And you are here why?

Herewith a brilliant article in the WSJ (ostensibly a "news"paper), which talked about all the Back door tax increases associated with the fiscal cliff fun-ness at the end of 2012. I'm not really going to get into this, 'cept to highlight an image that was included with the article A copy of the image is shown above.  I highly recommend that you click on it to embiggen, and take a good long stare at it.  Please do not laugh uncontrollably.  Or cry.  Both reactions are possible... (Also, do remember that the median household income in the U.S. is $50,100 ) See all those sad people? They're all clearly sad because their taxes are going up. Especially the single mom in the top-left, the one w/ the two kids and the $260,000 income Which is exactly like all the other single-moms out there, especially the ones with two kids, as long as they are making 5.18 times the median income! And the married couple on the bottom right, the ones with four kids and ...

The folks at Rich Blocks Poor Blocks certainly know how to do it right.  They took the data from the 2006-2010 U.S. Census Community Survey , mashed it up w/ a bit of Google Maps, and Bob's your uncle, you've got a spectacularly cool way of knowing more about the income levels in the neighborhood that you live in.  A couple of things leap out immediately Its fascinating to see trends - and stratification - in the neighborhoods.  NY city (above) vs. D.C. below is a brilliant example It doesn't matter how wing-nutty people get, there is no way that "middle class" is $400,000. Even Suffolk County in NY (which is pretty ritzy) gets to - at most - $110, 000 (its actually $92K +/- $26K).  And the statewide middle-class range in NY is between $49,000 and $62,000. By the way, as you can tell from the above, the variability in the ranges is quite high - but it still gets the point across, and it is fascinating to look at the trends... (The images here are jus...

Ross Douthat seems to have thrown his hat into the ring for the " Clueless Asshat of the Year " award with his latest troll entitled " The Liberal Gloat ".  To quote The liberal image of a non-churchgoing American is probably the “spiritual but not religious” seeker, or the bright young atheist reading Richard Dawkins. But the typical unchurched American is just as often an underemployed working-class man, whose secularism is less an intellectual choice than a symptom of his disconnection from community in general. Which of course brings to mind those other "unchurched" Americans - you know, the Hindus, Sikhs, Moslems, Buddhists, Jews, etc. who - collectively - happen to, really, not be " underemployed working-class...(with a)... disconnection from community in general ". On the contrary, Hindus and Jews are (by far!) some of the wealthiest religious groups in the US (chart at the bottom), and Buddhists beat out Christians (not by much, but ...

Via Andrew Gelman and Avi Feller , we have the following chart showing the election results for four income groups (based on exit polls. Blanks indicate states that were not polled). I'll let Andrew and Avi explain the results above Lower-income voters consistently support the Democratic candidate in nearly every state. Upper-income voters, on the other hand, are more mixed in their political views: wealthy voters in Mississippi are strongly Republican while wealthy voters in Massachusetts are strongly Democratic. And now to the threatening part. Consider the following The median income in the US is $50K . Translation? Half the voters in the country are going to - overwhelmingly - support Democrats As inequality grows, the percentage of people in the >$100K will decrease. Translation? The number of people who might vote Republican will decrease   And that is a problem, and a significant one at that.  To quote Danny DeVito in " Other People's Money ", ...

per Mike Konczal who parses the World Income Database for us, we have the wonderful tidbits “The top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.” (T)he gains become quite high the further you walk up the inequality ladder and Timothy Noah points out from the same paper that (R)oughly one out of every four dollars earned in the United States during 2007 went to people whose family income exceeded about $420,000 in 2010 dollars The one percent's income share fell to 20.95 in 2008 and 18.12 in 2009. But in 2010 it bounced back up to 19.77 Check out the chart above, showing the income distribution over time.  To summarize it, income inequality was - oh so briefly - falling after The Great Recession, but those days are over, the 1% are doing just fine, thank you very much, and the rest of us are, well, sucking eggs all over again. It still baffles me as to why people aren't more upset at this.  I suspect " Making it into the NBA "...