance ans suggests using WiFi. Maybe. But the most important aspect is "one digital protocol to rule them all", no matter what band you're on.

Put a cap on the emissions that industry can output, then create a market where companies can trade the right to pollute. Cap and Trade.

The big question is, what is this Change going to do to the US economy?

1. Create asymmetry between US industry and global industry for future growth. Why should I build my factory in the USA and go through the regulations when it just became more profitable to build it overseas?
2. Existing price structures are scrambled. Estimates from the power industry say that once you add in the costs of Cap-and-trade, this will make Coal more expensive than Natural Gas fuel, completely flipping the fuel makeups of almost all electricity production markets. Since Coal is used as fuel for about half of the energy production in the US, this will be disasterous to the wholesale markets. Since corporations always pass costs down to consumers, expect to see your retail electric bills go up by 5-15%, or an average of $700-1400 per family per year.
3. Who exactly is benefitting here? Estimates are that about $50 to $300 billion is getting ready to change hands, with the government running the auction for the "rights" to pollute. It essentially puts extra costs on industry that uses polluting fuels, and the claims are that some of the money will become subsidies to cleaner/greener energy producers. Since zero-emission technology is currently 3x as expensive as fossil based technologies, there will not be any savings to the public, hense the comparisons to a "tax" for the public.

While all of cap-and-trade appears very poorly thought out, Pres. Obama actually fully intended this to happen, as interviewed almost a year ago. So, hold on to your wallet, change is coming...

That quaint, outmoded thing?

Let only those who have known what it is like to be unprotected by instruments like the Geneva Convention exercise the privilege of joking about it.

(a) the guy with the idea behind this bill was "open government", "open access to court records", "open source", "open everything" activist Carl Malamud, who was most recently in the news when Congressmen and Senators started picking up his thread about making PACER -- i.e. court records -- free (as in beer); and

Also, it should probably be noted that Carl Malamud is informally campaigning to be nominated as Public Printer of the United States.

By the way, for those of you anxious to know the background of how an Assemblyman named Jonathan Bing got into this issue, I should mention that

(a) the guy with the idea behind this bill was "open government", "open access to court records", "open source", "open everything" activist Carl Malamud, who was most recently in the news when Congressmen and Senators started picking up his thread about making PACER -- i.e. court records -- free (as in beer); and

(b) the guy who helped usher this through, and put together the details, and get the Assemblymen to put their backs behind this, in the halls of government, is a very dynamic young geek and Slashdotter named Benjamin Kallos (like myself a Bronx High School of Science grad) who until recently was working for Assemblyman Bing but is now running for City Council in Manhattan.

First of all, let me thank you for acknowledging, that the hypocrisy I pointed out actually exists. Now let's go back to discussing, whether it is worth more of your concern...

if torrent files were used (and often times specifically designed) to murder other people.

The very first mistake in your reply is the use of the term "murder" instead of "kill". "Murder" is a crime, "killing" — not necessarily so. Guns are specifically designed to kill. That some of the killings end up being murders is the responsibility of the gun-users, not gun-makers.

Or such is the defense used by both the gun-manufacturers and The Pirate Bay.

The whole point of a legal system/justice dept. is to handle exceptional cases of law...

What?! Why is handling "exceptional cases of law" the "whole point" of a legal system? Of course it is not! A decent legal system is consistent in both its laws, and their application — in all (or most) cases, not just the spectacular heists you read about on front pages. That said, TPB with its flaunting is already an exceptional and spectacular case anyway.

Lastly, the jump between impacts of economic and violent crimes may be difficult to imagine, but there is a fairly-determinable cost of human life. And, although counted by "soul-less" bean-counters working for governments and insurance companies, it is based on what people themselves are willing to pay (as gauged by, say, consumers' willingness to spend on optional safety equipment like airbags). So, each $129K lost to copyright violations, is, according to Time-quoted Standford scientists, worth a year of human life (even more, according to insurers). And each $million lost is murder (not just "killing").

And now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government entities - that with various acts starting with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 under Carter and getting amendments over time, encouraged lending to the risks a normal banker would see a mile away?

