Interesting Miscellaneous

I found this on an excellent website called FiveThirtyEight.com.  I started reading this blog back during the 2008 election campaign.  It's a very interesting and the main author really knows his statistical stuff.  I highly recommend it!  Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see that Republican administrations (often associated in the popular mind with sound fiscal management) presided over massive increases in the National Debt as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product.  Of course, it makes logical sense - those were years of massive decreases in tax rates for the wealthy, and so of course government revenues were falling fast.  Anyway, there you go!

Similarly, check this one out.  US job creation has historically been more robust during Democratic presidencies than Republican ones.  Who knew?  And look at Bush II - almost no growth at all!  For 8 years of massive tax decreases and (bubble-led) ecomonic robustness.  

Finally (for this topic) check out this chart.  It shows that while the wealthy have done well under all the presidents, not everyone has.  While there are of course time lags and all sort of reasons to suspect that in the first year or so of any president is impacted by policies initiated by the previous one, the difference between the Reagan/Bush years and the Clinton years is interesting.  Everyone was massively better of under Clinton and his economic policies than anywhere else while really on the very rich (top 20% of the population) saw strong economic gains during those years when "supply side" or "trickle down" economics were supposedly working to make everyone better off.  

Then, of course, the poor really suffered under the past eight years of Bush II.  What's compassionate about that?  Here's an interesting article on this general theme.

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This doesn't take into account the recent additional fall or recovery on Wall Street, but it's interesting to see the comparison.

Here's a slightly worrying graph.  This shows that the Military is the most trusted institution in the country right now.  I think we have to calk part of that up to the Republican's very successful efforts to minimize the ability of the government (at all levels) to respond to the needs or the population.  From the massive failure to protect New Orleans (by maintaining levees) and the failure to respond to the disaster there to the everyday basic failure of the government to maintain roads/bridges/schools/libraries/unemployment insurance, from the gridlock in Washington to the politicization of medicine and science in the name of particular ideologies, who can blame people for not trusting most (or any) of the public institutions in their lives?

But when the people of a democracy start trusting the military more than the democratic, academic or scientific institutions (or religious institutions for that matter), we are moving in the wrong direction! 

Finally, something happy!  This is supposedly the real and true face of Shakespeare!  Found hanging around an old family hall somewhere in England.  It's cool!

Oh - one final final thing.  An interesting interactive quiz that asks "How Progressive Are You?"  Very interesting.  I scored a 332 - totally off the chart.  While of course the website this is on supports Progressive causes, it's not a judgmental quiz - just informative.  Take it and feel free to let me know how you score.  It would be fascinating!

Ciao!

Mark