Are You Better Off Today Than . . . .

According to the IRS (as reported by The Wall Street Journal), between 1992 and 2007,

. . . the average income for the top-earning 400 families, denominated in 1990 dollars, grew from $17 million to $87 million, representing a five-fold increase in real terms. . . .

The data shows that these families saw their incomes increase by 31 percent between 2006 and 2007 alone, while the average income of each family reached $345 million.

The amount of money earned by the group more than doubled from 2001, when its members earned on average $131.1 million. In 1993, the top 400 tax return filings amounted on average to $46 million. This means that there was an eight-fold nominal increase in the average earnings for this group between 1993 and 2007.

Meanwhile, the effective tax rate on this group—the amount actually paid in taxes—fell to 16.6 percent, the lowest figure on IRS records dating to 1992.

Miss Vaginal Davis

"Vaginal Davis is the key proponent of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag." More on YouTube.

Dallas County Primaries

We can't elect the officials we need if we don't get them on the ticket to begin with. We need to inform ourselves about party candidates and vote in the primaries (I admit I've been remiss in this dept.; but no more).

In Dallas County, the next primary is March 2. Early voting has already begun and continues through Feb. 26. Find your early voting locations here.

For what it's worth, among the Dems, I strongly endorse Ronnie Earle for lieutenant governor. Please contact me if you'd like recs re- the other offices.

Home Computer of the Future

The caption reads,

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.

(Thanks, Thor!) Love the monitor. And as U N Gaitonde asks (see comments below), the double steering wheel was for what?

Keep your eye on that RAND corporation.

Seeing ≠ Believing

Pretty amazing:



(Thanks, Ben!) The "news" segment startng 30 secs. in was for a movie . . . I think.

The Evisceration of the Middle Class

Great article, with supporting references, at Alternet. E.g.,

Paul Buchheit, from DePaul University, revealed, "From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation's total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%." Robert Freeman added, "Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three-quarters of all the economy's growth was captured by the top 1%."

. . . [T]he United States already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the average worker much harder than CEOs, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all time record.

As mentioned before, just look at the first full year of the crisis when workers lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans increased by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion, which is more than the combined net worth of 50% of the US population. Just to make this point clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155 million people combined.

* * * * *

[Meanwhile, although US workers are working more hours and have become dramatically more productive, their inflation-adjusted income has declined.] If our income had kept pace with compensation distribution rates established in the early 1970s, we would all be making at least three times as much as we are currently making.

More at the first link above. See also Elizabeth Warren.

Janitors Crash Bankers' Meeting

"At 10 am today, about one hundred janitors and supporters of SEIU Local 26 crashed the National Bankers Association meeting at the Saint Paul City Center. They executed a carefully planned action designed to barge into the bankers’ conference and demand fair treatment of Local 26 workers. Union members quickly surged from their bus parked outside into the atrium of the Hilton, past the conference check in desk and into the ballroom where speakers were addressing hundreds of Minnesota bankers. Security stopped the vast majority of the protesters, but a few made their way into the bankers’ gathering.

The union’s message was conveyed with chanting, air horn blasts and massive signs that exposed the multimillion dollar salaries of top Minnesota bank executives like Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, who made over $18 million this year. Full-time janitors make as little as $20,200 a year, before taxes, and many face thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical costs due to poor coverage, or avoid doctor visits out of fear of incurring big bills."

Social Evolution

Speaking of monopolies (see previous post),

Some cell behaviors – especially those that give the cell group its ability to exploit environmental resources – are cooperative in nature . . . . When genetic relatives are clustered together, cooperative cell behaviors like extracellular enzyme secretion can evolve more easily. Secreted enzymes, in turn, may allow a pathogenic bacterial colony to become more virulent, or a nascent cancerous tumor to become malignant.

. . . . In the three images shown here, the red and blue cell types do not differ in any way other than their color, which is used to determine whether a cell group remains well-mixed, or whether related cells tend to cluster together.

From left to right, environmental nutrient concentration was decreased from ubiquitous, to moderate, to sparse. As nutrient concentration decreases, the tendency for different genetic lineages to spontaneously segregate increases, which favors the evolution of cooperation.

More here; from the Art of Science 2009 Online Gallery, where there are more cool images (thanks, Bob!)