Deirdre McCloskey: Economic Growth Saves the Poor

A great essay, at the New York Times:

Growth, Not Forced Equality, Saves the Poor. https://t.co/nd90GXokj4

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 5, 2017

The Unconscionable Legacy of the 2016 Olympic Games — #ThirdWorldGames

At Vice Sports, "THE RIO GAMES WERE AN UNJUSTIFIABLE HUMAN DISASTER, AND SO ARE THE OLYMPICS." (Hat Tip: Mina Kimes.)

I don't think I watched any more after Tuesday night. Once most of the marquee track events were done, I tuned out. Then of course you had the news of that idiot lyin' Ryan Lochte. I hope he's banned from the sport. He only took one gold anyway, and that was on a team relay. He's washed up, in more ways than one.

And as you recall, my hashtag's been #ThirdWorldGames, and for good reason.

In any case, from the article:

More than anything else, what surprised me during my first Olympics was the sheer scale of the bubble the IOC has made for itself. After arriving at the airport, members and assorted apparatchiks were ushered into private cars, ferried along exclusive highway lanes—look out the window, and there were Rio 2016-branded walls to mask the favelas—and dropped off at their exclusive hotels ringed by security, so only those with credentials could enter. They then took the same private cars to all of their events. Some even got motorcades. Once they got to the various sports venues, they went in the Olympic Family entrances, passed through the Olympic Family security lines, mingled in the Olympic Family club lounges, and watched athletes compete from the Olympic Family seats. When they were hungry, they surely put their $900 per diems to use at the city's most exclusive restaurants and bars, never risking having to interact with anyone who wasn't wealthy. Except, perhaps, for the people serving them.

Yes, the Olympic Bubble is so all-encompassing that the IOC has convinced itself that it doesn't exist. "These games have not been organized in a bubble," IOC President Thomas Bach told reporters on Saturday as he made other demonstrably false claims, such as the Games not using any public money and Brazilians being "united behind these Olympic Games" despite the fact that half of them weren't. Bach ended his press conference by no-commenting almost every question, but adding that if the Olympics can happen in Rio, they can happen anywhere.

Putting aside Bach's sportocrat snobbery, there is a critical lesson here. The Olympic Bubble's comprehensiveness illustrates just how little the IOC is concerned with anyone but themselves—and how blithely, even happily indifferent the entire Olympic "movement" is to the waste and corruption it fosters, and the human wreckage it leaves in its wake...

Rather than bring development and prosperity, the games will increase economic inequality and social division.

More at that top link.

'Men Going Their Own Way'

Heh.

Check out this very interesting post at the Other McCain, "Attention @MGTOW: Survey Question." And be sure to read the comments. I think R.S. McCain missed his calling as a psychologist:

Scapegoating the opposite sex for our romantic disappointments is a problem for both men and women. Learning to accept responsibility for your own problems means learning how to adjust your expectations to the reality of your situation, rather than blaming other people because your dreams haven't come true.

More.

BONUS: Helen Smith, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters.

Donald Trump's 'Unlikely Melting Pot' Campaign

This is amazing.

And it's all the more amazing that the Old Gray Lady's running this.

See, "Donald Trump's Tampa Office Is an Unlikely Melting Pot":

TAMPA — Mireya Linsky, born to a Jewish family in Cuba, came to the United States as a refugee at age 5. Her family lived in public housing here for several years and sometimes relied on assistance from Catholic Charities. She has spent the past 33 years working for the Hillsborough County School District.

So Mrs. Linsky, 55, understands that some may see certain contradictions in the fact that she is now spending several nights a week volunteering here at Donald J. Trump’s campaign office. “Like I’m just pulling the drawbridge up behind me,” she says.

Yet Mrs. Linsky is also quick to acknowledge a long list of racial fears and resentments that she says help explain why she is drawn to Mr. Trump: She is furious at undocumented workers who “come basically to see what they can get.” She is wary of Muslim Americans imposing their religion on communities in the United States. She is fearful of more American jobs being outsourced to China, India or Mexico. She even suspects President Obama “has a dislike for white folks.”

“We’re not taking care of our own,” she said.

Recently, Mr. Trump’s campaign has been engulfed by ugly images of mostly white Trump supporters facing off against, and sometimes attacking, young protesters, many of them black or Hispanic, at Trump rallies in Chicago, St. Louis and elsewhere.

But here in Tampa, in the week before the pivotal Florida primary, conversations with more than 20 volunteers showing up to make campaign calls or otherwise help out at a small Trump campaign office in an old cigar factory yielded some surprises on the subjects of race, ethnicity and bigotry.

