More evidence on the rise and rise of the working super rich – the top income earners are top wage earners now

Down and out in America in 2009

via Understanding Poverty in the United States: Poverty USA.

The Myth that ‘Buying Local’ Is Good for the Local Economy

Video

Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, selected OECD member countries

Poverty traps: would a minimum wage increase take-home pay?

Crimes by age and offence category

I thought America’s poor never had health insurance cover!? I’ve watched too much American TV?

How to make the case for arming British police when attacking American police shootings

https://www.facebook.com/TheAntiMedia/photos/a.156753707783006.14385.156720204453023/441065559351818/?type=1

More British English, Scottish and Welsh police (68) have been murdered by gunfire than British police have shot people dead (52) in over a century.

Source: Number of police officers shot dead in the UK by decade | John Graham-Cumming.

This suggests to me that the ledger is in the wrong direction. This list does not include British police stabbed or beaten to death nor are Northern Ireland deaths.

According to the FBI, from 1980–2014, an average of 55 law enforcement officers are feloniously killed per year in the USA. Those killed in accidents in the line of duty are not included in this number.

More law enforcement officers are murdered every year in the USA than ever murdered by gunfire in Britain. Police have the same common law right as any other to defend their own lives  and the lives of others.

Source: What we know about attacks on police – Vox.

Hourly minimum wages before and after taxes, USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan

Figure 1: Hourly minimum wage before and after taxes, 2013, US dollars at purchasing power parities, single-person household

image

Source: OECD Focus on Minimum Wages after the crisis (2015).

If Roe v Wade was to fall

On abortion, the USA is split on pro-life versus pro-choice. State legislatures pass laws safe in the knowledge that they will be struck down the next day. they were playing to a grandstand made up of values voters.

ft_16-04-07_abortion_history

When the supreme court became a little vague on some procedural aspects of abortion law in the early 1990s, the state legislatures started showing much more restraint because the median voter would be annoyed.

Where Roe v. Wade to fall, some states would permit abortion, some would not. The Center for Reproductive Rights predicts that 21 states are likely to outlaw abortion immediately where Roe v. Wade to fall. This assessment is based not only on current law, but on the political makeup of the state legislatures. On the other hand, abortion is likely to remain legal in many states, according to these groups.

A key reason why self-funded candidates often falter

image

via Sometimes, Money Can’t Buy You Votes | FiveThirtyEight and Four Ways To Fund A Presidential Campaign | FiveThirtyEight.

Takings, property rights and democracy

Who has heavily guarded borders?

Average effective retirement ages by gender in the USA, UK, Germany and France, 1970 – 2012

Figure 1 shows a divergence from a common starting point in 1974 effective retirement ages. The French in particular were the first to put their feet up and start retiring by the age of 60 by the early 1990. There was also a sharp increase in the average effective retirement age for men in the UK over a short decade. After that, British retirement ages for men started to climb again in the late 1990s. Figure 1 also shows that the gentle taper in the effective retirement age for American men stopped at the 1980s and started to climb again in the 2000s. The German data is too short to be of much use because of German unification. France only recently stopped seeing its effective retirement age fall and it is slightly increased recently – see figure 1

Figure 1: average effective retirement age for men, USA, UK, France and Germany, 1970 – 2012, (five-year average)

image

Source: OECD Pensions at a Glance.

Figure 2 shows similar results for British and American women as for men in the same country shown in figure 1 . That is, falling effective retirement ages for both British and American women in the 1970s and 1980s followed by a slow climb again towards the end of 1990s. French  effective retirement ages for women followed the same pattern as for French retirement ages for men – a long fall  to below the age of 60 with a slight increase recently. The German retirement data suggest that effective retirement ages for German women is increasing.

Figure 2: average effective retirement age for women, USA, UK, France and Germany 1970 – 2012, (five-year average)

image

Source: OECD Pensions at a Glance.

Obama’s report card – second quarter 2015

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