Stuff we should all know by now - the causes of the US Defecit

For this week's know-it-all (because you darn well should) tidbit, a chart explaining US budget deficits, both recent and projected.  Another thing that's not in the news much, but hopefully will become more common knowledge as time goes on, is the contribution war and tax cuts have made to the US national debt.  From this article by James Fallows

Stuff we should all know by now: Who's paying for your gas?

For this week's set-O-facts, a couple of different breakdowns of the subsidies that the US government gives the petroleum industry, compared with how much it helps solar and other forms of alternative energy.

First, this chart, showing the comparative amount spent on each sector:

And then this one, showing a couple of "what if" situations:

But solar isn't efficient yet!  The subsidies are smaller because the solar industry is much smaller!  Let's wait and give solar a chance to prove itself before we give them the money that they need to become more efficient.  Ummm, anyone else sense a catch-22 here?

Stuff we all should know by now - Prisoners in the US

What are approximately 1 out of every 100 Americans doing right now?  Why, sitting in jail, of course!  Young black men?  That jumps to 1 in 10.  Per capita, that's higher than most places in the world by an order of magnitude, and even higher that places with less-than-stellar human rights records such as Iran and, um, the country that I'm currently living in.

People in the US aren't terribly aware of this, but many other parts of the world are, as in, for example, this clip from a UK game show.  Probably no wonder that other governments often don't take the US very seriously when it comes to accusations of human rights abuses...

For more information, and links to some of the facts in the video, click here.

Stuff we all should know by now - Doing the numbers

So then, class, let's get back to my posts about consensus, numbers, and Cookie Monster proclaiming the end of the world, shall we...?

To review a bit:

A:  We humans in general, and we Americans in particular, have a few problems that we need to figure out.
B:  An important step in solving these problems is coming to a consensus on what, exactly, these problems are.

To which I now will add... 

C:  It would be very helpful if everyone started with the same facts, then, wouldn't it?

Or, put in to question format:  What can be proven?  What do the facts suggest, versus what is merely commonly held opinion?  Put scientifically, then, what is actually observable in the world around us?

Let's take, as an example, the huge income disparity that now exists in America between its wealthiest citizens and everyone else.  This can be represented in any number of ways, but let's simply take one statistic: today, the top 1% of Americans earn almost 25% of the income every year.  Okay, big deal, big deal - what we need is more context, so let's compare it historically.  Twenty five years ago, the figure was about half as much, at 12%. Turns out the last time this particular number was this high was in 1929.

Now, this is America, right?  (Or, more globally speaking the internet.  Readers from other countries, please bear with me for a bit...)  You're free to think this is a good thing, or a bad thing.  You can argue about the causes of the inequality, or its possible results.  You can rephrase it, as in "Hey, the richest top ten percent pay 60% of the taxes."  (Well, yeah, that's still saying the same thing, but less directly.)  And, if all else fails, you can start to yell "Class Warfare" whenever someone who may vote you out of office brings it up.

What you can't do, however, is pretend otherwise, which is what it seems that many of us are doing.  Here is a video of people taking a look at another statistic - the distribution of wealth in America.



For those of you with slow internet connections (or those with aversions to Warren Buffet for whatever reason), skip ahead to around 1:15.  To sum up: here is the chart that most Americans surveyed selected when asked to chose one that  shows what wealth distribution in America looks like (yellow representing the share of wealth held by the top 20%):

Nope!  Sorry, that's Sweden.  Here's a chart that shows the actual distribution of wealth in the US:

Good thing?  Bad thing?  I've got my opinions on the subject, and I hope that you've got yours.  What we can't do, however, is pretend like it's otherwise, or tell ourselves that it really doesn't matter.  Unless you live in Sweden*.




*in which case, you may want to feel smug for a moment or two, and then start looking at statistics for wealth distribution globally...