Category: Poverty & income gap
-
Something Stinks About This Tax Proposal
By Peter Galuszka Pick a number. Any number. Could 49,000 jobs be created? How about 44.000 jobs? It could be 77,000 jobs, or maybe as few as 900 jobs. These are the all-over-the-board possibilities suggested by the grandly-named Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy in Springfield, which touts itself as a non-partisan think tank, when,…
-
Zoning Laws, Housing Segregation and Educational Inequality
by James A. Bacon Following the lead of the book, “Why Nations Fail,” Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rothwell classifies national institutions into two categories: “open” institutions that diffuse power and opportunity and “extractive” institutions that concentrate power and limit opportunity. Among the extractive institutions he espies in the United States is zoning. As he writes…
-
Quote of the Day: Mark Spitznagel
From “How the Fed Favors the 1%” in the Wall Street Journal. The Fed, having gone on an unprecedented credit expansion spree, has benefited the recipients who were first in line at the trough: banks … and those favored entities and individuals deemed most creditworthy. Flush with capital, these recipients have proceeded to bid up…
-
The “Agenda 21” Nutbars
By Peter Galuszka A half a century ago in rural places like the tobacco and corn fields of Eastern North Carolina, there used to be billboards with strong and aggressive messages. One said: “This Is Klan Country.” Another advocated: “U.S. Out of the United Nations.” Both represented frightening, hard-right elements. The source of the first…
-
¡Viva la Revolución!
—
by
in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterEstimado Jefe! Usted nunca debe salir de la ciudad, señor! Ahora que usted está ausente, la revolución comienza! Amados lectores de ya no ver los artículos que glorifican a los ricos y privilegiados. Vamos a ayudar a la tierra y los pobres y redistribuir los fondos de cobertura. ¡Viva la Revolución!
-
IG of the Day: Virginia Poverty
Over the past 30 years, Virginia has consistently logged a lower incidence of poverty than the United States as a whole, as seen in this graphic published by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. But broad measures of poverty don’t tell the whole story. In “Poverty and the Social Safety Net: Who Are Virginia’s…
-
No More Welfare for Drug Abusing Moms
by James A. Bacon During my urban homesteading days in Richmond’s gritty Church Hill some 20 years ago, I lived on a block that, at any given point in time, had two or three crack houses. Gunshots were common background noise. There was a triple homicide in one house, and a separate triple shooting (only…
-
Fleeced by the Fed
Fed’s zero interest rate bails out Wall Street and Treasury, sinks middle class by James A. Bacon The Federal Reserve Board announced plans last Tuesday to keep short-term interest rates at near zero for another three years and said it might embark upon another bond-buying program to drive down long-term interest rates. The stock market…
-
America’s Growing Cultural Class Divide
Charles Murray, the most brilliant sociologist at work in the United States today, has written a fascinating essay in New Criterion about the class polarization taking root in the United States. Once upon a time, he argues, Americans of different social and economic classes mixed easily with one another. Today, they no longer do. Increasingly,…
-
Why People Are Pissed
There are good reasons why the American people are angry at the big bankers on Wall Street. The latest news is the revelation by way of Bloomberg that the Federal Reserve Bank discretely lent up to $1.2 trillion to United States banks at below-market interest rates during the height of the financial meltdown, a gift…
-
IG of the Day: The Wage Gap
This chart, taken from the Weldon Cooper Center’s newly published, “Virginia Income Trends, 1980-2010,” illuminates the growing income gap in Virginia. This chart, which shows the growing disparity in wages, has more meaning to me than stats showing the disparity as measured by adjusted gross income reported to the Internal Revenue Service, a commonly cited…
-
Link between Poverty and Obesity
New column published in the Washington Times. by James A. Bacon A while back, I attended the homecoming game between Collegiate and St. Christopher’s, two prep schools in the Richmond, Va., area. For the most part, the parents in the football stands were well-to-do professionals, executives and business owners who could afford to pay stiff…
-
IG of the Day: Millionaire Mobility
The Congressional Budget Office made quite a splash recently when it published its recent report, “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income between 1979 and 2007.” Progressives swooned in droves at seeming confirmation of their conviction that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. (Actually, the report concluded that the richer…
-
Elephants Squeak By
By Peter Galuszka Virginia’s Republicans failed to replicate their national party’s success in last year’s mid-term national elections and barely squeaked by to win both houses of the state General Assembly. The 20-20 split in the state Senate hung on a spare 222 votes in a Spotsylvania County race. By conceding his election race Democratic…
-
The Wonk Salon, November 8, 2011
The Education Almanac National Center for Educational Statistics “The Condition of Education 2011” is jam packed full of statistics covering a wide range of topics in K-12 and post secondary education. Who Are the Poor? Urban Institute Not a lot of surprises here. The poor consist disproportionately of young people, single-parent households, people with lower…