It’s been a few years since I’ve posted about this but maybe it’s time to revisit the distribution of incomes in the United States. The graph above is the most recent I could find. It’s five years old but things haven’t changed much over that time. Basically, the entire graph has moved right a few bars.

Let’s also take this opportunity of thinking about statistics. The distribution isn’t the typical bell curve in which mode = mean = median for a number of reasons the most important being subsidies and regulations. The mode (the most commonly occurring income) is around $30,000, i.e. two people working full-time earning minimum wage. The median, the point at which half of households earn more and half earn less, is now around $62,000 rather than the $53,000 it was just a few years ago. That’s a welcome improvement. The mean, the arithmetic average, is around $75,000 which tells us that there are quite a few people earning significantly more than the median income.

Here’s one definition of “middle class”. People who earn a middle class income are earning one standard deviation from the median, plus or minus. I won’t trouble you with the mathematics of it. That means that a middle class income is from around $30,000 to $90,000. If you earn $90,000 or more and you think of yourself as poor, you’re living in the wrong place. 7/8s of people earn less than you do.

To find the top 1% of income earners in the graph above, count six blocks right from the 95th percentile. That’s 1.27 million households. They earn around $400,000 or more. The greatest number of those are professionals, the middle management of large companies, or the upper management of small companies. To find the ultra-rich, the top 12,700 households in the country, you’ve got to go way to the right.

Let’s add one more wrinkle. 44% of households pay no federal income tax. Those are the leftmost six bars on the graph above. That includes most of the lower middle class and a good chunk of the middle middle class.

In reality there are only two ways to provide a large middle class tax cut. One way is by cutting property taxes but that’s the responsibility of state and local governments. The only practical way to accomplish that at the federal level is to cut payroll taxes. I will bet a shiny new dime that not one presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, calls for that.

Consequently, if anyone calls for a large middle class tax cut, they are either lying or misinformed. Their hearts may be in the right place but their heads are in the wrong place.

In his Washington Post column Robert Samuelson expresses a reaction to the Democratic presidential debates similar to mine:

Three issues bother me.

The first is this: The campaign’s attention is focused heavily — almost exclusively — on domestic problems and programs, but the most pressing issues that await the next president will probably involve foreign policy.

How are we to judge the competence and judgments of the rival candidates on matters with which they have little experience? Assuming for the moment that President Trump does not win reelection, how is his successor going to deal with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and our estranged allies, as well as our trade and economic relations with them?

With the conspicuous exception of former vice president Joe Biden, none of the candidates has much international experience. To be fair, this is often the case, but the consequences today loom larger, precisely because the post-World War II framework has broken down. Its replacement needs to deal with the reality of a populist backlash — both in the United States and in other advanced societies — as well as the need to remain engaged globally. In a world shrunken by technology and trade, we do not have the luxury of neo-isolationism and neo-protectionism, even if Trump thinks we do.

An enomrous amount has changed over the last 25 years. Decades worth of globalization, military intervention, and nuclear proliferation mean that we no longer have the luxury of treating the rest of the world as though it did not exist. You would not have received that impression from the Democratic candidates. They seem to be running for Bill Clinton’s first term.

Second: A similar dilemma afflicts domestic policies. As a society, we have committed ourselves to more programs and subsidies than we can easily afford. Despite this, the candidates seem wedded to yet more expensive experiments in social policy.

Shortly before last week’s debates, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released the latest version of its annual long-term budget outlook. Even with the economy near “full employment,” the federal government runs massive annual budget deficits, meaning that we spend more than we tax. At the moment, those deficits equal about 4 percent of the economy (gross domestic product), or about $1 trillion annually. Under present tax and spending policies, deficits will grow for decades. The resulting debt — the accumulation of past annual deficits — is now about 78 percent of GDP, up from 35 percent of GDP in 2007.

If we cut military spending to zero, something manifestly impossible, it would still not be enough to fill the hole in our budget. We will be extending credit to ourselves for the foreseeable future and our ability to do that depends on the dollar’s remaining the world’s save haven currency, see the primacy of foreign relations, above.

Third: leadership. The power of the presidency, the late political scientist Richard Neustadt constantly argued, is the capacity to persuade — that is, to convince other people that what the president wants is what they ought to want for their own good and the nation’s good. Neustadt’s imperative applies to both individual power brokers and to mass constituencies of voters.

On this I’m willing to cut the candidates some slack. Presently, they’re preaching to the choir—they don’t need to convince the already convinced. They need to rev them up. The graver questions are whether any of them can be elected solely by revving up the base or whether they can appeal to the unconvinced while revving up the base. I don’t believe they can.

There was something deeply nostalgic about the debates. They are running for president of the United States they wish we had rather than the one we have. Democrats have dug a hole for themselves, shovelful by shovelful, for many years. My advice: stop digging.

