Paul Krugman

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July 5, 2011

Shares of Total Taxes Paid by Each Income Group Were Similar to their Shares of Total Income in 2010

Posted by Nathen under money, Paul Krugman, statistics, taxes
[2] Comments 

I thought this was an interesting presentation of data, from a column by Paul Krugman. Usually, when you see displays of percentage of taxes paid by income group, they show only shares of federal income tax, the only really progressive tax in the US. This display shows the percentage of all US taxes paid by income group, including payroll, local, state, etc. That’s the blue bars. The grey bars are also interesting–instead of just showing share of taxes by income group, this display compares share of taxes to share of income by income group. By this measure, it looks as if at the widest spread, total tax burden is only progressive by less than 5%. That is, even the top 1% of earners pay less than 5% more of total US taxes than the lowest 20% when their total share of income is taken into account.

 

July 15, 2010

My News Sources

Posted by Nathen under Benjamin Lester, Darlene Lester, decisions, endorsements, Ethan Mitchell, headlines, Jay Smooth, Jeannie Lee, Left Right and Center, listening, lists, Long Now Foundation, Maya, media, National Public Radio, news, Paul Krugman, Planet Money, politics, Radiolab, This American Life, Thomas Friedman, Wall Street Journal
1 Comment 

I like to know what everyone thinks is going on. To this end, about a year ago, I filled up my igoogle home page with feeds from a bunch of different news sources. They are political news sources, for the most part. I don’t care at all about sports or celebrities. I tried to pick stuff from the hard left and hard right and then some mainstream stuff, thinking I could read headlines every day or two and read the articles that grabbed my attention.

It’s not working out that well. I’m too busy to read much. I do glance over the headlines a bit, but there are a lot of them and often my eyes just glaze over. And while I want to know about the rest of the world, I’m even more interested in what my friends and family are doing. If my sister-in-law, Maya, has posted on her blog, or my mom on hers, my brother Benjamin on his, or my friend Jeannie on hers, or my friend Ethan on a couple of his blogs (one about everything and one about his wife Susannah’s struggle with leukemia–both amazing), or several other friends and family with blogs have posted, that’s what I read while I’m brushing my teeth or during whatever scanty extracurricular-reading time appears.

So I need to cull. I’m considering getting paring it down to the few feeds that I actually click on. That would look like this:

Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman columns at NYTimes.com–occasional reads.

Wall Street Journal feed–very occasional reads.

NPR’s political feed–pretty regular use, but usually just audio clips from “All Things Considered,” plus a nearly-daily five-minute news overview, also audio.

A google news feed gathered from a bunch of sources–very occasional reads.

Plus PsychCentral‘s Mental Health News and Children/Parenting News feeds–pretty frequent reads, a few a week–and Nildoctrine‘s feed for his hilarious feminist political vlogs.

And plus my podcasts, which I have absolutely no problem keeping up with: Left, Right and Center, Planet Money, This American Life, Radiolab, and The Long Now Foundation’s Seminars About Long Term Thinking. These I love the most.

I’d call that a US-centric, left-leaning-centrist list. I’d be ditching my right-winger stuff besides the Wall Street Journal–FrumForum which looked pretty good when I checked it out, but I just haven’t been checking it out, and National Review, whose cartoony headlines and terrible writing meant that I almost never looked at it, and regretted it when I did. I’d ditch quite a bit of left-winger stuff–The New Republic & Mother Jones (cartoony headlines again), Truthdig (generally good but not catching me), and Democracy Now! which I think is great but consistently depressing. Also The Onion, which is hilarious but I’ve stopped looking at it, and a CNN feed, which is weak.

That list doesn’t really do what I originally wanted–covering hard left to hard right–but it seems OK for now. What do you think? I’m interested in the media-intake schemes of anyone who made it this far through my post. How do you make these decisions? Do you think I’m missing anything crucial? Make me some recommendations!

Also, anyone interested in my actual media diet can look at my reading list here.