How do you alleviate economic inequality in America? It's easy to complain about greed and extravagance but much more difficult to come up with practical policies that would make a real difference in the long run.

The default proposal these days is to increase tax rates on top income brackets, starting with an elimination of the Bush tax cuts. That may help a bit, but as you can see from the following graph, the trend toward income concentration did not begin with Bush's presidency, and it would take radical tax increases to get back to 1970s levels. The government would have to strip an additional 30 percent from the incomes of the top ten percent and somehow put that money into everyone else's pockets.

After the Thanksgiving Day gluttony is over and after our teams have either won or lost (Our biggie between the Lions and the Packers went horribly awry for my loved ones, poor dears.) and after we've taken our tryptophan-induced naps, the next fun thing to think about, talk about or plan for is Black Friday, our annual Big Huge Shopping Extravaganza.  It's the day when primitive survival skills kick in and the absolutely-must-haves traditionally

It's hard out there for a bank. Last year, retail banks lost a major revenue source when the government regulated overdraft charges. This year, they took another hit when the government capped the debit card fees. And amidst an anemic credit market, they're having trouble finding investment opportunities for their deposits.

It's become disturbingly clear that the people occupying Wall Street, and the centers of several other major American cities, have no plan for the future. No vision. No coherent ideas. No sense at all of what to do next.

Before about a decade ago, I paid rent, insurance, and doctor's bills by writing checks and sending them through the mail. My wife paid by check at the grocery store. I had a credit card for traveling and large purchases, but used cash as much as possible.

As Solar Decathlon teams assemble their entries, politics heats up everything under the sun. Republicans gleefully exploit the failure of solar panel startup Solyndra, and Germany's Passiv Haus Institut casts out their US incarnation. In Passive House Schism Leaves U.S. in Limbo, GreenSource reports:

After I suggested being honest about college sports on this blog page, Taylor Branch has made the same case, better, in The Atlantic. With, you know, actual reporting and everything.

Here's a bit from Branch's lead, as a shoe-advertising king pin talks openly about "buying your schools" in order to increase his market share:

Let's get one thing straight: without a national debt, there is no national defense. This has always been true.

We can all sputter righteously about the evils of borrowing and debt, but a United States government that did not borrow would either have to do without any military at all or else make do with a tiny, ill-equipped military with troops who almost never got their pay, which is what we had before the Washington Administration. Access to credit has always been central to effective government operations, and especially to effective military operations. Gimmicks like "debt ceilings" and "balanced budget amendments" not only threaten the effectiveness of basic, everyday governance but make the government completely incapable of responding to an emergency.

American businesses are breaking up with the middle class.  This won't be news around here, though it might stir up some controversy over at The Daily today.  In my column this week I looked into some of the potential implications of two big changes in American business.  They used to rely largely on domestic middle class consumers to make their profits.  This was true even in the 1990s, when the main effect of globalization was overseas exploitation in order to sell cheap goods ba

So, last summer LeBron James decided to leave Cleveland, leading to a massive outburst of Clevesentment and a widespread belief that Cleveland had burned down among my friends and family who don't live there (and not just among them, judging from the search terms that old post collected). A year later, he's gotten himself to the NBA Finals for the first time in his career.

Since my previous post on the satirical Web site CoalCares.org, there have been several interesting developments. First off, the infamous Yes Men have been outed as the masterminds behind the site.

Head on over to CoalCares.org and take a look at the work they’ve done creating a spoof Web site for the purpose of creating discussion on the harm of coal plants as well as rising asthma rates.

A snippet from the site:

In Peak Oil Elasticity, Tom Whipple wonders why $4.00 fuel hasn't made Americans cut back our driving all that much: 

As America celebrates President Barack Obama's birth certificate as well as Osama bin Laden's new eye hole, one bit of news managed to get by that will likely have a bigger effect on the U.S. - Chrysler announced a profit:

Chrysler has posted its first quarterly net profit since declaring bankruptcy almost two years ago, Reuters reports.  

The New York Times takes a look at the contract disputes that have been delaying production of Mad Men. (But Deadline Hollywood suggests that the show is now a go, even though the fight with series creator Matt Weiner is not over.)

Here's the deal: how much money you get paid is based on how much other people get paid. This is a fact of life. Your paycheck is based on what other people get in other jobs like yours, and what other people in your area make, and what other people with your qualifications make. The price of those people's work sets the price of replacing you if you quit your job. If you make less than they make, it can only be so much less. If you make more than they make, it's only realistically going to be so much more.

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better by Tyler Cowen

The Great Stagnation, a short yet ambitious e-book by economist Tyler Cowen, has been generating a lot of buzz lately. It has been recommended by Matthew Yglesias (ThinkProgress), Ezra Klein (Washington Post), Tim Harford (Financial Times), and Nick Schulz (Forbes), to name a few.

I bought the book on the suggestion of EmmaZahn here at dagblog. I found it to be clear, original, and so engrossing that I missed my subway stop. But I did not ultimately find it persuasive.

In the book, Cowen argues that America's spectacular growth of the past 200 years has been driven by the consumption of "low-hanging fruit" which we have now exhausted. In particular, he cites cheap land, advances in education, and technological innovation. He argues that since we can no longer rely on these drivers, our economy will stagnate for the foreseeable future.

But you don't have to be an economist to see that the evidence Cowen relies on to bolster his low-hanging fruit theory has been derived from some aggressive cherry picking.

Sam Antar, one of the architects of the “Crazy Eddie” fraud of the 1980s, has examined the current state of politics and has made an important decision - He's going back to crime.