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Number of tickets sold peaked in the early 2000s at over 1.5 billion, and has been on a very gradual decline to around 1.3 billion per year since then (for North America).

The inflation-adjusted cost of a movie ticket soared in the 1960s. So you could argue this either way - that the new price is the new norm, or that the theaters have been gouging us for 50 years. I wasn't around in the 1960s so can't really speculate as to what caused the rise in prices then. But in the last 40 years I suspect the advent of cable TV and VCRs/DVDs, and now streaming has forced theaters into a higher-priced niche. They're now more about a viewing experience (e.g. IMAX, THX, 3D) rather than merely watching the movie.

Which brings us to an important point. You can't judge how well the movie industry is doing solely on theater ticket sales. Subscription services (e.g. HBO), and disc and digital sales and rentals are an important part of their revenue today. From what I could gather, theater ticket sales only account for about a third of the industry's revenue.

Sure, let's take a look at how "fine" salaries are today. Here's some numbers.

So, over the last 47 years, we've got a whopping 21% growth in the median salary. That's a roughly 0.4% annual growth rate, on average. That's all we've gotten from widespread automation, swapping out typists for software engineers, etc.

If these remarkable advancements in technology are only giving us 0.4% annual growth in salaries, is it even worth it? Society sure seems to get more than 0.4% more complicated every year. Work seems to get a lot more than 0.4% demanding every year.

For the years when it was accepted that the even-numbers Star Trek movies were the good ones, adjusted for inflation:

The Wrath of Khan made $195,813,803 from a budget of $27,791,563.
The Voyage Home made $240,072,498 from a budget of $45,951,859.
The Undiscovered Country made $170,579,218 from a budget of $52,816,901.
First Contact made $222,943,340 from a budget of $68,702,290.

(Those numbers come from Boxofficemojo and Wikipedia, adjusted for inflation via http://www.davemanuel.com/infl...)

Granted, that's not Star Wars or Avengers money. But those are very respectable... and profitable... figures.

You do realize that all these numbers are quite easy to look up right?

http://www.davemanuel.com/hist...

I have trouble believing that Bush had the highest deficits ever when Obama clearly had the largest ever.

Bush:
Year Actual number Inflation Adjusted
2001 $127.3 Billion Surplus $172.26 Billion Surplus
2002 $157.8 Billion Deficit $210.12 Billion Deficit
2003 $377.6 Billion Deficit $491.67 Billion Deficit
2004 $413 Billion Deficit $524.11 Billion Deficit
2005 $318 Billion Deficit $390.18 Billion Deficit
2006 $248 Billion Deficit $294.89 Billion Deficit
2007 $161 Billion Deficit $186.13 Billion Deficit
2008 $459 Billion Deficit $511.14 Billion Deficit

Obama:
Year Actual number Inflation adjusted
2009 $1413 Billion Deficit $1578.77 Billion Deficit
2010 $1294 Billion Deficit $1421.98 Billion Deficit
2011 $1299 Billion Deficit $1384.86 Billion Deficit
2012 $1100 Billion Deficit $1148.23 Billion Deficit
2013 $680 Billion Deficit $699.59 Billion Deficit
2014 $485 Billion Deficit $490.89 Billion Deficit
2015 $438 Billion Deficit $438 Billion Deficit

Because clearly, 4 years of more than $1 trillion deficits is so much lower than less than half a trillion max!

Let us also not forget that percentages lie quite handily. Let's say you got a 5% raise every year for a decade.
Well, if you were making $150k/year, you'd be up to about $240k/year. Overall you've gone up nearly 100 grand per year. That's not too bad, and while you're not up with overall "inflation" one should keep in mind that a lot of those prices are loaded at the bottom end for things like groceries and gas, stuff that at $150k you're probably not going too bad for.

