[Manhattan Institute] The Question: How should the next president address wealth inequality?
Changes to the tax code certainly could reduce inequality, but the real question is whether we should try to reduce it. There is little evidence that we should.
Are American levels of inequality harmful? Some analysts claim that they hurt middle-class incomes or increase poverty. But child poverty is at an all-time low, and middle-class incomes are also at historic highs. Across developed countries, those with higher inequality have slightly higher middle-class incomes and less poverty.
Others argue -- based on mobility measures constructed to look worse when inequality rises -- that higher inequality causes lower economic mobility or leads to political inequality. In fact, research claiming that the rich get their way in Congress over other voters has been debunked; in truth, across most issues, rich, middle-class and poor Americans have similar policy preferences. And in the United States, mobility has remained flat while inequality has risen over the past generation. Areas of the United States with more income concentration at the top have no worse mobility than areas with low inequality. The same is trueacross countries -- the best research indicates that low-inequality Sweden is no more mobile than the United States.
Still others, such as Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, claim that higher inequality saps economic growth. The research on this question is all over the map, but studies by experts including Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez indicate that countries with higher inequality growth tend to have higher economic growth too. Paul Krugman, another Nobel Prize-winning economist...
[Wash Times] Serbian protesters greeted Vice President Joseph R. Biden Tuesday with derisive chants of "Vote for Trump!"
Hundreds of demonstrators in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, chanted for the U.S. Republican presidential nominee upon Mr. Biden’s arrival, Reuters reported.
The demonstrators were Serbian ultranationalists protesting Mr. Biden’s one-day stop in Belgrade before his visit to Kosovo. They also wore shirts displaying an image of Mr. Trump.
"Trump is the alternative to globalization," Vojislav Seselj, head of Serbia’s ultra-nationalist Radical Party, told Reuters when asked about supporting Mr. Trump. "He will destroy old centers of power in the United States and he is a supporter of Russia."
At a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton on Monday in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden said he was visiting several countries in Europe this week to reassure NATO members who are worried that Mr. Trump might not support the alliance if elected president.
In Belgrade, Mr. Biden offered sympathy for Serbians who died during NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999.
"I'd like to express my condolences to the families of those whose lives were lost in the wars of the 1990s, including those killed as a consequence of the NATO air strikes," he said alongside Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic.
#1
The chants for Trump go a bit deeper than the current U.S. election. The Serbs will forever remain bitter over the betrayal, by then President Bill Clinton and his support for the Islamist in the Bosnian war.
#3
Chuckle, chuckle, that was good for a laugh this a.m. Thanks Besoeker. Does the heart and soul good to laugh. Clinton's were protective of the Islamists. We were thanked with 911.
[Right Scoop] Shortly after Hillary Clinton left the Obama administration, the State Department quietly took steps to purchase real estate in Nigeria from a firm whose parent company is owned by a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, records obtained by Fox News show.
On March 20, 2013, William P. Franklin, an "international realty specialist" at the State Department, emailed Mary E. Davis, an American diplomat stationed in Africa, instructing her to "put on Post letterhead" an "expression of interest" by the department in purchasing property at Eko Atlantic, a massive real estate development off the coast of Lagos.
Franklin further instructed that the signed letter was to be "delivered to Ronald Chagoury." The draft letter, also obtained by Fox News, was undated and addressed to Chagoury care of his firm South Energyx Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of the larger Chagoury Group that is spearheading the Eko Atlantic real estate venture. The State Department letter sought, among other things, to confirm that the department could proceed with "acquisition of the real property...[at] the asking price of $1,250 per square meter."
Overtures to real estate developers from State Department officials scouting locations for embassies, consulates and other diplomatic facilities would ordinarily not arouse interest. But in this case, the budding transaction ‐ never completed, the department now says ‐ raised eyebrows because Ronald Chagoury is the brother and business partner, in the Chagoury Group, of Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born businessman whom federal records show has donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
No, we’re not surprised, so don’t ask, BUT, it’s one thing to have just opinions about her corruption, and finding real evidence. And this, is real evidence...
From Instapundit: As somebody said on Twitter, the difference between Hillary and normal people is that when she gets an email from a rich Nigerian proposing a deal, it’s actually from a rich Nigerian, proposing a deal.
#2
I read it and didn't believe it. So I read it again.
I think I understand the words but I can't be sure what they mean in this context.
Bill Clinton went to a swamplawyer's party in Lagos,
1) believed the pitch they were going to drain it,
2) went home and told Hilarity
3) went BACK, saw some different dry land, told Hilarity.
4) Then SHE(SoS) told the US to buy some of the swamp.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
