Remembering Martin Luther King on Confederate Heroes Day

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 20 Comments

Today is Confederate Heroes Day in Texas. If it seems like a strange coincidence that Confederate Heroes Day is placed awkwardly close to the date we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, that’s because it’s not a coincidence.

Robert E. Lee’s birthday, January 19^th, has been a minor state holiday in Texas since 1931. Amid rising calls nationally for a celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday, the Texas Legislature responded in 1973 with the sort of passive-aggressive hostility so common in the late Civil Rights Era. They consolidated Lee’s and Davis’ birthday holidays into a celebration of the Confederacy which, by pure happenstance of course, would fall at almost the same time as King’s birthday, January 15^th.

That little piece of spite on the part of the Legislature happened in an era of one-party Democratic rule in Texas. Republicans are fond of pointing out that Democrats ran the South throughout the Civil Rights Era and were responsible for many of the worst of the atrocities carried out against African-Americans. So, here’s a chance for my fellow Republicans to put some capital behind their rhetoric.

Perhaps it would be a valuable good-faith gesture for the Legislature to simply move Confederate Heroes Day to line it up with similar commemoration dates in other states later in the spring, usually in April. It would acknowledge the Democratic legislature’s poor motives in setting the date in January and emphasize the state’s commitment to Dr. King’s legacy and memory under a new, more enlightened Republican regime.

This will not happen. The reason it will not happen is that the Republicans who hold single-party rule in Texas now are the heirs of single-party Democratic rule back then. In fact, some of them are literally the same people sitting under a different party banner. Something as innocuous as attempting to change the date of a holiday hardly anyone knows exists would bring the rats out the woodpile. They would place relentless pressure on Republican politicians not to “back down” to “political correctness.”

That is the state of the Republican Party in a nutshell. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Tagged with: confederate, confederate heroes day, martin luther king, republican, texas
Posted in Civil Rights, Neo-Confederate, Texas

Alex Haley’s Interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 5 Comments

The Daily Beast republished an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. done by Alex Haley in 1965 for Playboy magazine. So much of our memory of Dr. King is bound up in his 1963 speech in Washington and the mythmaking that has followed his death. Reading his comments in such a relatively relaxed setting is a powerful reminder of his human side.

Fifty years later his casual commentary on events from that time still resonate. The whole interview is worth a read, but here are a few excerpts:

Comparing Southern racism against his experiences in the North:

Well, the Northern white, having had little actual contact with the Negro, is devoted to an abstract principle of cordial interracial relations. The North has long considered, in a theoretical way, that it supported brotherhood and the equality of man, but the truth is that deep prejudices and discriminations exist in hidden and subtle and covert disguises. The South’s prejudice and discrimination, on the other hand, has been applied against the Negro in obvious, open, overt and glaring forms—which make the problem easier to get at. The Southern white man has the advantage of far more actual contact with Negroes than the Northerner. A major problem is that this contact has been paternalistic and poisoned by the myth of racial superiority.

Responding to calls for more patience in achieving better race relations:

Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America? I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom.

We often forget that King was criticized bitterly in the Black community for being a racial “moderate,” bargaining with the white community for freedom.

I mean to say that a strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist. If I am to merit the trust invested in me by some of my race, I must be both of these things.

His painful disappointment with white religious leaders:

The most pervasive mistake I have made was in believing that because our cause was just, we could be sure that the white ministers of the South, once their Christian consciences were challenged, would rise to our aid. I felt that white ministers would take our cause to the white power structure. I ended up, of course, chastened and disillusioned. As our movement unfolded, and direct appeals were made to white ministers, most folded their hands—and some even took stands against us.

Haunting comments on the impact of the Civil Rights movement, up to that point, on middle class African-Americans and the poor:

Though many would prefer not to, we must face the fact that progress for the Negro—to which white “moderates” like to point in justifying gradualism—has been relatively insignificant, particularly in terms of the Negro masses. What little progress has been made—and that includes the Civil Rights Act—has applied primarily to the middle-class Negro. Among the masses, especially in the Northern ghettos, the situation remains about the same, and for some it is worse.