Now if you're making only $30k/year. Congratulations, after slugging it out you've not made it up to near 49k/year. You've got up about $19,000. Except at $49k, the cost of those student loans, groceries, mortgages and car payments still hurt *a lot*

Now the median US income is about $52,000. That's per household though, so you and your spouse would have had to nail those 5% raises each and every year to get from there to $81,500... an increase of $31,000. It's not bad, but you'd still better hope those loans were paid off early and you don't need a new car.

Realistically though, you didn't get those raises. The median household income 10 years ago was $46,000. Now it's about $52,000 so all those happy people got the rough equivalent of a yearly 1.1% raise over the last decade.

The good news is that if you saved up to buy a house now... *that* is possibly a bit cheaper than in 2006.

Of course if you bought 10 years ago, that was at the top of the bubble and you've lost value while paying a nice mortgage rate of 6.4% (4.45% after a 5yr renewal). That means on a $200k mortgage you would have paid nearly $100k in just interest alone already. Ouch

Apparently, Summers doesn't understand how inflation works.

$500 of 1969 dollars would be worth: $3,267.97 in 2015

$500 of 2015 dollars would be worth $76.50 in 1969

$100 of 1969 dollars would be worth: $653.59 in 2015

$100 of 2015 dollars would be worth $15.30 in 1969

Source: Inflation Calculator.

The Federal Reserve has been working hard for the last 100 years to reduce the value of U.S. currency. It is not necessary for Congress and the Department of Treasury to aid them any further in the endeavor as they seem to be getting along just fine.

"Does the Obama Administration..."

Yes, they understand that.

President Obama is invested in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund as one of his largest holdings, apart from bonds and T-bills -- Source: http://www.davemanuel.com/pols... -- which in turn is invested in:

Telecoms: AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. Class A
Oil companies: Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp.
Pharma companies: Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co. Inc., Gilead Sciences Inc., Allergan plc, Amgen Inc.,
Banks: Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Visa Inc. Class A
Healthcare problem companies: Philip Morris International Inc., Altria Group Inc., McDonald's Corp., Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc.
Healthcare solution companies: UnitedHealth Group Inc., CVS Health Corp., Medtronic plc

Among others -- Source: https://personal.vanguard.com/...

So perhaps this explains the issues he's interested in, and the things he votes and advocates for and against.

Ebay...isn't surge pricing in any stretch of the imagination.

What definition of "surge pricing" are you using that excludes eBay? Please paste the link, because I think you're making stuff up.

One definition of surge pricing is that it "occurs when a company raises the price of its offering if there is an increase in demand." And that's exactly how an auction works: the price rises until supply and demand are in equilibrium.

So please provide a link for a definition that excludes eBay, if you can.

Go look at teh stories about uber and surge pricing. You'll see a lot of time when it had to be turned off because of bad PR.

That's a good example of the "bandwagon fallacy." You're arguing that because people are opposed to something, it must be bad. But because argument from fallacy is also a fallacy, we'll have to agree to disagree on this point.

On the subject of bad PR, here is an interesting article about how a city shot themselves in the foot after a hurricane because they were offended by the high price of resupplying ice to the residents.

The problem with dynamic phone tariffs is that it incentives companies to never upgrade their infrastructure.

Could you elaborate on why high surge prices won't encourage other companies to start providing service? Because that doesn't make any kind of sense to me.

Canadian here,
Harper had nothing bad going on. He just got ousted by social media Meems(seriously) and everyone is sucking out new governments dick because they have change syndrome ( my life sucks and it can't be my fault syndrome).
In reality out new government is spending insane amounts of money and putting us in debt. It sucks here right now.

The PM's been in office for three days. He is not spending insane amounts of money; there hasn't even been enough time to do so. This is why politics suck: partisan rants.

Also, newsflash: Canada has been in debt for decades, with a present debt of over 616 trillion. The prior government also brought our country into a deficit this year, so your partisan rant is rather weak.

Debt != deficit. Deficit is per year; debt is "sum of all yearly deficits (plus interest and some other crud, I'm not an economist)".

Also, see one of the many deficit sites like: http://www.davemanuel.com/hist...

