Archive for February, 2010
Monday, February 8th, 2010
It’s the Capitalists, Stupid
From economist Emmanuel Saez, reporting on the share of personal income going to various percentiles of the U.S. households:
Year 2007 [was] the second highest year on record since 1913 almost equaling 1928, the record year when the top percentile share reached 23.9 percent. Even within the top percentile, the gains from 2006 to 2007 are extremely concentrated. The top .01% (top 14,988 US families, making at least $11.5m in 2007) share increased from 5.46% in 2006 to 6.04% in 2007 leaving well behind the 1928 peak of 5.04 percent.
One wonders whether the year 1928 doesn’t have rather a great deal of relevance as history repeating itself. 2007 looks an awful lot like that former pinnacle, with eerily similar effects seemingly ensuing, with the crucial difference that, behind the marketing facade, Obama is Hoover redux, not FDR II.
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Corporations in the Womb
In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, I thought I’d share another reminder of the genesis of the modern conglomerate business corporation.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, when major investors in the United States found themselves in a confounding situation.
