Author: Sirhc

11/27/2020 David Howden

Imagine that you earn $40,000 a year and your boss doubles you at $80,000 a year. Business was good to you both in 2013, and you received a 25% raise for your efforts. Not bad, and your boss gets to share in this good fortune too with an extra $25,000 (about 30%). You’re going to make $50,000 in 2014 and your boss will pull in $105,000.

Are you happy with this deal? Probably. But wait, income inequality just increased! Your boss originally outpaced you by 100%, but now his salary is 110% higher than yours.

To read the brouhaha going around right now, this situation is cause for alarm. Income inequality has increased and despite the fact that everyone is doing better than they once were, one group is doing relatively better.

What about if we reverse the example, starting from the original salaries? Instead of having a great year, imagine things were very bad and salary cuts are going around. You get a 25% pay cut so that you will now be earning $30,000 a year, and because he has more responsibility about the direction of the business and its lack of success, your boss gets a larger pay cut of $25,000. (This situation is the mirror image of the first example.)

You are making much less than you did last year. Are you upset about this? Probably. But wait, apparently there is a silver lining. Your boss now “only” makes about 80% more money than you, versus the 100% salary differential that existed last year. Income inequality decreased!

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11/24/2020 Nick Hankoff

Gone are the days of the Federal Reserve hiding in the shadows. Now it’s a woke central bank fighting for climate and racial justice. Progressives must not fall for this but instead team up with the populist right to audit the Fed and demand transparency.

Let the healing begin! If it is going to be President Joe Biden a couple months from now, then there will be all the more incentive for antiestablishment Democrats to join forces with populist Republicans. What better issue than auditing the Federal Reserve System?

There is strong precedent for progressives and the populist right to unite around an “Audit the Fed” movement. In early 2009, Congressman Ron Paul introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which garnered 320 House cosponsors by the summer of 2010.

Since then, the antiestablishment factions of both parties have grown and at least one of the 2009 House cosponsors now holds a Senate seat. Audit the Fed has passed the House on three occasions, so it could see as much or more success this coming session.

Another development over the last eleven years is the Fed’s evolving public image. Before Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential run, the central bank lurked in near-total darkness. Two thousand nine was a breakout year for its public relations campaign, and the Fed has failed to return to its prior obscurity. 

Now the secretive power center larps as a super–social justice warrior, fighting for climate and racial justice, the top pet issues of the progressive left. Many grassroots progressives expressed their distaste for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, but even those who held their noses to vote for them shouldn’t feel at all obliged to apologize for the Fed’s virtue signaling.

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