Clinton ran a (small) surplus for 3-4 years, which means a negative deficit for 3-4 years. He didn't have a big effect on the debt, true, but considering that Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and Obama all ran deficits (the Rs mostly increasing-per-year, the D decreasing-per-year) not growing the debt is a pretty impressive deal.

I wish I could expect Clinton II to run a surplus the same as her husband did, but that seems unlikely. Bill's budget involved both parties compromising plus Bill raising taxes. Both of those (compromise and raising taxes) are completely rejected by the Rs in congress now. I expect Hillary to lower the deficit but not zero it. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

The current average retail price of a new car is now $33,560 or about 64% of U.S. Household income. In 1980, it was $7,200 or 44% of 1980 median household income. The further back you go, the more affordable cars were. Compound that with the fact that most households used to be single income, and now most households are dual income means that the real rate of increase of car prices is even more out of control than it looks.

And back in the good old days, we bought them more often. Last vehicle I bought was to replace a ten year old one. When I started driving, in ten years, you were on your third vehicle.

Due to all of the tech in cars now, they are too fucking expensive. That's why most people lease cars -- because they cannot hope to actually pay for one outright any more. This is only going to exacerbate that problem. Until auto-makers can make cars that will last generations of drivers can they expect us to pay for them over generations.

The current average retail price of a new car is now $33,560 or about 64% of U.S. Household income. In 1980, it was $7,200 or 44% of 1980 median household income. The further back you go, the more affordable cars were. Compound that with the fact that most households used to be single income, and now most households are dual income means that the real rate of increase of car prices is even more out of control than it looks.

The debts he [Reagan] piled up were unconscionable.

Arguably so, but he was far from the only one, or even the first one, to do so - and Obama dwarfs all of the others. Here is the amount of national debt, in billions of constant 2012-adjusted dollars, accumulated during the terms of various Presidents.

Wilson, 1912-1920 239
Harding, 1920-1922 15
Coolidge, 1922-1928 -78
Hoover, 1928-1932 91
Roosevelt, 1932-1945 3068
(same, prior to WW2 only), (1932-1941) (454)
Truman, 1945-1952 -1091
Eisenhower, 1952-1960 -22
Kennedy, 1960-1963 80
Johnson, 1963-1968 -7
Nixon, 1968-1974 -80
Ford, 1974-1976 301
Carter, 1976-1980 23
Reagan, 1980-1988 2597
Bush, 1988-1992 1661
Clinton, 1992-2000 939
Bush, 2000-2008 3223
Obama, 2008-2014 7125

Roosevelt kicked off the tradition of accumulating huge debt in peacetime, even if we leave out the WW2 years. And nobody came close to repeating it until Ford. However since 1912, only Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon left the country's debt better than they found it.

A History of Debt in the United States

I'm not sure what your point is? Those conservative politicians have from the start supported aid for sandy victims- they just wanted it paid for instead of blindly charging it yet again. If you remember- at the time this was being debated, the deficit of the US grew from around 500 billion in 2008 to over 1 trillion dollars in the 4 years previous to the aid package while at one point reaching 1.4 trillion.

http://www.davemanuel.com/hist...

Debt, no; deficit, yes. Except it popped into existence in 2002.

There were previous deficits over the years though. Most years appear to have deficits:

http://www.davemanuel.com/hist...

But eg. every Clinton year was better than the previous year without fail. Bush II got 5 years that were each worse than the previous, but then reversed the trend until getting sucker-punched at the end of 2008 (shows up even more drastically in 2009 under Obama). Previous Bush had a neutral first year and then a downward trend. Reagan had a mixed record; things generally worsened but it was recovering by the end. etc.

To some extent there are economic factors outside of presidencies, e.g. no matter how much you think the economy stems from the singular person of the President, you can't fully blame Bush for 2001 or 2008 or Obama for 2009.

I don't know why Republicans are so blind to the black and white numbers. Here's a picture.

Here's a table.

You're not one of those people who will now concoct a bizarre story involving a potato chip and a particle accelerator where Obama reached into the past and made Reagan run a deficit, are you?

