I Help Paul Krugman Find His Reading Glasses

Playing a variant of "the debate is over", Paul Krugman lauds the new Pikkety book while ignoring and deriding the critics:

The Piketty Panic

“Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the new book by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is a bona fide phenomenon. Other books on economics have been best sellers, but Mr. Piketty’s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a way most best sellers aren’t. And conservatives are terrified. Thus James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warns in National Review that Mr. Piketty’s work must be refuted, because otherwise it “will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged.”

Well, good luck with that. The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty’s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling — in particular, claims that Mr. Piketty is a Marxist, and so is anyone who considers inequality of income and wealth an important issue.

I’ll come back to the name-calling in a moment. 

Let me save you the suspense:

So what’s a conservative, fearing that this diagnosis might be used to justify higher taxes on the wealthy, to do? He could try to refute Mr. Piketty in a substantive way, but, so far, I’ve seen no sign of that happening. Instead, as I said, it has been all about name-calling.

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve been involved in debates over inequality for more than two decades, and have yet to see conservative “experts” manage to dispute the numbers without tripping over their own intellectual shoelaces. Why, it’s almost as if the facts are fundamentally not on their side.

Hmm, who is name-calling now? Since I offered help with the reading glasses, let's start with Scott Winship, writing in Forbes. One of his main points - some of Pikkety's charts are upside down:

Whither The Bottom 90 Percent, Thomas Piketty?

While Piketty’s efforts to improve our understanding of income concentration have been invaluable, the tax-return-based estimates that he and others have compiled are not without problems for certain applications. 

Basically, the tax data is more useful for very high incomes but much worse for the 90 percenters:

At the same time, it is no less true that tax return data cannot be used to assess trends in income below the top—at least in the U.S., and I suspect elsewhere. The Piketty and Saez data for the U.S. indicate that between 1979 and 2012, the bottom 90 percent’s income dropped by over $3,000. However, the official Census Bureau estimates indicate that the bottom 80 percent of households saw an increase of nearly $3,500. Median income—the income of the household in the middle of the distribution—rose by $2,500. If you are underwhelmed by these initial differences, stick around.

I need some help here. Mr. Winship is linking to this Census Bureau table. The key line is replicated here:

           Lowest   Second    Third   Fourth  Highest    Top 5    Top 5
    Year    fifth    fifth    fifth    fifth    fifth  percent  percent*
-------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- --------
2012 Dollars
   1979    11,808   29,369   48,422   71,060  127,526  194,491  214,767
   2012    11,490   29,696   51,179   82,098  181,905  318,052  433,937

These are in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars (the nature of the inflation adjustment can be improved, as Mr. Winship explains), but pressing on, I see a decrease for the bottom quintile of ($318), an increase for the next quintile of $327, an increase for the middle quintile of $2,757, and an increase for the fourth quintile of $11,038. That sums to a lot more than the $3,500 cited by Mr. Winship. In fact, if he is describing only the bottom three quintiles the increase is $2,765. Either number buttress his argument, but confusion about his numbers weakens it. [Wow, my bad - obviously, I need to average the four quintiles, not sum them, which gets me back to $3,500. Scary. They say this coffee is half-caf, but I suspect it is half-decaf.]

So why should we favor the Census Bureau numbers?

The Census Bureau figures are superior to the Piketty and Saez estimates when looking below the top ten percent in two ways. First, the measure of income derived from tax returns excludes a significant amount of income, and people below the top are disproportionately recipients of that income. Most importantly, in the United States, most public transfer income is omitted from tax returns. That includes not just means-tested programs for poor families and unemployment benefits, but Social Security. Many retirees in the Piketty-Saez data have tiny incomes because their main source of sustenance is rendered invisible in the data. The Census Bureau figures include some transfers, though even they omit non-cash transfers like food stamps, school lunches, public housing, Medicare, and Medicaid.

You might think that that means the Piketty-Saez data still does a good job capturing “market income”—what people make before the government steps in to redistribute. But their data also excludes non-taxable capital gains (such as those accruing to middle-class households when they sell a home), employer benefits (like health insurance), and other sources of non-taxable income. More subtly, it is impossible to get an accurate read on trends in market income concentration when retirees (with little to no market income) are included in the data (as they always are). The share of retirees has been growing for some time, and that puts downward pressure on the market income trend.

Hmm. There are other wrinkles:

The second reason that tax return data are inferior to Census Bureau estimates for incomes below the top is that tax returns—or “tax units,” which essentially means potential tax returns if everyone filed—are different from households. The Piketty and Saez data include as tax units all returns filed by dependent teenagers with summer jobs and undergraduates with work-study positions. They count roommates and unmarried partners as separate tax units rather than as one household, ignoring all of the shared living expenses that make living with someone cheaper than living alone. As a consequence, incomes are much lower among tax units than among households.

So when my seventeen year old got a summer job and filed a tax return he was contributing to the gloomy income inequality statistics in America? I did not know that. Nor, based on the lack of changes in his lifestyle, did he.

