Subscribe to this blog's feed

Recent Posts

Search

Pages I refer to often

  • Income Distribution in the US
    How is our income distributed? Well, it is pretty concentrated. How concentrated? Take a look.
  • Progress and Poverty, by Henry George
    Here are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!
  • Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: Bottom 90%, Next 9% and Top 1%
    Aggregated data by net worth quantile, for various kinds of wealth. With calculations you won't find anywhere else!
  • Wealth Concentration Tables from 2004 SCF: 50-40-5-4-1
    These tables show how concentrated the ownership of various kinds of assets are. With calculations you won't find anywhere else! This version is less aggregated: Bottom 50%, Next 40%, Next 5%, Next 4% and Top 1%.

Pages

Categories

Books I Value

  • Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The Remedy
    This is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.
  • Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It!
    This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

Where Else Might You Look?

Sites I enjoy

About

Blog powered by Typepad

July 2023

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Archives

More...

Notes

  • Add to Technorati Favorites

« 15,000 contractors costing how much? | Main | Wealth Concentration and Trinity Church (Wall Street) »

December 16, 2011

Facts & other stubborn things

Facts & other stubborn things: Don't you dare tell me economics can't solve the vexing problems faced by human society.

Facts & other stubborn things --  the blog of Daniel Kuehn

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams

"When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
- John Maynard Keynes

I thought the two quotes quite wonderful, and spent some time reading the blog itself ... went back a few pages, and found this post with a link to a two-page journal article, which I commend to your attention. [Chickens, Eggs, Causality, or Which Came First?]

Back to the two quotes.  When Americans go to elect a President next November, one of the key considerations should be how the Supreme Court justices each candidate would offer to our senators for confirmation would respond to the latter quote.  I submit that our current group of "originalists" should not be expanded -- and that this issue transcends most or all of the other issues at hand, if our primary concern is the sort of society we leave for our grandchildren.

I commend to your attention Henry George's book of essays, "Social Problems," which speaks, among other things, to the changes which had taken place in the first 100 years of this country's history, and might lead one to re-examine closely-held assumptions about the eternal quality of the notions and accords of the Founding Fathers.

Posted on December 16, 2011 at 09:24 PM in Social Problems, teach your children well |

| | | |

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

The comments to this entry are closed.