I can't totally parse what you are trying to say here, it seems pretty jumbled and at least partly demonstrably wrong.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac were gov't entities, then were spun off into non-gov't corporations (though everyone thought they had some sort of special unspoken gov't back-up), then were placed back in gov't conservatorship recently. They are not the cause of the financial upheaval going on. They actually got into the sub-prime market late and in a lesser way due to legal restrictions that other companies did not have.

The CRA has been blamed by many on the right largely because it is about the only way to tie the financial shitstorm directly to Democrats. Unfortunately, the argument simple doesn't hold water. Are you really suggesting that a law passed 31 years ago caused no problems for 3 decades caused a sudden and dramatic panic? Do you have any evidence to offer to support that? Do you even know what the CRA really requires of lenders (and which ones)?

encouraged lending to the risks a normal banker would see a mile away?

Baloney. The CRA doesn't *require* any risks, and in fact CRA-regulated loans are not the ones that have been causing problems.

This financial downturn has been predicted by free marketeers since 2002 by the likes of Ron Paul and Peter Schiff:

And by gov't regulators who warned of problems back last century. It is not difficult to forsee that when bigger mortgages are given to a whole lot more people with a whole lot less ability to afford them, at predatory rates & conditions that there will be problems. Many people on the left (and some on the right) called for better regulations, yet we can thank Greenspan for undermining pretty much anything meaningful.

-Ted

That wasn't the point of Joe's question. Joe stated he wanted to buy a business and hoped that his hard work would bring in more than 250K. Obama stated that he wanted to take that success and spread it to people that made less than Joe hoped to make with his business acquisition and hard work.

One very, very rarely makes an income of more than a quarter of a million dollars in a year solely through one's own hard work. One usually makes it by leaching, to some degree, off the hard work of others. (The exceptions are mostly matters of dumb luck - a superstar performer getting "discovered", for example.)

And the answer to the GP's question is, yes, Joe (who is not really a plumber, under city of Toledo regulations) would get a tax break even if he owned the business, as will the vast majority of small businesses, assuming an Obama victory and that his plan goes ahead pretty much as stated.

It's one thing to say you want to "tax the rich" to fund the government, it's another when you want to do it to give other people the money, i.e., "Spread the Wealth".

In our capitalist system, the government does a tremendous amount to help those who have wealth, get more. It's so basic to the system we rarely think about it, but how much concentration of wealth would there be without government-issued corporate charters, land and resource deeds, copyrights, and patents? Not to mention a reserve banking system that lets privately owned banks make money out of thin air, and an economic policy that uses the DJIA as a measure of economic success.

These government actions and policies are so successful at concentrating wealth that the top 20 percent own 90% of all financial wealth. And it stays in the family; the U.S. has lower intergenerational mobility than France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway or Denmark

The small effects of progressive taxation and social spending - spreading around the wealth that other government policies helped concentrate - act as a (small and inadequate) governor on the machinery of state capitalism.

Now, I would rather get rid of that machinery entirely, but I think that unlikely, at least in the near term. If we're going to have it, I'm all for decreasing the power of the government to help the wealthy become wealthier by adding some negative feedback to the system.

You're making an even bigger assumption in saying that the reason there aren't more members of NOW is because they've already got everybody who agrees with them. It could be just that it's hard to get people to join activist groups or marches. By your metric, nearly no one on slashdot supports the ACLU.

This is also ludicrous on the face, since 59% of Americans support abortion rights as they now stand. The poll doesn't give a gender breakdown, so I suppose that could mean every man and 11% of women, but that seems unlikely to me

Can anyone comment on "The Center for American Progress" and "The Center for Democracy and Technology" I've never heard of them before and they sound like the sort of names church groups give themselves when they want to sound credible.

There's a lot of think tanks and policy advocate groups with high minded names.
Some of them are more descriptive than others.

http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus (2003)

"Founded in 2003, CAP is headed by John D. Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and professor at the Georgetown University Center of Law. CAP is designed to provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement. Our ability to develop thoughtful policy proposals and engage in the war of ideas with conservatives is unique and effective."

http://www.cdt.org/about/ (1994)

"The Center for Democracy and Technology works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age. With expertise in law, technology, and policy, CDT seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies. CDT is dedicated to building consensus among all parties interested in the future of the Internet and other new communications media."

It doesn't look like either of these think tanks are church groups trying to sound credible.

Google is your friend.

