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[Mongrel]

Uh, are you sure?  Pretty much all they're about is being separate and distinct from those other jerkweeds.

Kind of. The kind who host Ted talks or whatever maybe, but not so much the ones in kitchens or living rooms (though the distinction breaks down the higher up you get in what's left of the upper middle class). 

I think that it's still useful to point it out, because a lot of people are still thinking in terms of rich versus poor and right versus left instead of the balkanized clusterfuck we really have. Most people hear "polarization" and they think of two poles. "Polarization" is correct but the big mistake being made is thinking there are only two.

[Royal☭]

To be fair, you're discussing a group that tends to identify more with people who make 1000 times more than them rather than the people who only make 1/10 of what they do.

[Mongrel]

One of the biggest successes of the current wealthy (maybe not quite the 1%... let's say the 2% or even 3%) is that barring the usual deranged celebrity whores, they don't seem to have lifestyles vastly in excess of the middle class.

They DO have vastly different lifestyles, but you have to get up close to see a lot of the differences. Both groups have houses, cars, vacations, pensions, kids, health care, (probably) no servants, etc. But the quality of those things for the two groups is vastly different. Like say if you compare the furniture owned by a middle manager versus a C[letter]O or a specialist doctor. The kinds of guys with mid-to-high six-figure incomes.

The middle-manager will have used credit to buy a serviceable couch and a glass-topped coffee-table. The executive will have paid cash for a fifteen grand couch that outwardly looks just a little nicer and has done a dozen lines of coke on his coffee table. Both people will be sending their kids to school, but while the middle manager can get his kids into State U by cutting back elsewhere, the rich guy bankrolls his kid to go to Cornell or Princeton wherever. The house of the rich guy will be a fair bit nicer and in a nicer neighbourhood, but not dramatically so. But the richer dude's house will be better-built, better decorated and probably all paid off. He may also own vacation property.

The real difference when you get down to it is that the rich guy is so much more secure than the middle class guy. If the middle class guy is fired, he falls off the debt-payment treadmill and quickly spirals down the crapper. If the rich guy is laid off, he's got reserves, he's got better connections, and his shit's paid off so he's got way fewer fixed costs dragging him down. And the rich guy is way more likely to have an ace pension and a non-zero amount of cash in the bank.

Now the super-super-rich is another story. They clearly live in ludicrous mansions with servants and all the rest. They're smart as well, having purchased the most valuable commodity of all in the modern world: privacy. But that is a small number of people. Though they have a disproportionate impact on the political system through their wealth, it's the "regular" rich guys who are having a larger effect on politics and a way larger social footprint in most communities.

Anyway, it doesn't surprise me that what's left of the middle class identifies more with the rich. The poor have sweet fuck all, whereas the middle class manages to use credit, cheap goods, and denial to get about 80% of what the average rich guy has. Superficially anyway.

[Büge]

I think I read somewhere that most people identify as being better than they are, i.e. the poor see themselves as working-class, the working-class see themselves as middle-class, etc.

[JDigital]

America has a class below working-class?

[Mongrel]

Sure. "'Muricans".

[Dooly]

Morans?

[Brentai]

Wells Fargo chooses to settle on allegations that it dumped minorities into unnecessary subprime loans.

So, uh... how hard is it to refinance with another lender?


(THAD EDIT: Fixed missing bracket.)

[Shinra]

Morans?

:| we are a noble and prestigious family. There is a moran with a car dealership or a weatherman position or night time newscaster position in every city in America.

[Mongrel]

You can't fool us. You're all descended from Colonel Sebastian.

[Mongrel]

So, you know that question everybody asks? "Where did all the money go?"

Well, a new study estimates that the super-rich are hiding as much as $32 Trillion in offshore tax havens

Sweet mother of pearl, they've gone and put a number on it.

-----------

Alllllssooooooo, is anyone else following the LIBOR scandal?  (Here's a recent update, including a hilarious Goldman Sachs quote)

The substance of the scandal doesn't really matter so much as it's scale and depth. We're talking about one of the fundamental underpinnings of modern global capitalism here. It's bad enough that some international bankers and economists are considering the possibility that they might not actually have any way of fixing the problem.

