Empirically empty and theoretically blind arguments are a waste of time.

Ms Overington at least supplied some facts which suggested that varying degrees of inequality had a neutral effect on the rate of economic growth…

On examination - see the updates - your assertion that Overington supplied some facts proves to be false. At best she provided factoids, based on the spurious premise that comparing income inequalities between different countries is:

(A) Possible;

(B) Useful.

The rest was your usual “I’m a clever, clever cultural Dry, you’re all stoopid, stoopid cultural Wets” schtick.

As usual, you got ridiculed for it, as usual you very quickly turned peevish, and laboured long and hard to show what a quick-witted fellow you are, always with a suitably impressive array of irrelevant facts, figures and links at your Google-powered finger tips.

You got ridiculed for that too. This made you more peevish. And here you really topped yourself by miscoding your post - I have no idea what Moveable type has done to it, I’m not interested in finding out. I’m not interested, either, in fixing up your errors, when your sole purpose in commenting is to remind us proles how very, very superior you are. What, exactly, is in it for me?

Here, you made a the completely ridiculous request that your coding errors be fixed for you, a favour that has frequently been extended to you in the past, often enough it seems that you have come to expect it as something like a right. Think again sport. If you’re going to write long dilatory comments with fragile html code, write them in a text editor with html syntax recognition, get the code right, then paste them into the comments box. As far as I’m concerned you’re overdrawn at that particular favour bank.

Finally, one thing about a cocked hat is that you can take it off when you decide you don’t like the look of it. That isn’t true of a coxcomb.

It’s not hard to pick up a few useful ideas from watching and reading the work of one of the acknowledged masters of the art Jack.

The link in your comment pointed to some stats I quoted on US economic growth. You apparently think that providing data is an example of my “acknowledged mastery of the art” of self-parody. Diagnostic of your inablility to discern the fine line between fact and fancy.

Gummo Trotsky says:

Still, I live in hope that one day you’ll recognise the true nature of your genius and finally retire.

Be careful of what you wish for. If I retired from my day job as well I would have more time to knock your rambling diatribes, clumsy attempts at humour and amateurish social critique into a cocked hat. A cap fit for you to wear.

Perhaps you should stick to self-parody, there’s certainly enough material there to play with.

It’s not hard to pick up a few useful ideas from watching and reading the work of one of the acknowledged masters of the art Jack. Still, I live in hope that one day you’ll recognise the true nature of your genius and finally retire.

Man, I throw you guys a nice little news tip about one of your favourite targets and you don’t even bother to pursue it,

did someone just pass wind…?

your tub-thumping bombast and vainglory has never been the least bit amusing.

The missing pars contained commonly known statistics and some elementary arithmetic. Facts and logic are perhaps useful for things other than “amusing” you. Perhaps you should stick to self-parody, there’s certainly enough material there to play with.

My inclination is more to start cutting you back to a first paragraph, a middleparagraph of my selection and a last paragraph. Because your tub-thumping bombast and vainglory has never been the least bit amusing.

But since I don’t have me glasses with me tonight, you’ll be spared that indignity for the moment.

Anthony’s quote indicating the glacial rate of progress in the growth of median black households during the last 20 years should have alerted him to this. A 20% total growth in median black household real income over this time amounts to an annualized rate of growth of less than 1%.

During that time the real US economy almost doubled in size, growing from $6.053 trillion in 1985 to $11.048 trillion in 2005. (in constant 2000 US dollars). That is an annualized growth rate of 3.05% pa.

So the rate of growth of median black household income was less than one third the rate of growth of overall median household income. One does not have to be whiz-kid at algebra to infer from this that black households relative share of US national income has declined over this period.

This is confirmed by the black households declining share of US national wealth.

I would be grateful if Webmaster could re-insert these pars in place of the mangled par, elipsed below, that appears about half-way down the previous comment:

Anthony’s quote indicating…declining share of US national wealth.

Thanks.

Another Bwahahaha I’m Jack Strocchi! Hear my…poorly argued and barely comprehensible effort shabbily held together with a few arguments from authority and finished off with a big helping of “I’m not, you are!”

You are game, I’ll give you that. But I am in no mood to give a sucker an even break. Your howlers are easy mincemeat. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Anthony says:

Economists - a Mr Bargearse…Borjas’s “facts” are often highly distorted or selective, and his interpretations of them always seem to be slanted heavily to favor his views supporting significant immigrant restriction.