More grist:

It’s also worth reiterating that there are ways of improving on income measurement that none of the above figures incorporate. Income trend estimates should account for declines in household size—fewer mouths to feed for a given income—and they should use a better cost-of-living adjustment. When I raised these issues with Saez recently on a conference panel in which we both participated, he agreed that in principle, incomes should be size-adjusted, though he favored adjusting them according to the number of adults rather than the convention of adjusting by the number of adults and children. He also agreed that the inflation measure favored by the Congressional Budget Office and targeted by the Federal Reserve Board (the “Personal Consumption Expenditures deflator”) is more appropriate than the adjustment used by the Census Bureau and by himself and Piketty.

Another improvement to the above income estimates would incorporate non-cash public benefits and employer-provided health insurance. Finally, particularly if we are concerned about inequality, income measures should account for the redistribution that occurs through progressive taxation (as Piketty and Saez have done in less-cited work).

And some bottom-lining:

When I incorporate these improvements using the Census Bureau data, I find that median post-tax and -transfer income rose by nearly $26,000 for a household of four ($13,000 for a household of one) between 1979 and 2012. If you don’t like the household-size adjustment, the non-adjusted increase was over $20,000 at the median.  If you think that valuing health care as income is problematic, that figure drops to $10,400 under the implausible assumption that third-party health care benefits have no value to households. The income of the bottom 90 percent rose nearly $12,000 under that assumption instead of dropping by $3,000 as in the Piketty and Saez data, and it rose by nearly $21,000 if health benefits are included. For a household of four, median market income for non-elderly households (not counting employer-provided health care as income) rose $9,400.

That suggests the Pikkety effort may be disoriented:

In short, Piketty seems to draw too strong a conclusion (“terrifying,” in his words) about what continued rising inequality would entail for the bottom 90 percent (at least in the U.S.). Rising income concentration has not been accompanied by stagnation below the top, and there is no reason to think that it will be in the future. (In fact, there are reasons to think that income concentration might level off in the future and incomes lower down might rise more robustly, a point to which I will return in a future post. Those of you who heard my question at Piketty’s Tax Policy Center event already can anticipate it.)

The Winship effort lacks the snark we had expected from Krugman's typically thoughtfully commentary. However, back in 2011 I penned a snark-filled blast at Ezra Klein noting the many problems with the "rising inequality" figures, so maybe that will do. The Times (eventually) mentioned the similar result of a Burkhauser paper from June 2011. From the Times:

Research led by the Cornell economist Richard V. Burkhauser, for instance, sought to measure the economic health of middle-class households including income, taxes, transfer programs and benefits like health insurance. It found that from 1979 to 2007, median income grew by about 18.2 percent over all rather than by 3.2 percent counting income alone.

Mr. Winship takes another bite of the apple here, explaining the many and subtle problems with tax data and capital gains. This passage inspires a mini-rant:

Since top income tax rates have fallen since the 1970s, the concern is that the incentives for tax avoidance and evasion have fallen. That would cause more income to show up on tax returns rather than being hidden in tax-exempt or tax-deferred forms, or otherwise sheltered from the view of the IRS. In other words, it is possible that part of the apparent increase in income concentration is simply the result of a more transparent picture of incomes at the top. Combine that with the capital gains issue, and it is easy to imagine that Piketty’s view of income concentration trends may be distorted by shortcomings of the data.

Back when income tax rates were much higher executives had country club memberships paid for (for entertaing, natch), a generous expense account that was only lightly monitored, company cars, and all sorts of perks that amounted to untaxed compensation. Malcolm Forbes was famous for his "business" entertaining on sumptuous yachts operated as a business expense; the executives at RJR were bought off by corporate jets, and I like this mini-review of Barbarians At The Gates, about the RJR takeover:

It is incredible to hear about the shear amount of corporate excess that Russ Johnson (CEO of RJR Nabisco) created at the firm with the company covering his golf club memberships at 12 different clubs (one of which including the famous DeepDale course), 8 corporate jets that he allowed any of his friends and directors to use, corporate apartments he had the company pay for him, and trips to NYC that he would have the company pay for to foot his expensive food and drink bill.

Hmm, "shear" like in sheep? Maybe! But none of that compensation showed up on his taxes, so go puzzle on that, Mr. Pikkety. [Mickey Kaus wrote on actual receipts versus high marginal tax rates back in 2012; Tyler Cowen comments on Pikkety here and at Foreign Affairs.]

Clive Crook at Bloomberg takes aim at the premise that capital concentrations can only increase, and delivers the most amusing line I have seen in this debate. He quotes Pikkety:

The inequality r>g [the rate of return on capital is greater than the rate of economic growth] implies that wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages. This inequality expresses a fundamental logical contradiction. The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future. The consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying ...