The Great Recession really sucks, and the investment banks have never been held to account for their strong role in creating it [...], but don't lay all the world's ills at its doorstep. We're still far better off economically than the 70s!

In spite of a far more educated workforce I have serious doubts that that's true.

Adjusted for inflation, the median household income in 1975? $45,788
The median household income in 2012? $51,017

But wait you (might) say. That means we're better off now....except for one small detail. We're measuring household income.

In the 1970's that was (generally) one persons income, in 2012 that's two people's income. In terms of physical goods I think we compare quite favorably, but factoring in things like housing, energy and food? Not so much.

REFERENCE http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker compensation is now approximately 10 times its value in 1950. This is approximately commensurate with the average increase in the Dow average adjusted for inflation.

Right; and one should hardly be surprised by this since our government continually passes more and more regulations that generally only benefits big businesses. The barrier to entry for a small or medium-sized firm to get on a public stock exchange is enormous. When competition is limited, one should not be surprised when the market can no longer efficiently remove wasteful players. Paying prices vastly more than necessary to secure a proper executive is, of course, very wasteful. But this is not a fundamental issue with CEO pay, this is an issue with regulation that keeps smaller firms out.

But why should CEOs receive the entire benefit of a growing economy when all actors have contributed to that growth? CEO compensation has no correlation with company performance.

As I see it, the problem has nothing to do with a free vs. a coerced market. The problem is that the market of executive compensation is entirely divorced from the market at large. "Stockholders... vote... for whatever the management recommends no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be". This is what I mean by oligarchy: a few privileged elites have control over this smaller market without the essential feedback cycles that stabilize prices in the larger economy.

Yes, and this smaller market is much easier to manipulate when it remains artificially small due to artificial barriers to entry. That said, your definition of oligarchy is quite arbitrary; even if you could absolutely measure the power the "privileged elites" have over a smaller market, at what ratio of power to size does it constitute an oligarchy? I do agree with your sentiment, and I think my paragraph above speaks to it.

The issue is that the market value of labor has plummeted in relation to productivity and in relation to the value of top earners. In the 50s one could work part time at a minimum wage job and pay rent and college tuition and walk away with a degree free and clear. Today, just to pay rent, one needs roommates or more than one part-time minimum-wage job, let alone any ability to pay for education in order to get a better job.

1950: $0.75/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $750 wages $42 * 12 months = $504 rent $35 * 4 quarters = $140 tuition

2013: $7.25/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $7250 wages $602 * 12 months = $7224 rent $3917 * 2 semesters = $7834 tuition

How do you measure productivity? GDP is a pretty useless measurement. Also, there is this silly notion that public sector consumption should actually be counted as production. Since there is no objective way to measure public sector "productivity" (since it is not part of a market), it should not be included in aggregates; also it is quite common for the public sector to be horribly inefficient with its "funds". Government makes up

The ratio of CEO compensation to average worker compensation is now approximately 10 times its value in 1950. This is approximately commensurate with the average increase in the Dow average adjusted for inflation.

But why should CEOs receive the entire benefit of a growing economy when all actors have contributed to that growth? CEO compensation has no correlation with company performance.

As I see it, the problem has nothing to do with a free vs. a coerced market. The problem is that the market of executive compensation is entirely divorced from the market at large. "Stockholders... vote... for whatever the management recommends no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be". This is what I mean by oligarchy: a few privileged elites have control over this smaller market without the essential feedback cycles that stabilize prices in the larger economy.

The issue is that the market value of labor has plummeted in relation to productivity and in relation to the value of top earners. In the 50s one could work part time at a minimum wage job and pay rent and college tuition and walk away with a degree free and clear. Today, just to pay rent, one needs roommates or more than one part-time minimum-wage job, let alone any ability to pay for education in order to get a better job.

