Jude Iam
01-13-2016, 01:03 AM
reality context for the fine phrases and patriotic puffery. jude
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/09/20150916_obo.jpg
podfish
01-14-2016, 09:19 AM
reality context for the fine phrases and patriotic puffery. jude
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/09/20150916_obo.jpgnot that I disagree with the overall message, but it's worth noting that these charts are designed to serve as propaganda, not to be particularly informative. They want to make a point. Kind of like the charts you see associated with global warming. For example, the two most dramatic are 'home ownership' and 'workers share of the economy'. Both are sharply descending lines, from the top left down to the bottom right. Looks like a bunch of people owned homes and they all lost them, and that workers have lost all participation in the economy. But, the scale chosen shows that home ownership has dropped from just under 69% to about 65.5% - a drop of a bit more than 3%. Not good, but not what the chart wants to convey. And worker's share has dropped from 47% to a bit over 42%. That's almost 5%, also not good, but again, carefully presented to elicit outrage rather than present information.
And what exactly IS 'workers share of the economy', or even weirder 'money printing' supposed to be? I bet almost no-one who looks at those charts and says 'damn those bastards! we're getting screwed!' could clearly explain what exactly that grid of charts means.
Ok, now that I'm writing, I'm even more annoyed by the propaganda aspect of this. What the hell is 'federal debt' doing here? It's a clear attempt to lump it together with social-justice issues in a way that I think is exactly wrong and misleading. Efforts to reign in federal debt benefit the 1% more than the proles, while this table cunningly tries to imply the exact opposite.