Center for Democracy and Technology:

http://www.cdt.org/about/

Center for American Progress:

http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus

> I guess you aren't a math major huh?

As a matter of fact I wasn't. But that's irrelevant - these aren't my figures; I just read the news.

> A CEO makes $2 mil, with 10,000 employees, that's $200/employee. Talk about a red herring.

I did not say that the "average CEO earns more in one day than the lowest paid worker in his own company." Try to pay attention.

"In 2005, the typical CEO received $11.6 million in total direct compensation-salaries, bonuses, restricted stock grants, gains from stock option exercises and other long-term incentive payouts."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1549065.html

The Heritage Foundation? You're joking, right?

Not that the linked graph isn't a brilliant piece of research, but let's be honest about the climate we're in. If I told you that the Center for American Progress disagrees, would you care? Would you even take it seriously?

To be fair, your graph is based on data from the CBO, which was already Democrat-controlled when the report was released. On the other hand, it's without context. That is, how have domestic income tax receipts decreased in the same period?

Moreover, if you'll recall, we've experienced a general economic recovery since that time -- until relatively recently -- which may or may not be due to the tax cuts. (I think we can guess where each other's intuitions lie here.) There's no obvious reason to take the correlation between tax cuts and corporate income tax receipts as a causal indicator. Plenty of other options abound.

6) The fact that Donald Rumsfeld even created his own intelligence unit because the CIA was still unable to uncover anything supporting, what the administration was believing to be true.

Just another Team B, complete with agenda intact and the same rhetoric. Are we having fun yet? And of course, Team B is famous for gerabbing the credit for any percieved 'victories'. Nothing to see here, move along, and leave your tax money in the plate...

Hmm, well I don't believe that for a second, especially if one adjusts for inflation, total budget size, etc. But I'm willing to entertain that claim if you can provide some concrete references

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/07/b1984135.html

Is one you might believe. That's a fairly progressive web site and the figures do not include research for military purposes. Scroll down and you'll see that the biggest spender is Bush. Really, just look at the deficits, and ask yourself, what -hasn't- Bush spent money on!

Part-time second jobs. Living with a roommate to ameliorate the expenses. From experience I can tell you its very possible to escape poverty and America has possibly the greatest social mobility. Those that stay at the poverty level (in most instances) do so by choice - in that they choose not to make the necessary sacrifices or put forward the effort toward actively acquiring a better life.

Yeah, it's a pretty messed up situation. I was reminded of this article a while back when wondering why the FCC insists on auctioning off spectrum, rather than keeping it, forcing some rules onto spectrum users, and licensing retailers/end-users.

I agree with the Feld/MAP analysis: Google will build the architecture, then get a bunch of also-rans to actually sell the service on to end-users. This situation is analogous to the previous ISP golden age, back when the power of AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe was waning. Suddenly, all of these little ISP's appeared, each offering dial-up at $15-20 a month. Hopefully, Google will usher in a new golden age, but with a little bit faster speeds (we're already 16th in the OECD. How much slower can we get?)

How hard will it be to build the infrastructure? First, Google could pull a Cisco, and outsource the construction, just slapping their name on the finished product. Second, we're talking about 700MHz, as in UHF. This will be a boon to all (7) of the RF-geeks out there just itching to build UHF transceivers. There are many possibilities, and depending on what level of control Google chooses to exercise, we could see a lot of antennas popping up in odd places. Don't forget the UHF...public access channels!

Why would Google build it? Why not? They build everything else themselves. Servers, switches, talk of renewable energy (yes, they blow a lot of hot air, but what corporation doesn't). They've figured out that the best way to stay in the game is to not rely on their "friends" but to bring competence in-house. This has probably had a negative effect on the rest of the industry (someone should do a study on this). If all the best minds are going to Google, then the rest are...dumb? I don't know. It's better than the best and the brightest going into the Pentagon, at least.

Since the FCC isn't going to collapse overnight, we're probably stuck with this model for a while. Auctions will be with us until the general public figures out that auctions are a pretty pathetic way of distributing our precious natural resources.

Disclaimer: I actually hate Google. I just hate AT&T and Verizon more.