Facing the constant threat of death:

If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn’t function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically. I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause.

Is it strange that the best song ever written about Dr. King came from an Irish rock band?

Happy Birthday Dr. King.

Tagged with: martin luther king, mlk
Posted in Civil Rights

Hygiene for an open forum

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 12 Comments

Hopefully many of you are enjoying this platform. I’m finding it a lot more enjoyable than I anticipated and I intend to maintain it. That said, it is by necessity very lightly moderated. A few reminders about best practice might be helpful.

Don’t worry about “hijacking” a thread. The topic/subtopic structure of the comments mean that you can pretty much post whatever you want and replies can go off in their own direction while other conversations continue. I like it. Go nuts. The more the comments section resembles an old-fashioned message board the better.

Civility on a platform like this is largely a two-dimensional choice. As the wise Homer Simpson once said, “it takes two to lie – one to tell the lie and another to believe it.” Likewise, offensive trollery tends to starve where people ignore it. It blooms, spreads, and spawns where it draws attention. Dumb comments are best left to rot in the digital sun.

Thoughtful disagreement is fuel for a place like this. A reply is a kind of acknowledgement of an interesting and credible opposing viewpoint.

Most of the usual stuff about be respectful and whatnot is unnecessary here. I appreciate that fact a lot.

I’ve learned a lot over the years from the comments on these posts. Thanks for hanging out there and making this so much fun.

Posted in Uncategorized

Same sex marriage in Texas

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 66 Comments

For two decades, since Steven Hotze pushed Betsy Lake out as chairman of the Harris County GOP, religious activists locally and nationally have pushed the Republican Party into indefensible, bigoted, and ultimately futile stands on a whole series of “culture” issues that mean a great deal to them and matter little or none to anyone else. The effort has run the party’s once-powerful center-right, business-friendly coalition onto the rocks, completely alienating a younger generation, ending the party’s relevance in urban areas and the north, and saddling an otherwise attractive commercial agenda with nearly impossible baggage.

What have these religious fundamentalists accomplished for all the damage they’ve done?

The Mayor of Texas largest and most important city is now married to her longtime, same-sex partner. Same-sex marriage is now legal in Utah and Oklahoma. In short, the Religious Right has accomplished none of their ridiculous and embarrassing goals while turning the GOP into the Party of Bigoted Jerks.

What is the Harris County GOP doing about it now? Suing the city over same-sex spousal benefits. The Party’s leading Imam, Jared Woodfill, issued the following fatwa this week:

“Why does she wait to get married in another state after the election? Why does she give same-sex benefits to couples married in other states after the election?” Woodfill said. “This is a mayor who is bringing California and New York values to Texas, and these are values Texans don’t subscribe to. Texans have defined their position on marriage in the form of a constitutional amendment.”

It was a mistake to build an agenda around these issues in the first place. It is utterly idiotic to double down on them as they continue to fail. Someone has to take Republicans’ feet off the pedal of the culture wars before we drive this bus off a cliff.

Congratulations Mayor Parker. I’m sorry it took me and so many other Americans so long to recognize what you and others were experiencing. Best wishes.

Tagged with: houston, parker, republican, same sex marriage
Posted in Religious Right

American conservatives could learn from Israel

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 93 Comments

Religious fundamentalists in the US have a favorite foreign country. They revere Israel, campaign there, and use it as a prop for fundraising. Their reverence for Israel might prove useful if they took the time to actually look at the place. Unfortunately the far right’s affection for Israel resembles certain other things they love, like market economics and the Bible, in that they know very little about it and refuse to learn more.

That’s a shame, because there are powerful lessons we could learn from Israel’s remarkable economic success and its growing internal political dysfunction. A reality-based look at Israel might bring some much-needed sobriety to the Republican Party.

The state of Israel was built on Socialism and was perhaps the earliest, most committed Marxist experiments outside of Russia. Early relations with the US were understandably tense and complex. The country’s first major ally was the Soviet Union and relations with the Soviets were strong until Stalin’s death.

The post-Stalinist Soviet government made allies of Arab-nationalists and for the next twenty years Israel had no firm international support. Relations with the US only started to warm significantly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War placed Israel solidly, though still awkwardly, in the global anti-Communist bloc.

