Economists Predict U.S. Poverty Will Reach Highest Rate Since 1960s

"The analysts’ estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the United States, or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures. ...

"Demographers also say poverty will remain above the prerecession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent, and weak wage growth. 

"Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent."

US poverty rate projected to hit highest level since ’60s (The Boston Globe)

As If It Wasn't Generic Enough Already

Darden, the company behind the I-could-be-anywhere-USA restaurants Olive Garden and Red Lobster, has now started pairing the two under one roof in certain markets. As if we needed any more convincing of the dubious quality of the food at these places. Welcome to the continued generification of America.

"'This is really the first casual diner, full-service restaurant that I’ve seen do this,' said Senatore, who is based in New York. 'You have to ask: 'Why has nobody else done it?' Sometimes it’s because it’s not a great idea.'"

Darden Sees Olive-Garden-Red Lobster Making New Revenue (Businessweek)

Yes, We Need to Raise Taxes, but We Also Need a More Transparent Tax System

Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic:

"It is beyond dispute that there is a huge amount of rent-seeking in the American system, that lobbying yields truly stunning returns on investment, that the complexity of our tax code benefits very rich people who employ extremely intelligent tax attorneys to reduce their tax burden, and that certain policies (like the Wall Street bailout) redistributes toward moneyed interests. ...

"When campaigning in 2008, Obama explicitly argued that the American system required systemic reform as a precondition for fair outcomes. After being elected, he abandoned any real effort to fundamentally change the system, and proceeded to work on enacting reforms within it. I'd love to see Obama achieve systemic tax reform that ends the advantages the rich gain from complexity and access. Instead he's focused on the "within the system" reform of raising rates on the rich. Given the alarming fiscal situation we're in there's a case to be made that doing so is necessary. But it's a suboptimal course, and there should be no illusions about that." (Emphasis added.)

Focus on the Ill-Gotten Gains of the Rich Instead of Their Tax Rates

In Praise of Boredom

"...Boredom is more than a mere flagging of interest or a precursor to mischief. Some experts say that people tune things out for good reasons, and that over time boredom becomes a tool for sorting information — an increasingly sensitive spam filter. In various fields including neuroscience and education, research suggests that falling into a numbed trance allows the brain to recast the outside world in ways that can be productive and creative at least as often as they are disruptive."

You’re Bored, but Your Brain Is Tuned In (NYT)

Should the U.S. Follow New Zealand's Example and End Farm Subsidies?

"Faced with a budget crisis, New Zealand's government decided to eliminate nearly all farm subsidies. That was a dramatic reform because New Zealand farmers had enjoyed high levels of aid and the country's economy is more dependent on agriculture than is the U.S. economy.

"Despite initial protests, farm subsidies were repealed in 1984. Almost 30 different production subsidies and export incentives were ended. Did that cause a mass exodus from agriculture and an end to family farms? Not at all. It did create a tough transition period for some farmers, but large numbers of them did not walk off their land as had been predicted. Just one percent of the country's farmers could not adjust and were forced out. 

"The vast majority of New Zealand farmers proved to be skilled entrepreneurs — they restructured their operations, explored new markets, and returned to profitability."

In New Zealand, Farmers Don't Want Subsidies (Cato)

Teacher Idiotically Brags About Illegally Blocking an Atheist Student Group to the Wrong People (Jezebel).

Republicans Want Their Own Preexisting Conditions Covered, But Not Yours

"'House Republicans refuse to admit they voted to give themselves taxpayer funded lifetime guaranteed health care instead of having the same health care as their constituents,'" said Jesse Ferguson, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, referring to the fact that members of Congress are eligible for retirement benefits after just five years."

Democrats Mock GOP For Protecting Own Health Care In Repeal Vote

On Internet Addiction

"We may appear to be choosing to use this technology, but in fact we are being dragged to it by the potential of short-term rewards. Every ping could be social, sexual, or professional opportunity, and we get a mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for answering the bell. 'These rewards serve as jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion engine, much like the frisson a gambler receives as a new card hits the table,' MIT media scholar Judith Donath recently told Scientific American. 'Cumulatively, the effect is potent and hard to resist.'"

