[MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] one amazing graph that tells it all

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

You have to check out this excellent graph:

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/03/american-politi.html

Think about it (you might have to look really carefully because it's 
slightly fuzzy).  Note especially that people are showing larger income 
gains under Democrats than under Republicans at *all* plotted income 
levels!  Here's what Krugman has to say:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/bartels-alfred-wegener/

There were some nice comments:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/bartels-alfred-wegener/?8ty&emc=ty#comment-32306
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/bartels-alfred-wegener/?8ty&emc=ty#comment-32341
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/bartels-alfred-wegener/?8ty&emc=ty#comment-32624
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/bartels-alfred-wegener/?8ty&emc=ty#comment-32635


A paper by Bartels (author of the graph) with a clearer version of the 
graph (on p. 31) can be found here:

http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/income.pdf

One of the commentators had written this interesting piece with a nice 
graph showing employment statistics by presidency:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_02/010773.php


My comment (submitted a few minutes ago):

Under Republican administrations of recent decades we have seen massive 
increases of national debt due to low taxes and high defense spending. 
The defense spending is a way of moving money into the pockets of wealthy 
owners of defense-related businesses.  When such spending is hard to 
justify, fear must be evoked and sometimes wars have to be started.  Once 
we have sufficient fear and/or an ongoing war, the President can twist 
Congressional arms to get control of a larger pile of cash.

It simply is not true that the wealthy do worse under Republicans than 
under Democrats.  The mystery will be solved if you break down the high 
end of the income distribution in your graph to reveal what is happening 
in the upper 1%, 0.1%, 0.01%, 0.001% and 0.0001%.  The rest of the curve 
for Republican presidencies is explained by the inadequacy of the "trickle 
down" effect.  This proves that supply-side economics really does work 
great, but only for the very rich.  The other 99% of us either prefer a 
Keynesian approach, or we are totally ignorant of such things and will 
vote for whoever shows the greatest contempt for Charles Darwin, whoever 
has the nicest smile or whoever would be the most fun to drink beer with.


So, MLUG, what do you think?

Mike

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