The problem of income inequality: Day One

When I pledged to make 2011 the year of my reading about income inequality and the welfare state, I thought I’d be able to contain myself to, oh, a dozen or so really smart books—representing a range of viewpoints—to give me a solid grounding. And I thought I’d start with Paul Krugman’s now slightly dated 2007 book, “The Conscience of a Liberal.” What I didn’t realize is that once I started thinking about these related topics, I’d start seeing good reading on them everywhere.  There’s been lots of magazine articles and blog posts to take note of just in the first month of this project. So this month’s installment will also draw on some recent magazine articles — “The United States of Inequality” by Timothy Noah at Slate, “The Rise of the New Global Elite” by Chrystia Freeland at The Atlantic, and “Business Is Booming,” by Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect—as well as Tyler Cowen’s new mini e-book, “The Great Stagnation.” (Other sources will be cited, as needed.) Instead of reviewing Krugman, he is the jumping-off point for the project.

 My sources generally come from the left side of the spectrum. Obviously I do to. But I’m going to try not to put my thumbs on the scale, because my aim is to understand the issues and what solutions, if any, are best suited to resolving them. Which is why, in coming months, you’ll see texts from the right of center, as well.

 That said, I had a series of questions in my mind when I started reading, and I’m going to take them one-by-one each day this week.

* Is there an issue of growing income inequality in the United States?

Yes. Next question?

OK, let’s add some depth. Here’s what it boils down to: Since 1980, the United States economy has grown quite a bit — even when taking the recent Great Recession into account. But those gains have gone almost entirely to the country’s ultra-elite: 80 percent of the gains went to the richest 1 percent of Americans. Wages for everybody else, on the other hand, have more or less stagnated. Case closed.

Here is one of a million charts that make the case:

“In the 1980s, however, it gradually become clear that the evolution of America into a middle-class, politically middle-of-the-road nation wasn’t the end of the story,” Krugman writes. “A small number of people were pulling far ahead, while most Americans saw little or no economic progress …. those trends continue to this day: Income inequality is as high as it was in the 1920s, and political polarization is as high as it has ever been.”

I have a white whale no longer

Longtime readers will know of my continuing disdain for the work of NYT Magazine's Deborah Solomon. Looks like I'll have to find a new target for my ire:

"My immediate plan is to devote myself to my long-overdue, almost-finished biography of Norman Rockwell, which will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. I had eight great years writing the column, and I have been encouraged by the paper's top brass to continue writing for the paper. Naturally, I also plan to continue asking as many impertinent questions as possible."

The problem with Solomon's work wasn't that her questions were impertinent. It's that they were often impertinent for their own sake, journalism as a kind of masterbatory pugilism. As I wrote when I first got on my Deborah Solomon high horse, her interviews "are performance art pieces, designed to elicit discomfort in interviewees and readers to no good purpose at all." Good riddance.

 

Me @ Macworld: I review Rupert Murdoch's new The Daily

Announced on Wednesday, The Daily was touted by its creators at News Corp. as a rethinking of journalism for a new audience and new technology. There’s just one problem with the hype: Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad newspaper closely resembles other—often unsuccessful—attempts over the last decade to “reinvent“ the news. The only difference, from a user perspective, is that a few semi-new digital flourishes have been thrown into the mix.

via macworld.com

'Democracy' in Iraq

There's a lot to say about how American conservatives have been coming out of the woodwork to suggest that regime change in Iraq veeeeeeery slowly sparked the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere around the Middle East in recent weeks. (A variant on this theme is offered by NRO's Jay Nordlinger, who writes: "It seems that a democratic revolution is sweeping the Middle East — spurred, I am sure, by American and allied actions in Iraq.")

So it's worth taking note of today's New York Times story that gives us a picture of what "democracy" in Iraq actually looks like:

Iraqi security forces controlled directly by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki continue to hold and to torture detainees in secret jails despite his vows last year to end such practices, according to a statement from Human Rights Watch released Tuesday.