Is the Web Driving Us Mad? (Newsweek)

The Future Isn't So Bright For Private Medical Insurers

Rick Ungar makes his case for the most potent component of Obama's Affordable Care Act:

"That would be the provision of the law, called the medical loss ratio, that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect—85% for large group insurers—on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit. Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care.

"This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time.  Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ratio will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry."

The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! (Forbes, December 2011)

Gallup Poll Indicates Weaker Showing By Young Voters in 2012 Election

"Fifty-eight percent of U.S. registered voters aged 18 to 29 say they will 'definitely vote' this fall, well below the current national average of 78% and far below 18- to 29-year-olds' voting intentions in the fall of 2004 and 2008. ... 

"With Obama maintaining just a slight advantage over Mitt Romney in registered voters' presidential preferences, the election result could be decided by turnout. The challenge for Obama is that many of his strongest support groups, including young adults, blacks, and Hispanics, have historically turned out to vote at lower rates than other subgroups. So maintaining a relatively high level of turnout among these groups is a key to Obama's winning a second term."

Young U.S. Voters' Turnout Intentions Lagging (Gallup)

Gates Foundation Pledges $1 Billion For Birth Control In Developing World

"Family planning nearly vanished from the global agenda over the past several decades, partly as a result of past abuses, such as forced sterilizations, and partly because of opposition from religious conservatives.

"Gates said she and her husband, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, made a careful study of the issues and were swayed by the strong evidence that giving women the power to limit family size not only improves health but also increases children's school attendance, leads to more prosperous families and can raise countries' GDPs. 

"'That's why ... we had absolutely no hesitation in making this decision,' said Melinda Gates, who has described the new initiative as her 'life's work.'"

Gates Foundation's pledge for contraceptives in developing countries: $1 billion (Seattle Times)

Romney Booed After Pledging to Repeal 'Obamacare'

The crowd didn't like this particular aspect of Romney's speech given at the NAACP annual meeting in Houston today (Houston Chronicle).

And here's a video at Think Progress.

The Impact of Ending Tax Cuts on The Rich

"Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimates that allowing tax cuts for Americans who earn above $250,000 to expire at the end of 2012 would reduce gross domestic product growth in 2013 by $40 billion, or about 0.24 percentage points.

"Allowing the “middle class” tax cuts to expire would shave an additional 1.06 percentage points off economic growth. That means letting all of the Bush tax cuts phase out would cut about 1.3 percentage points from growth."

Will Ending Tax Cuts for the Rich Hurt the Economy?

Income Inequality Illustrated in Six Cases

Nick Hanauer, an individual from Seattle who makes $10 Million+ per year, on income inequality:

"'If there were a shred of truth to the claim that the rich are our nation's job creators, then given how rich the rich have gotten, America should be drowning in jobs!'

"'So if the rich don't create the jobs,' I ask, 'who does?'

"'The middle classes!' Nick roars. 'A huge middle class will produce an unbelievable opportunity for capitalists.'"

Amber Waves of Green (GQ).

Big Organic

"...organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store. The industry’s image — contented cows grazing on the green hills of family-owned farms — is mostly pure fantasy. Or rather, pure marketing. Big Food, it turns out, has spawned what might be called Big Organic."

How ‘certified organic’ went corporate.

Following Crazy Horse's Example

"The ideologues of rapacious capitalism, like members of a primitive cult, chant the false mantra that natural resources and expansion are infinite. They dismiss calls for equitable distribution as unnecessary. ...

"Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality. Societies strain harder and harder to sustain the decadent opulence of the ruling class, even as it destroys the foundations of productivity and wealth."

Time to Get Crazy by Chris Hedges.

"Religious Freedom" Usually Means "Everyone Should Believe My Religion"

Rep. Valarie Hodges (R-Watson) is backpedaling after coming to the realization that the voucher program she voted for, which would permit funding of religious charter schools in Louisiana, ALSO applies to those pesky non-fundamentalist-Christian religions. Lol.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday. ...