However, says Mr. Crook:

[C]apital will outpace the economy only if owners of capital save a sufficiently large part of the income they derive from it. (Suppose they save none of it: Their wealth won't grow at all.)

History is oddly reassuring:

Wolf offers this clarification: Piketty "argues that the ratio of capital to income will rise without limit so long as the rate of return is significantly higher than the economy’s rate of growth. This, he holds, has normally been the case." That's better: The gap between r and g has to be "significant." The bigger the gap, the more likely it is that saving will build capital faster than output rises -- and Piketty does show that the gap usually has been big.

The trouble is, he also shows that capital-to-output ratios in Britain and France in the 18th and 19th centuries, when r exceeded g by very wide margins, were stable, not rising inexorably. The same was true of the share of national income paid to owners of capital. In Britain, the capitalists' share of income was about the same in 1910 as it had been in 1770, according to Piketty's numbers. In France, it was less in 1900 than it had been in 1820.

What about the 21st century? Perhaps the capitalists' share will rise inexorably in future -- and that's what matters.

Perhaps it will, but Piketty advances reasons to doubt this too. He expects r to be a bit lower and g a bit higher than their respective historical averages. There are many other factors to consider, as he says, but on his own analysis the chances are good that the future gap between return on capital and growth will be smaller than the gap that failed to produce an inexorably rising capital share in the two centuries before 1914.

And a punchline:

This book wants you to worry about low growth in the coming decades not because that would mean a slower rise in living standards, but because it might cause the ratio of capital to output to rise, which would worsen inequality. In the frame of this book, the two world wars struck blows for social justice because they interrupted the aggrandizement of capital. We can't expect to be so lucky again. 

Maybe global warming can provide the devastation of a world war or two. Here's hoping!

Kevin Hasset of the AEI delivers many snark-free thoughts. My takeaway - the growth in the capital-to-income ratio in the rich countries has been primarily in the housing stock; concentrations of productive capital are not dramatic.

That is a bit of a reading list for the prof. I assume Krugman will want to find some foolish comment from some unknown Congressman (or shock jock!) and claim that it exemplifies the entire conservative reaction.

I CAN QUIT ANYTIME: This from Krugman's column is a burr under my saddle:

For the past couple of decades, the conservative response to attempts to make soaring incomes at the top into a political issue has involved two lines of defense: first, denial that the rich are actually doing as well and the rest as badly as they are, but when denial fails, claims that those soaring incomes at the top are a justified reward for services rendered. Don’t call them the 1 percent, or the wealthy; call them “job creators.”

I'd feel a lot better about adopting the socialism of Pikkety's proposed global wealth tax if its advocates could point to a system anywhere that was advancing the human condition as successfully as the quasi-market capitalism that is moving the ball today.

SOCIAL CAPITAL TRANSFERS: David Brooks thinks this is a scuffle between the holders of financial and cultural capital:

If you are a young professional in a major city, you experience inequality firsthand. But the inequality you experience most acutely is not inequality down, toward the poor; it’s inequality up, toward the rich.

You go to fund-raisers or school functions and there are always hedge fund managers and private equity people around. You get more attention than them at parties, but your whole apartment could fit in their dining room. You struggle with tuition, but their kids go off on ski weekends. You wait in line at the post office, but they have staff to do it for them.

You see firsthand the explosion of wealth at the tippy-top. It really doesn’t help that you have to spend your days kissing up to the oligarchs and their foundations to finance your research, exhibition or favorite cause.

Think of Bill Clinton before he made his hundred million and had to rely on the kindness of rich strangers to enjoy a summer getaway. Where's the justice - do we know who he is?!?

However, Mr. Brooks goes awry here:

This is a moment when progressives have found their worldview and their agenda. This move opens up a huge opportunity for the rest of us in the center and on the right. First, acknowledge that the concentration of wealth is a concern with a beefed up inheritance tax.

The inheritance tax prompts the super-rich to put their money in a foundation with their heirs in charge. In the longer term progressives can capture these pots of money, since spending other people's money is what they do. But in the short run, the heirs will enjoy the power associated with controlling the distribution of great wealth even though they don't formally "own" it. Does anyone think that the heirs of Bill and Melinda Gates will lack for Davos invitations, White House dinners, or lovely vacations just because they no longer "own" a big chunk of Microsoft but merely sit on the board of the Gates Foundation? Please. 

Or try this - suppose the Dreaded Koch Brothers did a NY Times like reorganization of their hodlings so that they retained voting control of their enterprises but the bulk of the (newly-created, non-voting) dividend-paying shares were tossed into the various Koch family foundations directed by the same evil brothers and their spawn. Would liberals cheer this dissipation of wealth? Why not - per the Pikkety numbers it would be a blow for income equality. 

Comments

[rich@gmu]

wow, this will take forever to read.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK F!

[Fubar]

Taxing the 1%'s wealth is an alternative to inheritance taxes, and we already have wealth taxes. (property taxes are wealth taxes)

In fact, it's even worse than a wealth tax since you're taxed on the full value of your house rather than your equity (wealth) in the house.