My post of yesterday has evoked a post today at Outside the Beltway from James Joyner and has occasioned an interesting conversation in comments there:

While that’s certainly the arrangement that the Framers had in mind, it hasn’t worked that way in my lifetime. Arguably, it hasn’t worked that way in living memory.

James and the commenters miss something important. Whether American voters are interested in it or not and whether presidents are interested in it or not, foreign policy is something that happens to presidents. The last president to run on his foreign policy experience was George H. W. Bush. Nonetheless every president since him has found his presidency largely devoted to foreign policy, even consumed by it. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama ran campaigns that emphasized domestic policy. Their presidencies became preoccupied with foreign policy.

It’s not hard to discern why that might be. It’s in the job description, as I pointed out yesterday.

We have fifty governors, each of whose attention is completely devoted to domestic policy, but only one president, much of whose attention will inevitably be captured by foreign policy. Doesn’t it make sense to consider foreign policy more seriously when selecting a president?

Let’s imagine a presidential candidates’ debate. If I were coming up with ten questions questions to ask, here’s how I would allocate them:

Foreign policy—5 questions
The economy—1 question
Race relations—1 question
Health care policy—1 question
Education—1 question
The budget—1 question

It’s practically the opposite.

My attention was captured by an editorial in the Las Vegas Sun criticizing the use of unemployment statistics for blacks by the Trump Administration:

Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the overall black unemployment rate at 6.2% in May 2019, Perry argues compellingly that the figure doesn’t tell nearly the whole story.

Perry also shows that not only are African-Americans struggling with overall employment, they face an enormous gap in joblessness compared with whites.

In the black-majority cities of Atlanta and New Orleans, for example, unemployment is five times higher among blacks than whites — 11.5% compared with 2.5% in Atlanta, and 11.3% compared with 2.3% in New Orleans. Perry notes that gaps of at least 3.9% exist in all 10 of the nation’s largest black-majority cities.

Zooming out and looking at the nation’s 28 black-majority cities with at least 65,000 residents, Perry found that 25 had higher unemployment among blacks than whites.

Who’s right? I think they both are. Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s most recent employment situation report:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent), adult women (3.2 percent), teenagers (12.7 percent), Whites (3.3 percent), Blacks (6.2 percent), Asians (2.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.2 percent) showed little or no change in May. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

and here’s what the Brookings report to which the editorial refers says:

Take the 10 largest black-majority cities. In each of these cities, the black unemployment rate is 3.9-10.8% higher than that of white residents. Black residents of Atlanta and New Orleans experience unemployment rates of 11.5% and 11.3% respectively, figures more than five times larger than the white unemployment rates of 2.5% and 2.3%. In Macon-Bibb county, Ga., the black unemployment rate (11.5%) is quadruple the white unemployment rate (2.7%). For a list of cities included in the map, as well as the accompanying data, click here.

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 saw the aggregate unemployment rate peak at 10.0% in October 2009. 10 years later, black communities continue to face disproportionately high unemployment.

How can these disparities coexist with the notion of full employment? Full employment, informally defined, means that there are more jobs than people looking for them. But the concept is an imperfect measure of economic achievement. Unemployment rates that fall too low can drive inflation. Full employment fails to capture other nuances of the labor market, prioritizing job quantity over quality. As we use the term today, full employment is colorblind. Like the unemployment rate, the national data masks racial differences.

Note, too, the graph above (sampled from the Brookings report). As you can see black unemployment is presently lower than at any time since Nixon was president, the white unemployment rate is presently lower than at any time since Reagan was president, and the gap between the two is at an historic low.

That doesn’t even touch on the highly important subject of the black male labor force participation rate, which is persistently high. The black female labor force participation rate is higher than the white female labor force participation rate.

Still, I agree with bottom line of the editorial and the report. The black unemployment rate in black majority cities is too high. I would submit the following hypotheses:

• Black majority cities are mismanaged and undercapitalized. The remedial action would be to implement measures that improved governance and attracted businesses.
• The policies that have been adopted over the last 35 years did not help black people. Those policies include business regulations, trade policies which led to American deindustrialization and education policy. Whatever effect higher education has on wages it does not apply to at least half the people. We can’t accept policies that coldly leave those people behind. The remedial action are to reduce trade with China by whatever means necessary, restructure federally-subsidized educational loans to focus on tracks that will lead to gainful employment, and constrain business regulation to what’s actually necessary.
• Illegal immigration is not good for native-born blacks. The remedial actions would be to change our immigration policy to a skills-based system, limit immigration to what is actually necessary to promote economic growth, and reduce illegal immigration.

If I had been given the opportunity to ask one question of the Democratic presidential candidates, it would have been “What will you do to improve the employment and life prospects for young, urban, black men?”