Anthony thinks that puerile joke settles it. Borjas work depends on a basic economic theory: the law of supply. Increase the supply of unskilled workers and the price of such workers goes down. Illegal Mexican-American immigrants are usually unskilled, as are legal African-American residents. BOth ethnic groups inhabit similar economic niches.

Those interested in the “water runs down hill� form of economic argument can study Borjas paper at their leisure:

Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks.

The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skill black men, fell precipitously from 1960 to 2000. At the same time, the incarceration rate of black men rose markedly. … we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose.

Borjas is not a doctrinaire economist. He points to the fact that other factors are accentuating the decline in the mass of African-American living standards.

These findings can obviously generate a great deal of controversy in the immigration debate and can be easily misinterpreted…although the evidence suggests that immigration played a role in generating these trends, most of the decline in employment or increase in incarceration in the black population remains unexplained.

Put differently, immigration seems to have an effect and this effect seems to be numerically important, but we would have witnessed much of the decline in black employment and the concurrent increase in black incarceration rates even if there had been no immigration in the past few decades.

Who thinks that these other, non-cultural, factors depressing the relative shares of African-Americans might be class-related? That is my working hypothesis. It is also obvious to anyone who has first-hand experience of the US or anyone with more than two synapses firing. What’s Anthony’s excuse?

Anthony says:

$30,858. The annual median income of black households in 2005. In constant dollars, this is up from $25,642 in 1985.

Another elementary blunder. If you want to determine the whether there is “polarized SES stratification” over time you should compare relative shares, not absolute levels.

African-Americans have made substantial income gains over the “desegregation generation”, roughly 1954-74. That is the grain of truth in the widely noted “Black Middle Class” phenomenon.

But the pace of these gains slowed down drastically for the “liberation generation”, roughly 1975-95. Things picked up for African-Americans a bit during Clinton’s tenure but have slumped since Bush Republicans got the whip hand.

Anthony’s quote indicating the glacial rate of progress in the growth of median black households during the last 20 years should have alerted him to this. A 20% total growth in median black household real income over this time amounts to an annualized rate of growth of black households declining share of US national wealth.

The net worth of Hispanic and black households fell 27 percent from 1999 through 2001, while white household wealth rose 2 percent during the same period, the survey found.

A short high-concept phrase for this is “polarization of SES stratification”. But it seems I have to spell it out for the slow learners.

Anthony says:

and communal segregation.

The news on US cultural segregation is not wholly good. The US has been informally segregating over the past generation. Thanks in part to the Cultural Left’s brilliant diversity philosophy we now have a situation in the US where ethnic groups are increasingly going their separate ways and doing their own thing.

Robert Putnama studied this phenomenon at length and concluded that:

A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University’s Robert Putnam, one of the world’s most influential political scientists. His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbour to the mayor.

The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust.

“They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof Putnam. “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.”

Some people think this kind of diversity should be celebrated. As a fan of Dr Martin Luther King I think it is kind of sad.

Anthony Says:

All a bit depressing really. C’mon do the trick again

You are a sucker for punishment. I dont think I have the heart to mete any more of it out to such a easy target.

She hasn’t left.

Tim information was in error as it transpired. But spelt correctly.

Which was nice.

Jack

Another Bwahahaha I’m Jack Strocchi! Hear my … poorly argued and barely comprehensible effort shabbily held together with a few arguments from authority and finished off with a big helping of “I’m not, you are!”

What can I say, it’s a bit of a shit sandwich. It’s shit, there’s not much sandwich.
Economists - a Mr Bargearse

As academics such as Barry Chiswick and Jagdish Bhagwati have observed with regard to this book or other research, Borjas’s “facts� are often highly distorted or selective, and his interpretations of them always seem to be slanted heavily to favor his views supporting significant immigrant restriction.

: O

The US polity has encouraged cultural diversity and financial proprieties in the past generation. This has caused both the Class War and Culture War to heat up. The result is a massive increase social inequality

$30,858
The annual median income of black households in 2005. In constant dollars, this is up from $25,642 in 1985.

24.9%
Poverty rate in 2005 for those reporting black as their only race. This rate was down from 31.3% in 1985.

[link]

and communal segregation.
[link]

All a bit depressing really. C’mon do the trick again.