[boris]

This argument is sound but it doesn't work against them and it doesn't work for me ...

I'd feel a lot better about adopting the socialism of Pikkety's proposed global wealth tax if its advocates could point to a system anywhere that was advancing the human condition as successfully as the quasi-market capitalism that is moving the ball today.

The kindergarten fairness behind this ... nobody can have ice cream unless everybody gets an equal share ... is primitive and tribal.

The second kind of fairness is ... people get to posses the product of their own efforts and envy is harmful.

The fact that the second kind works better is not the only reason to prefer it. Even if they both worked about the same people like me refuse the first.

[Stephanie spring sprung baseballs back umm ummm umm]

Happy birthday, Mark F!

[Mark Folkestad]

Rich and Steph, St. Jane of the Fabled Isle told me that I had a lot of birthday greetings waiting at JOM. Thanks to you two, and to the others whose messages I haven't seen yet. I'm officially 63. Gah! People say I don't look a day over fifty, if that, but I don't feel a day under eighty. The only celebration is going out for dinner with a cherished (non-backstabber) cousin tonight.

[narciso]

Crook and even Galbraith per, slap Piketty right upside and behind, McLuhan, would say 'you know nothing of (this) work, you teach a class in this'

[Mark Folkestad]

We Lutherans tend not to give our children names based on the saint honored on, or nearest, the day of their birth. But my name was chosen long before I was born, and I arrived three weeks late, on the Feast Day of St. Mark. Pure coincidence. I've always wanted to celebrate my birthday in Venice, when the city goes nuts over its patron saint, so I could pretend a multitude was celebrating my special day. With my luck, though, I'd be in Venice at high tide, with a storm surge, and the terrified pigeons circling above, dropping bombs on my head.

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

--Taxing the 1%'s wealth is an alternative to inheritance taxes-

Who says?
VATs were supposed to be alternatives to other taxes as well but the other taxes curiously never went away.

[lyle]

Couldn't every Krugman column be distilled to the same formula?

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

"VATs were supposed to be alternatives to other taxes as well but the other taxes curiously never went away."

Funny how that works.... And even with the confiscatory taxes, the Socialist/Marxist state inevitably bankrupts and the lies the state told to win elections are exposed. That's when the socialist/marxists go full dictator as the castros did in Cuba and Chavez did in Venezuela, because elections no longer work for them. Does Hollande have les ballz to do that in France? Probably not, but the EUCrats will do it. The Crats are the state now in EUtopia.

[peter]

hb, mark

[Cecil Turner]

Taxing the 1%'s wealth is an alternative to inheritance taxes, and we already have wealth taxes.

Yeah, right. And if we just elected some more enlightened members of the rightleft-thinking class, it'd all get better . . . right?

It's not like if they had a new income stream they'd just spend it on frippery, would they? I mean, it's not like we'd have 99% of the electorate clamoring to spend other people's money, or anything. Right?

[hit and run]

Who let Mark post? I thought we had him contained?

:)

Just kidding. Good to see you at JOM.

[Danube on iPad]

Pretty sure a federal tax on wealth would require a constitutional amendment.

Happy birthday, Mark.

[Fubar]

It's not like if they had a new income stream they'd just spend it on frippery, would they?

Frippery is in the eye of the beholder. We spent almost a trillion on the Bush wars and we didn't get a single Iraqi nuke.

But Rand Paul assures us that Halliburton did just fine, thank you very much.

[lyle]

Note to POS Pauly Peanuts: Like Spinal Tap your audience is getting more selective.

[rich@gmu]

Great you made it here to comment Mark. Hit had the birthday announcement a few threads down.

I'm just skimming this post. Does anything more need to be said? YIKES!!!

[Paul Zrimsek]

The average income for the bottom four quintiles was $40,165 in 1979 and $43,616 in 2012, an increase that matches Winship's "nearly $3500". The $2500 figure was the increase in the median for the entire population. You'd expect that to be not too different from the increase in the mean for the third quintile alone-- and, sure enough, it isn't.

[lyle]

We spent almost a trillion on the Bush wars and we didn't get a single Iraqi nuke.

"Bush wars"? Are you effing kidding me? Barry's in his sixth year and we're still in the sandbox with more troops having been killed than in the previous five. Own it, cretin.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

This Keystone/Harper chronology is worth a read. Comments are pathetic... it is Bloomberg News afterall: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-24/how-obama-shocked-harper-as-keystone-frustrator-in-chief.html

[rich@gmu]

Krugman and Brooks ...

looks like it is drinking time.

[Danube on iPad]

Constitutionality of a wealth tax:

http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/333660/constitutional-fiasco-wealth-tax-matthew-j-franck

[Cecil Turner]

Frippery is in the eye of the beholder. We spent almost a trillion on the Bush wars and we didn't get a single Iraqi nuke.

