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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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T

The Librarian

Banned
Link said:
I refuse to contribute to that joke of a thread, but how old are you? You're seriously underestimating monthly costs and leaving quite a few necessary costs out.
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Black Mamba said:
My recollection of zero shift in this thread has been positive, so that thread is so confusing.
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pigeon said:
This has been such a weird week that way. First Karma Kramer turned out to be a Benghazier when he always claimed to be Green, and now zero shift is a Randian. Is Kosmo travelling around the country locking posters up in a room with Fox News until they turn insane?
Click to expand...

Now, hold on, gentlemen, I think Romney has a point. See, if you make some smart investments in stock, you can easily fall back on that money in hard times. So that leaves plenty of room to afford the basic necessities. If you calculate the inflation of the median cost of the poor status, you'll find that affordability has tracked pretty close to the highest outlier.
 
U

User 406

Banned
Considering the basic thrust of zero shift's questions over the past few months, it seems pretty clear his political opinions have shifted. It happens.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
I think his inittail question (in this thread) was worth asking. Median income up for the bottom 20% does mean something. But as others noted, it's only one small piece of a bigger picture.

Costs of specifc things (like healthcare) as opposed to general inflation should be considered.

The amount of work one does to maintain that income (wage deflation) should be considered.

Costs associated with childcare, particularly for people who work more the earn the same amount of money needs to be factored in.

In other words, the stat is meaningless on its own.

Wealth disparity is IMHO a separate topic, as I don't think it's a horrible thing *if* the lowest-income people enjoy a certain standard of living. That's the line Fox is pushing, but the fact is that lowest 20% *isn't* enjoying a certain standard of living.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Ignatz Mouse said:
I think his inittail question (in this thread) was worth asking. Median income up for the bottom 20% does mean something. But as others noted, it's only one small piece of a bigger picture.
Click to expand...

I generally agree with your points here, but I would specifically note that it's also important to consider median income for the bottom quintile in the context of median income for all the other quintiles. If the median income for the poorest stayed static along with the median income for everybody else, that's just a recession. When the median income for the poorest is stagnant while the median income for the richest is jumping, that's a question of the distribution of surplus. So the stat is not meaningful on its own.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
I gotta say, as much of a shithead as Coburn's being right now, there's something to be said for consistency.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
pigeon said:
I generally agree with your points here, but I would specifically note that it's also important to consider median income for the bottom quintile in the context of median income for all the other quintiles. If the median income for the poorest stayed static along with the median income for everybody else, that's just a recession. When the median income for the poorest is stagnant while the median income for the richest is jumping, that's a question of the distribution of surplus. So the stat is not meaningful on its own.
Click to expand...

Hence my comment about disparity.
 
B

Blatz

Member
B-Dubs said:
That's the thing, they found a problem and fixed it before anyone even found out. That's why no one really gives a fuck, they fixed it so there's nothing to be outraged over anymore.
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Not just that they fixed it, but they all received tax exempt status. 100% of those tea party A-holes.
 
B

Blatz

Member
zero shift said:
What's wrong with this claim?

20120524-bottomfifth.jpg
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It went up $1700 over 13 years. Then it took 30 years to go up another $1200. I don't know what's "wrong" with the claim. But it's a disgusting set of figures, IMO.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Blatz said:
It went up $1700 over 13 years. Then it took 30 years to go up another $1200. I don't know what's "wrong" with the claim. But it's a disgusting set of figures, IMO.
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What wrong with it is that they skip the years Reagan was in charge. They blend him together with Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. It's one thing to do it at a 13 year interval, but to do 13 years followed by 30? Obviously something disgusting is being hidden.
 
Angry Fork

Angry Fork

Member
Zero shift was trolling with that thread? Or his opinions legitimately changed? I remember he posted an article he wrote here sometime last year talking about favoring a reformist method towards socialism rather than revolutionary. What happened?
 
Link

Link

The Autumn Wind
B-Dubs said:
What wrong with it is that they skip the years Reagan was in charge. They blend him together with Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. It's one thing to do it at a 13 year interval, but to do 13 years followed by 30? Obviously something disgusting is being hidden.
Click to expand...
There's definitely a reason they chose those specific years. Were those depressed years economically?
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Ignatz Mouse said:
Hence my comment about disparity.
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Well, right, but I think my point is actually separate from the question of income disparity. I'm not talking about the moral or economic question of diverging incomes by class, I'm just noting that the statistic, in a vacuum, is not meaningful.

To take a Yglesias-style hypothetical, if every American suddenly made half as much money at their jobs due to Sharia law, you'd see the poorest Americans drop in median income by about 50%. This might look like a huge issue, but it really wouldn't be, because everybody's income would be dropping in the same way, so overall, it wouldn't change much of anything. (This is a gross oversimplification since prices are sticky, but in a traditional Keynesian model multiplying everybody's income by a constant is essentially irrelevant.)

If the law only cut the incomes of the bottom 20% by half, on the other hand, it would look the same from the perspective of that particular statistic, but it would actually be the return of slavery.

Without at the very least considering share of income or at LEAST income relative to GDP the median income by quintile number is too contextless to be meaningful at all.
 
Angry Fork

Angry Fork

Member
What's the point of being so serious about the trolling when you're already an established member though, like at some point you're supposed to reveal it's a joke no? lol
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Link said:
There's definitely a reason they chose those specific years. Were those depressed years economically?
Click to expand...

But the point is silly to begin with . . . there have been massive productivity gains over the decades. Are we supposed to give zero percent of those productivity gains to the poor? Look at the wealthy over the same time period . . . they went from millionaires to billionaires. And we are discussing how the poor went from $17,000 to $20,000?!?! WTF?
 