1950:
$0.75/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $750 wages
$42 * 12 months = $504 rent
$35 * 4 quarters = $140 tuition

2013:
$7.25/hour * 20 hours * 50 weeks = $7250 wages
$602 * 12 months = $7224 rent
$3917 * 2 semesters = $7834 tuition

I believe that raising the average wage will have a better impact on the economy as a whole than raising executive compensation. I believe that income inequality is a social ill that should be addressed through policy -- not by Marxian state capture of the means of production and not through Randian private hoarding of the means of production, but through a hybrid realistic approach like "all employees should receive stock options or profit sharing if executives do".

Try again. He's shed a large chunk of his wealth into charity. If I remember correctly, most of his wealth is invested to make money to give to charity and provide a continuous income stream for charity.
http://www.davemanuel.com/net-worth/bill-gates/

Minimum wage, the least someone can if they consistently show up late or stoned, is now three times higher than the average used to be. (Inflation adjusted of course .)

So yes, a rising tide lifts all ships. Please go talk to an old person, complain to them about not being able to fly first class to the Bahamas during your two weeks of paid vacation and see what they can tell you about life just sixty years ago.

From 60 years ago (1953) to today, I can believe there have been gains at most levels, but the upward trend seems to have peaked around the turn of the century/millennium. The peak median income seems to have been (inflation adjusted) $56,080 in 1999

http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

For the last decade and a half it has been dropping, having fallen by more than 10% to $51,017 in in 2012.

Yeah we're better off than grandpa was at this stage of his life, but not so well off as your older cousin was, perhaps. And the trend is not in the right direction. The lower income levels have fared even worse than the median.

The top has done pretty well the whole time however....

Gosh I sound like a whiner self-indulgent liberal socialist or something. I'm probably just mis-interpreting the data and really the middle class is better off earning less money.

You should read the link I posted instead of oversimplifying and trying to sound like you're teaching me something you obviously have not studied. Federal surpluses don't necessarily mean a decreasing debt. I was trying to be polite, but you are being rude, so let me say this again: your question is stupid.

The most recent surplus was the month of June 2013. There were annual federal surpluses in 1998, 1999, and 2000 under accrual accounting... even if you don't use unified (including social security surpluses), which is probably the counter-argument you've been waiting to make. 1998 can be made into a deficit with other accounting methods, but 1999 and 2000 were surpluses.

If you want to understand why your question is uninformed and misleading, I suggest you read How Did A Surplus Result In The National Debt Going Up?. For others reading, the short is that Social Security surpluses are converted to debt. When SS Surplus > on-budget surplus, ++ federal debt (although debt held by the public will decline).

Of course, a bunch of illiterate assholes are going to use that as their primary argument for cutting SS soon. They will point to the trillions of dollars in debt to SS, ignore that the debt is from SS being required to invest in the federal government, and then demand SS be cut because it's such a large part of our debt.

http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

Based on the levels shown on that, sourced from the US Census Bureau, the average median income would be adjusted for inflation $44,823 in 2011 dollars back in 1983. Incidentally, the actual median income in 2011 was actually $4,000 higher than this. Income has outstripped inflation, whether median, mead, mode, sum of least squares, however you want to calculate it; growth at the top of the food chain has far outstripped the rest of the four quintiles, but the old addage is true: a rising tide raises all ships.

The average worker in the USA in 1970 earned $19.20
In 2010 the average worker earned $19.70

The average worker's wage was under 10,000 in 1970.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/polisci120a/immigration/Median%20Household%20Income.pdf
http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php

Their house purchasing power has gone up: http://www.nahb.org/assets/docs/publication/fft2001_8142002101506AM.pdf

Even adjusting for inflation we see that we are better off than historically. http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php I'm just not sure what data you are using to back up your argument.

We don't have any more disposable income (adjusting for inflation) than in the past, but we have more luxeries and larger homes.

Check out the US Deficit Clock

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

http://www.davemanuel.com/us-national-debt-clock.php

Sure, at first, some people may notice that there used to be thrift stores. For a while. Some old geezers will say "I remember back in my day when you could just buy things, and then sell them--for cash!--and it was nobody's business but yours". But eventually, it will just be normal. Thrift stores will just be added to the list of businesses that aren't allowed to exist, and so they don't exist. And since they don't exist, nobody will care about getting the law overturned, because they will perceive no demand.

