1. Interview with Saez (I find his views on elasticities somewhat surprising, actually).
2. Why conspiracy theories persist in Pakistan (they are often true).
3. There is no great stagnation.
5. Dennis Rodman in North Korea, and oddly the game ended in a tie.
6. Those Americans who will tell pollsters they approve of Congress, excellent piece, one excerpt: “Other answers were simpler. Clyda Mellett of Tennessee, who described Medicare as her top political interest, offered an unqualified thumbs-up. “I think they’re doing great,” she said.”
#3 on TGS, I think that Eulerian Video Magnification is a more significant disproof.
0 Comments, but I will sacrifice being the first to post but instead give a 20 second review of all links
@#1 – because of sharp changes in the Gini coefficient, it cannot be that pay equals productivity but rather rent seeking and politics determines who gets what. So Thatcher/Reagan revolution meant rich got richer. Advocates a tax on the rich. Points out rich do not work less if you tax them more (I’ve seen this before, and consistent with the fact the rich work because they like to, not because they have to). My criticism: Gini coefficient is not a tell all–the proverbial prisoner’s dilemma game of “you get $100 if I get $1M or we both get $0 comes to mind”.
@#2 – CIA does secret stuff in Pakistan; India possibly finances Pak enemies in Afghanistan, as rumors indicate. Ho hum, boring to me. Call me when they threaten a regional nuclear war.
@#3 – “who invented a machine for separating Oreos” – I will not watch this…TK is making fun of his critics but I think they are right. But TK is open-minded about the issue so it’s not hopeless
@#4 – A Ganges river religious festival human interest story of how some people get lost in a crowd, are illiterate, and take days to reunite with their family. Some people use the festival as a way of losing their family
@#5 – “Rodman traveled to Pyongyang with three members of the professional Harlem Globetrotters basketball team” Also of interest Richardson of New Mexico was on the trip–I think he has an interest in Korea, seen his name before…quick Google…yep, since 1996. D amn I’m good.
@#6 -a non-story: “But the small group of people who really did approve of Congress generally seemed to fall into two broad camps, which might be termed the “natural optimists” and the “Obama haters.”” – of course you’ll get people who approve of anything. Probably more than 25% of Americans believe UFOs have landed and it was covered up by government.
I will not hit the ‘Enter’ key and see where in the queue I am–certainly will not be the first poster though…
Wow! I was second! Must be a slow news day on MR.
No, it’s that we’re not supposed to comment on this item. He linked to an article about conspiracy theories that are later confirmed to be true. The Koch brothers want him gently sanctioned by a comment boycott. Didn’t you get the memo?
LOL
Re: Saez video
I love the implicit assumption that we have more rents now because inequality is higher. It is inconceivable that wages now (mostly) reflect marginal productivity and the older system of reducing the purchasing power of the rich and increasing the purchasing power of the less-rich had more “rents”?
#1 is amusing:
“DG: if I understand your argument, it suggests that whenever there are relatively high tax rates at the top a CEO might be less inclined, for example, to pack the board of directors with cronies who would support high compensation. This is because our forward-looking CEO appreciates that much of the additional compensation would simply go right back to the government.
ES: Yes, for rent-seeking in terms of excess compensation, I would think that’s likely to be the main mechanism . . .
ES: For top earners, we need more research, but I have yet to see a study that shows me that when you increase top tax rates, top earners work less.”
Yeah, I picked up on that too. Pretty strange theory of incentives he’s got there.
Also he might pack the board and get them to spend on lavish executive suites and the like to compensate him before taxes.
No. 3 is good, but not as good as the Skittles sorting machine that has captured my daughter’s imagination.
As I’ve mentioned before, these smart but useless machines are demonstrations of cognitive surplus. The skills to build the Oreo or the Skittles machine could be applied to any number of useful arts … are the application niches more rare at this point than the skills? (The Oreo “machine” looks ready to be broken down and re-purposed to the next cleaver demonstration as well.)
I was thinking the same. A physicist working on Rube Goldberg machines to remove cream from an Oreo seems like it could be a good sign of stagnation to me.