Bwahaha. Look at all the money we've saved since then . . . and how much safer the world has gotten.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Krugman will shortly be being paid $25,000 a month to study poverty at CUNY, so things will improve markedly for the rest of us, I'm sure.

[daddy]

On 12 April Larry Kudlow had Amity Shlaes as a guest on his weekend Radio Show and much of their discussion was this Thomas Pikeetty guy; what he is trying to do, why Krugman loves him; and what damage his call for an 80% Tax Rate would to the middle class via killing the Stock Market.

The main takeaways to me are:

1) that Piketty tries to awe his opponents by "Baffling them with BullshIt," meaning he writes and speaks so highfalutin' and with such difficult appearing equations in his book, that hopefully his opponents will not understand what he is saying and shrink away from opposing his intellectual brilliance. That's part of why Krugman loves him.

2) His call for 80% Taxes gives great cover to the Left who can then raise Taxes to 50%-60% and say proudly that they are not near as high as Piketty's 80%, so I'm not a Socialist therefore shut up and enjoy my magnanimity in not taxing you more.

It's a decent segment, 10 minutes long, with a slap or 2 at Krugman and a little Coolidge history tossed in. If you want to hear it go here to Larry Kudlow Podcasts,

Then click "Play Now" on the April 12, 2014 Podcast, give it a minute to load, and then move the cursor to 59:30 seconds into the broadcast when the Amity Shlaes segment starts.

[Fubar]

Pretty sure a federal tax on wealth would require a constitutional amendment.

Only until President Hillary replaces Scalia and Thomas.

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

Not sure if Fubar is noting the extra-constitutionality of the left with approval or mockery @ 2:23 but his notation is noted.

[MarkO on the road]

This is why econcomics is known as the dismal science.

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

--Frippery is in the eye of the beholder. We spent almost a trillion on the Bush wars and we didn't get a single Iraqi nuke.--

How is that a sensible or even rational response to this;

--It's not like if they had a new income stream they'd just spend it on frippery, would they?--

Recognizing both sides spend money without restraint on retarded projects is an argument against new income streams not for them.

[lyle]

Only until President Hillary replaces Scalia and Thomas.

Makes for quite the fascist wet dream, huh?

[daddy]

OT,

I've never landed in Little Rock, but last night I was given Little Rock as an alternate airport if the weather was bad at Memphis.

When I brought up Little Rock to have a look at the Runways I saw that the official name of the Airport is Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

I suppose it makes sense, since I took off from Ted Stevens International Airport, but it just surprised me that Hill got top billing along with Bill. I suppose in a couple years it'll be the Bill and Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky National Airport.

And in case you missed it, here's The USS Gabby Giffords

[4JackisBack!2 (On His iPhone)]

Why would TM or anyone else want to read the thoughts of a French communist when all you have to do is see how well it's working there now?

Rush just mentioned that the turnover for the top 400 wealthy in the US is 90% over 10 years and that 12% of Americans will join the 1% at least once. My question is, who is going to use wealth in a more productive investment for the greater good? The government or the private individual?

[daddy]

I'm GUNS, Sarah Palin, Oil Spills, and a little bit of Animal Blood Lust.

How 'bout you guys?

The Stereotype Map Of Every U.S. State — According To British People

[Danube on iPad]

"Only until President Hillary replaces Scalia and Thomas."

Note the unspoken premise: her nominees won't care what the constitution says.

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

Stoners

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

Also hot, sunny and lovely; yep that's me alright.:P

[glasater]

Here's a little esoteric (sorta) conversation Rick Santelli had with Carlos Gutierrez this AM regarding the Census Bureau. Referring back to one of TM's previous blog posts and since this current post had census information in his article I felt it combined a couple of thoughts - their discussion was about how healthcare info would be affected rather than an income discussion but nevertheless..

I tried to grab the transcript but that can get things garbled. The video link is below if one wants to take the time also.