For a campaign frequently depicted as offering a rallying point for the white working class, the people volunteering to help Mr. Trump here are noteworthy for their ethnic diversity. They include a young woman who recently arrived from Peru; an immigrant from the Philippines; a 70-year-old Lakota Indian; a teenage son of Russian immigrants; a Mexican-American.

They range the political spectrum, too, from lifelong Democrat to independent to libertarian to conservative Republican. To a person, they condemned and sometimes ridiculed David Duke and other white supremacists who have noisily backed Mr. Trump. “I totally do not agree with them,” said one volunteer, Andrew Cherry.

Yet like Mrs. Linsky, many spoke openly about how fears centered on race and ethnicity were at the heart of their support for Mr. Trump. To a large extent, they traced those fears to the scars they still bear from the Great Recession — lost jobs, drained 401(k)’s, home foreclosures, rising debt, the feeling that the country is broken.

More than anything, several Trump volunteers here said, the Great Recession exposed a corrupt, out-of-touch ruling class in Washington that allows big corporations to outsource jobs at will while doing nothing to address millions of illegal immigrants who compete for jobs and drain government coffers. In Mr. Trump, they say, they see a potential antidote to all of this. A man too wealthy to be bought or co-opted. A man with the blunt-force clarity to declare that he is ready to Make America Great Again.

“I think we’ve come to the conclusion that our country is falling apart, and we have to take care of it,” Mrs. Linsky said.

It would be hard to imagine more politically unfriendly turf for a Trump campaign office than the old Garcia and Vega cigar factory on Armenia Avenue. The factory looms over West Tampa, a Democratic stronghold long dominated by Latinos, especially Cuban-Americans. Today, the factory has been converted into space for start-ups. The campaign rents a small room on the second floor and uses a common area for its phone banks.

Early on Wednesday afternoon, Bob Peele, 62, pulled up to the back of the cigar factory in a pickup truck overflowing with Trump campaign signs. Mr. Peele, burly and bearded, wearing a Harley-Davidson hat and a T-shirt depicting a bald eagle, began unloading signs...

More.

What a great piece, totally not going with the left's "racist" Donald Trump narrative.

How Democrats Abandoned the Working Class and Spurred the Rise of Donald Trump

From Kyle Smith, at the New York Post (via Memeorandum and Right Wing News):

Inequality has risen. Jobs are going overseas. The more the stock market rises, the more the working class feels crushed by globalization.

And all of this has occurred exactly as Democrats have engineered it. Stuff happens, they say. The truth hurts.

Take it from Larry Summers, once one of President Obama’s leading economic advisers: “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of an equalizer,” Summers reportedly said in a candid moment in 2009. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” (Summers this week denied saying this.)

The elite professional class, in the 1950s one of the Republican party’s most reliable constituencies, became the very heart of the Democrats by the 1990s. The party of labor morphed into the party of lawyers. This didn’t happen by accident.

In his new book “Listen, Liberal, Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People,” progressive commentator Thomas Frank (author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”) says Democrats need to take a good long look in the mirror if they want answers to why blue-collar workers are feeling abandoned and even infuriated by what used to be their party.

Many such voters are now backing Donald Trump, who is sketching out the problem with America in exactly the terms they agree with: Jobs are either going to Mexico, or going to Mexicans. Unchecked illegal immigration on the one hand and free trade on the other hand are driving down the wages of working-class Americans, or costing them their jobs outright.

This isn’t racism: angry Americans told they were losing their jobs at a doomed air-conditioner factory in Indiana wouldn’t have applauded if told production was moving to Canada instead of Mexico. Either way, they’re losing their jobs.

In Frank’s analysis, around 1972 the Democrats started to suspect their lunch-bucket workers were warmongering dinosaurs doomed by their reliance on dying Rust Belt industries. The party placed its future in the hands of groovy technocrats in non-union fields and wrote off the workers, who soon defected to the Republican party even though Republicans didn’t and don’t apologize for being the party of capital.

Blaming Republican Intransigence (TM) for liberalism’s failures, particularly in the Obama era, is a common excuse that Frank isn’t having. He points to areas such as Rhode Island and Chicago where Republicans are virtually extinct and finds that Democrats behave exactly the same way: They make mild clucking noises about inequality while taking donations and policy ideas from financiers (both R.I. and the City of Big Shoulders are run by former Wall Streeters) and outlining an economic future of enhanced “innovation” designed to tilt the economy even further in the direction of elite knowledge-economy workers and away from those without college degrees.

Innovation, Frank says, is often just code for new methods (from Uber to credit default swaps) to evade necessary protective regulations. Many such innovations pump up profits for rich entrepreneurs and shareholders by unloading employees with benefits in favor of part-timers and freelancers with no benefits. Democrats take big donations from such firms, laud them in speeches, and tell everyone else to get out of the way of the “disruption.”