Without being an “innovation” or “innovator” shortfall … though of course aggregate “demonstrations” must empower commerce. For what it’s worth, I got that one of these (personal barbecue pit automation) was possible, but I found tuning my vents too easy (once I was comfortable with it). Strange days.
I would say the fact that he won the innovation prize is more indicative of a great stagnation than the fact that he built it. Is this the most innovative thing they could find? Factories are already full of machines that do all manner of motion control tasks faster and more efficiently than the Oreo machine, so where is the innovation again? It was cool that he did it all by himself in “.04 years” using a garage full of junk and he’s got a great deadpan delivery, but what he did is more a great parlor trick than anything truly innovative.
You mean like inventing the swivel chair indicates a stagnation? So much for the late 18th century, then.
Rather, I think a society in which individuals create innovative devices in their free time shows one in which individual creativity is encouraged, rather than saying anything about a “cognitive surplus”.
Problem is you’re on a blog populated by market fetishists. If an innovation does not produce an measurable $$$ return to the investor, it does not exist.
Not sure about the Oreo thing, but the skittles machine seems like it has a genuinely useful purpose (ability to automatically sort small objects by color) even if it’s not currently being put to a useful end.
Diverse forms of motion control in the Oreo machine … could be re-applied to whatever. It is almost a “sampler” in the needlepoint sense.
5. Will the dear leader adopt body piercings like Rodman and require all patriotic Koreans do the same.
No, he will be trying to work on his Jedi mind-meld.
Saez is a socialist net tax consuming New Class parasite, in stark contrast to Microsofties, Googlers, and Facebookers, who earn their incomes on the market, by offering services paid for in voluntary transactions. His idea that Microsoft, Google, and FaceBook are “semi monopolies” shows what a pseudo economist he is.
+0.543
(sorry, I had to send Saez his cut)
How is it that high marginal rates are supposed to adjust pre-tax incomes for the lower 99%? Yes, you could spend the money on transfer payments – but that isn’t pre-tax income. And it’s in effect paying people to not try to make the 1% – regardless of the effects on the high earners, how is paying people to remain low earners a good policy?
(Indeed, various writings on implicit marginal incomes shows that the US in effect “pays” low earners to remain low earners.)
Further, why does anybody think that money taxed away from high earners and distributed by government won’t be captured by various kinds of cronyism/rent/dupe behavoirs? That is, if all high marginal rates do is move money from CEOs to various cronys, who does that help the lower 49% or lower 5%?
“The tightness of the correlation between top tax rates and pre-tax top incomes is so strong that I doubt that it will go away entirely.”
Huh? The correlation between Irish bread prices and Venetian water levels is also so tight Saez doubt’s that it will go away entirely?
“…and then income concentration fell dramatically in most western countries following the historical narrative of each country. For example, in the United States the Great Depression followed by the New Deal and then World War II.”
Wonderful, let’s have another Great Depression, followed by a New Deal, and then WW III. Heck, we may have the first two already, though some macroeconomists will surely argue that they haven’t been large enough.
The income distribution per se is a non-problem.
Saez makes the very common mistake of looking at tax rates and ignoring the tax base. Yes, the top rates after the 1986 reform act were much lower. But that act increased income taxes for many high income people because it eliminated the shelters they used to keep from paying those rates. Crediting high rates for something makes no sense if almost nobody pays those rates. I know of some very rich doctors who paid zero income taxes before 1986 and who were furious because of the changes. People shouldn’t talk about taxes without bothering to learn a bit about them.
“ES: The striking fact is that no matter what the mechanism is, what we observe empirically is that in countries that have really steep progressive taxation, you don’t observe sustained high levels of income concentration. So some mechanism must be at work reducing pre-tax incomes.”
I thought of a couple things as I read this.
First, of Mickelson and Woods choosing to reside in Florida to avoid higher income tax states. Of course, Saez does mention mobility of capital elsewhere in the interview.
Second, I thought the U.S. was shown to have one of the most progressive codes around. No?
+1 on this:
Second, I thought the U.S. was shown to have one of the most progressive codes around. No?
Me too. So do we in the USA pay more progressive taxes or not? I think that we do. A slightly different question would be: do our rich pay a higher % of there income in taxes or not? I do not know the answer to that one.
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