…remember that most households in the top 20% percent of income have at least two earners and the lower limit for the top quintile was $126,855 in 2017. That’s an average of $63,428/year per earner.
I don’t want to overstate the transience of affluence, though; as the above table shows, a good number of American households that reach the top income quintile stay (or return) there for several years - allowing them to build wealth to sustain them through their golden years. Who are these people?
To quote: “…climate change beliefs have only a modest impact on the extent to which people are willing to act in climate friendly ways”…
A few years back, sociologists Thomas Hirschl and Mark Rank reviewed 44 years of US household and individual income data and found …
Straw man argument: “…an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while refuting an argument that was not advanced.”
My point here is simply to highlight that disagreements about “facts” are often less about their accuracy than their use-value - that is, what would happen if a lot of people accepted these facts as true. And thus we have a whole industry of scribblers and pundits who provide “context” to uncontested facts. Of course, such context comes with its own truth-value and use-value.
Habitat management is not about preserving a biological moment in a specific locale. It’s about maintaining biodiversity and saving species.
…my TBI would provide $1000/month up to six years total (minimum one month at a time) for adults enrolled at least part-time in postsecondary training and education programs, from ESL classes to apprenticeships to graduate school. Among the benefits…5. A TBI would not be means-tested so recipients could work without reducing the benefit. Note that part-time work (20 hours or less a week) is associated with higher college GPA and completion rates. …
Everyone contains multitudes. Therein lies redemption.
[Americans] “felt ashamed that ‘their’ country's history was being stained by cruelties, lies, and betrayals. So they went to work in protest—not merely as advocates of universal human rights, but as Americans who loved the common American project…
What do chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans all have in common? We laugh.
Doing the math, that means 15% of the American electorate are liberal Democrats and 17% are conservative Republicans. Yet liberals and conservatives are increasingly dominating their respective parties, meaning a lot of the poor electorate is being left out of the political equation. These marginalized Americans may vote for whatever party is closest to their views, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy with it. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they are “really” Democrats or Republicans, as if those two labels represented a natural division of humanity. As if all political inclinations were points along a line stretching from left to right, liberal to conservative. As if “moderate” was simply a middle range on the line, a weaker version of the end points. As if moderates were liberals and conservatives who simply lacked the courage of their true convictions.
Let’s think beyond the line. Thinking within a box would be progress.
There appears to be a consensus among social scientists that Americans are clueless as to the extent of inequality in the US. To illustrate: …
Question: What percent of American adults live in households in the Top 20 percentile of income at some point before they're 60 years old?
We've heard that power corrupts, which is another way of saying that having power makes it easier to lie, cheat, steal, inflict pain, or otherwise engage in bad behavior. This is partly because powerful people tend to be strongly goal-directed…
So how would this work out in the real world? Let’s take the case of an Amazon employee who receives food stamps, i.e., SNAP benefits. Here are SNAP’s gross income eligibility standards for Fiscal Year 2018: …
The poor are also much more likely than the rich to go to church every single week and thus be asked for money in a public setting every single week. Talk about social pressure…
…The authors conclude that the rich are less generous than the poor because they are less compassionate, less trusting, and less egalitarian.
…Ditto the development of increasingly resilient crops, which are better at enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous climate. As long observed, healthier plants are less vulnerable to insect infestations.
Ditto the results of a 2017 study: not a single a luxury sedan or sports car was among the top choices of high-income Americans. And then there's the complication that half the luxury cars in the US are bought by individuals with incomes of less than $100,000 a year (per the research firm Kantar Media TGI).