I am scrolling through my social media feeds, and noticing that there is a heck of a lot of strife going on now... Egypt... Syria... Ukraine... Spain... US... It's pretty cool to remember that because we have the right to association, petition, and redress... we have a lot more control, influence... whatever you want to say about that... then people in other corners of the world. We're squabbling over those things that Locke and Jefferson pointed out as our unalienable rights... Government expenditures, social policy, restructuring institutional debt in place like Detroit, distribution of resources, government regulation of industries, and just plain old government corruption. This last resources is a really fun one... allowing you to interact with the data. There are also great visualization of the data in the brochure towards the bottom. Tons to talk about here... so how do you plan on using it?
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Started my morning click-clacking over my keyboard when a friend on FB alerted me to this amazing little info-graphic... about income inequality. I jumped in for the five minutes (and then felt like puking)... and then decided to do some more digging. 'Cause, why not? So he talks about socialism and capitalism... and when I think socialism and capitalism, I think <<CRASH COURSE>> (check this guy out on youtube. Ah---maaaaa-zzzziiinngggg... (fast, but funny. And good) So now that we have that under control, maybe we can talk about what it feels like to be poor? I am all about sympathy, but empathy is so much more powerful. Have your kids play Spent... It's quick, it's easy, it's depressing...
And then once we have set the stage, we can start talking about what the government does with all of this. Perhaps, we can look at this awesome Rolling Stone Article about the history of taxation, which is definitely pulling for the left, no doubt about it. Reminds me of that Will Rogers quote from the Great Depression... "The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy." How do I balance this discussion? Do we go to Mundell and Laffer for the "Laffer Curve" and give supply-side economics? I do think that my Economics Book does a good job giving a fair shake to this theory... So there you have it, folks. Your piece of the American Pie. |
Photo via Flickr/Ted Eytan
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