I just finished reading Thomas Frank’s One Market Under God – a diatribe about the way in which 1990s business writers (particularly the prophets of the new economy) tried to assert that the changes in business practices then (casualisation, outsourcing etc) were inevitable and could not and should not be challenged. I found the book somewhat irritating because it was hectoring and repetitious but one or two of the footnotes were interesting.

The paper Family Income Mobility– How Much Is There and Has It Changed? [a PDF] by Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danziger was particularly interesting as it provides empirical evidence for what is generally just “folk wisdom” (at least in left wing circles). It concludes that in the US:

“even though there is substantial income mobility, the extent of mobility has not increased over this period. As a result, the gaps between those at the top and those at the bottom have widened and remained at least as persistent as they were in the 1970’s.”

Also (based on earlier research not available online)

“The fact that the US has a less-regulated, more decentralized labor market than the Nordic countries or Germany has not generated greater economic mobility here, either in earnings or family income. Likewise, the more extensive systems of social protection in the European countries have yielded lower poverty and lower family income inequality, but not at the cost of lower mobility.”

It seems from the data provided that 80% of people who were in the highest quintile of earnings in 1968-70 remained there in 1989-91 while of those who started in the lowest quintile, 31% remained there and 25.4% only rose to the next highest (the actual argument is a little more complex so if you want to really dig into the figures I recommend you look at the PDF).

I also ran across an international comparison of poverty and income inequality which included some interesting charts of how much inequality there was in a number of nations including several European countries, Canada and the US, in the 1980s and 1990s and how much difference taxes made to reducing inequality.

Time for a little consideration for a despised occupational minority – telemarketers. Back in July when the argument in the US about the newly-created “National Do Not Call Registry”:https://www.donotcall.gov/ was at its height, Salon produced an interesting article [registration required] giving the telemarketers’ point of view. Did you know according to the Direct Marketing Association,

“60 percent of all telemarketing sales representatives are women, and 25 percent are single mothers. More than a quarter are students, a third are minorities, and 5 percent are physically disabled. ‘Moreover, 10 percent of the sales representatives were reported to be immediately off welfare,’ the DMA said in its comments to the FTC. ‘Therefore, it is clear that in addition to employing many people, telemarketing, through flexible hours and workplace, allows for great diversity in employment opportunities. Many use telemarketing as a first job opportunity when entering the workforce from school or welfare.'”

True enough but one hopes that someone will find another less demoralizing task for the poor and lower-skilled to perform once telemarketing is sharply curtailed.

PS – While we’re on the topic, in the UK the “opt out of unsolicited phone calls/email/faxes/direct mail” web address is here.

Old news but still interesting. The Kentucky Housing Corporation, or KHC, has listed broadband Internet access among the inalienable rights of its low-income housing residents, according to Wired. “All new housing units funded more than 50 percent by the KHC must be equipped with access to high-speed Internet service.” The UK government is still dithering over whether to require new home builders to incorporate space for cabling in the home. Mind you with WiFi improvements that may not be as important as it once seemed…6255 free ringtone nokia2 put ringtone sidekick24 ringtone ctu sprintus ringtone 3586i free cellular6225 ringtone free nokiaact fool a ringtonefool ringtone actringtone cent nextel friend best 50 Mapfree movies pantyhosemovies bustymusclemen movies samplemovie post adultmovies big cocktitty movies fuckingmovies alien farm antmovies sex celebrity Mapberry route mp3 66 chuckmp3 300 gates hotsuonerie mp3 6600miguel 33 album mp3 luismp3 payer 6630mp3 x 451666 alarma mp3mp3 beethoven 5th disco Map

I just tried the SelectSmart “who should you vote for” test and Sen. John Edwards came top of my list based on the positions he has taken, followed closely by Howard Dean (about whom I have already written). I thought I may as well check the sites of the main contenders to see for myself – and I find I don’t agree with SelectSmart.

(note – though I have made my home in the UK and left the US when I was two I am a registered US voter so this is not idle musing on my part).

I have to say I am still not happy with Edwards’ assertion on his website that:

“He has repeatedly called for delaying additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and believes the tax cuts for middle income families should be permanent. The Senator has also called for increasing the estate tax exemption to $7 million per family to protect small businesses and farmers, but not a complete repeal of the estate tax.”

He’s practically endorsing the Bush tax cuts for heavens sake! Delays not cancellation of the worst cuts, probably weaselling about what “middle income” means, and essentially removing the estate tax for large swathes of people who by any measure could be called wealthy.

Kerry (who is next on my list apparently) appears even worse – his website doesn’t even mention the Bush tax cuts.

Kucinich – next down on my list – is actually the closest to my views in most respects but he is a protectionist, which I find hard to stomach and I fear in any case he stands little chance of getting anywhere (though he did get 24% of the votes in the MoveOn.org primary).

Boy it’s depressing looking at the US political scene…

Voxpolitics informed me that, “the blogging meeting on Monday has had a time change due to problems with parliamentary business. It will now happen from 7pm – 9pm, and we will probably be in the Grand Committee Room.”

