I Hear This Song Echoing Across My Neighborhood When I Step Out My Front Door Each Morning . . .

QUOTE OF THE DAY

If it wasn’t for socialism, I wouldn’t be sitting at this computer right now. In order for me to get out of bed and hosed down and fed and all the other stuff that’s a prerequisite for rolling up to the computer, I employ a group of humans who rotate in and out every day to assist me. And their wages are paid by our tax dollars via a state program. It’s that evil bloody goddam job-killing socialism at its finest.

Cripples in states like Texas and Wisconsin and Kansas are fighting like hell to stop the funds that pay their assistants from being cut off. Governors are instead giving tax breaks to the mega-rich so that they will create more jobs. We all know this is true. When the mega-rich get to keep more of their money they throw bigger and better parties, which creates more jobs for cocaine dealers and prostitutes.

LET us HELP

Mike Ervin, 

AKA  

Smart Ass Cripple

CONTINUE GETTING OUT OF BED,

Shall We.

IT'S A STIGLITZ KIND OF DAY

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

- by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair.

Do you know we could eliminate half the predicted shortfall in the national budget by simply failing to renew the Bush tax cuts? Do you know that if corporations were taxed at a fair rate, much of the rest could be found? General Electric recently reported it paid no current taxes. Why do you think that was? 

Why do middle and lower class Tea Party members not understand that they bear an unfair burden of taxes that should be more fairly distributed? Why do they support those who campaign against unions and a higher minimum wage? What do they think is in it for them?

- from: The One-Percenters, Roger Eberts Journal.

The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty.

From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes - - -

- - - tramps and millionaires.

- from: the Populist Platform of 1862.

STUBBY'S LABOR QUOTES. 

APPLIED ECONOMIC THEORY & URINAL CAKES

Dear Economist,

Whenever I go to the gentlemen’s toilet in a pub, I’m unsure how to behave. The question is: Should I urinate on the urinal cakes or not? At first, I think that if I urinate on them I’ll help to finish them earlier, thus making the publican purchase more of them, and helping the economy.

But then I think, while I’m urinating, that if the publican has to buy more tablets, eventually he will probably have to raise the price of the beer, to my huge disappointment. So the question is, where should I urinate in the gentlemen’s toilets in the pub?

Thank you,

Massimo J.

Italy

READ THE RESPONSE HERE.

by Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist (Via. Twitter!).

I confess, I found this on Andrew Sullivan's site, The Daily Dish.

For more on the analogy try: Frederic Bastiat.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

-- Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson.

Applied Economic Theory & Urinal Cakes.

Frederic Bastiat, The Broken Window Allegory.