"...before we get to the special guest, former commerce secretary carlos gutierrez, in the april 15th edition of the new york times, we were notified of a change. put it on the screen. the census bureau is changing its annual survey so thoroughly it will be difficult to measure the effects of president obama's health care law in the next report due this fall, census officials say. but don't despair. read on. another paper said it is coincidental and unfortunate timing that the survey was overhauled before major provisions took effect. welcome, mr. secretary. thank you. what do you think about all of this with regard to the census bureau? listen, one-sixth of the economy is health care. you know, i cover markets. this is important. is this something i should be concerned about? yeah, look, we've been doing census since 1790. so we're not new at this, and we've got some very good people in the census bureau. they're professionals. so it's very odd about this, rick, is we wouldn't run the two systems in parallel for about five years, so that you can get a trend, you can see the pattern, and you could tell whether you really have a new, better methodology or not. i don't understand why the sudden change. that's not the way these folks typically work. they usually, you know, look for patterns, look for long-term trends. so run the two systems in parallel. that's the way they should be done. it is a bit of a surprise. very odd that they would just change the methodology from one day to the other so we can no longer compare the results to the past. yeah, i agree. and taking it a step farther. we all want everybody to have good health care. i understand that. but a couple of things. you know, when we reach 7 million or 8 million and we don't know how many paid, but that's the government's number, i guess what i'm always surprised about is, is why do we look at -- there's a penalty for not signing up. you know, when i pay a toll, mr. secretary, ido doesn't give me a thank you card for being generous, because you have to pay a toll. this is required. you get penalized if you don't join. there's so many upside down issues regarding this health care plan, and this seems to be the tip of the iceberg, making it difficult to interpret. can you give the final minute on what you believe we'll be looking at as this law goes on board in a larger fashion over the next several years? well, i mean, you know, the problem, of course, with this specific situation of the census is that we're not going to know. we're just not going to be able to compare how were we doing ten years ago to how we're doing today, because you're talking about two different methodologies, and that is a shame. you know, adding questions to a questionnaire makes it more difficult to complete. so it's just -- it's very unfortunate. and it just sheds some light on the question of are we concealing something? so the administration is not helping itself, and, you know, we should have a separate information system for this and not continue to add. and very importantly, not use the census to make a political statement. we've been doing this for over 200 years, and that's what we've been trying to avoid."

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000269367&play=1

[peter]

Wondering when there will be a USS Lady Gaga, or a USS Kim Kardashian.

[cathyf]

Happy Birthday, Mark.

St. Mark the Evangelist is credited with founding the church in Alexandria, and was buried there -- until the Venetians stole his body in 828, took it to Venice, and made him their patron saint. But the Alexandrians claim that they stole the wrong bones and thus they get the last laugh.

[Fubar]

her nominees won't care what the constitution says.

They'll care about as much as the Roberts court.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Fubar@3:08 is about the stupiest thing I've ever seen on JOM. Where's DD?

[daddy]

Perhaps its just me, but see if you can make heads or tails of Begich's support of this decision by a Federal Judge to suspend Drilling in the Arctic:

Judge suspends Arctic drilling, orders new environmental report

the U.S. Department of the Interior must redo the supplemental analysis using what's expected to be a much higher estimate for the amount of oil extractable. In the meantime, no drilling for oil or natural gas can take place.

Here's Begich's reaction:

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, called the order "good news," saying it "should lead to resumption of oil and gas development in our state's promising offshore" by next summer

But in the next paragraph:

Earth Justice attorney Erik Grafe, who opposes drilling and who helped bring the lawsuit, also hailed the decision. The opposing sides had worked for the past two months to negotiate a deal, which the judge adopted almost completely.

Grafe told the Los Angeles Times the redo was a "good outcome," considering that the erroneous figure of 1 billion barrels "infected every part of the original analysis."

He said the new report would likely show that oil companies would bring far more boats, planes, drill rigs and pipelines. As a result, he expects the analysis to show a much greater disturbance to the habitat of whales, walruses, polar bears and other animals.

They can't both be right. And from the Alaska Dispatch we get this tidbit:

There is no timeline yet for that supplemental study to be completed

So no drilling until the Department of the Interior completes an expensive new study, and no time line that the Department of the Interior has to comply with to complete that study---they can take forever.

I must not be smart enough to be a US Senator.

[jimmyk]

I've been shut out of posting since this morning, first time that's happened to me. Must be punishment for responding to duda. I had several posts that were so brilliant and witty that everyone would have forgotten bgates, but their moment has passed. But I can still wish Mark F Happy Birthday.

[Stephanie spring sprung baseballs back umm ummm umm]

ZOMBIES, OUTKAST, REM, GOLF, and WEIRD ACCENT.

Every frigging state in the south rated as some degree of racist, which is funny, cause I think the percent of blacks is higher in the south than any where else. I guess they are saying that southern blacks are racist, too.

Was at Home Depot yesterday and got told to "get your white ass out of the way. I got places to go!" by some witch wanting to turn around and not waiting for loading. The guy loading my car slowed to a crawl just to piss her off and then moved the forklift to where she couldn't get out of the loading zone turn around but allowed me to leave. He loads stuff for me every few days and is Jamaican and enjoys talking baseball. A lot of islanders don't have much patience for native born blacks.

[Clarice Feldman]

Very funny, jimmy!

[daddy]

Iggy,

Are you sure you aren't a Smelly Hippy, or does that only apply to DrJ and Central Cal?

[jimmyk]

Fubar@3:08 is about the stupiest thing I've ever seen on JOM.

Sorry, maybe I'm having an off day, but I'm not seeing the stupidity. One might have thought a constitutional amendment would be necessary to permit the government to mandate a purchase of health care, but somehow the mandate was legislated anyway. Then we've seen how much the Wise Latina cares about what the Constitution says, so why would we think that Hillary would appoint people who care more? What am I missing here?

[DrJ]

Are you sure you aren't a Smelly Hippy, or does that only apply to DrJ and Central Cal?