Much like Western Europe, Israel since the ‘90’s has worked to dismantle the infrastructure of state socialism. That effort has led to a slow, but concerted privatization campaign and the liberalization of its laws on capital ownership and private enterprise. It has not, however, had a meaningful impact on the dense network of social support that the state has constructed.

Israel has a highly successful system of universal healthcare. Just like the US under “Obamacare,” they have a personal mandate requiring everyone to obtain insurance. Unlike the US, basic coverage is paid for through a tax surcharge collected through the authority that maintains the social safety net. Israel’s system costs of fraction of what we pay in the US, while delivering health care ranked among the best in the world.

Tax rates in Israel are very high, even in comparison to Western Europe. Those who earn more than the equivalent of about $200,000US annually pay the top marginal tax rate of 50%, in additional to social security and health insurance tax surcharges. When all of these charges are included, the top marginal rate is well over 60%. Israelis also pay a VAT of 18% on purchases. Capital gains rates can reach 50% for some transactions and corporate tax rates are 25%.

The social welfare system provides the poor with payments for food, transportation, housing and cash which are relatively generous compared to the US. About a quarter if Israeli households use the welfare system, about the same as in the US.

Abortion is legal in Israel, though a review committee must approve the procedure in each case. The review committee has historically approved 98% of requests. This year the government has further extended abortion rights by deciding to significantly expand state funding of abortions. That’s right, American fundamentalists whose religious freedom is supposedly destroyed because Obamacare provides contraception coverage are somehow untroubled that their aid money is indirectly underwriting Israeli abortions.

Though Israel’s abortion laws are among the most lenient in the world, Israel has very low abortion rates compared to the US and Europe.

Gay marriage in Israel is a practical reality through a sort of common-law marriage provision. The Israeli state does not provide any government-sanctioned marriage. Marriage law is a purely religious matter regulated by each religious community, but a civil union law grants same-sex couples equivalent rights.

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been illegal for more than twenty years. There have been no bans on gays serving in the military officially since the sixties. Women have always been permitted to serve in combat roles since before Israel was formally a state and women are subject to compulsory military service.

Taxes are high. Everyone gets health insurance. Gays are treated equally and abortion is safe, legal and rare. If Ted Cruz’s vision of the world makes any sense, this place should look a lot like North Korea (or even worse, France). In reality Israel has developed into a powerhouse of economic dynamism.

Israel hosts 60 companies on the NASDAQ exchange, more than any other foreign country except China. Technology you use for cell phones, virus protection, cutting edge health care and navigation all have roots there. Israel hosts major development centers for nearly every influential player in information technology. As recently as 2008, Israel attracted as much venture capital as Britain. Israel leads the world in per capita venture investment, entrepreneurship, and research & development spending.

A strong public education system, a tight social safety net, excellent public infrastructure, an aggressive effort to recruit immigrants, strong ties to the West, significant state support for research and development, and a solid base of property protections have contributed to Israel’s successful embrace of the modern knowledge economy. This progress has come in the face of daunting internal and external obstacles. Though Americans tend to be aware of Israel’s external challenges, the internal ones may be the most dangerous to this emerging super-economy.

Like the US, conservative politics in Israel is increasingly influenced by religious extremists. A rapidly growing community of ultra “Orthodox” Jews, Israel’s answer to the Amish, are challenging Israel’s liberal political establishment.

They are fundamentalist, poor, and thanks to a specialized curriculum, badly under-educated, leaving them largely incapable of functioning in a modern economy. They are driving a hardline foreign policy that keeps the country locked in constant military tension, yet they are exempt from national service.

The Orthodox community is a small but consolidated voting bloc that has been very successful in carving out concessions at the expense of the rest of the country. They are pushing Israel toward international confrontation while undermining the political liberalization and economic progress that has powered the country toward greater integration with the wider world.

Sound familiar?

American conservatives could learn from Israel’s success. Economic liberty, combined with a strong infrastructure, immigration, and a solid safety net are a fine formula for economic growth. We also have a lot to learn from Israel’s worst political problem. The religious extremists who are terrified by the modern world will destroy the personal freedom and prosperity that comes with a dynamic economy. There’s a lot to love in the Israeli experience if we have the stomach to view it honestly.

