(I can already hear my readers sharpening up their quills as they prepare their screeds on how GDP growth means nothing if the benefits of that growth are not equitably distributed. Fine. It's still better to have some growth than none.)

Well, yes, there's this, from Heather Boushey, of the Center for Economic Policy and Research:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1243&Itemid=45

If This Is Such a Rich Country, Why Are We Getting Squeezed?

....

Saying that the majority of the country's economic gains in recent years have gone to the top one percent of the income ladder understates the trend. You have to cut the pie into even smaller slices to get the full picture. Because while the bottom half of the top one percent of the income distribution have done far better than the average wage slaves, it is a smaller slice still -- the top .01 percent -- that has grabbed most of the gains--seeing an impressive 250 percent increase in income between 1973 and 2005 -- from an economy that's grown by 160 percent.

An analysis by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez gives us the best perspective of what's going on for everyone else. They found that despite several periods of healthy growth between 1973 and 2005, the average income of all but the top ten percent of the income ladder -- nine out of ten American families - fell by 11 percent when adjusted for inflation.

It's hard to see why some growth must be better than none if 160 percent growth in the economy produces a net 11 percent drop in income for 90 percent of the population. This is the macro-economic reflection of the corporate-growth-by-downsizing paradigm. It may still be true that growth is generally better than no growth, but it can no longer be assumed that it must be better. The inequalities are just too large.

But there's another point to be drawn from such statistics: it's precisely this sort of wealth concentration that makes the following so dangerous:

There's a simple answer to why we should care. Credit crunches spark recessions. If money gets expensive, companies don't just stop buying each other, they also find it harder to raise capital to do anything. Growth slows. People get laid off.

While this has always been true in a broad sense, what's happened to our economy since 1973 has both centralized credit markets, meaning that a crunch in one market is much more tightly linked to potential crunches in others (the dark side of liquidity), and it has dramatically increased the reliance of consumers on personal debt, making them much more vulnerable when such downtowns occur. And, of course, the reign of conservative orthodoxy has also managed to significantly reduce the amount of coverage under unemployment insurance, which not only directly cushioned a much larger percentage of workers in 1973 than it will today, but also indirectly protected all sorts of people who continued to be paid by those covered by unemployment insurance.

In short, there are multiple ways in which income inequality and credit crunches interact to produce misery. Lucky us! We get to enjoy them all!

nabalzbbfr:

You mock God at your own peril.

Matthew 25:31-46:

The Sheep and the Goats

31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

44 "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

45 "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

46 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Sorry, Dude. You were right. Lake of fire.

What reporter can resist a Coast Guard Boat gratuitously floating a few feet offshore by the name of "The Halibut"?

You just have to mention it, in the same spirit it was deployed, just for "The Halibut."

At least it wasn't a junk.