No, I was right. They exist to serve the people. It's the only reason why they're allowed in a democracy or democratic republic. The growth purpose is a means to the end. We discovered that the best way to make a corporation serve the people effectively was to try to make them as profitable as possible

Well, no, sir, you were wrong. Originally corporations were permitted to exist only while they served the public interest, but that is no longer the case - which is why corporate charters are almost never revoked. Now corporations exist soley for their own interests.

Modern large corporations profit by controlling markets, by externalizing costs, and by exploiting labor with a rush to the bottom, not by providing quality goods and services or by serving the people.

Actually having to do good work is old-fashioned, for tiny companies, not for corporate behemoths.

Most of the money naturally goes to the people responsible for the businesses (because they're the ones who've done the work or risked their capital)

But the ones who do the work are not the ones who get the money. One rarely acquires wealth in this economy through labor; it's done through parasitic speculation and absentee ownership. Or the old fashioned way - by inheritance (which is why the U.S. has lousy inter-generational income mobility).

Risking one's money isn't, in and of itself, admirable to such a degree that public policy should reward it. Gambling on stocks is no more heroic than gambling on the ponies.

I'm still looking for an example of a piece of legislation that the people are truly unhappy with as a whole that is requested by a corporation.

The point is that by controlling the process, corporate interests are able to keep such legislation out of the spotlight. Did "the people" want to give almost three billion dollars to the coal industry? Or lend five billion dollars to Westinghouse (a British Nuclear Fuels company, at the time) to build nuclear power plants in China, strengthening the infrastructure of our chief economic rival? (And giving technology to a Chinese company that had previously given nuclear tech to Iran and Pakistan!) I'm pretty darn sure they did not.

But did "the people" have any idea this was going on? No.

The ratio of adult to embryonic research by the NIH is about 3:1. There are 73 stem cell treatments out of which 73 use adult cells. Were even 10 of those treatments from embryonic stem cells, I would concede that the embryonic funding was about reasonably productive. But that would be a different world.

There are zero restrictions on private money going into embryonic stem cell treatments. States do fund and private groups can fund what the federal government does not want to fund. But the private money generally isn't going to embryonic because the private money has to earn a rate of return and people get tossed out of work if they fund too many unproductive research proposals.

I like Michael J Foxx just as much as the next guy. I hope that he gets a cure for his disease. I think that it's a tragedy that he's spending so much time and effort to lobby on behalf of type of therapy that has not given any positive results in terms of actual therapies. And yes, he's manipulative as hell.

Start at page 10. It reviews not only the research, but even reviews of the research. There's been an awful lot of research. ;) The most recent evidence comes from No Child Left Behind, which *does* record race (starting at page 17).

There's good reason for all this. As the paper notes, for one, the socioeconomic background of students is widely recognized as playing a major role in how well they do in school -- there's less economic pressure on them, more pressure from their families to go to college, and so on; having the poor along (often non-white) with the rich (often white) puts them in an environment where they are exposed to this atmosphere that they wouldn't normally be exposed to. Also, schools in poor districts (often non-white) tend to have much lower funding through property taxes.

The biggest irony, in my opinion, is that the Bush admin has been pushing for this, and appointed the judges who made it possible. Yet, No Child Left Behind is explicitly race-conscious.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/05/ruy _deficit.html

clicked on newsletters and scrolled through all 5/2007 links until I saw one that looked promising.

Assuming this is the correct one the poster is correct that at least on budget defecits, most agree that we're completely out of control.

IMHO the ultra rich are happy about their taxbreaks, and certain extremist liberals aren't concerned. Everyone else realizes that screwing over our grandkids is wrong. With our current (unconstitutional) system of letting banks "create" their own virtual money, and "lend" it to the government, not only are we spending money we shouldn't, we're also handing over future (not today's) money to the banks. Kennedy and Lincoln both tried to fix this, or at least admit the problem.

Legislating to NOT fund a war that 60% of Americans want us out of is not "micromanaging" a war. Especially a war that this administration has been unable to successfully manage at all in the past four years. This is what this Congress was elected in 2006 to do. It is actually the exact same thing that many past Congresses have done. (For a list of them, visit THIS site.http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/0 1/military_deployments.html)

In fact, this administration has been so incompetent in carrying out this war that they are now looking for someone to take it over. I'm not kidding: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast /12policy.html?_r=1&ref=washington&oref=slogin Too bad they're having trouble finding someone dumb enough to take the job.

