Ran across two interesting articles today worth saving. The first is by famed Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert on why he has resumed reading newspapers. He had become more of an online news consumer, like many of us, but began to notice problems with "news" websites being vague about their sources, and gimmicky in general. He specifically mentions The Huffington Post making it difficult to click on and read the actual story they are teasing on their front page, possibly to increase page views. He includes lovely photographs of people reading newspapers in different settings, which oddly feels a bit nostalgic.
I stopped taking the paper a long time ago - Mr. Ebert may have inspired me to resubscribe.
Roger Ebert: I'm reading newspapers again
Next is Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration who is now a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, discussing President Obama's stimulus plan. I've always liked Mr. Reich - he is extremely bright, yet also a down-to-earth straight talker. I am no economist, but somehow when he explains pertinent issues, I get a good bit of what he's saying, and it happens again here. This paragraph about our current financial mess is particularly telling:
What happened to the money? According to researchers Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, since the late 1970s, a greater and greater share of national income has gone to people at the top of the earnings ladder. As late as 1976, the richest 1 percent of the country took home about 9 percent of the total national income. By 2006, they were pocketing more than 20 percent. But the rich don't spend as much of their income as the middle class and the poor do -- after all, being rich means that you already have most of what you need. That's why the concentration of income at the top can lead to a big shortfall in overall demand and send the economy into a tailspin. (It's not coincidental that 1928 was the last time that the top 1 percent took home more than 20 percent of the nation's income.) (emphasis mine)
Again, I am no economist, but this makes sense. Remember all the times our "leaders" tried to sell us "trickle-down" economics over the years? Did you ever feel any economic trickles, or droplets, or drizzles? A fine mist of some sort, perhaps? (Toilet flushes don't count.) Yeah, didn't think so.
Read the full Washington Post article here.
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