Things of Interest
Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me).
There’s a graph that Obama supporters are sending around, showing the differences between the Republican and Democrat tax cut proposals. It shows that Obama is not in fact planning to raise taxes - he’s planning to cut them for all but the very, very rich. I couldn’t help but notice though - the graph is still massively weighted towards the interests of the super-rich. For example, the bottom two-thirds of the population are given only a third of the space on the graph, while the top 0.1% of the population - one in a thousand people - gets almost 10%. What’s more, an “average tax cut” is then given, which seems to have been derived from taking a total of the nine income brackets shown and dividing it by nine. Journalists should really volunteer to take remedial arithmetic, you know. Once again, this ignores that one of the brackets represents one thousandth of the population.
So let’s make this a bit more accurate - let’s keep all the brackets, but draw it to scale.
TIME: Wall Street's Bomb: What's the Fallout for You?
It was a traumatic day for financial firms - Lehman Bros. declared bankruptcy, Bank of America swallowed Merrill Lynch, and AIG scrambled to prevent becoming the next casualty. What does it all mean to you? Here are some questions worried investors and homeowners might be asking.
Just When You Think McCain Has Hit Bottom
…he breaks through the crust and keeps on going.
After a series of TV ads that are farragoes of shameless lying, Straight-Talk McCain has surpassed himself.
and the follow up:
That’s how it goes / Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows.
Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”
There’s a graph that Obama supporters are sending around, showing the differences between the Republican and Democrat tax cut proposals. It shows that Obama is not in fact planning to raise taxes - he’s planning to cut them for all but the very, very rich. I couldn’t help but notice though - the graph is still massively weighted towards the interests of the super-rich. For example, the bottom two-thirds of the population are given only a third of the space on the graph, while the top 0.1% of the population - one in a thousand people - gets almost 10%. What’s more, an “average tax cut” is then given, which seems to have been derived from taking a total of the nine income brackets shown and dividing it by nine. Journalists should really volunteer to take remedial arithmetic, you know. Once again, this ignores that one of the brackets represents one thousandth of the population.
So let’s make this a bit more accurate - let’s keep all the brackets, but draw it to scale.
TIME: Wall Street's Bomb: What's the Fallout for You?
It was a traumatic day for financial firms - Lehman Bros. declared bankruptcy, Bank of America swallowed Merrill Lynch, and AIG scrambled to prevent becoming the next casualty. What does it all mean to you? Here are some questions worried investors and homeowners might be asking.
Just When You Think McCain Has Hit Bottom
…he breaks through the crust and keeps on going.
After a series of TV ads that are farragoes of shameless lying, Straight-Talk McCain has surpassed himself.
and the follow up:
That’s how it goes / Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows.
Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”