Set it, and forget it...

This is why the The Daily Show wins Peabody's and Emmy's. Showing the ridiculous parts of the debate like no news show has. It's beyond irony. It may be because the show doesn't have a pretense like news shows do to be unbiased towards individuals or the story...

Slateiness is next to Googliness

Put simply, reading Slate clarifies things in a way I have yet to see a newspaper do. Starting with good writers (Daniel Gross, Fred Kaplan, even Hitchens), great guest writers (Henry Blodget), great conversations, great cartoons, and with little things like using hyperlinks. It's fascinating to me how online newspapers still get away without linking to obvious online sources, government websites, research papers, other news websites (for those stories about a single scandalous quote). Slate is different in a lot of ways, and what says it perfectly to me is: A Slate writer never wastes a readers time. I don't know if I can say that for any other news source, apart from very few blogs, and one monthly news magazine (Harpers).

After The Washington Post Company bought Slate from Microsoft (1 out of 1.5 good things the company has started), and sqished the Business and Technology section into one, it's hasn't changed much editorially, which is good. The website sadly still looks the same since I regularly started reading Slate in 97-98 maybe. The search function could use some Googleiness. I have no complaints otherwise.

Prototype racing is good for you, especially on the radio.

I just drove my bike 90 miles, 30 and 60 miles continuously, and I've re-discovered something I already knew... I'm a weakling. Fuck, I'm tired! My knees are about fall off, but not nearly as fast as my two shoulders and elbows will. That's right, one arm - two pieces. Hitting cold-fronts and warm-fronts going 70 MPH is no good either. Eh... first time, it'll get better.

It's funny because it's true

Here's a page (208) from America: The book:



Here's an article from Armed Forces Journal, Before:


and After:



Bonus: Here's an article from Coming Anarchy about Central Asia:

Memorize This...

Thanks to the Economist's View for the nice example:

...assume taxes on the Poor are 10% and taxes on the Rich are 30%.

Scenario A: GDP is 1000. Rich (a small number of people) receive 600, Poor (a large number of people) receive 400.

Taxes: Rich pay 180, poor pay 40, total is 220, Rich share is 180/220 = 82%

Now do nothing more than redistribute income from Poor to Rich:

Scenario B: GDP is 1000. Rich (a small number of people) receive 800, Poor (a large number of people) receive 200.

Taxes: Rich pay 240, Poor pay 20, total is 260, Rich share is 240/260 = 92%

Some people have found a way to argue that because the share of taxes paid by the wealthy is higher under B, 92% instead of 82%, and because the Rich pay more, 240 instead of 180, the burden on the Rich has risen. I'll take that burden if they don't want it.

It's also possible to cut taxes. Starting from scenario A once again, let taxes fall to 25% for the Rich and 5% for the Poor, and redistribute income in the same way as in B:

Scenario C: GDP is 1000. Rich (a small number of people) receive 800, Poor (a large number of people) receive 200.

Taxes: Rich pay 200, Poor pay 10, total is 210, Rich share is 200/210 = 95%

That's the rich paying 95%, up from 92% in the same economy, after a flat tax cut. I'm very soon going to start calling our tax system regressive, I am. So... the Democrats can't explain this in english because... I'm sure Krugman has eluded to the GDP as the bigger factor, construing the taxes, but an example just makes things so much clearer.

Robert Reich goes to the core of the problem, growing the economy "progressively", through a progressive tax system, which automatically leads to better social mobility if I understand him correctly.