There is some enticing evidence for Frank’s claim that Democrats deliberately shunned American workers...

Keep reading.

Plus, here's Frank's book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

'Equal Is Unfair'

From Don Watkins and Yaron Brook, Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality.

Richest Americans, on Both Left and Right, Shape Private Tax System to Save Billions

Well, an update from the class war, from the New York Times (who else?), "For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions":

WASHINGTON — The hedge fund magnates Daniel S. Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and Steven A. Cohen have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested millions in art — and millions more in political candidates.

Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. The trick? Route the money to Bermuda and back.

With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.

In recent years, this apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes, including Mr. Loeb and Mr. Cohen, who give heavily to Republicans, and the liberal billionaire George Soros, who has called for higher levies on the rich while at the same time using tax loopholes to bolster his own fortune.

All are among a small group providing much of the early cash for the 2016 presidential campaign.

Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government’s ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans.

The impact on their own fortunes has been stark. Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups.

The ultra-wealthy “literally pay millions of dollars for these services,” said Jeffrey A. Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies economic elites, “and save in the tens or hundreds of millions in taxes.”

Some of the biggest current tax battles are being waged by some of the most generous supporters of 2016 candidates. They include the families of the hedge fund investors Robert Mercer, who gives to Republicans, and James Simons, who gives to Democrats; as well as the options trader Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian-leaning donor to Republicans.

Mr. Yass’s firm is litigating what the agency deemed to be tens of millions of dollars in underpaid taxes. Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund Mr. Simons founded and which Mr. Mercer helps run, is currently under review by the I.R.S. over a loophole that saved their fund an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade, according to a Senate investigation. Some of these same families have also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative groups that have attacked virtually any effort to raises taxes on the wealthy.

Some of the biggest current tax battles are being waged by some of the most generous supporters of 2016 candidates. They include the families of the hedge fund investors Robert Mercer, who gives to Republicans, and James Simons, who gives to Democrats; as well as the options trader Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian-leaning donor to Republicans.

Mr. Yass’s firm is litigating what the agency deemed to be tens of millions of dollars in underpaid taxes. Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund Mr. Simons founded and which Mr. Mercer helps run, is currently under review by the I.R.S. over a loophole that saved their fund an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade, according to a Senate investigation. Some of these same families have also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative groups that have attacked virtually any effort to raises taxes on the wealthy...

Notice how this isn't just a conservative or Republican phenomenon. George Soros is perhaps the most important puppet-master of the Democrat Party/radical left establishment. All of these people are gaming the system for all it's worth. The difference, at least for me, is that Democrats don't care about the corruption of their wealthy elites --- just look at the epic hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton, the Democrat front-runner.

No, it's going to take a constitutional conservative revolution to shake loose the barnacles of the Beltway political class. It's coming, though. I really feel significant change is coming.

More at the link.

Keely Mullen

R.S. McCain's mocking the hell out of this poor girl.

She was on Cavuto's the other day, and didn't acquit herself too well.

You have to really feel badly for America's youth if this lady's is anything near representative. Just wow.

Socialist Bernie Sanders Draws 'Massive' Crowd of 10,000 in Wisconsin

Heh, you go Bernie!

The socialist Sanders will pull Hillary even farther left than she already is, and she's been pandering hard to that left fringe of late.

At the Hill, "Sanders draws massive crowd in Wisconsin."

Sanders leaves the stage to a 10,000+ standing ovation. #Sanders2016 #BernieSanders #FeelTheBern

— Wisconsin Defender (@wi_defender) July 2, 2015

Magical Leftist Thinking

From Andrew Klavan:

U.S. and China Show Contrasting Shift in Global Economy

At WSJ, "Signals From U.S., China Show How Much Global Economy Has Shifted Since Crisis":

Developments in just the past week underscored a remarkable turnabout in the global economy since the financial crisis.

Six years ago, the U.S. was in financial panic, Europe was seen largely as an innocent bystander and China as an engine for a return to global growth.

Now the U.S. economy is charging ahead—producing jobs at the fastest pace since the late 1990s—while Chinese authorities are struggling to manage a gathering slowdown and Europe is still getting back on its feet.

Emblematic of the shifts are differing monetary signals: Strong U.S. jobs data Friday increased the likelihood the Federal Reserve will raise short-term interest rates this year, while the People’s Bank of China added to a rate-cutting campaign early this month.

The mismatch in growth outlooks and policy responses portends financial-market aftershocks, including the potential for further gains in the U.S. dollar, which has appreciated 11% against a broad basket of other currencies in the past year and 2% against China’s yuan.