“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said. “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Louisiana Republican: When I Voted for State Funds to go to Religious Schools, I Didn’t Mean Muslim Ones

Why Are You So Busy?

"The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. ... Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day."

The 'Busy' Trap (NYT).

Martian Mantle Contains More Water Than Previously Thought

"Based on the mineral’s water content, the scientists estimated that the Martian mantle source from which the rocks were derived contained between 70 and 300 parts per million (ppm) water. For comparison, the upper mantle on Earth contains approximately 50-300 ppm water.

"'There has been substantial evidence for the presence of liquid water at the Martian surface for some time,' Hauri said. 'So it’s been puzzling why previous estimates for the planet’s interior have been so dry. This new research makes sense and suggests that volcanoes may have been the primary vehicle for getting water to the surface.'"

Extensive Water in Mars' Interior (ScienceBlog.com).

Austerity Puts Greek Archaeological Heritage at Risk

Research and excavations are being abandoned. Museums that can no longer afford to pay for security are being plagued by armed robbers. And organized criminals are exploiting the chaos in an explosion of illegal digs and the trafficking of illicitly procured antiquities.

Cuts Leave Greek Heritage in Ruins (Nature).

The Real Job Creators

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Now let's focus that question on the economy: Which comes first, demand or supply? Well, Mitt Romney and most of the right would have us believe that supply leads demand, that noble 'job creators' must have their tax burden reduced in order to bestow jobs upon the middle class. You can think of this as the 'if you build it, they will come' school of economics. And, simply put, it's bullshit. Ceteris paribus, demand always comes before supply. And thus, growth in the economy comes from an empowered consumer, not from reducing tax burdens on employers. John T. Harvey, in a recent piece on Forbes.com, makes the point pretty well:

"...every rational entrepreneur’s goal is to reduce, not increase, the number of workers they have to pay. And quite right. Entrepreneurs have families, too, and they need to feed and clothe them. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

"Second and more fundamentally, no matter how much you lower costs, if you don’t have more customers, you won’t hire more workers. If the demand for goods and services stays where it is today and we only cut industry taxes and regulations, there is absolutely no reason to think that firms would expand employment. Rather, they would continue to produce at the same level and simply earn higher profits. On the other hand, if we leave taxes and regulations untouched but increase demand, entrepreneurs will happily add workers. And that is the root of the problem today. The bottom line, lost on Mr. Romney and many others, is that the real job creators are consumers. The direct route to reducing unemployment is boosting demand, not reducing costs."

Let's not forget that consumption is 70% of GDP. The Real Job Creators: Consumers, by John T. Harvey (Forbes).

Artist: Lori Nix

Years ago, Opensewer was one of the first websites to feature the art of photographer Lori Nix. Her work is brilliant, depicting strange constructed scenes of disasters, bleak locales and other odd happenings. Below is a brief description of Lori's art in her own words, as well as some images from the original Opensewer exhibition. To see what she's currently doing, go to her website, LoriNix.net.

"I am greatly influenced by landscape painting, particularly the Hudson River School of Painting which included the artists Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Frederich Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, and the Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich. Each of these painters possessed characteristics of romanticism and the Sublime and it's ability to create a state of mind and express intense emotions either through beauty or horror."

"I am interested in depicting danger and disaster, but I temper this with a touch of humor. My childhood was spent in a rural part of the United States that is known more for it's natural disasters than anything else. I was born in a small town in western Kansas, and each passing season brought it's own drama, from winter snow storms, spring floods and tornados to summer insect infestations and drought. Whereas most adults viewed these seasonal disruptions with angst, for a child it was considered euphoric. Downed trees, mud, even grass fires brought excitement to daily, mundane life. As a photographer, I have recreated some of these experiences in the series 'Accidentally Kansas'."

The Sublime And The Beautiful

From The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton:

"We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean but awed by what is powerful and noble." The sublime reminds us "that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves."

No matter what our aspirations and accomplishments, we're all just dust to dust. This sentiment is actually encouraging to me...kinda takes the pressure off, you know?

For more reading on the sublime, refer to Mr. Burke.

