tbentley.com

From NYT 7/9/12:

USA trends

On his blog, McAfee explains the graphic:

Since the Great Recession officially ended in June of 2009 G.D.P., equipment investment, and total corporate profits have rebounded, and are now at their all-time highs. The employment ratio, meanwhile, has only shrunk and is now at its lowest level since the early 1980s when women had not yet entered the workforce in significant numbers. So current labor force woes are not because the economy isn’t growing, and they’re not because companies aren’t making money or spending money on equipment. They’re because these trends have become increasingly decoupled from hiring — from needing more human workers. As computers race ahead, acquiring more and more skills in pattern matching, communication, perception, and so on, I expect that this decoupling will continue, and maybe even accelerate.

He offers some (and some not so good) solutions here.

Also, charts on the development of poverty since Harrington.

Click on image to expand

Inequality

Estonian president blasts Krugman over GDP graph

A wise man once told me, “Never get a house that doesn’t have corners to hide in.”  Or at least a plethora of corners, hidable or not.  And some doors.

I don’t understand the demand for homes with an “open plan.”  This generally means a lack of walls, no corners,  large open spaces.  Which means, a larger house.

My house now has about 3500 square feet of space.  This gives three bedrooms, livingroom, master bedroom, master bath with separate WC and walk-in closet, dining room, kitchen, plus lanae in the warm months. There are lots of corners in our place.  And a number of doors.  We use one of the smaller bedrooms as a TV room; sometimes, after watching the news, I will walk from there to the master bath, passing through the diningroom and livingroom, where there is quiet, classical music playing.  The contrast is stunning, and immediately soothing.  An immediate hideout.  And an entirely different wing of the house.

The average-size home built in the the 60’s was 675 square feet; in the  late  ’70s it was 1250 square feet; the average size home built today is over 2500 square feet.  My own house could fit easily in the “great room” of many new homes.

I put this growth of square footage down in large part to the demand for “open layout.”  When everything is open, everything is together, and privacy is lost. So if you want to feel alone, you have to have another room, and then each room has to be larger.  In the open plan, you can watch the TV from the kitchen sink; in fact you *must* watch the TV if you’re standing at the kitchen sink–or at least hear it.  Hear the TV, and all the converstaions in the rest of the “open” area, including squabbling and qvetching. And the dog barking. And the phone ringing. And you’re never alone–until you go down in the basement, or to the “bonus” room  (o0ps, the bonus room is usually an open space upstairs, overlooking the “great” room).

I really think we’d all be better off if we learned to live in less space, but with more private spaces, where you can be alone and quiet, to just think.  Or is that un-American?

Lots of scary talk about frackin’ goin’ on these days. Doing big scary things underground, where we can’t see what’s going on. Not being forthright about what they’re doing.
Reminds me of some other big things going on underground–some other big, scary things. Really. I wrote about it a couple of years ago, here:  My Atomic Explosion

From WonkBlog:

@EzraKlein: If health-care costs had tracked inflation over recent decades, the average family would have $5,000 more per year: http://bit.ly/wzDCER

But health-care costs are included in the CPI (inflation rate).  How does that affect the picture?

Why we’re not shut up in a room:

Chart

(I post these charts so I will be able to show them in an argument)

Can’t stand hearing Repooplicans saying again and again that Obama has lost jobs and has never created any jobs. Note that Obama took office during the great decline in employment, and jobs started going up after the Stimulus started.  Here’s the important graph:

chart of jobs before/after obama

Dear Ed,

Love your show, and your down-to-eath presentation. Seems to me, though, that lots of folk out there don’t understand the basics of economics. “Trickle Up Economics” chart does a great job, but there are so many more ideas that need to be made clear.

• What is a bank?  How does it work?
• What does GDP mean? or GNP?
• How does capitalism work?
• What is socialism?
• Why regulation?
• What’s the Euro? (soon to be huge)
• What’s a Board of Directors?
• What does ‘Incorporation” really mean?
•  The difference between TARP and the Stimulus

I’m not suggesting you start a classroom going–that would be really dreadful. But every day, one of the above or a similar economic question comes up, or is caused by one of the above subjects.

So why not have your staff you surely have a competent staff) prepare a whole variety of answers to such questions; then, if there’s a bank failure, say, you can talk for a few minutes about how banks work. Or Congress is passing a national debt constitutional amendment, explain how the national debt works, and why that’s different from the deficit.

In other words, devote a portion of each show explaining the economic (or governmental) underpinnings of the issues the rest of the show deals in.

Just a suggestion; I look forward to seeing its implementation.

Yours,

Tom Bentley
Simpsonville, SC
tbentley@tbentley.com