This backdrop also raises a big question: Can the U.S. economy—stronger but still weakened by crisis—power the global economy the way it did in decades past?

Because China accounts for a bigger share of global growth than it did before, its slowdown will surely have bigger global consequences than it might have in the past. But an improving U.S. and stabilizing Europe would help the rest of the world manage to weather China’s problems.

Central to the outlook: the changing patterns of financial stress across the globe.

Fed officials said Thursday that 31 large banks had passed its annual “stress tests” of their financial resilience, meaning they had capital buffers large enough to withstand a return to recession. It was the first time since the Fed launched the tests during the panic of 2009 that all banks had the capital needed to weather the Fed’s test of their financial health.

With U.S. financial institutions on surer footing, credit growth is accelerating. Commercial and industrial loan portfolios among banks in the U.S. were up 12% in mid-February from a year earlier, at the same time as real-estate and consumer loan portfolios are rising and growth of cash holdings slowing.

“It has been a painful path and somewhat disappointing, but we got to this point with a process of fairly gradual but significant adjustments in private sector [debt], a grinding healing in the financial sector and a Federal Reserve which has been consistently trying to offset [drags on growth],” said Bruce Kasman, chief economist at J.P. Morgan .

Chinese authorities, on the other hand, reduced their growth target for 2015. At 7%, the world’s second-largest economy is still expected to expand faster than almost any other in the world, but the momentum has clearly downshifted.

Growth last year was 7.4%, the slowest pace in nearly a quarter-century. The International Monetary Fund has forecast 6.8% growth for 2015.

Moreover, China’s woes are reflected in the fortunes of other emerging economies oriented toward exporting commodities—Russia and Brazil are both in or near recession...

More.

And remember, the growing performance of the U.S. economy is in spite of the Obama administration, which has shackled U.S. growth and wages with its humongous regulatory and tax burden placed on business. We're still struggling to overcome weak wage growth this long after the crash. American workers are bearing the brunt of this disastrous Democrat "social justice" redistributionist regime.

Sluggish Productivity Hampers Wage Gains

Remember, the economy still remains a potent issue for Republicans. Despite modest GDP growth in recent years, workers continue to suffer from weak earnings gains. As I always say, with a savvy and articulate Republican nominee, the Democrats will be crushed in 2016.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Tepid Growth Restrains Worker Pay, Despite Added Jobs":

Based on the jobs data alone, the American economy is doing fabulously.

Monthly payroll growth this year, averaging 267,000, already is ahead of last year’s impressive tally, which in turn handily beat the prior year. The unemployment rate, at 5.5%, is now in the range some economists consider “full employment.”

But overall economic growth has been less impressive. That’s because productivity—the amount of goods and services each worker produces—is growing at a tepid rate.

Since the economic expansion began in 2009, annual productivity growth has averaged just 1.3%, if the farm and government sectors are excluded. That is the weakest growth of any expansion since the 1970s. On Thursday, the day before the encouraging February jobs data were released, the Labor Department reported that productivity in last year’s fourth quarter didn’t grow at all from the year-earlier period.

On Friday, several economists lowered their estimates of GDP growth for the first quarter, some to as low at 1.5%, annualized, citing weak trade and car sales and the effects of snowstorms. Even if the weather effect proves temporary, economic growth shows few signs of breaking out of the 2% to 2.5% range where it has been since the expansion began.

Productivity matters because it is the ultimate source of a rising standard of living. The more a worker produces, the more the employer can afford to pay. Over time, real wages—those adjusted for inflation—are determined by productivity.

Hourly wages have grown by an annual average of just 2% since the expansion began. In February, they rose just 0.1% from January, and 2% from a year earlier.

Real wage growth has generally lagged behind productivity growth during the expansion. That has confounded economists and Federal Reserve officials. Most blame slack in the labor market that isn’t captured in the unemployment rate, such as the many people working part time who would like to work full time.

Still, even if real wages do catch up with productivity, the scope for significant gains will be limited if productivity itself doesn’t pick up...

More.

America's Two-Tiered Economy Reshaping Markets — And Politics

There's been some leftist talk about how with the economy picking up steam Republicans won't have their most potent issue to hammer the depraved Democrats in 2016.

Don't believe it for a second.

The Democrats are the party of the rich new "liberal gentry" class. Especially on the West Coast, in the rich technology sector, wealthy new gentry liberals have been enjoying the benefits of a top-tier economy while giving overwhelmingly to Democrat Party candidates, especially President Obama. Meanwhile, the poverty rate under the Obama administration has skyrocketed to levels not seen in 50 years. And the rolls of Americans dependent of food stamps for their daily food survival is unprecedented in U.S. history.