In a column that opens with a description of his inadequacy as a parent:

We were discussing a Harvard law professor, Ronald Sullivan. He had been pushed out of his secondary job as head of Harvard College’s Winthrop House after he helped give Harvey Weinstein, accused of sexual assault, the legal representation every defendant is entitled to.

To me, as a progressive baby boomer, this was a violation of hard-won liberal values, a troubling example of a university monoculture nurturing liberal intolerance. Of course no professor should be penalized for accepting an unpopular client.

To my daughter, of course a house dean should not defend a notorious alleged rapist. As she saw it, any professor is welcome to represent any felon, but not while caring for undergraduates: How can a house leader support students traumatized by sexual assault when he is also defending someone accused of rape?

I believe that Nicholas Kristof is confused. He has confused the lightning with the lightning bug. As Lincoln noted just because you call a tail a leg does not make it one. Liberalism has been abandoned in favor of progressivism and today’s progressivism has assumed a decidely authoritarian cast.

Perhaps I can help clear the fog by referring to Aristotle. In Aristotle’s elaboration of Plato’s theory of forms, “essence” is the set of properties that makes an entity or substance what it is. It must have these properties. Without them it does not retain its identity. It may have other qualities as well that are not essential. These qualities are termed “accidents”.

Freedom of expression is essential to liberalism. Without freedom of expression it is not liberalism. It should also be added that subscribing to a code of ethics is essential to professionals. Legal ethics requires attorneys to provide a vigorous defense even to those with whom they disagree and of whom they disapprove. Whatever Mr. Kristof’s daughter believes, she is not a liberal and she believes that political beliefs transcend professional ethics.

I believe that Harvey Weinstein is probably guilty of the crimes with which he has been accused or at least some of them. I cannot know whether he is since I wasn’t there but I believe that he is. I disapprove wholly with what he has done but nonetheless I still believe he should have a vigorous defense.

When one believes that organizing mobs to defame people who have done nothing wrong because you assume that the only possible explanation for their behavior is based on race, you cannot be a liberal. You cannot even be a progressive.

To what view are suppression of freedom of expression and abandoning of ethical obligations in favor of the political passions of the day essential? I would claim that they are essential to authoritarianism.

I sincerely hope that the views of the young brownshirts whose activities are so much publicized these days are not typical of their age cohort. Mr. Kristof’s column suggests that they are.

Have I ever mentioned my plan for ending unwanted robocalls? For each call the call originator’s account would be debited 10¢ and the called party’s account would be credited 10¢. Optionally, the called could enter a code and the 10¢ would be credited by the called party back to the call originator. All handled by the phone company.

I suspect that would put an end to most robocalls practically overnight. If it reduces the number but doesn’t end them, up the amount from 10¢ to 20¢

Yes, the system could be gamed and, yes, there are opportunities for fraud. Wire fraud is a federal crime.

I disagree with so much in thie piece by Andrew Michta at The American Interest I hardly know where to begin. He opens by laying out some priorities:

Focus on Eurasia, invest in allies, rethink globalization. The West needs to focus on these fundamentals to achieve its overarching strategic objective: preventing China’s domination of Eurasia.

He expands on that:

Today preventing China’s domination of Eurasia should be our overarching strategic objective, and to achieve this we need to focus on three fundamentals: 1) Prioritize Eurasia and stop draining our military resources in secondary theaters; 2) invest in allies who see their interests directly aligned with ours and are willing to assume the attendant risk; and 3) decouple U.S. strategic industries from China’s and redefine the rules of international trade to ensure equitable competition.

What don’t I agree with in that? I think that “the West” is propaganda that once served a purpose but no longer does. I’m not sure we actually have any allies. Clients, yes. Allies, no. The problem is not that we’re not in investing in them but that they’re not investing in themselves. I agree completely with that third “fundamental”. That we have not been doing that all along is a scandal and an outrage.

Here’s something else about which I’m skeptical:

U.S.-German relations, which are vital to NATO’s continued success, are likely to present a challenge, for Washington and Berlin have thus far proved unable to insulate the German-American strategic conversation on shared security and defense priorities from domestic political constraints. Still, Washington should continue to make every effort to work closely with Berlin; as a key member of the NATO alliance and the main entry point for U.S. forces into Europe, Germany remains a vital American ally.

Who fomented the Balkan War? Who supplied the materials for Iraq’s, North Korea’s, and Iran’s chemical warfare arsenals? And Iran’s nuclear development program? Who built China’s factories? Who is cozying up to Russia for oil and natural gas? Who is destabilizing Europe by inviting hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants? Whose economic policies are making it hard for smaller, undercapitalized European countries to survive economically? The answer to all of those questions is Germany. These are not the actions of an ally.

