Forbes says Bill Gates is the richest person in the world. Here’s why they’re wrong.

Forbes says Bill Gates is the richest person in the world. Here’s why they’re wrong.



This is an interesting take on how to evaluate a person's wealth. We hear what may or may not be specious comparisons of wealth all the time, for instance the claim that the poorest person in America is wealthy compared to the nobility of the 10th century. This article attempts to compare them in a reasonable way.

One thing I notice, though, is that on the graph that shows the Forbes list (in terms of nominal assets without adjustment), you could also look at certain family fortunes. Sum the fortunes of the Koch brothers, for instance, and they top the list. Sum the Walton heirs, and they in turn beat the Kochs.

Republican tax overhaul would come at cost of hundreds of credits, deductions - The Washington Post

Republican tax overhaul would come at cost of hundreds of credits, deductions - The Washington Post

Gotta say it, I'm astonished. A Republican proposal that I can get behind.



There are things I'd change, but much or it seems to be a step in the right direction.

Tea Party is Folding on the Debt Limit | New Republic

Tea Party is Folding on the Debt Limit | New Republic

 Prior to the shutdown, it wasn’t clear whether Bachmann et al were irrational (that is, so zealously attached to their ideological goals that they ignored conventional political incentives, like widespread public disapproval), or delusional (meaning they were perfectly capable of responding to political incentives in theory; they just assumed the masses supported them).

IOW, Teapartiers are so embedded in their echo chamber that they truly believe most people think like they do.

But the lesson of the shutdown is that engagement and accommodation is worse than useless—it’s counterproductive. When you’re dealing with delusional people, any gesture in their direction will only be interpreted as confirmation that their delusions are true. When Obama agreed to pare tens of billions from his 2011 spending request shortly after the GOP won control of Congress, House Republicans didn’t see it as a sign of good faith, as the White House believed they would. (David Plouffe: “The trust was increased.”) They interpreted it as an admission by the president that the public supported their radical agenda. 

IOW, letting a delusional person have his way only encourages the delusion.

It’s only through confrontation—doing away with negotiations and inciting voters to communicate which side they support—that you have any chance of breaking through. Going forward, that means there’s no probably difference-splitting approach to, say, getting an immigration bill through the House. If you want immigration reform, let Republicans reject the reasonable-sounding bill that passed the Senate, then force them to pay a brutal price for their unpopular positionin 2016. 

IOW, force them to commit to crazier and crazier ideas  

If I thought Obama was that smart, I might have thought he was doing that. Unfortunately he has failed to grasp the fundamental truth of bipartisanship: When one side says 2+2=5 , and the other side says 2+2=7, compromise between those positions isn't much help. I really can't think of a bipartisan idea in the last century or so that was actually a good idea (WW II a possible exception).

"But they earned it." Oh really?

The usual objection to redistributive economic policies is that the wealthy have earned their wealth, and it is morally wrong to take away what someone has earned.



Well, not so much.



So much for the wealthy having "earned their money."



And the road to shared prosperity is precisely to attack the _unearned_ economic rents of the very wealthy, not the wealth they themselves have actually produced.



The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes | Economic Policy Institute



I have no objection to Bill Gates being wealthy. I have a very strong objection to the Waltons stealing the productivity of their workers, and seeing their inherited super-wealth as somehow morally equivalent to Gates'.

Solving the problem by, well, solving the problem

Want to end poverty? Brazil’s answer: Give people money



I said many years ago that if you want to end airplane crashes it's actually very easy. Take the wings and the wheels off of them. No crashes.



It will be interesting to see if this is done correctly: the government can put money in circulation this way, but it has to remove enough money in taxes to prevent inflation. I'm betting that they'll fall down on that part. If they do, it will cripple any effort to fix problems here, since the press is too dumb to understand what they will have done wrong.



On the other hand, if the program is done right and actually succeeds, we can watch the pseudo-libertarian lackeys of the 0.01% make excuses about why it won't work here.

Science press gets it wrong again.

In other news, water is wet.



Stephen Hawking: 'There are no black holes' : Nature News & Comment



When the headlines, "There are no black holes," simply contradict what the very story under it says, it's time to fire the editors.

A good idea is quickly abandoned...

... while a bad idea lasts forever.



Popular Flood Insurance Law Is Target of Both Political Parties - NYTimes.com



One of the first things I realized about the consequences of climate change is that one of the most immediate dangers is foolishly trying to fight the sea. Beach communities already pay huge amounts of money to fight the littoral current that moves sand up and down the shore. (Remember your parables, folks? Foolish man, houses, and sand?) How do you suppose they'll react when their coastal property is below sea level? And who do you suppose they'll expect to pay for it?



So now sea level is rising, and people are crying. Look, I'm not unsympathetic to people whose homes are being lost. But come on, one of the risks of living close to the water is that the water may get a bit too close. Who should pay for that? Gee, lets see. You get to live near the beach. You get to go fishing and swimming, bird watching in the marshes, enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of coastal living. So of course the people who should pay for that are.... everyone else, right?



The Biggert-Waters flood insurance reform act put more of the burden of insuring flood-prone coastal properties where it belongs-- on the people who choose to build in a flood zone. So naturally the people who now have to pay the true cost of their foolishly located buildings are crying.



It's really not complicated. Don't build on a flood plain. That includes the coastal property likely to flood in severe storms. It would have cost much, much less after Katrina to give displaced homeowners a check for the equity they lost and tell them to build above sea level. Sea level in the Miocene, that is. (See figure 2, page 3) And not on a river flood plain either.