Weekend Reading

Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
Milwaukee Bucks Drawing Attention From Potential Buyers
Annualized Returns & the Average Investor
The Myth of Income Equality, Courtesy of AEI
Who The Job Creators Really Are
How Capitalism Enriches The Few Rather Than The Many
The Short Guide To Capital In The 21st Century

Immobility

David Callahan has a great article, The Income Mobility Myth.

• The majority of the new jobs created during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were low-wage positions with no benefits.
• Today, about a third of poor families with children include a parent who is working full-time.
• The conservative mobility narrative trumpets the wealthy as "job creators" and agents of opportunity. But that story is exactly backwards in some respects. Corporations and the wealthy have embraced a set of strategies for improving the bottom line that have spelled downward mobility for many workers. For example, when a company moves its back office accounting work overseas, executives and shareholders in that firm may get a nice return as profits go up. But a bunch of college grads lose their jobs.
• African-Americans and Latino households lost over half their median net worth during the most recent boom and bust - even as the Wall Street insiders who invented the subprime securitization machine and capitalized predatory lending outfits got unbelievably rich.

Go read the entire article.

The Creation Conundrum

At one turn, the Republicans are extolling small business as the engine of job creation. (Remember hearing this oft-repeated line during the 2008 and 2010 elections?) Small here obviously implies these "job creators" are not part of the top 1 percent. These are everyday people, playing by the rules, working hard, and trying to build a business of their own.

At the next turn, the Republicans are claiming we can't tax the top 1 percent because they are job creators. The richest amongst us are rich due to deserved rewards for their risk, innovation, and efficient allocation of capital. These are very special people with keen insights and understanding (that layperson can't process) and therefore deserve their rewards.

Hmmm, if that's the case - if all (big or small) are job creators - where are all the jobs? If small business owners and the rich are all job creators, why are so many people unemployed?

Do the Republicans have a platform? Any kind of belief system anymore? Or have they become the party of intellectual somersaults, continually rolling into whatever position best riles the rabble?