Itzhak Perlman is 68 Today

Born on the same day as Van Morrison.

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So What Does a “Central Banker” Do? Protect the System or People?

Brad DeLong looks at the choices.

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Happy Birthday, Van Morrison!

You coulda stopped with “Brown-Eyed Girl” and still been a Big Deal, but you took it a whole lot farther. Thanks for everything!

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Dr. Krugman, the Guy with that “Swedish Thingy,” as He Calls It, Has a Reminder About How Short We Fell in Responding to the Recession

On his blog, which I recommend following closely.

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Economist Jared Bernstein, With a Handy Note on the Economy and Income

Right here. Note the contrasting direction of the two lines.

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Poverty Makes Everything Harder, Including Making Decisions

If one has ever been poor, you know it makes you tired; because you’re constantly scrambling to keep things together. Your time, your options, your freedom become circumscribed, and the energy you have to deal with everything is almost constantly near “empty.”

Emily Badger, who’s becoming one of my favorite writers, has a piece on Atlantic Cities describing a new study, “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function” in the journal Science. It’s firewalled, so you’ll have to join to read the entire thing, or perhaps seek out the study itself. But you can read the abstract, or Ms. Badger’s reporting. You can also follow her on Twitter at @emilymbadger. It’s worth it. Some declare poverty is the result of stupidity, making bad choices. Actually, it appears it may be the other way around.

I get really, really angry at the condescending and, frankly, cruel jerks who write about how the greedy, lazy poor are such a drain on us hard-working taxpayers, leeches, really, parasites. Let those bastards spend a couple of years with nothing, perhaps homeless to boot, and see how parasitic they feel. Yes, there are welfare cheats out there; I’ve even known a few, but compared to the tens of millions of people who’re trying to keep going in the face of very long odds with very few resources, they don’t count for much, except in political rhetoric.

Oh, and a little policy side note: In the late 1950s, there were about 40 million Americans in poverty, 22.4 percent of the population. These numbers declined steadily throughout the 1960s, reaching a low of 11.1 percent, or 23 million people, in 1973. Over the next decade, the poverty rate fluctuated between 11.1 and 12.6 percent, but it began to rise steadily again in 1980. By 1983, the number of poor individuals had risen to just over 35 million people, or 15.2 percent. For the next ten years, the poverty rate remained above 12.8 percent, increasing to 15.1 percent, or a little over 39 million individuals, by 1993. The rate declined for the remainder of the decade, to 11.3 percent by 2000. From 2000 to 2004 it rose each year to 12.7 in 2004. See any correlations here?

There are about 46 million Americans living in poverty, double the number 40 years ago; 16 million are children, or one in five children in this country. Approximately 8 million Americans in poverty are 16 or older but have a disability. About one in five poor Americans is working. And a whole lot of us are much closer to poverty than we might know. That phrase about millions of American families being one lost job or one big medical bill away from poverty is truer now that when it was coined.

Poverty is hard. It’s not the result of laziness, stupidity or immorality. It’s the result of social, economic and political forces that are pushing more and more Americans towards the bottom of the ladder.

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50 Years Later

Michael Fletcher, Washington Post, on the bitter economics of race.

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50 Years

While it sounds cliched, it seems like only yesterday.

One of the most famous speeches ever delivered was the climax of a day that saw more than 250,000 people march peaceably to the National Mall to support calls for jobs and justice. The Civil Rights movement was gathering tremendous force and was being met with tremendous violence. At the beginning of the year, George Wallace would take the oath of office as governor of Alabama and declare, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In June, he would make his famous stand at the door of the University of Alabama (and would step aside once he’d spoken his piece) in an attempt to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood from registering. Later that month, Medgar Evers, at the time the most prominent Civil Rights leader in the country, was gunned down in front of his family by Klansman Byron De La Beckwith. It is 31 years before Beckwith is convicted. Evers’ widow, Myrlie, would speak at the March.

Not three weeks after the March, four young girls who were getting ready for services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham died when a bomb exploded near the basement. Adie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley never got to celebrate their 15th birthdays.

Dr. King gave his speech after powerful presentations by now-Congressman John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, and Mahalia Jackson, among others. As he was nearing the end of his prepared remarks, Jackson called to him, “Tell `em about the Dream, Martin,” and he launched into the stirring passage we all remember.

The next year, the Civil Rights Act would be signed into law. A year after that, the Voting Rights Act (now under assault by the U.S. Supreme Court). Three years later, King would be assassinated.

For a time, it seemed like we’d made some real progress against the social evils King fought–racism, poverty, injustice, violence. But these days, despite the fact we have an African-American president, to most of us, the Dream he described remains unfulfilled. Voting rights are being rolled back in several Southern states. Economic hardship has spread widely, and the minimum wage is actually lower than in 1963..

And racial attitudes still have a long way to go.

But it was transcendent moment, nonetheless, and if we have failed to bring Dr. King’s vision to fruition, that doesn’t prevent us from getting up tomorrow and trying again.

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August 26, 1920

The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was certified by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.

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August 25th, 1975

Born to Run

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