Piaw Na

The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?) Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid. - Piaw Na

Seriously. I'm surprised there aren't riots over this. - Piaw Na

Read the entire series. - Piaw Na

It is not, as it turns out, necessary to be a micromanaging psychopath with narcissistic personality disorder (or even to pretend to be one) if you just hire smart people and give them real authority. The saddest thing about the Steve Jobs hagiography is all the young “incubator twerps” strutting around Mountain View deliberately cultivating their worst personality traits because they imagine that’s what made Steve Jobs a design genius. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, young twerp. Maybe try wearing a black turtleneck too. - Piaw Na

Red Moochers Aaron Carroll of The Incidental Economist and I have been emailing back and forth about the extent to which conservative states tend to be much more dependent on government support than liberal states, and Aaron has produced a nice chart. He takes the top ten most conservative and liberal states as ranked by Gallup, plots the conservative minus liberal score on the X-axis, and the ratio of transfers to personal income on the Y-axis: Those very conservative states with low reliance on transfers, by the way, are Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah; they really are pretty self-reliant, but they also have very few people, so the overall conservative performance is dominated by bigger states that are simultaneously very conservative and very much dependent on the government safety net. - Piaw Na

Indeed. It's a pity seasons 3.5 and 4 sucked. - Piaw Na

Makes me want to read that one issue of Superman. - Piaw Na

Via Greg Mankiw. - Piaw Na

Gimme a break. Self-reported study? How the heck does that survive peer review?!! The answer, in the peer-reviewed study of the online habits of girls ages 8 to 12, is that those who say they spend considerable amounts of time using multimedia describe themselves in ways that suggest they are less happy and less socially comfortable than peers who say they spend less time on screens. The research raises as many questions as it seeks to answer, as the scientists readily acknowledge. That is because the research was based on an online survey taken by more than 3,400 girls, a sample that may well not be representative of the larger population and, because the responses are self-reported, are not subject to follow-up or verification by the researchers. - Piaw Na

So are states that get a lot but don’t pay much also states that vote for candidates demanding self-reliance and an end to Big Government? Basically, yes. By my reckoning, 7 of the most dependent states in the sense that they pay relatively little while receiving a lot went for McCain in 2008; only 2 of the least dependent states did. - Piaw Na

The team of American and Australian scientists concluded that the easier a person's name was to say, the better their success was in the workplace and the quicker they were promoted. - Piaw Na

Smoke & Mirrors - Piaw Na

I love it! - Piaw Na

To watch - Piaw Na

Ridiculous. Just break up the EU and be done with it. - Piaw Na

The researchers' findings, published in the journal Science, show that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer's. The results point to the significant potential that the medication, bexarotene, has to help the roughly 5.4 million Americans suffering from the progressive brain disease. - Piaw Na

If the appearance of your child under the age of 16 has changed due to the normal aging process, you do not need to apply for a new passport for him or her. Comment from Piaw: The rest of us call this "growing up", but the state department calls it the "normal aging process." - Piaw Na

“Spending like this is simply unsustainable, and it’s time to cut up Washington, D.C.’s credit card,” Mr. Cravaack said in a February speech to the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce. “It may hurt now, but it will be absolutely deadly for the next generation — that’s our children and our grandchildren.” But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs. - Piaw Na

Wow. Good stuff. - Piaw Na

Of course, Romney, Obama’s most likely opponent in the general election, will never challenge the Wall Street hold on Washington, since he is the personification of the vulture capitalism that is the true cause of America’s decline. Obama should shine in comparison with his Republican challenger, but there is little in his State of the Union speech to suggest he will chart a much-needed new course in his second term. - Piaw Na

No shit! - Piaw Na

The reviews are hilarious. Worth reading. - Piaw Na

At a basic level, this is all kind of terrifying. If top financial officials and credentialed economists can’t even avoid getting confused about the difference between asset prices and productive capacity, what hope is there for rational policy discussion? - Piaw Na

In the US margins are remarkably at a peak, despite very high unemployment and spare capacity. What a new world! To mitigate this pressure on labour, developed societies could adjust the tax structure. In the US they did, but it was done perversely, doubling up on the benefits to the rich by lowering their share of taxes. And pressures on labour have not been limited to taxes. Both the global ranking of US educational excellence and the quantity and quality of training for workers have declined quite rapidly when needed most. But all complaints of justice are either ignored or dismissed as class warfare. The propaganda machinery of the right has for 20 years made the left look like amateurs, just as propaganda from the Tea Party makes the Occupiers’ efforts look diffused and feeble. - Piaw Na

Pretty cool result. - Piaw Na