Bush admits income gap

From the Wall St. Journal: "This isn't a sudden change in Mr. Bush's economic philosophy, but rather a change in tactics." Why doesn't Bush see the income gap as a problem?

As the graph shows, most of the workforce got left behind during the last five years of recovery. This fits with two other pieces of the jobs puzzle. (1) Outsourcing has been growing, and (2) about 7 million jobs failed to materialize after the recession. These jobs were predicted year after year by the Bush economists, but they never materialized.

Outsourcing helps explain the missing jobs, and fewer jobs per worker means workers will settle for lower pay. And that's one big reason wages have not kept up.

But why doesn't Bush think that's a problem? The Wall St. Journal tells us: "Top White House economic officials still don't consider today's inequality -- the growing share of income going to those at the top -- an inherently bad thing; they believe it simply reflects the rising rewards accruing to society's most skilled and productive members." The reason: Bush's economists tell him it's not a bad thing.

Where did they get this idea? It's half the standard economic theory--the half conservatives like. Economics says every one gets paid their "marginal product." So if you get paid more, it means your marginal product is higher, and if you don't it's lower. It's sounds fair because it sounds like "your marginal" product is all your doing: you're lazy or you're good.

But, real economics doesn't say that. It's say it's only part you and it's part the market. If lots of jobs go overseas, or foreign workers come in, then there are too many workers per job. Adding one more worker is worth less when there are too many already--so by economic definitions they all have lower marginal products even though they are just as good as they ever were. Skilled economists like those it the White House know this, but they will never, ever, say it in public. Conservatives like to pretend the individual is 100% responsible, and the market is 100% fair.

What will happen in the next recession? We lose another 7 million jobs? Read more!

Austin's Electric Car Folly

Turning Cars into Power Stations. Austin's mayor Duncan has spent $1 million promoting his scheme to have cars suck up electricity at night so they can act as electric power stations by day.
Works great, except for the $10,000 battery cost. It seems Austin forgot that batteries wear out. They figure just the cars have batteries anyway, so they are free.

In reality, hybrid batteries are long lasting only because they are not heavily used. They are rarely fully discharged and normally charged only to 60% so they have room for regenerative breaking energy. Here's a rough cost analysis. The new Prius batteries hold 1.8 kWh of electricity. Bought at night and sold in daytime this might save 7¢. These batteries are pretty much the same as in your laptop and are pretty well kaput after 1200 full cycles. That's an electricity saving value of $84. The Prius batter costs over $3000.

The problem is that once cars are used as power stations every day, their batteries will no longer last the life of the car and will have to be replaced at huge cost to the car owner. Excerpts from Wall St. Journal ♦ Battery life
Read more!

Sunnis: Stay ... and Be Shot.

Bush tells us the Iraqis don't want us to leave. That's about right. Only 30% want us to leave immediately. But figure this out. 94% of the Sunnis think its acceptable to shoot at US troops, ...

Sunnis think we should not have invaded by 98 to 2, but 44% want us to stay till things settle down. Why? So they can shoot at us?

Probably not. Although 94% think that's fine, the Sunnis are afraid of the Shiites and think we provide some protection. They don't want us to stay because they like us.

Here's another mystery. Only 6% of Sunnis want an Al Qaeda style religious government. So why have they been supporting Al Qaeda? Same answer. They like Al Qaeda shooting at the US and the Shiites. Al Qaeda would have almost no support in Iraq (6% of about 18% Sunnis is only 1% of the population) if the US left and the Sunnis had some territory they felt safe in. ABC Polls Read more!

Un-De-Baathification

It works just like unscrambling eggs. In May 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, sent Saddam's army home with their guns and sacked the rest of the Baathist party. Out of work, many joined the insurgents. This was known to be mistake by all but Cheney's neocons even before it was carried out.

Finally, the US is backing a law to reverse the blunder. Shiites who dominate the Iraqi parliament, claim the point is to put Baathists back into key positions of power. This makes some sense as Saddam's army cannot be re-hired, nor can most former government employees, since the government has been completely reorganized and re-staffed. Sources Read more!