Tagged with: fundamentalist, israel, republican, socialism, socialist
Posted in Health Care, Religious Right

Legal weed is making people crazy

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 38 Comments

Marijuana has been available for sale legally in Colorado for a couple of weeks now. As predicted by some, legal marijuana is driving people toward some shockingly idiotic public behavior, but so far none of it is coming from the users.

The normally sound and reserved David Brooks may have produced the most embarrassing commentary so far on the subject. By getting all personal about what’s wrong with marijuana legalization, he revealed perhaps a little too much.

His article on the subject ended up being an accidental piece about how affluent white Americans live on a completely different planet from everyone else. It’s clearly a nice place, with a different colored sky, where well-heeled youngsters experiment with narcotics without the faintest suggestion of concern that it might place them in the cross-hairs of local law enforcement.

Brooks describes the gradual process by which he and his young friends gradually abandoned weed in the most agonizingly clueless terms:

We graduated to more satisfying pleasures. The deeper sources of happiness usually involve a state of going somewhere, becoming better at something, learning more about something, overcoming difficulty and experiencing a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

One close friend devoted himself to track. Others fell deeply in love and got thrills from the enlargements of the heart. A few developed passions for science or literature.

So his young friends were rescued by art and literature, except for that one kid who apparently suffered from some sort of heart condition. The irony of course is that Brooks is describing what people will experience in an environment in which pot is essentially legal. For those who grow up white and affluent, minor marijuana use IS effectively legal and almost everyone has done it. Nowhere in his maudlin account does he describe being dragged out of his car by police or having his access to college loans ripped away because he got caught. That simply isn’t part of the prohibition experience for certain Americans.

Whatever thought I may have had of using weed in high school went up in smoke with the first “dog runs” on campus. It would begin with pagers (remember pagers?) going off all over the school and dealers scrambling to get out of class. Police vans would arrive, the on-campus cops would lock down the classrooms, and no one would be allowed out until the dogs had made their sweep. Whoever was loose in the hallway would be arrested. Police would come remove from class the culprits whose lockers had been sniffed out and cart them off to jail.

What was Brook’s marijuana nightmare?:

I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning.

Yea, those memories are tough to live with.

As awkward as Brook’s commentary may be, no one can ever top Sen. Ted Cruz for pure absurdity. Fearless, even in the face of crippling contradictions, Cruz assaulted Obama’s “Imperial” Presidency by criticizing the President’s refusal to send the feds to shut down Colorado’s marijuana markets.How does this theory square with states rights, limited government, and liberty? When you’ve already made up your mind, everything is evidence that supports your opinion.

For once, the National Review actually nails it:

The legalization of marijuana in Colorado — and the push for its legalization elsewhere — is a sign that Americans still recognize some limitations on the reach of the state and its stable of nannies-in-arms. The desire to discourage is all too easily transmuted into the desire to criminalize, just as the desire to encourage metastasizes into the desire to mandate.

Colorado is doing fine so far and although there are a lot of kinks to work out in their regulatory scheme, it is reasonable to expect that the miserable era of prohibition is nearing its end. We won’t miss it.

Tagged with: brooks, cruz, legalization, marijuana, prohibition
Posted in Ownership Society

A theory that could explain the NJ bridge scandal

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 24 Comments

Someone may finally have uncovered an explanation for this very “bridge & tunnel” scandal that could actually make sense.

The claim that Gov. Christie’s aides arranged a traffic jam to bully a recalcitrant small-time mayor always sounded too petty to be credible. The stunt would have been a dumb idea politically, but it may have been a brilliant piece of payback for a well-connected real estate developed in need of some help.