Hey! I attend to my personal hygiene once a month whether I need it or not! :) I can't speak for CCal.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Your criticism of the Roberts' ACA decision is the opposite of fascistic judicial authoritarianism. you believe Roberts was too timid and failed to properly exercise constitutional judicial review, by too easily deferring to Congressional politics. Fubar's comment is moronic because he accuses the Roberts Court of fascistically imposing their will outside of the elected political process. Whether Roberts' ACA decision was Korematsu/Plessey timid is debatable, to call his court activist partisans is stupid in the extreme.

[fdcol63]

I'm still a little confused.

Obama and the Dems sold ObamaCare by claiming it was NOT a tax.

Then they reversed themselves and claimed it WAS a tax before the USSC.

Roberts agreed that it was a tax.

But supposedly, tax bills have to originate in the House, not the Senate as ObamaCare did.

So .... WTF?

[narciso]

Begich is the idiot missing from the village, his remark is worthy of James Downey's rejoinder in Billy Madison,

[narciso]

btw, the Deal weasel, seems to catching some flak from his former budget chief, ala the way they seem to going after Perry.

[Mark Folkestad]

CathyF, the Venetians were largely to blame for the fizzle of one of the Crusades. They stole more than the bones of St. Mark. Those magnificent bronze horses were loot from Constantinople. And my understanding is that the Venetians had something major to do with helping cast those enormous cannons that finally breached the walls of Constantinople in 1453. So I don't rave about the wonders of Venice and its glorious history quite as much as many people.

[Mark Folkestad]

CathyF, the Venetians were largely to blame for the fizzle of one of the Crusades. They stole more than the bones of St. Mark. Those magnificent bronze horses were loot from Constantinople. And my understanding is that the Venetians had something major to do with helping cast those enormous cannons that finally breached the walls of Constantinople in 1453. So I don't rave about the wonders of Venice and its glorious history quite as much as many people.

[matt]

We need to tax the rich more because shut up!

Paul Krugman

Happy B Day, Mark!

[the wolf]

Krugman and Picketty would have income inequality erased by making everyone equally poor.

[narciso]

Interesting Mark, there's this new book, Christopher Moore's the Serpent of Venice, which does a Monty Python mashup of Othello, the Merchant of Venice and the Cask of Amontillado, for good measure,

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

I am up for post Midterm election Impeachment Hearings over Immigration and other executive abuses. I think they would be very informative for the ignorant voter pool to learn who's been trolling whom. HildaBeast would demand Obummer back off IMO: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/24/Senators-Denounce-Obama-for-Threatening-Entire-Constitutional-System-By-Nullifying-Immigration-Laws

[Janet - the districts lie fallow, while the Capitol gorges itself]

And in case you missed it, here's The USS Gabby Giffords

I thought that story was a joke.
I can't believe it.

[Janet - the districts lie fallow, while the Capitol gorges itself]

And in case you missed it, here's The USS Gabby Giffords

I thought that story was a joke.
I can't believe it.

[lyle]

Before I clicked the Brit stereotype map, I already knew. I wasn't surprised although I was hoping for "guns" as well. Nope. Silly Brits.

[Porchlight]

The Stereotype Map Of Every U.S. State — According To British People

Strange, that matches up almost exactly with The Stereotype Map Of Every U.S. State According To The American Left. And they live here and so ought to know better.

[Mark Folkestad]

The denial of service attack seems to be doubling some of our comments.

[Jane]

But supposedly, tax bills have to originate in the House, not the Senate as ObamaCare did.

There is a lawsuit pending about this issue. I always thought it was the most promising one out there.

[maryrose]

Happy Birthday Mark!
We have been lucky so far that Bammy has just replaced liberals with liberals. We need to win in 2016 to complete the SC when Stevens and Ginsburg retire or expire.

[sbw]

Piketty tries to awe his opponents by "Baffling them with BullshIt,"

He's French. Learned from Foucault and Derrida.

[narciso]

Smart diplomacy as Taranto points out;

Another problem, as Levant suggested, is that the Russians appear to be better at mockery than their American counterparts. After a phone conversation between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, Levant wrote, "the Kremlin release[d] this note: 'Mr. Obama congratulated Mr. Putin on the success of the Paralympic Games and asked Mr. Putin to pass on his greetings to the athletes.' . . . At least Samantha Power stomped her feet and wrote a mean Twitter tweet. But Obama personally congratulated Putin, during a phone call about a war?"

[Fubar]

We need to win in 2016 to complete the SC when Stevens and Ginsburg retire or expire.

Stevens retired years ago.

[Fubar]

We need to win in 2016 to complete the SC when Stevens and Ginsburg retire or expire.

Stevens retired years ago.

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Well Obama and Vlad are ultimately teammates in destroying US power and wealth, so no reason for Obummer to be rude to Putin. It's not like he's a Repub or NRA member.

[Jim Eagle]

The fact that this comes from National Journal tells me that the Clinton camp ARE worried about Warren.

