Wasting Time With Alex

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Elections & economics.

In these days leading to a national election with a decidedly biased MSM acting as a branch of the DNC, it is critical to understand the reality of our economic situation, especially since the usual class warfare leftists are lying about how bad things are, to be able to counter the bull. David Freddoso over at NRO has one heck of a good commentary piece dealing with this campaign of disinformation by the left which then links back to both an interesting discussion by one of my favorite economists Thomas Sowell as well as a Brad Schiller Wall Street Journal article destroying “ The Inequality Myth” thoroughly.

The main contention by the left is that the income share of the bottom 20 percent of households shrank from 4.1% in 1970 to 3.4% in 2006. But Freddoso points out that the 3.4 percent being bandied about applies to a pie three times as large as the pie of 1970. Adjust that for growth Freddoso points out that the average income of households in the bottom 20 percent has risen by 36% since 1970. Even a retard (most socialists tend to be a step lower that that however) can see that the poorest Americans are richer than they used to be, in addition to being among the richest poor people in the world. And there is another factor that is huge: the top 20 percent household bracket (64 million) contains nearly twice as many actual people as that bottom 20 percent bracket (39 million)! And keep in mind that today 27 percent of households are one-person households while in 1970 that number was just 17 percent. Does anyone want to contest the fact that one-person households are the most likely to be in the bottom quintile? What else? Freddoso points out that:

The bottom 20 percent includes millions of young people starting their first jobs, who will earn more as they grow older. It includes some retirees with assets but little income, and millions of new immigrants just stepping up to the bottom rung of the economic ladder. And yes, millions of chronically unemployed householders, too. But let’s take that bottom quintile for what it is and do a bit of amateur number crunching:

a)The 39 million people living in the bottom-earning household quintile (13 percent of Americans) made a total of $476 billion in 2006.

b) If they were their own nation — let’s call it Carteria (please, suspend your disbelief for a moment) — they would have had a per capita Gross National Income of $12,205 in 2006. (Their per capita GDP would be much higher, but also impossible to calculate with the numbers we’re given.)

c) According to my highly scientific survey of Wikipedia, that puts Carteria in a tie with Saudi Arabia for 41st place in per capita income. The average Carterian would be well ahead of the average Mexican and twice as well-off as the average Venezuelan or Russian.

That’s not great, but it’s not so bad considering that Carterians all come from the 23 million lowest-earning households in the United States.

Plain and simply put, the lowest 20%, is a bracket where a significant amount of the people really are not enduring much of any kind of hardship. But like with Healthcare where the number 43 million uninsured gets bandied about without ever pointing out what the breakdown of those 43 million is, this big number makes for better socialist propaganda. If however that 43 million is broken down thus making it obvious to the audience that the majority of people lumped in that group are there by choice - teenagers with parents that have insurance, young people that opt not to purchase insurance, and so on - or by shady accounting that includes illegal aliens (that vote for democrats) as uninsured people, then suddenly it loses its power. Just like that constant harping about the lowest 20% loses its power when you reveiw the above data. The fact is that democrats want to tax people into obedience and use government handouts to control society and perpetuate their power. They should not be allowed to lie about the economy to do so. The traditional MSM is not very likely to do the work and challenge their bull, so we need to do it ourselves. You can be certain that the economic improvements for anyone, and especially those in the bottom 20%, will never come from anything democrats do. Their MO usualy results in damaged economies and slowed or even worse false growth. Of course you would be damned to find anyone in the MSM that will not suddenly think the economy was just fine if the coccupant of the WH had a (D) next to his name like we had when Clinton was there.