In the real world we have 7.8% U-3 unemployment [1] and 14% U-6 [2] unemployment. With a whole load of people in the past several years who have pretty much given up finding a job (google: participation rate).

When pawn shops, used car dealerships and the like go out of business, it will crater the economy. Sure it may take a couple of years, but it will probably result in at least 10% more unemployment... and the "job makers" aren't going to be able to employ those folks.

[1] http://www.davemanuel.com/2012/10/05/whats-that-unemployment-rate-drops-to-78/
[2] http://www.davemanuel.com/investor-dictionary/u6-unemployment-rate/

Sure, at first, some people may notice that there used to be thrift stores. For a while. Some old geezers will say "I remember back in my day when you could just buy things, and then sell them--for cash!--and it was nobody's business but yours". But eventually, it will just be normal. Thrift stores will just be added to the list of businesses that aren't allowed to exist, and so they don't exist. And since they don't exist, nobody will care about getting the law overturned, because they will perceive no demand.

In the real world we have 7.8% U-3 unemployment [1] and 14% U-6 [2] unemployment. With a whole load of people in the past several years who have pretty much given up finding a job (google: participation rate).

When pawn shops, used car dealerships and the like go out of business, it will crater the economy. Sure it may take a couple of years, but it will probably result in at least 10% more unemployment... and the "job makers" aren't going to be able to employ those folks.

[1] http://www.davemanuel.com/2012/10/05/whats-that-unemployment-rate-drops-to-78/
[2] http://www.davemanuel.com/investor-dictionary/u6-unemployment-rate/

So, government being bigger than any company means it is the only sector of the economy that is growing?

- USA government is nearly 50% of economy. If it's not growing in one particular day at the same rate that it is growing in the overall sense, over years, then it doesn't change the fact.

Just the Federal government in USA has expanded its balance sheet by 5 Trillion dollars over 4 years. Apple market cap is 638 Billion in total and that's the largest company (in terms of market capitalization).

You don't like the facts?

Here is a page on the growth of government, I'd quote it here, but it's too large, it has data from 1934 until now and into the projected future (to 2015). Yes, government is the largest growing sector.

As to manufacturing - in USA manufacturing is shrinking, not growing. The pathetic little bit of growth that registered in the last 2 months is in assembling, not manufacturing, they don't grow manufacturing in USA and assembly is not the same thing.

Yes, it's true, the service sector is growing in USA, that's just like government, it adds to the trade deficit and worsens the economic conditions and it lives on the promise of government bail outs and stimulus (well, I consider the Federal reserve to be an arm of the government).

I think they are two different things though. Just because your pay hasn't kept pace with productivity doesn't mean you aren't earning over the median household income. I suspect most 2 income working families in the US would be over the median income, they're still getting the shaft on hourly wages, but they are going to be over the median.

one runs the risk here of confusing nominal and PPP numbers. On a nominal basis US bottom 99% workers have seen constant wage increases since the 1970's, the real buying power of that money has been flat.

Median income in PPP and nominal for 40 odd years

The median income in the US has actually gone up by almost 20% on a PPP basis since 1970, it's clear a lot of that has been transfer to those at the top of the income curve (the top 0.1% and to a lesser degree the top 1%), which is what you are correctly getting at - and that's true. But what TheSync is getting at is that you can be on the top half of that curve by being very productive, that's harder to verify, it's certainly likely to be true, essentially an average worker gets a 2% raise, a good worker 3 a bad worker 1. Productivity increased by 5%, so you're actually falling behind your own productivity, but you're still doing better than the bad worker, which would then reasonably stratify into good being above the median income.

Forgive the offtopicness, but I couldn't let this one fly:

Debt problem: real problem, but caused by Bush policies. At least things are headed in a better direction.

