Month: January 2013

Noah Smith worries that automation is increasing inequality:

For most of modern history, two-thirds of the income of most rich nations has gone to pay salaries and wages for people who work, while one-third has gone to pay dividends, capital gains, interest, rent, etc. to the people who own capital. This two-thirds/one-third division was so stable that people began to believe it would last forever. But in the past ten years, something has changed. Labor’s share of income has steadily declined, falling by several percentage points since 2000. It now sits at around 60% or lower. The fall of labor income, and the rise of capital income, has contributed to America’s growing inequality.

The Economist‘s more optimistic view:

Roughly a century lapsed between the first commercial deployments of James Watt’s steam engine and steam’s peak contribution to British growth. Some four decades separated the critical innovations in electrical engineering of the 1880s and the broad influence of electrification on economic growth. [Economist Robert Gordon] himself notes that the innovations of the late 19th century drove productivity growth until the early 1970s; it is rather uncharitable of him to assume that the post-2004 slump represents the full exhaustion of potential gains from information technology.

As more details about the Manti Te’o hoax surface, Gene Wojciechowski summarizes the knowns and unknowns:

[U]ntil the mushroom cloud of a Deadspin report enveloped his life Wednesday, Te’o was considered to be all that was right and good about college football. He was more than an All-American linebacker from Notre Dame; he was an ideal, a template for integrity, compassion and humility. Te’o might still be all of those things. Or none of them. We still don’t know for sure.

We do know he issued a statement saying that he was the victim of an elaborate online and telephonic deception. We know that his “girlfriend,” and her death from leukemia, were the figments of someone’s depraved imagination. What we don’t know is whether Te’o’s imagination was involved in the deception.

Alexander Abad-Santos is puzzled:

Buzzfeed’s video Svengali, Andrew Kaczynski, found a Te’o interview from December 8 — two days after he allegedly found out this was a hoax — wherein Te’o acknowledged that his “girlfriend” died from cancer. “I don’t like cancer at all. I lost my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer,” Te’o said. Te’o here is, at the very least, perpetuating his girlfriend’s leukemia saga.

Douthat warns both parties:

The idea that the G.O.P.’s House majority is so secure that perpetual brinksmanship (today debt ceiling threats, tomorrow a government shutdown, rinse and repeat) carries no political costs has seduced some Republicans, but it’s quite likely wrong, and the idea that the Obama majority can be recreated easily enough in 2016 by a lesser political talent absent much stronger economic growth isn’t any more self-evident. Demographics and district lines are powerful, but so long as public satisfaction with the country’s direction remains twenty points below its Reagan-era levels, it seems wiser to bet on further upheaval than to expect the status quo.

The past week has seen multiple bombings in Syria, with more than 80 killed in a Tuesday attack on Aleppo University and more than 20 killed in suicide bombings in the Idlib Province on Wednesday. Scott Lucas highlights conflicting reports on the party responsible for the University attacks:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has criticised US media for accusations blaming Tuesday’s blasts at Aleppo University on the Syrian regime: “Yesterday I saw a semi-neutral report on CNN that it was not ruled out that this terrorist act had been staged by the government forces themselves. I cannot imagine anything more blasphemous.” In a statement on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry blamed “terrorists” for the “merciless bloody provocation”, which was “the terrorists’ revenge for the significant losses sustained in their confrontation with government forces”.

In contrast, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said, “The United States is appalled and saddened by the Syrian regime’s deadly attack yesterday on the University of Aleppo.”

James Miller reports on the work of the Local Coordination Committees, which provide daily updates on non-regime casualties:

The Local Coordination Committees (LCC) is an activist network operating both inside and outside of Syria. They claim to use stringent verification processes to ensure that a member of the LCC can vouch for any information posted either on their Facebook page or their website. The LCC also populates a database of those killed in the Syrian conflict, which can be seen at the website for the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria. The LCC’s casualty figures are a mix of insurgents and civilians, and never include regime casualties. Syrian State Media has stopped reporting regime casualty figures.

The NYT captions the above video:

A description of the video posted on YouTube by ANA, which is run from Cairo by the British-Syrian activist Rami Jarrah, said that the video was filmed by an activist just after the university was hit by a missile fired from a Syrian Air Force MIG fighter jet, and captured the impact of a second airstrike.

“You know, at least I’m not lying saying “my girlfriend” anymore. And in all fairness, all my girlfriend jokes — for anybody who thinks, Oh, that’s sad, he had to make up whole stories — I didn’t make up whole stories; they were real stories, I just changed the gender. And by the way, if that doesn’t prove how much same-sex couples are the exact same as heterosexual couples, not once in my career did anyone ever hear a story I told and say, “Wait a second, that doesn’t sound like anything we … ” It’s all the same,” – comedian Todd Glass on coming out on Marc Maron’s podcast a year ago.

On the hundreds of interviews and radio call-ins I’ve done on marriage equality over the last two decades, one question was very common. It was: “I’m not anti-gay, I think. I just don’t understand homosexuality. I have no real way to understand how a guy is attracted to another guy. It makes no sense to me.” I loved getting this question because it helped get closer to the core of the issue. My response was simply: “Yes, you do understand homosexuality very well. Because you’re a heterosexual. It’s exactly the same – but with the gender switched. It’s the same bundle of love, pain, misunderstanding, passion, anger, communication, frustration, happiness, joy, respect, and sadness that all true romantic and conjugal heterosexual love entails.

Every straight person already knows everything important there is to know about a gay person’s needs and loves and lives. Just look in the mirror. We are humanbefore we are gay or straight. We are you.

(Hat tip: Jane Marie)

Alex Klein reports (link now fixed) on the latest chapter of the ever-darkening saga of Scientology – a real-estate scam labeled “Ideal Org” that sapped millions of dollars from members:

It’s no secret that Scientology is pay-to-play; the prices for its services and teachings, from books to audits to seminars, seem to know no ceiling. But this moneymaker is different: The building drives ask for straight-up cash donations of fixed amounts — many times larger than traditional Scientology buy-ins — and, according to former executives, go straight to the central church’s kitty.

When two friends began to question the shady “Ideal Org”:

[Tony] DePhillips complained to a staff member that the aggressive, post-purchase, empty-building fundraising “went against [founder L. Ron] Hubbard’s financial policy.” The staffer responded by suggesting he report himself to the church’s Ethics department, which would help him “get [his] shit together.” He ultimately resigned and was branded a “suppressive,” a church enemy with whom no Scientologist is allowed to communicate.

Next, the church’s “counselors and security checkers” descended on [Bert] Schippers, insisting he agree, in writing, to never talk to his friend again. He demurred, tried to reason with the church. “Tony’s a good person,” he urged. That fell on deaf ears. He was later ushered out of the church and branded suppressive as well. His stepson and daughter, still in the church, no longer speak to him. “I moved up the ranks because I wanted the spiritual salvation,” says Schippers. “But I never got it. The spiritual salvation I was looking for turned into spiritual rape.”

(Photo: The Church of Scientology’s Flag Building, the centerpiece of a construction campaign for the church, is seen on May 22, 2008 in Clearwater, Florida. By Paul J. Richards / AFP-Getty Images)