Or rather, in which I link you to other people being ranty. I’ve had some of these sitting around for a dog’s age, and I’m never going to wrangle my thoughts into anything like a coherent enough mass to make an actual post out of it, so instead you get other people being articulate for me.

Must the Rich be Lured into Investing? Who are the Real “Job Creators?” — Supply Side [economic theory] assumes that the rich have a zillion other uses for their cash and thus have to be lured into investing it! Now ponder that nonsense statement. Roll it around and try to imagine it making a scintilla of sense! Try actually asking a very rich person. Once you have a few mansions and their contents and cars and boats and such, actually spending it all holds little attraction. Rather, the next step is using the extra to become even richer.

How Capitalism Kills Companies — There’s no limit at all to the amount of growth that the public companies will demand: in 2007, for instance, after a year when Citigroup made an astonishing $21.5 billion in net income, Fortune was complaining about its “less-than-stellar earnings”, and saying — quite accurately — that if they didn’t improve, the CEO would soon be out of a job. We now know, of course, that most if not all of those earnings were illusory, a product of the housing bubble which was shortly to burst and bring the bank to the brink of insolvency. But even bubblicious illusory earnings aren’t good enough for the stock market.

Central Tendency in Skewed Distributions: A Lesson in Social Justice — The point being, the lesson of the positive skew, is that the distance between being middle class and being poor is very, very small.

Radical Solutions to Economic Inequality — There is something almost quaint — but decidedly refreshing — about the commissioners’ blunt language. “Effective action by Congress is required…,” the report proclaimed, “to check the growth of an hereditary aristocracy, which is foreign to every conception of American Government and menacing to the welfare of the people and the existence of the Nation as a democracy.” Far from debating whether “corporations are people,” the commission took for granted that concentrations of corporate power were undemocratic, that gigantic fortunes “constitute a menace to the State,” and that it was the duty of government to restore a balance of power.

Jubilee. Jubilee. Jubilee. — Reduce the principle, forgive a portion of the debt, proclaim a jubilee. It would save taxpayers money. It would keep hundreds of thousands of families in their homes.

But it can’t happen if we decide to act like jerks.

Person, Person, Corporate Asset.

And one I missed including in the race-related link dump, that you absolutely should read if you have not already: Teju Cole on The White Savior Industrial Complex.