But I agree with this:

Sovereign economic strength, including a vibrant manufacturing base, is as important to great power status today as it has been for centuries. Just ask the denizens of Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, or Berlin. It is also the essential prerequisite of military strength. We cannot have it both ways, pretending that the deindustrialization of the United States does not really matter while at the same time noting with growing concern the continued rise of the People’s Republic of China, today the world’s premier supplier of high-value manufactured goods. Should war come, it will not be enough to write software, for to run even the most basic app one needs also to be able to assemble a silicon chip.

My priorities would be different:

• Cultivate stronger, healthier relationships with our neighbors in the Western hemisphere. Our relationships with Mexico and the countries of Central America are not healthy. They are pathological.
• Reindustrialize the United States. We can’t afford not to.
• Let Europe take care of itself. If France and Germany want to become Chinese satrapies, let them.
• We need to have a much better Africa game than we presently do. China is doing much better job than we there and that’s where the real challenge is not in Europe.

Revitalizing our own society and politics wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.

At The Cook Political Report Amy Walter saw the debate a little differently:

Biden came in as the frontrunner and took a lot of incoming flak on everything from his age, to his record on race, to his support for the Iraq war. He looked good on some things (he easily swatted down Rep. Eric Swalwell’s ham-handed generational attack) but was shakier on race (Harris attacked him on his past record on busing and two Democrats commented to me post-debate that his “states rights” answer on busing was terrible). Overall, however, he took a lot of punches but didn’t take on water.

That’s what the post-debate polling has shown. Biden’s numbers were essentially unchanged while Harris’s improved. However, I think that Ms. Walter is not taking into account what the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants. They want blood. They’ll never support Biden. I believe them when say they’d rather that Trump be re-elected than that a mild candidate oppose him.

The Democratic Party has a number of distinct factions: progressives, black voters, labor unions, technocrats. I don’t think that black voters vote on race as much as many commentators seem to or at least not in the same way and I think that Biden is likely to retain his present strong union support. The stage is set for a family feud.

I think that John Kass’s Chicago Tribune dissection of the debates is right on target:

It’ll take a few more days or so before what Harris did to Biden will take effect. But he’s not coming back from it. He can’t.

Democrats want to find someone who can take on Trump. Now they know Biden can’t.

Next up for Harris is Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s been repackaged to appeal to the hard-left voters who have drifted away from Bernie Sanders.

Sanders was set up in the 2016 Democratic Party primaries that were rigged by party leaders with plenty of collusion by the media on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders might have defeated Trump if he’d been the nominee. But the DNC and Obama wanted Clinton. And the media wanted Clinton. So, it was Clinton and the party base was betrayed.

Harris is a former prosecutor, a trial lawyer, and showed she can handle pressure. She calmly embraced all that heat on the debate stage, brought it to her for dramatic effect, drew it in, then released it right at Biden.

The way she played Biden and race, just think what she’ll do to Warren, who vaulted herself onto the faculty of Harvard Law School as a Cherokee and came up with those ridiculous recipes involving cold crab meat that were offered up as true Native American fare.

Warren’s career is a creation myth born in identity politics. She insisted she was a Cherokee, and Harvard praised her for it as if ethnicity was a virtue, perhaps because Harvard was desperate to promote minorities on its law school faculty.

Then Warren’s embarrassing DNA test came out. No further questions, your honor. But Harris will have questions. Bet on it.

All such drama is about ambition and skill and tactics. But that’s too small to define a political party.

During the Thursday debate on left-leaning MSNBC, the Democratic presidential candidates raised their hands in agreement with the idea that illegal immigration should no longer be considered a crime.

Later came another question.

“This is a show-of-hands question and hold them up so people can see,” said co-moderator Savannah Guthrie. “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide (health care) coverage for undocumented immigrants.”

Biden raised his, as did Sanders, Harris, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, the magical Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper and Eric Swalwell.

Did any of them think how a declaration of open borders policy and free health care for undocumented immigrants who break into the U.S. would play out in a general election?

Did any of them pause before engaging in self-destructive pandering?

What defines an election isn’t take-down dramas.

What defines elections, and political parties, are ideas with sweep, ideas that announce “This is who we are” to the voters.

Like the Democrats’ new open borders policy. And their agreement to provide “free” health care to immigrants here illegally.

As Joe Biden learned, rhetoric has consequences.

But ideas have consequences too.

The only thing I can speculate is that either the candidates think they’ll be able to backpedal for the general election or they have their collective finger on the pulse of the wrong patient. I think that most of the Democratic Party, nearly all independents and even some Republicans are in favor of some merciful resolution for the DACA beneficiaries and more human treatment for migrants coming into the country illegally but the Democratic candidates have gone one step too far. Maybe two steps.

The next question is whether Kamala Harris can actually “take on Trump”. I’m skeptical. If there’s one thing we know about him it’s that he doesn’t play by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.