In short, the affluent have prospered enormously under the Democrats these last few years, while those on the bottom rungs have become increasingly marginalized and dependent of government welfare programs. For those made worse by Democrat failure to expand the economy for all, the idea of an "opportunity society" is a cruel joke.

The GOP presidential field would be wise to adopt Bill Clinton's mantra from 1992: "It's the economy, stupid."

A smart, talented Republican nominee should be able to eviscerate Democrat Party inequality politics, making the case for the expansion of the economy to benefit everyone, not just the rich gentry leftists connected to the far-left, Democrat-insider crony regime.

In any case, at WSJ, "How a Two-Tier Economy Is Reshaping the U.S. Marketplace":

WOODINVILLE, Wash.—Five years ago, Quadrant Homes churned out starter houses in the Seattle area with an average sales price of $269,000 and the marketing slogan, “More House, Less Money.”

But facing a debt-burdened middle class and rising land prices, Quadrant has since exchanged entry-level buyers for customers free of credit worries and ready to splurge. Its new slogan, “Built Your Way,” accompanies homes with vaulted ceilings and gourmet kitchens that last year sold for an average price of $420,000. “We used a lot of market research to tell us that our old model wasn’t going to work,” said Ken Krivanec, Quadrant’s chief executive.

The emergence of a two-tiered U.S. economy, with wealthy households advancing while middle- and lower-income Americans struggle, is reshaping markets for everything from housing to clothing to groceries to beer.

“It’s a tale of two economies,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, a real-estate brokerage in Seattle that operates in 25 states. “There is a high-end market that is absolutely booming. And then there’s everyone in the middle class. They don’t have much hope of wage growth.”

The recession blew holes in the balance sheets of all U.S. households and ended a decadeslong loosening of credit for middle-class borrowers. Now, credit is tight, and incomes have been flat or falling for all but the top 10th of U.S. income earners between 2010 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve.

American spending patterns after the recession underscore why many U.S. businesses are reorienting to serve higher-income households, said Barry Cynamon, of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Since 2009, average per household spending among the top 5% of U.S. income earners—adjusting for inflation—climbed 12% through 2012, the most recent data available. Over the same period, spending by all others fell 1% per household, according to Mr. Cynamon, a visiting scholar at the bank’s Center for Household Financial Stability, and Steven Fazzari of Washington University in St. Louis, who published their research findings last year.

The spending rebound following the recession “appears to be largely driven by the consumption at the top,” Mr. Cynamon said. He and Mr. Fazzari found the wealthiest 5% of U.S. households accounted for around 30% of consumer spending in 2012, up from 23% in 1992.

Indeed, such midtier retailers as J.C. Penney , Sears and Target have slumped. “The consumer has not bounced back with the confidence we were all looking for,” Macy’s chief executive Terry Lundgren told investors last fall.

In luxury retail, meanwhile: “Our customers are confident, feel good about the economy in general and their personal balance sheets specifically,” said Karen Katz, chief executive of Neiman Marcus Group Ltd., last month. Reported 2014 revenues of $4.8 billion for the company are up from $3.6 billion in 2009.

Revenue for such luxury hotel chains as St. Regis and Ritz-Carlton rose 35% last year compared with 2008, according to market research firm STR Inc. Revenues at midscale chains such as Best Western and Ramada were down 1%.

On grocery aisles, the recession and its aftermath boosted sales of economy brands. At the high end, Whole Foods Market Inc. reported record sales per gross square foot last year.

“Demand bifurcated,” said Jason Green, chief executive of the Cambridge Group, a growth strategy firm that is part of Nielsen NV. “The familiar stuff my middle-class family had in the pantry, those are under significant pressure.”

In the grocery market’s middle tier, Safeway Inc., the second-largest supermarket chain in the U.S. was purchased last year by the private-equity group that owns Albertsons, the fifth-largest grocery retailer. Company officials said the deal would allow the companies to reduce costs—and lower prices for customers—as they fend off competition from low-price outlets and high-end stores.

In the cold case, sales of premium lagers are up 16% since 2007 after adjusting for inflation, while sales of economy brands grew 8%, according to research firm Euromonitor International. Sales of midprice beers are down 1%.

The trend hit auto makers some years ago, when BMW AG ’s former chief executive Helmut Panke described the U.S. market as an hourglass: lots of demand for budget and luxury brands but little in between.

Steve Bates, general manager of BMW Seattle for the past 12 years, said new-car sales at his dealership were up 25% last year, while used-car sales were flat. The M4 series, a sporty coupe priced from $64,000, has been “selling out as soon as it touches the ground,” he said.