5 Reasons Hillary Clinton Shouldn't Worry Too Much About Elizabeth Warren

[narciso]

Well she's never been challenged on her left flank, oh wait, she has,

[Jim Eagle]

OBAMA = left flank. Think about that:)

[narciso]

Well their Top Men, wilt, whereas ours have the whip hand,

Talk to the Hand;

http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2014/04/25/exclusive-putin-halts-all-talks-with-the-white-house/

[NK(withnewsoftware)]

Didn't the Japanese Imperial Staff do something like that on 6 December 41?

[Marlene]

Brit stereotypes of Maine... basically Canada, Stephen King,autumn leaves,lobster and white people.

[Danube of Thought]

They'll care about as much as the Roberts court.

Tell us the constitutional language the Roberts Court ignored.

[Clarice Feldman]

A little present for hit--how to drink beer all night without getting drunk:http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/how-not-to-get-drunk?src=soc_fcbks

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

--Iggy,

Are you sure you aren't a Smelly Hippy, or does that only apply to DrJ and Central Cal?

Posted by: daddy | April 25, 2014 at 03:18 PM --

If there are any smelly hippies around here it only means we should have buried them deeper. :)

[narciso]

Yes, Lurch inspires all sorts of confidence;

http://www.interpretermag.com/category/blog/

[Jim Eagle]

DoT,

Not being a lawyer or even educated in the intircinsies of the law, why are you such an abosoutionist? It was always my impression of the law that half the practioner sare proved wrong every day.

[Beasts of England]

Southern Comfort and orange juice? I've never heard of that combination and it certainly doesn't sound good. At all.

[jimmyk]

Tell us the constitutional language the Roberts Court ignored.

I would argue that changing the meaning of words (i.e. mandate = tax) to fit the Constitution is no better than changing the meaning of the Constitution. But I ain't no lawyer.

[narciso]

we can add ignoring precedent on Boumedienne, thousands of years of history and custom in Hollingworth, Kelo came before;

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/25/poll-virginians-growing-oddly-less-fond-of-medicaid-expansion-under-mcauliffes-leadership/

[Frau das Gesetz ist das Gesetz]

Why do the nincompoops regret their vote *after* the election?

[Skoot]

NW football reportedly voted down union today by large margin (HotAir). I figured the vote would leak almost immediately.

[Danube on iPad]

Jimmy, JiB and narc: the difference is subtle (to me, anyway), but ignoring or even overruling precedents regarding interpretation is one thing. But to uphold a wealth tax in the absence of an authorizing amendment would directly flout the plain words of the document. Far, far more constitutionally dishonest than merely discovering emanations and penumbras.

[Jim Eagle]

The kid leading this for Northwesrern is an Obabmbot. Believe me.

[daddy]

Tell us the constitutional language the Roberts Court ignored.

ARTICLE III

SECTION 1.

...The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour

[narciso]

What I have come to understand is when they want a result, no matter how pigheaded, like regulating the very oxygen we breathe, they find a way,

[Frau das Gesetz ist das Gesetz]

What is the best mixer, if any, for Southern Comfort?

Why does everyone apologize for not being a lawyer? Issa was upbraided insulted by the evil ones for not being a lawyer and was therefore "deemed" not qualified to chair his committee.

Why couldn't I wish MarkF a happy birthday this morning on either of my computers (Mac air and PC)?

Why couldn't I thank our host this morning for beating Enron adviser Krugman like the dirty rug he is?

Why is Thai Pest stealing our 1st amendment rights?

[Jane]

Wow, Nevada changed the qualifications for the position on the BLM that Reid's former employee got. This was all done at the behest of Reid.

[Happy, happy, joy, joy Ignatz]

--Why does everyone apologize for not being a lawyer?--

No kidding, Frau. Seems kind of bassackwards.

[henry]

Clarice, wish you posted the beer related link earlier. (Or not, I'll decide when the buzz clears). Met our lurker from Chitown for coffee, then later Gus for beer. (Their schedules didn't match). ; )

[Beasts of England]

@Frau: I think most people drink it mixed with Coke.

[Captain Hate]

What is the best mixer, if any, for Southern Comfort?

The drain in the kitchen sink

[narciso]

Well probably, but orange juice would seem a poor chaser, interesting, that only the Times really followed up their two minute hate, on an inside page, the Daily News and even my fishwrap were silent on the point,

[Captain Hate]

That link Clarice provided sounds like the chemistry is legit. May have to try it out.

[jimmyk]

I have never apologized for not being a lawyer. I have merely issued disclaimers, often with tongue firmly in cheek, as in "I am not a lawyer, so I'm not familiar with twisting language around to make something mean the opposite of what it seems to mean."

[Frau das Gesetz ist das Gesetz]

Thanks, Beasts with a southern answer and CH will the Ahia recommendation.

daddy, Gabby got a ship named after her but the forgotten six who died didn't even get a t-shirt.