Wrong! Under the Bush presidency, the deficit never reached the $502 billion mark. Since 2009, the deficit has never reached BELOW the $1300 billion mark. I don't think it's Bush's policies that are the problem. Also note that the President does not write policy. Congress does. In Jan 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6%. Since 2009, it has not been below 8%. What changed in Jan 2007? Democrats took control of Congress.

Source

Not sure what your point is about the racist in the Justice dept, haven't heard anything to make me think that's remotely true.

Black Panthers harassed voters in front of a polling place. The justice department did nothing. If that were a Klan member doing the exact same thing, don't you think the Justice Department would have prosecuted?

If you can't see you're on the wrong (morally) side of the photo id laws ... that's just sad.

If you can't see that without ID laws that it's REALLY easy to vote for other people and almost impossible to catch... that's just dumb.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-16/metro/31062045_1_voter-fraud-absentee-ballot-application-absentee-voting-laws
http://www.wtoc.com/story/16571904/south-carolinas-attorney-general-detects-voter-fraud-for-primaries
http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/29/mississippi-naacp-leader-sent-to-prison-for-10-counts-of-voter-fraud/

Just like the money the foundation lost from the BP oil spill? They lowered their payout they had promised following the American housing and financial crisis and I'm sure it's because they didn't get the money they thought was "already in the bag."

If you make 5% and spend 10%, it would take nearly 35 years for the overall payout to fall below that of the "sustaining" model of only paying out what you make in interest. So, the sad part is that they could have sucked up a one-time hit on the principal and still not had any real effect on the long-term viability of the foundation.

No, you're full of bullshit. A one-time shot of a half-billion dollars will get pissed away in a year. Put that money in a foundation and consistently donate the interest, however, and you get a significant chunk of change going to the cause every year, forever.

Forever? Just like the stock market is going to last forever? Just like the money the foundation lost from the BP oil spill? They lowered their payout they had promised following the American housing and financial crisis and I'm sure it's because they didn't get the money they thought was "already in the bag." Of course we can't get at any hard figures of how much they had pre-market crash and right after it but I'm going to go ahead and say you're full of bullshit in thinking that they are investing in things that are consistently going to help. They are investing in the stock market. The stock market is a gamble. Any thoughts otherwise are true bullshit.

the inflation-adjusted median income has gone down by 17%

No, it hasn't.

Whoops! That's right. I meant that the income share of the bottom 90% of families (ie, just about all of us here) has gone down by 17%.

Here is the theoretical justification for the laffer curve: At a 0% tax rate, no revenue is generated. At a 100% tax rate, no one works. Somewhere in between is higher, therefore someone in the middle it must have a downward slope.

I agree. And it seems that, after that is established, every Republican I talk to waves their hands in the air and claims that it's just obvious that we're well in the downward-slope region.

I don't buy it.

Something else worth considering. A miniscule increase in year to year economic growth accumulates geometrically over time.

I don't agree. This isn't a simple algebra-II problem where we're calculating compound interest or bacteria multiplying in a dish and things just keep multiplying over and over.

Eventually, you're going to reach the point where everybody's working and they can't make (TV's | houses | cars | lattes ) any faster. This is what boggled me about the dot-com boom; everybody thought that the "new economy" was going to make everything super-cheap to make. But I couldn't shake the fact that it still takes just as many swings of a hammer to build a house.

Unless they somehow make: 1) the house take fewer hammer-swings to build, 2) the hammer-swinger accept less money per swing of the hammer, or 3) somehow lower the cost of the materials, then the price of a house isn't going to go down. But #3 is actually just #1 and #2 applied to the materials supplier.

Now, #2 doesn't really help the economy because the hammer-swinger is going to have less money to spend on other goods. So, the only thing that really helps the economy is #1: making it take fewer hammer swings. The economists' term for this is "worker productivity". Now, the dot-com boom did give us some productivity gains in the form of just-in-time inventorying, smoother channels for ordering/tracking/paying, etc... but it didn't do much to make houses take fewer or smaller nails.