Link

Link

The Autumn Wind
speculawyer said:
But the point is silly to begin with . . . there have been massive productivity gains over the decades. Are we supposed to give zero percent of those productivity gains to the poor? Look at the wealthy over the same time period . . . they went from millionaires to billionaires. And we are discussing how the poor went from $17,000 to $20,000?!?! WTF?
Click to expand...
No, I agree that even the point of the chart is ridiculous, and I also asked that very same question about the wealthy earlier, but to use such random years as 1967 and 1980? There's a method to that madness.
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
Cyan said:
Now, just for pure curiosity, how has the top quintile done since 1967?
1967: $101,711
1970: $108,653
1980: $117,139
1990: $140,915
2000: $180,129
2010: $169,633

Increase of 66.8%. If this is lower than you expected, consider that this is the top 20% rather than the top 1%.
Click to expand...

Yep, and it includes the top 1%, which is where almost all of that increase is coming from. I would imagine if you exclude the top 1% from this quintile, you would see an increase that is only marginally more than the bottom quintile.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
I'm hearing Coburn may be backing down from his previous ransom.

Kind of a pity, really.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
Cyan said:
See, this is why it's useful to look at the underlying data. :p

http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf#page=49

And we discover that the number being used is in fact the 20th percentile--the point at which 20% of Americans get less income than you, and 80% get more--and not the mean income of the bottom quintile, as implied.

If we look at the mean income for the bottom quintile, we see the following:
1967: $9132
1970: $9982
1980: $10,858
1990: $11,589
2000: $12,860
2010: $11,034

But wait, this means income for the poorest quintile is up 20.8% since 1967, not the mere 17% that Fox News claimed! Yeah, except that income is still $11k, which is presumably why they used the other figure.

Also, let's look at the other dates. Income is up 10.5% since 1970, 1.6% (!) since 1980, down 4.8% since 1990, and down 14.2% since 2000. Yes, down. This is why they skipped forward 30 years, to avoid showing that bottom-quintile income is lower now than it was in 1990.

Now, just for pure curiosity, how has the top quintile done since 1967?
1967: $101,711
1970: $108,653
1980: $117,139
1990: $140,915
2000: $180,129
2010: $169,633

Increase of 66.8%. If this is lower than you expected, consider that this is the top 20% rather than the top 1%.
Click to expand...

Pigeon, Cyan, thanks.

That tells quite a different story.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
I know I've been really harpin' on Iran-Contra, but I gots me one last (?) question: Why exactly did congress outlaw funds to go to the Contras to begin with?
 
S

speculawyer

Member
ClassyPenguin said:
So once again the real winner is PC.
Gaben for treasurer.
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The xbox system sounds like they are trying to be Steam and go with a CD-Key system. Except who is going trust Microsoft? And will they have great sales? And can I log onto any xbox one with my ID and then download and play my games?
 
C

CharlieDigital

Banned
Oklahoma's GOP Senators Find Themselves In Tornado Aid Bind

Even as President Obama was declaring that would get "everything it needs right away," the state's most vociferous critic of federal emergency aid vowed that he, too, would push for assistance "without delay."

Yet Republican Sen. Tom Coburn's position on federal aid came under close scrutiny in the hours after the tragedy. The issue is a complicated one for Coburn and his fellow GOP senator, James Inhofe: Both have been consistent critics of FEMA spending and recently voted against aid to victims of Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged swaths of New Jersey and New York last year.

Three of the state's five members of the U.S. House also voted against Sandy aid; Republican Reps. Tom Cole and Frank Lucas supported the $60.2 billion aid package.

Tuesday with NPR, Cole said he was proud of the vote.

But Coburn and, to a lesser extent, Inhofe have become the faces of pushback on federal emergency spending even though their state is one of the biggest recipients of U.S. disaster aid.​
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
speculawyer said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boland_Amendment

That doesn't give the whole story though . . . part of it was that many of the groups we were supporting were down-right brutal organization with terrible human rights abuses.
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Wasn't another reason also cause congress found out the Contras were dealing drugs?

edit: Also, I hope Coburn stays firm on his demands. Would help further diminish the GOP's popularity.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
CharlieDigital said:
Oklahoma's GOP Senators Find Themselves In Tornado Aid Bind

Even as President Obama was declaring that would get "everything it needs right away," the state's most vociferous critic of federal emergency aid vowed that he, too, would push for assistance "without delay."

Yet Republican Sen. Tom Coburn's position on federal aid came under close scrutiny in the hours after the tragedy. The issue is a complicated one for Coburn and his fellow GOP senator, James Inhofe: Both have been consistent critics of FEMA spending and recently voted against aid to victims of Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged swaths of New Jersey and New York last year.

Three of the state's five members of the U.S. House also voted against Sandy aid; Republican Reps. Tom Cole and Frank Lucas supported the $60.2 billion aid package.

Tuesday with NPR, Cole said he was proud of the vote.

But Coburn and, to a lesser extent, Inhofe have become the faces of pushback on federal emergency spending even though their state is one of the biggest recipients of U.S. disaster aid.​
Click to expand...

Why doesn't some nutty religious person stand up and say "Well, god has rendered judgment upon Oklahoma. They voted not to help others so now they got hit." That would make more sense than most of the stupid stuff they say.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
speculawyer said:
Why doesn't some nutty religious person stand up and say "Well, god has rendered judgment upon Oklahoma. They voted not to help others so now they got hit." That would make more sense than most of the stupid stuff they say.
Click to expand...

God's punishment for Republicans slacking off when it came to voting to repeal Obamacare?
 
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