The statement renewed longstanding criticism of Mr. Maliki that he has violated the Constitution by having some security forces in charge of pursuing terrorists report directly to his office. About 280 detainees are being held at Camp Justice, a military base in northern Baghdad, with no access to lawyers or their families, according to the report. They are being held by brigades that are supposed to report to the Defense Ministry, it said.

After the disclosure of a secret prison last year, Mr. Maliki said the detainees would be transferred to the Ministry of Justice, under which they were expected to receive proper legal representation. But Human Rights Watch, citing internal government documents and interviews conducted in Iraq with government officials and detainees, said that this has not occurred. 

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that Egyptians aren't really all that inspired by a US-backed "democratic" (remember, Maliki didn't actually win the last election) government that tortures its enemies. That's what they're protesting against! I'm guessing the sparks of the recent waves of protests involve a complicated set of kindling that I don't fully understand, but I do know that Iraq War apologists will never stop trying to extract "victory" from a very bad war.

 

The Inky takes on the death penalty

I'm just a touch perplexed by today's editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The ed board there is apparently extra-horrified by the way Ohio now plans to execute its death-row prisoners:

The continued practice of capital punishment got even more unsettling with Ohio's announcement that it will become the second state that executes convicts with a drug typically used to euthanize animals.

Pentobarbital is well-known to veterinarians, who use it to euthanize terminally ill pets.

Comparisons between executions and putting a pet out of its misery might be unfair, but they're unavoidable now. Some people call murderers "animals," which is how they will be treated when Oklahoma and Ohio dispatch them to eternity.

The whole apparatus of state-sanctioned executions is awful to comprehend, but even more so with the use of a drug pulled from your local vet's medicine cabinet.

I think the Inquirer is trying to say that the death penalty is bad, and I agree. But I don't get this particular set of quibbling. Is the death penalty really worse because states have exchanged one set of lethal chemicals for another? It's hard to see how. It would be one thing if the Inquirer wanted to argue the new chemicals will some how increase a convict's suffering during execution, but that's not what is being said here, and I'm not sure that's even the case. There are a host of reasons to believe that states shouldn't have the power of life or death over their citizens; I'm not sure that squeamishness is really going to rank that highly among them.

TSA backlash watch: Is the TSA getting it right?

Maybe the Transportation Security Administration is getting it, after all. The agency is debuting new body scanners that don't show so much ... body: 

The machines now produce a gray, cookie-cutter outline of the human form. The silhouette appears on a screen about the size of a laptop computer that is attached to the scanning booth.

If a passenger is cleared by the scan, the screen will flash green with an "OK." Suspicious items detected by the scanner appear as little boxes outlined in red, showing their location on generic front and back silhouettes on the screen.

Please do watch WaPo's video of TSA head John Pistole announcing the new scanner. Nice how they demonstrate it by showing a white woman going through the scanner without weapon — and a black man going through the scanner while concealing "suspicious objects." Way to be sensitive and avoid stereotypes, guys.

That said, this seems much less intrusive than the scanners that let airport officials see your nude body underneath your clothing. My family might be more willing to get on airplane if we aren't subjected to a virtual strip search prior to flying. But this technology is still in the testing phase; we'll see how long it takes to get all the way to Philadelphia

 

 

The Daily News takes on 'power' in Philadelphia

Still love the Daily News, and Lord knows I hate bullies. Still, I can't help but feel a bit off-put by this story in today's paper:

Upper Darby police yesterday arrested a seventh and final teen in a horrific bullying incident caught on video, and Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said the tough guy was crying and vomiting when he was brought to the police station.

The 14-year-old was charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault and related offenses for allegedly being one of seven boys who shoved 13-year-old Nadin Khoury (right) in a tree and hung him on a fence on Jan. 11, police said. The entire incident was videotaped by one of the attackers on a cell phone, according to police.

I'm glad the kid is being brought to justice. But budding thug though he may be, he's still just a kid. And it just seems weird and unseemly for a major metropolitan newspaper to use its platform to mock an adolescent. The DN is ostensibly siding against bullies -- and I'm with them! -- but it ends up acting like a big bully itself. Uncool.