So, anyway... the long and short of it is: I don't agree that we can make tweaks that give us miniscule bumps in the GDP and that they will just keep compounding geometrically without bound. The GDP has a ceiling, determined by worker productivity (ie, how efficiently the worker can make their widget), availability of workers, demand for the widgets, etc. Cyclically, we get politicians who try to squeeze out more GDP with tweaks to the system and then we get corrections like we have now.

the inflation-adjusted median income has gone down by 17%

No, it hasn't.

Here is the theoretical justification for the laffer curve: At a 0% tax rate, no revenue is generated. At a 100% tax rate, no one works. Somewhere in between is higher, therefore someone in the middle it must have a downward slope.

It may not be a remotely clean curve. The effects on people's purchasing and work effort are gradual at best while the reduced tax is immediate. But historically it has not demonstratably failed.

Something else worth considering. A miniscule increase in year to year economic growth accumulates geometrically over time. Eventually the additional growth will produce a GDP such that the lower rate of the modified GDP will exceed the higher rate of the lower GDP. Depedning on numbers it may take a long time, but it will happen

First, I think your anger at the SEC is misplaced. I grant you that there have been some monumental screwups in that institution, and that in the light of our current economic woes some of the trust we placed in our financial institutions seems misplaced. Having said that, the institutions most responsible were not the regulators but the regulatees- AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, the now endless litany of failed or failing banks- we were deliberately deceived, and they were foolishly wrong in their calculation of risk. Should the economic regulations surrounding these institutions, and the government agencies that enforce them, be changed? Absolutely. Should we allow the scoundrels of industry a freer reign with which to abuse our trust once again? Absolutely not. Re-regulate, don't de-regulate.

You think my anger is misplaced? This is a government agency with a budget that went from 400 million dollars in 2000 to almost a BILLION dollars today and almost four thousand full-time staff that do its job of cracking down on a Ponzi scheme that they were WARNED about in 1999 and again in 2005?

So you think the SEC should be 're-regulated' instead of being trashed to give that money back to the taxpayers?

Fannie and Freddie are government sponsored enterprises, so they are hardly 'regulatees' in my book. All that leaves for me to blame is AIG. Ok, I blame them, let them go bankrupt! That's the best discipline to keep those 'scoundrels' from overreaching! Oh, seems the federal government can't let that happen either... And is even giving them more money for their failure. See where I'm getting at?

Secondly, you seem to be arguing that the economy has grown past the point where it needs the abuses of the past. You then go on to mention "even worse informal market jobs" as being the consequence of the absence of minimum wage. This is a contradiction, and it reveals the extent of your experience with the truly deregulated markets. Outside of the minimum wage economy lies misery, particularly where it relates to the (totally unregulated) labor conditions under which illegal immigrants work. It would kill you to work like that, and if you suspect for even a moment that it was more than the accident of your birth that protected you from that fate, think again. The companies that abuse immigrants, if given even the faintest whiff of an opportunity, would cheerfully work you to death too.

The fact is that while companies do bid for the services of workers, in the swollen uneducated labor market the cost of the mobility required by the free exchange of services is prohibitive to most workers. Those that do migrate do so constantly, unable to scrape together enough savings to escape their lifestyle, and denying their children the education needed to eventually find a better life. Even if you maintain that those workers have earned their lives- an attitude I find repugnant- I have found few people willing to callously condemn the children of this country to lives of ceaseless misery on the back of an empty economic principle.

How is what I said a contradiction? The fact that people are working for less than the minimum wage in horrid conditions is because they are forbidden to work in the normal conditions of the formal market because _working and employing for less than the minimum wage is ILLEGAL_. Illegal things have a way of happening in less than nice ways.

Compare the living standard of a hooker working in a brothel in Nevada to one in different state. If the latter gets the crap beat out of her by her pimp she can't go to the cops because then she's a criminal. The first one doesn't have a pimp, she has a contract with which she can sue her boss for any violations.

'Totally deregulated market' does not mean a lawless society where might is right. A free, unregulated market system presupposes