Reporter Steve Kornacki is claiming that the traffic jam may have been engineered to provide a boost to the developers of a nearby property who were struggling to obtain financing. From New York Magazine:

The project is question is the redevelopment of 16-acre piece of Fort Lee land located at the foot of the George Washington Bridge. Sokolich divided the space, which sat vacant for years, into two parts: The eastern portion is now occupied by two new residential towers that should be finished later this year. The western half is to serve as the site of Hudson Lights, a $218 million mix of residential, commercial, and parking space that, as Kornacki notes, used its proximity to the George Washington Bridge access lanes as a major selling point to potential investors and tenants. Groundbreaking on Hudson Lights was delayed this summer because of financing issues. However, the project’s developers announced that they had finally secured financing on September 16 — three days after New York Port Authority official Pat Foye put a stop to the access lane closures by questioning their legality in an e-mail to his New Jersey counterparts.

This line is a bit more interesting. It might explain why Christie appeared so clueless about the whole thing, and hint at the real reason he so promptly fired the aides involved when he finally took a close look.

Always follow the money.

Tagged with: bridge scandal, chris christie
Posted in Uncategorized

Why the workforce is shrinking

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 6 Comments

The Washington Post’s Wonkblog presented a good summary this week of the intersecting factors contributing to steep declines in workforce participation. They identified three different dynamics at work, but unfortunately they left out one really important statistic that helps tie them all together. Without that one additional factor, it is tough to appreciate what we are experiencing or to recognize the policy demands created by this transformation.

The article points out that declining workforce participation is influenced by:

1) Demographics – the Baby Boom generation is retiring. In fact, almost all of the decline since 2011 is attributable to retirements.

2) Economic weakness – many of the long-term unemployed are simply giving up their careers, falling into poverty or leaning on family where possible.

3) Social Security disability – related to both of the two other factors, many more people than before are applying for and receiving permanent disability status.

What these factors overlook is the larger set of structural forces that are going to drive down workforce participation further, even after a full economic recovery. The best clue to this factor comes from examining long-term workforce participation in the most affluent segment of our population: white males.

Labor force participation by adult white men has been on a continuous steep decline since we started measuring it in the 1940’s. It’s not because white folks are so shiftless. It’s because we’ve been getting richer.

The length of a productive career, as a percentage of a lifetime, has been dropping steadily as capitalism advances and that process has accelerated dramatically since the rise of global capitalism a generation ago. Yes, there are fewer jobs available at the low end of the economic spectrum than there were fifty years ago, but that’s not the only dynamic at work. A productive, successful career starts later and ends earlier than it ever has. Our most lucrative careers don’t crank up until a worker is nearly thirty and they taper off to more or less voluntary work, or entrepreneurship, about twenty years later.

White males have been the first to experience this transformation because they have traditionally enjoyed the greatest access to the best careers, but this transformation is spreading through the rest of the culture. We are seeing a steeper shift right now because of an unusually weak economy and the beginning of the Baby Boom retirement cycle. However, declining workforce participation rates are likely to continue even as the economy recovers. Understanding this dynamic changes the range of relevant policy approaches pretty dramatically.

Tagged with: retirement, unemployment, workforce participation
Posted in Economics

Did Sen. Rubio just endorse a minimum income?

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 67 Comments

Florida Senator Marco Rubio today commemorated the 50th anniversary of Johnson’ War on Poverty with a speech outlining a new approach to the social safety net. What that approach actually is remains to be seen, but his vague comments hint at shift in policy that has been bubbling through the right for almost a decade.

His speech may have been short on details, but it was remarkable for some of the facts he acknowledged.

Today, the debate on poverty is primarily focused on the growing income gap between the rich and poor. From 1979 to 2007, income for the highest-earning Americans grew more than it did for anyone else. From 1980 to 2005, over 80% of the total increase in income went to the top 1% of American earners.

These are indeed startling figures, and they deserve attention.

This is common knowledge across the country to almost everyone, except for Republican politicians. For a GOP Senator to even acknowledge these facts is a bit of a shock, and enough to earn some immediate criticism. But he went on:

A lack of education is contributing to inequality in other ways as well. The jobs that have replaced the low and middle skill jobs of the past pay more. But they require a high level of professional, technical, or management skills. And we simply have too many people who have never acquired the education needed to attain those skills.

