By Pavlina R. Tcherneva
Bard College
Growth in the US increasingly brings income inequality. A striking deterioration in this trend has occurred since the 80s, when economic recoveries delivered the vast majority of income growth to the wealthiest US households. This note updates my original inequality chart (reproduced below) with the latest data. For earlier discussions, see e.g., here, here, and here.
Figure 1: bottom 90% vs. top 10%, 1949-2012 expansions (incl. capital gains)
By William K. Black
March 28, 2017 Bloomington, MN
The good news is that the Kansas legislature, the land of the lunatics, experienced an outbreak of the reality virus (first diagnosed and named by Steve Keen among neoclassical economists). The bad news is that the Kansas’ Crazy-in-Chief, Governor Sam Brownback, has proven immune to the virus.
Brownback decided to put Art Laffer in charge of Kansas’ taxation policy. Even neoclassical economists roll their eyes when it comes to Laffer’s claims that dramatic tax decreases lead to significantly increased net tax revenues. Laffer’s batting average on this claim is .000 and his “proof” of his claim is a graph (the “Laffer curve”) that he drew that contradicts reality. Brownback knew that Laffer was batting .000 on his claims and that Laffer never drops his claims when reality (repeatedly) falsifies his graph. To no one’s surprise, Brownback’s tax cuts produced a fiscal disaster for Kansas.
William K. Black
(A co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United)
March 20, 2017
The New York Times’ editorial board published an editorial on March 12, 2017, praising Preet Bharara as the “Prosecutor Who Knew How to Drain a Swamp.” I agree with the title. At all times when he was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (which includes Wall Street) Bharara knew how to drain the swamp. Further, he had the authority, the jurisdiction, the resources, and the testimony from whistleblowers like Richard Bowen (a co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU)) to drain the Wall Street swamp. Bowen personally contacted Bharara beginning in 2015*. Continue reading
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Posted in William K. Black
Tagged banksters, Citigroup, Richard Bowen
NEP’s Bill Black appeared on The Real News Network discussing newest government data still show trends of low wage job creation, racial disparities in employment, and workers continuing to leave the labor force. Video is below. You can view with transcript here.
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Posted in William K. Black
NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network along with economist James Henry hypothesizing that here are fraudulent and criminal activities lurking within Trump’s unreleased Tax forms. The video is below. You can view with transcript here.
Posted in William K. Black
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