Then there are consumers like Vicki Oliver, 68 years old, of Temecula, Calif. She bought a used Hyundai Sonata last year to replace a wrecked 1995 Ford Explorer. Ms. Oliver and her husband, a real-estate agent, added onto their home two years ago so her daughter and son-in-law, a general contractor, could move in with their family.

“That was a way to make things work in hard times,” Ms. Oliver said. Caribbean cruises and trips to Florida are now memories. “We haven’t done that for years,” she said...

Keep reading.

'Fiberhoods' — Google Provides Neighborhoods With Faster and Cheaper Internet Service, but Are Some Being Left Behind?

Here's more on the power of contemporary social media companies.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Google Fiber Is Fast, but Is It Fair?":

Frustrated by the hammerlock of U.S. broadband providers, Google Inc. GOOGL +0.02% has searched for ways around them to provide faster Internet speeds at lower cost, via everything from high-speed fiber to satellites.

In the process, it is changing how next-generation broadband is rolled out.

Telecom and cable companies generally have been required to blanket entire cities, offering connections to every home. By contrast, Google is building high-speed services as it finds demand, laying new fiber neighborhood by neighborhood.

Others including AT&T Inc. T -0.40%  and CenturyLink Inc. CTL -0.27%  are copying Google's approach, underscoring a deeper shift in U.S. telecommunications policy, from requiring universal service to letting the marketplace decide.

As Google's model gathers momentum, it stirs up questions about whether residents of poor or underserved neighborhoods will be left behind.

U.S. policy long favored extending service to all. AT&T touted its "universal service" in advertisements more than a century ago. The concept was codified in a 1934 law requiring nationwide "wire and radio services" to reach everyone at "reasonable charges."

In exchange for wiring a community, telecommunications providers often gained a monopoly. Cities made similar deals with cable-TV providers beginning in the 1960s.

The emergence of the commercial Internet in 1990s led to a reassessment. Policy swung in favor of encouraging competition in the hope that it would bring more people online faster. Over time, Congress and regulators loosened the strings on Internet providers.

Google seized the opening in 2010, as it sought to stoke demand for bandwidth-hungry businesses, such as its YouTube online-video site. It solicited interest from cities for a new network, specifying that it sought "opportunities to experiment with deployment techniques." More than 1,000 municipalities responded.

In 2011, Google struck a deal with authorities in both Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., to build the service based on customer demand. City officials say they didn't push hard for universal coverage because they thought faster Internet service would boost the local economy and they were competing against so many other cities.

"The main point was to win and bring that infrastructure to our city," said Rick Usher, assistant city manager of Kansas City, Mo.

As phone and cable companies slowed their own expansion plans, more cities allowed the selective approach.

Mary Beth Henry, director of community technology in Portland, Ore., says broadband providers balked at covering the entire city. So Portland stopped requiring universal coverage in 2007 and this year signed a deal with Google that employs the build-to-demand approach.

Offering service everywhere is "too risky and returns are lower," she said.

In Kansas City, Google divided the region into areas of a few hundred homes it called "fiberhoods" and asked residents to pay $10 to preregister for a service that would operate at one gigabit per second, about 100 times the U.S. average. The service now costs $70 a month.

If interest exceeded a certain threshold, generally between 5% and 25% of households, Google connected the area. The threshold varied based on population density. Google also worked with local officials to speed the permitting and construction process. It skipped some areas entirely, because they were too thinly populated or because of construction challenges, a company spokeswoman said.

To date, Google has conducted preregistration in 364 neighborhoods; all but 16 hit Google's threshold for connection. Google hasn't disclosed how many homes in each neighborhood subscribe to its service...

More.

#Mexico Divided: Stark Photos Show Urban Wealth and Poverty Side-by-Side

Recall my son's country project on Denmark?

Well, whereas the Danes have the greatest economic equality in the world, as measured by the Gini coefficient, Mexico is plagued by some of the world's worst economic inequality.

London's Daily Mail chronicles some of that, "Mexico divided: Stark unaltered photographs capture middle class affluence side-by-side with extreme urban poverty."

More, at Distractify, "These Images Of Poor And Rich Neighborhoods Side By Side Are NOT Photoshopped. How Can This Be?!"

Pinch Sulzberger Responds to Backlash Over Jill Abramson's Ouster

In denial.

At NYT, "After Criticism, Times Publisher Details Decision to Oust Top Editor":

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, released a statement Saturday afternoon detailing his decision to fire the newspaper’s executive editor, Jill Abramson. He was responding to a growing controversy over accusations by Ms. Abramson’s supporters that gender played a role in her dismissal.

