I just finished listening to the Census Bureau press conference about their latest releast of median income, poverty, and healthcare data. The startling news is this: Real median incomes in 2015 for family households ($72,165) and nonfamily households ($33,805) increased 5.3…
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Trump & Sanders are both reactions to mmutilitarian policies
John B. Judis recently wrote a good analysis of populism on the right (Trump) and on the left (Sanders). This updates some of the themes in his book, The Paradox of American Democracy, in which he: presents a familiar diagnosis of American…
Posted in Medianism, Public Finance
The freaky economics of socialist healthcare in Britain
Below is an excerpt from Think Like A Freak, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Shortly after the publication of Superfreakonomics [2009], while on a book tour in England, we were invited to meet David Cameron, [the Leader of the Conservative Party] who would…
Why do stocks rise faster than incomes? Is that a good thing?
The US stock market has had faster long-run growth than US incomes (GDP). The FRED graph below shows data for a little more than a half century, but stock values have historically grown considerably faster then incomes since the beginning of…
Help the poor by helping the median
A lot of Americans actively dislike poor people and according to recent research, this trend has gotten stronger in recent years. Alec MacGillis summarizes some of the research: surveys… show a decades-long decline in support for redistributive policies and an…
Posted in Medianism
The repugnant conclusion is irrelevant because people find it repugnant
Vox is embroiled in a bit of controversy because the online magazine solicited an article from a Swedish philosopher, Torbjorn Tannsjo, endorsing the repugnant conclusion and then decided that Tannsjo’s conclusions were too repugnant to publish. My advice is to…
Posted in Medianism
80% of Americans have not recovered from the recession.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a chart showing that 80% of Americans have not recovered from the recession as of the latest annual data (2014): Note that compensation rose a lot more than wages for most people. The main reason…
Medianism 