How to Fix the U.S. Economy

In these days of red herrings and politically-driven 'morality' debates, the American middle-class is being misled regarding what's really necessary to get out of the economic mess we're in. First off,

"[This] recession [is] actually fundamentally different—a "balance sheet" recession resulting from a quarter-century-long debt-binge, one that [will] take a decade or more to fix."

So, how do we solve the problem? Should we go to the rational extremes implicitly held by the stalwarts of the two mainstream political parties? Specifically:

Far Right: "Do you want a violent, painful 'adjustment' in which many million more Americans are thrown out of work and the incomes and spending of tens of millions of Americans are suddenly reduced, thus crushing American companies at the same time? Then immediately cut government spending from ~20%+ of GDP to the 15% of GDP the government collected in taxes last year and hope (pray) that the resulting dislocation doesn't further wallop GDP (which history suggests it almost certainly will)." 

Far Left: "Do you want to pretend we don't have serious problems and just keep the government spending vastly more than it takes in every year until our government debt load finally becomes unmanageable and the currency collapses? Then just keep doing what we've been doing for most of the past 30 years."

Of course, neither of these extremes make sense. Rather, the author suggests, and I agree, that the rational approach to fixing the economy involves the government doing what it can to minimize the short term pain of the middle class (thereby bolstering consumer spending, which is 70% of GDP), while getting the long-term deficit under control. This will involve the difficult recognition that, over the medium and long-term, government spending will have to drop and taxes will have to go up--the worst of all worlds to a culture that has become accustomed to an expected level of entitlement.

Henry Blodget - Here's What's Wrong with The Economy... (And How To Fix It).

The Science of Sleep

According to some scientists, people did not always, nor did they feel it important to, sleep in continuous uninterrupted blocks during the night. From the article Slumber's Unexplored Landscape by Bruce Bower:

"Early modern Europeans usually sank each evening into what they called a 'first sleep,' which lasted for several hours. Shortly after midnight, they awoke and spent 1 or 2 hours in a 'watching period.' A 'second,' or 'morning,' sleep followed.

"The watching period presented many opportunities, Ekirch notes. People coming out of their first sleep often stayed in bed to pray, converse with a bedfellow, contemplate the day's events or the meaning of a dream, or simply let their minds wander in a semiconscious state of contentment that was prized at the time."

This 2006 article from the New York Times points out that diagnosing interrupted sleep as a problem is a relatively recent phenomenon, encouraged by the mass marketing of sleep-enhancing drugs.

Updated 8/24/13: A recent article on this topic: Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You

Defense of Marriage Act Getting the Flogging It Deserves

“Tradition, standing alone, does not provide a rational basis for the law.”

The Defense of Marriage Act, Exposed (NYT).

The Great Con-Game That's Fooling Middle America

Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, reflects on the irony that although many working-class people in the United States vote conservative, conservatives are the last ones who would have their best interests at heart:

"The very capitalist system the economic conservatives strive to strengthen and deregulate promotes and commercially markets the perceived assault on traditional values."

"In order to explain to the 'Cons' why no progress gets made on these [socially conservate] issues, politicians and pundits point their fingers to a 'liberal elite', a straw man representing everything that conservatism is not. When reasons are given, they eschew economic reasons in favor of accusing this elite of simply hating America, or having a desire to harm 'average' Americans. This theme of victimization by these 'elites' is pervasive in conservative literature..."

Reading the News Critically

This article, adapted from the book How to Read a Paragraph: The Art of Close Reading by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, has some good points on critically reading the news. One of the simplest tips, however, and one of my all-time favorites, is Betteridge's Law of Headlines:

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'."

Helpful to remember the next time you're being bombarded by sensationalism.

God Damn It, You've Got to Be Kind

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

 From what might be my favorite Kurt Vonnegut book, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

The Cage of Western Civilization

Adam Curtis's fascinating documentary, The Trap, dissects and examines our contemporary idea of freedom.

"...What none of them would realize, was that within this dark and distrustful vision, lay the seeds of a new and revolutionary system of social control. It would use the language of freedom, but in reality, it would come to entrap us and our leaders in a narrow and empty world."