"Incidently, I read something like for every dollar of work shipped out overseas, we get to see 1.30 in return."

I wish you would think more critically about the 'we' part. When a company offshores, the extra 30 cents is only seen by the owners and shareholders. The people who get laid off don't see that 30 cents. That 30 cents helps those who make their living off the interests of their investments, but the bast majority of Americans make their living from a paycheck.

I am glad that you are fortunate enough to have a good job that allows you to do interesting work. However, the American middle class is shrinking. The American middle class is at a 70 year low. The Middle Class Squeeze at 25-Year High in 2005. Worker productivity has been steadily improving over the past two decades, but worker wages have been declining. Somebody is pocketing the difference, and the person who is doing more while making less is getting screwed.

Gonzalas respects civil liberties like he respects the Geneva conventions. Qaint.

I mentioned the source for the "claim vs fact" of Rice's statement: http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=44918, which included LA Times and WhiteHouse.gov sources for those Genoa statements. But the LAT page is gone, and the WH page doesn't support the citation. After this problem was brought to my attention a few minutes ago, I emailed the AmProg website complaining, asking for an explanation. Until I get one, I'm no longer posting anything on the subject.

Citation for parent post: "Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission"

The government DID step in. And instead of implementing some sort of system that would tend to balance the standards of living, they have created INCENTIVES for offshoring.

http://techpolicy.typepad.com/tpp/2004/03/tax_brea ks_for_.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=32409

These were high up in Google, that's my only endorsement of these sources. It was a hot issue in 2004...

Given that the current administration had advance warning that Bin Laden was planning an attack and chose to ignore it, I fail to see what use additional surveillance and secrecy would be, or how it would've prevented the September 11 attacks.

If preventing a nuclear attack is such an important goal, then why is Bush cutting funds to secure loose Russian nuclear material? That budget is a sliver of the Iraq war cost.

There is, as of now, not much chance of a nuclear weapon being used by terrorists. A state is not likely to give such a weapon to a stateless group - because they lose control of the weapon. This is why it never made sense that Saddam might give NBC weapons to an Islamist terrorist group: because they didn't like Saddam, either, and dictators don't like to lose control.

This administration is not acting as if they felt that preventing terrorist attacks on US cities was their primary concern. We don't have to imagine what would happen if a city disappeared - New Orleans was our test case. (Here's a preview - local governments confiscating firearms.)

I've worked within a union within the State government (at a University no less). Despite my knee-jerk liberalism, I'm not sure I would voluntarly join a union again. In my anecdotal experience, the union didn't appear to save jobs when the State budget tightened and seemed to protect employees that probably should have been let go. On the other hand, I'll be enjoying my weekends, health insurance, overtime pay, paid holidays, and other benefits that were brought to us by unions whether or not I join one myself.

Anyway, more to the point, the issue shouldn't be a "Rush told me unions are bad" or, even, "unions will save our jobs". The cheap labor conservatives (e.g. the nanny state conservatives) love arguments like this since it pretty much distracts everyone from the fundamental point: the U.S. economy balance of power is tilting so far in the direction of the corporate entities that by the time we're done argueing about unions it will be too late.

I'm not sure about banning multi-national corporations because it would be pointless as long as all world corporations were similarly limited including pseudo-governmental corporations (e.g. from China, Dubai, Russia). How about a much smaller step: bring in 33% of the Federal Reserve Board's voting membership from labor organizations instead of from banks? At least in one aspect of the economy middle class American's interests could be represented.

With the bread & circuses being happily consumed by the masses,

by "bread & circuses" I assume you mean corporate wellfare, and by the "masses" I assume you mean corporate america?

Because it isn't like the US government is spending more than other western countries per capita on SOCIAL programs. So I know you aren't referring to that.

Perhaps you are referring to the massive subsidies given to the television industry?

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=1314449

Advertisements and unartistic drivel will soon be beamed in glorious 1080i to every household in the nation! Lets Roll!

Some progressive institutes are getting the hint as well... http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=1468377 A societal benefit, needs social support. The amount of time and money saved by Cisco and others not re-inventing the wheel is enormous. It's amazing how economists can point out how we're better off outsourcing because things will become cheaper, and we'll be able to spend the "saved" money on other things, but then not conced the same point for software.