Wealth Condensation: Why the Rich Get Richer

Back in the late 19^th century an Italian engineer-turned-economist named Vilfredo Pareto was coming up with some interesting notions regarding wealth distribution.  Pareto had noticed that quite a bit of Italy’s wealth seemed to be concentrated in the hands of only a few people.  After some diligent work, he determined that approximately 20% of the population owned about 80% of the land.  It was the beginning of an inquiry into why it is that in every human population – every single one – the majority of that population’s wealth concentrates itself in the hands of a very few people.

About Last Night's Republican Presidential Debate

Just a quick note, because this is something that has bugged me for some time, because there is just enough of the hint of truth in it to turn it into a Zombie Conservative Lie such that it never dies, and because I haven't seen anybody else mention it yet. In fact, I have yet to see anybody remark on this statement at all, even though it is easily the most radical thing to have been said last night.

During the debate, Gary Johnson announced that he was in favor of ending - completely - all corporate income taxes. He justified this by arguing that corporate income is money that is "taxed twice." We all own the corporations, he said, so when a corporation makes money that money is taxed, and then when it is distributed to "us" it is taxed again and that isn't right. (Let's just skip over the fact that most Americans do not, in fact, own corporations, or even any stock in a corporation other than what might be held by our mutual funds.)

Goddammit.