The decision to remove her, announced on Wednesday, “has been cast by many as an example of the unequal treatment of women in the workplace,” Mr. Sulzberger wrote. Instead, the statement said, it “was a situation involving a specific individual who, as we all do, has strengths and weaknesses.”

The statement by Mr. Sulzberger came three days after he told a shocked newsroom that Ms. Abramson had been replaced by her No. 2, Dean Baquet. During the announcement, Mr. Sulzberger delivered brief remarks and said, “There is nothing more that I want to say about this.” But Saturday’s statement, which was about 500 words long, is the second public comment that he has made since her ouster.

Driving Mr. Sulzberger’s increasingly public posture has been an escalating debate over pay equality and the treatment of women. Two articles in The New Yorker have said that Ms. Abramson’s base salary when she took the job in 2011 was lower than that of her male predecessor, Bill Keller. On Sunday, NBC’s “Meet the Press” is scheduled to have a round table on “the equal pay debate” and is expected to discuss Ms. Abramson.

On Saturday, Mr. Sulzberger said, as he did in an earlier public statement, that Ms. Abramson’s pay package in her last year in the job was 10 percent higher than Mr. Keller’s.

“Equal pay for women is an important issue in our country — one that The New York Times often covers,” Mr. Sulzberger wrote. “But it doesn’t help to advance the goal of pay equality to cite the case of a female executive whose compensation was not in fact unequal.”

Ms. Abramson has not made any public statement since her dismissal, and has not responded to messages and emails seeking comment. Her first remarks on her dismissal could come on Monday, when she is scheduled to give the commencement address at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, N.C.

Whatever. It was handled badly.

ICYMI, see Jonathan Tobin's response earlier, at Commentary, "Judge the Times the Way It Judges Others":

It is a terrible thing to see any veteran journalist get turned out on the street in this kind of manner and I don’t think anyone—except perhaps for Thomas—would be justified in exulting about has happened to Abramson. But for the Times itself, I have no compassion or sympathy. The Times deserves to be judged and condemned as the classic example of liberal hypocrisy.

Ain't it the truth.

My Son's 6th Grade Country Report

My boy picked Denmark. And of course I spent time with him researching the country and helping with the written paragraphs.

I'm impressed. Denmark boasts the world's highest level of income equality, as measured by the Gini coefficient (financed the world's highest tax rates). And Danes have the highest rate of meat consumption per capita in the world. It's basically your Scandinavian dream country. Modern, cultured and environmentally correct. I'm not planning a trip to Europe anytime soon, but after helping with this project, I'm way more inclined to consider a Copenhagen stopover.

My kid's 6th grade class project. #Denmark pic.twitter.com/84ebIAL09r

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 17, 2014

In any case, here's the copy on the country's background:

Denmark is located in Scandinavia, in the northernmost part of Europe. The geography of Denmark is mostly flatland. The country's highest point being roughly 173 meter above sea level. There are over 400 islands. Some of its best-known landmarks include the Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen and the Little Mermaid Statue, at the Langelinie promenade in Copenhagen. Denmark's natural resources include oil, natural gas, gravel, sand, limestone, chalk, and clay. Denmark is self-sufficient in oil. Denmark has a temperate climate with mild winters and cool summers. The country averages about 28 inches of rainfall per year. Denmark is a predominantly Protestant nation and Easter and Christmas are the country's biggest holidays. Danes celebrate three days of Christmas. Other religious holidays are also important throughout the year. The capital city of Copenhagen, population of over 1 million people, is a popular visitors' attraction. The city is rich in historical sites and palaces, as well as arts and culture, like museums and the opera. The Copenhagen zoo is popular as well. The original Legoland park is located in the city of Billund, to the west in Jutland. Danes are the world's greatest meateaters! Denmark boasts the highest consumption of meat per person in the world. Meat and fish are the main foods. Danes like to eat open sandwiches, called smørrebrød, with lots of toppings, as well as meatballs with all kinds of trimmings. Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Nina Agdal is probably the world's most famous Dane at the moment, although Prince Hamlet, from Shakespeare's play, remains as popular as ever. Because it is cool in Denmark most of the time, Danes wear a lot of layers in the clothing, as well as denim jeans, sweaters and scarves.

And you gotta love Denmark's immigration policy, via Der Spiegel, "Putting a Price on Foreigners: Strict Immigration Laws 'Save Denmark Billions'":

Denmark's strict immigration laws have saved the country billions in benefits, a government report has claimed. The Integration Ministry report has now led to calls among right-wing populists to clamp down further on immigrants to increase the savings...

The report has led to jubilation among right-wing politicians: "We now have it in black and white that restrictions (on immigrants) pay off," said DPP finance spokesman Kristian Thulesen Dahl. The DPP will almost certainly exploit the figures in future negotiations over the Danish economy.