Income inequality in the US has increased markedly over the past generation, due to class and race polarisation, with little postiive effect on the rate of capital accumulation or accentuation.

err, you have got your causality arse-up, jack. do you honestly believe, let alone have the capacity for substantiating the claim, that class and race polarisation drives income distribution in capitalist societies?

the problem with your call for reactionary capitalism economic programs and myopic conservative cultural programs is that this will only encourage and accelerate the tendency to see the relations of exploitation being expunged from the visibility of the social body of societies in question. Hence, the post-industrial transformation of most western societies and decrease in the social efficacy on the global media has produced ripe circumstances for the increased exploitation of labouring populations outside of arbitrary national boundaries. The apparent emergent class and race tension are just the resurgence of these labour relations within national boundaries due to the most recent stage of ‘workfare’ post-welfare state post-industrialisation. return of the global repressed in the mediated psyche of simple minded conservatives.

Man, I throw you guys a nice little news tip about one of your favourite targets and you don’t even bother to pursue it, beyond Gummo’s speculation (semi-accurate, as it turns out).

Heh! Thought there had to be some explanation for the fawning tone of that Overington article. And that the bio at the end should have read:

Caroline Overington is a senior writer on The Australian. Her previous article for the magazine was “Taking it to the Max” (March 31-April 1, 2007), a profile of Maxine McKew. [She currently has her hat in the ring for a job at the ABC.]

“semi-accurate”? High praise indeed, considering the source.

She said the decision to leave had been “the silliest� mistake she’d ever made.

Maybe she took a look at Mediawatch and realised that sometimes they go after ABC journoes too. No one’s safe from those buggers. Now back to the main game, whatever that is…

And “as far as” etc

The Diary in the Media section of Oz today reports she had taken a job as “an ABC radio current affairs reporter” however

“Late yesterday she shocked everyone … when she changed her mind and decided to stay at the Oz. She said the decision to leave had been “the silliest” mistake she’d ever made. The ABC had already announced her appointment in an email to staff yesterday. ABC director news and current affairs John Cameron said he was “shiocked and confused” when told of the backflip by Diary last night.”

I throw you guys a nice little news tip

I do think that sort of tip is best left to MSM bottom feeders - like gossip columnists, tabloid lynch mob ringleaders and talkback hosts.

You do know what I’m talking about here darling little timothy don’t you? Moi, you and Caroline are all well paid up members of the inner city, chardonnay sipping MSM elite. Looky here my dear, would you really like your blog proles that you so assidiously cultivate to grasp the fact they are just eyeballs that we’ll feed in any way possible to Rupert in exchange for a regular paycheck?

Do you remember the days when media meant going out and breaking stories and not waving a flaming torch to round up a mob? Well I don’t either but that’s beside the point.

But I mean really. Silly MSM pundit changes job. Since when did that become news?

If you’d made a phone call or two you’d have had a mini-scoop all to yourselves, at which point you could have launched a thrilling “evil woman invades ABC!” thread. Hey, there’s still time …

Don’t you ever get tired of Wikkying up new pieces of “superior knowledge”, every time somebody comes up with something new you don’t know? More to the point, when are you going to realise that it’s so bloody obvious what you’re doing that you just end up looking silly.

The answer is always wets! You can try it yourself.

steve on 2 May 2007 at 8:19 pm

A very, funny and dry argument, Anthony

I would not dignify anthony’s comment as an “argument”. More of a laboured parody. Steve has trouble with conceptual clarity. Not surprising since his cultural worldview runs on confusion.

If you dont see a connection between increased cultural diversity and increased social inequality can I suggest a visit to the reality-based community?

THe tension between diversity on the one hand and community and equity on the other is not some pet personal obsession of mine. It has been there since the Enlightenment ideological split.

Competent social theorists, both right and left, now more or less acknowledge this. NOt to mention those who still believe their own lyin’ eyes. And an increasing majority going by current politico-cultural tendencies.

It is also common knowledge amongst labour market economists, an area where you two clowns could not say boo to a goose.

I have spent time working both sides of the street in the states. You guys really need a wake up call on the relationship between cultural community and social equity.

The US polity has encouraged cultural diversity and financial proprieties in the past generation. This has caused both the Class War and Culture War to heat up. The result is a massive increase social inequality and communal segregation. Social division.

Very adverse for poorer African-AMericans, the most vulnerable members of the US citizenry.

But your average self-indulgent Wet couldnt care less. Bring on the chic ethnic cuisine, deferential ethnic nannies and cheap ethnic labour. Thats the ticket for diversity-crats looking for another racket to run and those infatuated with their image in the moral vanity mirror.

What a contemptible farce your lot have made of cultural theory and cultural policy. No wonder wanker and Wet are virtually interchangeable.

Way to go Leftist humanitarians!