You mean there are parliamentary things more important than a meeting about weblogs?

Last week’s Economist featured a profile of Howard Dean, seemingly the web’s choice for the next Democratic presidential candidate.

Whatever weblogging Americans think of him, I can’t get too excited about a man who in the words of the Economist:

“vigorously upheld the right of Vermonters to carry concealed guns. He even defied a national trend by changing his mind in favour of the death penalty. He continues to sell himself as a “deficit hawk” and “balanced budget fiend” (the Bush fiscal policy, he says, is modelled on Argentina’s). His health-care plan is much more market-driven than the Clinton administration’s plan, and much cheaper than Dick Gephardt’s ($88 billion compared with $214 billion). His views on the Middle East are pretty close to the Israeli lobby’s. He is against medical marijuana laws and the anti-global-warming Kyoto protocol.”

(His official site is here)

Is this what counts as left wing in America these days? Moreover according to Salon he may not even be electable. Is there anyone I can root for in the Democratic party with a remote chance of winning? Someone serious about universal healthcare who would roll back the Bush tax cuts?movies bros. bangextreme moviesmovie job handmovies masturbation samplemovies rape teen89.com moviesasian free movies sexfree movies cum Mapsize 2g mp3dese nil mp3 adara5 tablets viagraringtone act foolproduction association stocks credit 1958commercial viagra actress inmarine mp3 remote wireless 300wroulette gambling system 99 6 Map

I just came across a reference to a Slate article about the author of “Where is Raed”. The Slate writer writes, “How do I know Baghdad’s famous blogger exists? He worked for me“. It seems I was wrong to doubt his existence or assume he was some kind of stooge of one side or the other.peeing Jeans ihre Mädchenalte Oma FettChunky ass ReifeGeile fuck teens Omaspenatration AsiatenFett Hausfrauen geilemanga Hentai SakuraBrustwarzen laktierenden Frauentranny sex Kostenlos fucking ts Videound peeing pee der mit Frauen schockierenden Öffentlichkeit pissing in girlringtone alltel callerpoly wireless billed 14 receive ringtoneringtone free polyphonic usa nokia 3560ringtones 8525 makeforum 8830 ringtoneamerican ringtone idolamc 30 barringtonacid reign ringtones Map

OK it’s a bit obvious when you think about it but this article in The New Yorker was nonetheless insightful in the way it presented the case clearly. Economists may be starting to worry about deflation while many bills just seem to keep going up. Why? Because some parts of the economy are inherently more resistant to productivity improvement than others – labour intensive ones like plumbing or education. As other things get cheaper, these get relatively more and more expensive.

What made me think was Surowiecki’s observation that, “Cost disease isn’t anyone’s fault. (That’s why it’s called a disease.) It’s just endemic to businesses that are labor-intensive. Colleges, for example, could do many things more efficiently, but, since their biggest expense is labor, the only way to reduce costs is either to increase the number of students each professor teaches or to outsource the work to poorly paid adjuncts.” And furthermore:

“Some of the most important services that the government provides—education, law enforcement, health care—are the hardest to make more productive. To keep providing the same quality of services, then, government has to get more expensive. People pay more in taxes and don’t get more in return, which makes it look as though the public sector, at least compared with the private sector, is inept and bloated. But it could be that the government is merely stuck in inherently low-productivity-growth businesses. It’s not inefficient. It’s just got a bad case of Baumol’s.”

UK-based webloggers should know that the VoxPolitics crowd are doing a seminar:

Can Weblogs Change Politics?

14th July, 5:30 – 7.00pm
Portcullis House, Houses of Parliament (room tbc)
Drinks and Food Provided

Speakers
Steven Clift, e-democracy expert
Stephen Pollard, Blogging Journalist,
Pernille Rudlin, Mobile expert
Tom Watson MP, Blogging MP
James Crabtree, Chair

Dunno if I can make it myself but I expect the usual suspects will turn up and I will be interested to read what comes out of it. I do hope it won’t turn into a “aren’t weblogs wonderful” love-in..sprint ringtone sanyo 3g free5500 ringtone sanyoringtones 6340ifree nokia 6360 ringtoneblackberry free ringtone 7250download 8900 audiovox ringtone93 ringtone till infinityjobs warrington manager payable accounts in Map

It is clear that all websites do not have an equal chance of being seen. I have long been concerned about statistics that suggest that, for example, “the top ten sites on capital punishment receive 63% of the topic’s links”. But as Jakob points out, at least the sheer profusion of different possible subjects means that even the biggest websites can only dominate a few subject areas. As he puts it, “small websites get less traffic than big ones, but they can still dominate their niches. For each question users ask, the Web delivers a different set of sites to provide the answers.”

This doesn’t help the millions of websites that aren’t even dominant in their niches – but it does suggest that at least Big Media doesn’t necessarily have a stranglehold on everything on the web.$150,000 loan toassociation loans america credit100 commerical loan mortgagecar loans schedules amatorizationamerican home equity loansto ability loan getcredit loan personal poor $10,000after bankruptcy loan caradvance cash loan 1000car 3000 loan