Both of these stories seem moving towards a place progressives have been hoping to get to, but which they have totally failed to reach on their own: A world where the default assumption is that anybody with any large amount of money is always up to no good.

[Shinra]

So, you know that question everybody asks? "Where did all the money go?"

Well, a new study estimates that the super-rich are hiding as much as $32 Trillion in offshore tax havens

I'd like to see the right deflect tax haven criticisms now. This is absolutely outrageous.

[NexAdruin]

So, you know that question everybody asks? "Where did all the money go?"

Well, a new study estimates that the super-rich are hiding as much as $32 Trillion in offshore tax havens

I'd like to see the right deflect tax haven criticisms now. This is absolutely outrageous.

This will either go ignored or they'll say the integrity of the study was flawed and then it will go ignored. Never underestimate the power of denial.

[Thad]

The substance of the scandal doesn't really matter so much as it's scale and depth. We're talking about one of the fundamental underpinnings of modern global capitalism here. It's bad enough that some international bankers and economists are considering the possibility that they might not actually have any way of fixing the problem.

I love Stewart's juxtaposition of all the "too many stifling regulations" yammering with the LIBOR story.

I also love Issa grilling Bernanke on why he didn't do more to stop it.

You know, the Federal Reserve Chairman.  The guy in charge of an organization the right believes should not exist.  Is not doing enough to enforce regulations that do not actually exist because the right hates regulations.  For a scandal that is centered in London.

I mean, don't get me wrong.  Bernanke could probably have made more noise about it than he did.  But the Republicans are the last people in the fucking world who have any standing to complain about how he failed to stop the sort of shit that happens when you do what Republicans say you should do.

I'd like to see the right deflect tax haven criticisms now.

"The President wants to punish SUCCESS!"

[Büge]

So-called 'Job Bills' don't actually create jobs!

 , I know, but this article is backed up by actual factual economists.

[NexAdruin]

I'm stuck at the part where somebody said that Obama's policies weren't working and then he said that 30 GOP laws were the answer.

If there are no results, then those 30 jobs bills aren't working. That's isn't Obama that's just those laws failing.

Edit: oh okay the 30 laws haven't passed congress just the house.

At the heart of the GOP jobs package is a push for rolling back regulations -- and gutting environmental laws that regulate clean air and water -- to spur job growth. The House Republican Conference website makes the argument that deregulation will "remove onerous federal regulations that are redundant, harmful to small businesses, and impede private sector investment and job creation."

But economists told The Huffington Post that regulation has had a minimal impact on the unemployment rate. Their claim is backed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that just under 16,000 jobs, or 0.4 percent, were lost because of "government regulations/intervention."

"It's just hard to believe that the paperwork requirements to starting a business represent a major impediment to starting businesses right now," Burtless said. "That's not why we had lots more business creation in the late '90s."

This was interesting to me because this is the argument I hear from rich people the most.

[Brentai]

They don't not work, they just specifically don't work for the next 4 years.  It's telling that the GOP establishment is so sure that this course of action totally won't backfire on them.

[Shinra]

NOW I fucking remember why I stopped reading CNN

CNN's admission in this article that Romney's job plan is details light and unlikely is there, but so slight as to hardly be present. What the fuck is Romney's plan? How is 12 million jobs created a 'conservative' estimate of anything with a tax plan that is literally 'CUT GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND CUT TAXES'? Didn't we have eight years of sagging job growth under Bush to prove that that doesn't fucking work?

 

edit: FUCK, HOW IS THIS EVEN NEWS

WHY ISN'T THERE A 'PAID FOR BY THE COMITEE TO ELECT MITT ROMNEY' AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE

WHY

WHY

WHY

[Mongrel]

Even Forbes thinks we've pretty much learned nothing since 2008

[Mongrel]

Found a great little economics blog offered through the financial times called 'Alphaville'. There are patches of dense economics-ese, but most of it is very easy to follow.

Some great sample entries:

The march towards urbanization in China, or: Why urbanization in China won't necessarily increase Chinese prosperity

Ahhh No Robots! Or, why we may be in for a huge and permanent drop in economic growth rates

The law of unintended consequences; why Quantitative Easing may in fact lead to deflation rather than inflation (this one's a little harder to follow than the rest, but is still quite readable)

The comments aren't terrible either. Now there'a bonus you don't get too often!