91–99 of 99 posts
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It's been as high as 71.1% Black (in 1970). The percentage has been decreasing as Blacks have moved to the suburbs and Hispanics have moved into the city.
Well, I would argue a large number of young white professionals have moved in to and are gentrifying many parts of DC.
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The big risk isn't 3rd parties, it's just not voting, as about half of our citizens decide to do. And for example, it's hard to see the Republican party try to capture undecided voters with more centrist policies without pissing off the right-wing portion of their party, who won't go vote for the green party, but will instead: 1) Not vote 2) Start something like the Tea Party 3) Toss the incumbents out because they w…
Half is optimistic. In non-presidential year congressional elections it's not uncommon to have less than 1 in 3 voting. In true off-year elections in odd years where most folks are voting on lower court judges (in my state, anyway), local representatives on councils and school boards, it's much closer to 1 in 5 or less. There are just over 600 people in my ward of my township. 67 people voted in 2011 for the Council…
The reason the country is becoming more partisan is more likely due to the benefits of incumbency, and the insane level of gerrymandering we allow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering#United_States
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is running on a platform to cut Social Security, Citation needed. and has cut a massive number of government jobs during a time of high unemployment. As of Jan 2009, there were 2,790,000 federal employees. There are now 2,814,000. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/CES9091000001.txt Maybe you mean he didn't increase the number of government jobs as fast as was projected?
"Government jobs". There are fewer total people employed in government, because the states have been put through the ringer and the stimulus contained no state aid (price of getting the Maine senators on board). Anwyays, you're smart enough to know that flatlining is effectively a cut, relative to population and inflation. Certainly relative to every other recent president, Reagan and Bush very much included. And rel…
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG
Mike Bostock of D3 fame is basically unrivaled in data visualization using HTML, SVG, and JS: http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ Most of the code is open source, too: https://github.com/mbostock Awesome that he's working at the NYT alongside people like Nate Silver.
I agree, this is a really, really cool visualization of something that would otherwise be rather difficult to understand. I've always known about the "Southern switch" but something like this really highlights it. Alabama in particular had a almost 83% change in the vote from 1960 to 1964 and a 73% swing back in 1968! It's also cool to see the slowly cyclical nature of the elections, although the wild swings from one…
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"Government jobs". There are fewer total people employed in government, because the states have been put through the ringer and the stimulus contained no state aid (price of getting the Maine senators on board). Anwyays, you're smart enough to know that flatlining is effectively a cut, relative to population and inflation. Certainly relative to every other recent president, Reagan and Bush very much included. And rel…
Actually no, there are fewer people employed in government because state and local governments chose to raise employee pay while cutting the number of workers. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9092000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9093000001
The crappy part is that a huge % of the rollover cost is healthcare, so it's not even going to their employees.
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Actually no, there are fewer people employed in government because state and local governments chose to raise employee pay while cutting the number of workers. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIGVTWAG http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9092000001 http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES9093000001
Again, you're smart enough to know what 'normal' is. 'Normal' is cost of living raises, continued employer provided healthcare (which goes up in price every year), and ~~5% cost inflation for any organization that employs people. States have been cutting relative to that. The crappy part is that a huge % of the rollover cost is healthcare, so it's not even going to their employees.
Real wages need to go down in order for the recession to end, which is why inflation is promoted as the cure. Wages are sticky downwards, there is no reason to raise them, particularly for monopsony employers.
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I agree, this is a really, really cool visualization of something that would otherwise be rather difficult to understand. I've always known about the "Southern switch" but something like this really highlights it. Alabama in particular had a almost 83% change in the vote from 1960 to 1964 and a 73% swing back in 1968! It's also cool to see the slowly cyclical nature of the elections, although the wild swings from one…
Keep in mind that the parties used to stand for something different too. For example Strom Thurmond, a far-right-wing senator from South Carolina, was a Democrat until 1964.
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Bigger landslide in 1984[1]... Cheating there too? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elec...
> Cheating there too? Since when can cheating cause a landslide?
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Again, you're smart enough to know what 'normal' is. 'Normal' is cost of living raises, continued employer provided healthcare (which goes up in price every year), and ~~5% cost inflation for any organization that employs people. States have been cutting relative to that. The crappy part is that a huge % of the rollover cost is healthcare, so it's not even going to their employees.
According to Keynesian theories of economics, recessions are the product of sticky nominal wages combined with an exogenous shock. Real wages need to go down in order for the recession to end, which is why inflation is promoted as the cure. Wages are sticky downwards, there is no reason to raise them, particularly for monopsony employers.
Basically, states and local governments aren't operating with a macro worldview of the whole economy, they're trying to balance their own budget. They're going to eat it on healthcare, pay as small a COL raise as they can get the public employee unions to accept (pretty small actually), and lay off employees on the stupid last-in-first-out basis that the unions insist on. Decision makers at the state level are just trying to get through the year.
The funny thing is that a liberal can look at those ballooning healthcare costs (biggest $ item in the deltas year-over-year) and see it as a private sector screwup, while a conservative can look at the total costs going up and see it as public bloat.