But the report has sparked outrage from opposition parties like the centrist Social Liberal Party, which dismissed it as undignified and discriminatory. The party's integration spokeswoman, Marianne Jelved, said: "A certain group of people is being denounced and being blamed for our deficit, being made into whipping boys." She added: "We cannot classify people depending on their value to the economy. That is degrading in a democracy that has a basic value of equality."

Still, the announcement has not come as surprise. The right-wing populist DPP, which has been working with the ruling center-right coalition government of Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen since 2001, has in the past made its aims very clear: a complete halt to immigration into Denmark from non-Western countries. "A Somali who is no good for anything, that is simply not acceptable," said DPP leader Pia Kjærsgaard. Similarly, center-right liberal Prime Minister Rasmussen has also said anyone who would be a burden on Denmark is not welcome in the country.

Right-wing populists have even demanded a ban on satellite dishes so that TV stations like al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya cannot be beamed into Danish living rooms. There have also been suggestions to exempt migrants from the minimum wage -- supposedly to make it easier for foreigners to gain access to the labor market.

The small Scandinavian country already has the strictest immigration and asylum laws in Europe. For example, foreign couples are only allowed to marry if both partners are at least 24 years old. The number of asylum seekers and relatives of immigrants seeking entry into Denmark dropped by more than two-thirds within nine years as a result of the tough laws....

In November, the government agreed to stricter laws and made the entry of immigrants' spouses more difficult. Only those who collect enough "points" may come to Denmark in the future -- with points being determined by factors such as academic qualifications and proof of language proficiency. In addition, the equivalent of €13,000 must be deposited with the state in the form of a bank guarantee to cover any future public assistance. Socially deprived areas with a disproportionately high number of immigrants will be subject in future to a so-called "ghetto strategy" designed to prevent high concentrations of foreigners in public housing areas. Migrants will be assigned housing, and three-year-old children who do not speak Danish well enough will be required to attend state child care.

Some immigrants have already turned their back on Denmark voluntarily. Increasing numbers of Somalis are moving away, especially to the UK, the Jyllands Posten reported on Thursday, because of discrimination.

Hmm, racism as state strategy. And leftists say we're the world's most evil country, lol!

Ousted Editor Jill Abramson Was Raking More Than $500 Thousand Annually

They're the wretched of the earth over there at NYT, or something.

From Ken Auletta, at the New Yorker, "In 2011, Abramson's salary went from $475k to $503k, then $525k after protest; Keller's, $559k":

It is always hard to say what causes a final break—a firing, a divorce—but, clearly, a last straw came a few weeks ago, when Abramson, who made little secret of her displeasure with Sulzberger, decided to hire a lawyer to complain that her salary was not equal to that of her predecessor, Bill Keller. She had also been told by reliable sources at the paper that, as managing editor, she had once earned less than her own deputy, John Geddes. Abramson’s attempt to raise the salary issue at a time when tempers were already frayed seemed wrongheaded to Sulzberger and Thompson, both on its merits and in terms of her approach. Bringing in a lawyer, in particular, seems to have struck them as especially combative. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, argued that there was no real compensation gap, but conceded to me that “this incident was a contributing factor” to the firing of Abramson, because “it was part of a pattern.”

And there was a "non-disparagement agreement"?

Lifestyles of the rich and famous, sounds like to me. Sheesh:

Times ombudsman reveals that both sides have signed non-disparagement agreement, so don't expect a tell-all interview from Jill Abramson

— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) May 15, 2014

Previously: "Well, I was wondering what got Jill Abramson fired..."

Well, I was wondering what got Jill Abramson fired...

And now I know, via Ken Auletta, at the New Yorker, "Why Jill Abramson Was Fired" (at Memeorandum).



The leftist hypocrisy here is so typical of idiot progs.

She complained about gender discrimination and was fired, basically. Pinch Sulzberger can candy-coat it however he wants, but Jill Abramson got uppity about pay and he canned her.

More at Hot Air, "Oh my: NYT executive editor reportedly canned in part because … she wanted to be paid as much as her male predecessor; Update: NYT denies."

PHOTO: Dean Baquet and Jill Abramson, c/o the New York Times.

'I love being female, and I’m actually quite confident about being a woman, but the only time I even come close to feeling bad about myself is when major media outlets and elite feminists use their power to tell me there’s some major flaw with me being female...'

It's Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist, "Why Are Feminists So Insecure?"

She's writing about Katty Kay and Claire Shipman's "The Confidence Gap," which I blogged here.

And see the Other McCain, "How @ClaireShipman Ironically Proves Phyllis Schlafly Right About the ‘Pay Gap’."