What’s worse, children from lower income families are the least likely to get an advanced education. The result is a vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty.
[…]
Our modern day economy has wiped out many of the low-skill jobs that once provided millions with a middle class living. Those that have not been outsourced or replaced by technology pay wages that fail to keep pace with the cost of living. And even many of the middle-skilled white- and blue-collar jobs have also been lost to automation or shipped overseas.

At least until a few decades ago, our economy proved sufficiently dynamic and innovative to replace old jobs with new ones. But this hasn’t happened in recent years.

This one is a shocker. Everyone on the right knows that poverty can only come from bad choices and everyone has the same opportunity to succeed in America. The unemployed are just lazy people sitting at home soaking up tax revenues earned by good white folks. We are supposed to believe that jobs and good moral values would materialize if the checks stopped coming. Expect him to get some blistering criticism over this one.

Then come the proposals. Hiding inside the anodyne talk about “Washington elites”, bureaucrats, states’ rights and the need for family values was a nugget that sounds an awful lot like a minimum income. Here’s how he described it:

This would allow an unemployed individual to take a job that pays, say, $18,000 a year – which on its own is not enough to make ends meet – but then receive a federal enhancement to make the job a more enticing alternative to collecting unemployment insurance.

Unlike the earned income tax credit, my proposal would apply the same to singles as it would to married couples and families with children. It would also be a preferable means of distributing benefits since it would arrive in sync with a monthly paycheck rather than a year-end lump-sum credit. And it’s a better way of supporting low-income workers than simply raising the minimum wage.

Where have you heard that before?

Are Republicans finally warming to the merits of a minimum income?

Tagged with: basic income, marco rubio, minimum income, republican, senator rubio
Posted in Economics, Ownership Society, Welfare State

The problem with measuring poverty

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Chris Ladd — 8 Comments

What does poverty mean fifty years after the Federal government began systematically measuring it? This piece in The Atlantic points out some of the statistical problems with the way we measure poverty over time, but it misses what I think is the most important missing element. Here’s the problem pointed out in the article:

The Census Bureau’s method for deciding whether a family falls above or below the poverty line is also a problem, because it only considers pre-tax cash income—meaning wages and government benefits like Social Security payments. What’s wrong with that? Well, it ignores massive anti-poverty programs like food stamps, which families spend just like cash, or the Earned Income Tax Credit, which gives their finances a boost after tax season.

Our current approach to calculating poverty is so full of holes that, for the past few years, the Census Bureau has produced an alternative number known as the “supplemental poverty measure” or “SPM”—which is bone-dry government speak for “the statistic you should really be paying attention to.” Think of it as the official poverty rate’s smarter, more realistic cousin. On the one hand, it accounts for additional expenses, like medical care and regional variations in housing. On the other, it better incorporates government benefits, like food stamps and housing subsidies. In the end, it usually comes out to be a little less than a percentage point higher than the official poverty rate.

What’s also missing though is a more realistic measure of the steep decrease in the overall cost of living, as measured by our ability to obtain (cheaply) things that no one in 1965 was even dreaming of. This comparison from a previous article comes to mind:

In 1985, a top of the line Ford Mustang GT carried a sticker price of $14,000 which, adjusted for inflation, equals roughly $30,000 today. That car featured an AM/FM radio with an optional cassette deck. The finest Mustang you could buy in 1985 had no air bags, no anti-lock brakes, no remote electronic door locks, no CD player, USB port, or heated seats.

It had no cup holders.

Visit a Ford showroom today and you can drive away with their finest Mustang GT tricked out with advanced safety features, every imaginable gadget, excellent engineering and reliability, a spectacular warranty, and even cup holders for about $30,000.
…
The examples could go on and on. In 1985, not even Steve Jobs could afford to store and use all of his music and movies on a device the size of a credit card. Now you can get one on eBay cheaper than the relative cost of a Sony Walkman in the ‘80’s. Overseas travel, electricity, movies, stock trading, even fresh vegetables in the wintertime are cheaper, better and more broadly available than they were just a generation ago. The only things that are getting more expensive are services that still depend on direct, personalized interaction with a human expert, like health care and education.

An accurate measure of relative poverty over time is highly elusive. Measuring rising inequality may be a more practical way to determine how lifestyles and well-being have changed over time.

Posted in Uncategorized