constructive thinking and transparent design

Per Christoph Wolff: "constructive thinking and transparent design"

Following the lead of Open Thread for Night Owls over at Daily Kos, I want to recommend a read by Gerald Friedman (he teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is the author of Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring means to ends in a democratic Labor Movement). From a first installment of a new series at Alternet, Professor Friedman writes The Great Capitalist Heist: How Paris Hilton's Dogs Ended Up Better Off Than You:

Summer 2009. Unemployment is soaring. Across America, millions of terrified people are facing foreclosure and getting kicked to the curb. Meanwhile in sunny California, the hotel-heiress Paris Hilton is investing $350,000 of her $100 million fortune in a two-story house for her dogs. A Pepto Bismol-colored replica of Paris’ own Beverly Hills home, the backyard doghouse provides her precious pooches with two floors of luxury living, complete with abundant closet space and central air.

By the standards of America’s rich these days, Paris’ dogs are roughing it. In a 2006 article, Vanity Fair’s Nina Munk described the luxe residences of America’s new financial elite. Compared with the 2,405 square feet of the average new American home, the abodes of Greenwich Connecticut hedge-fund managers clock in at 15,000 square feet, about the size of a typical industrial warehouse. Many come with pool houses of over 3,000 square feet.

Steven Cohen of SAC Capital is a typical product of the New Gilded Age. He paid $14.8 million for his Greenwich home, which he stuffed with a personal art collection that boasts Van Gogh's Peasant Woman Against a Background of Wheat (priced at $100 million); Gauguin's Bathers ($50 million); a Jackson Pollock drip painting (also $50 million); and Andy Warhol's Superman ($75 million). Not satisfied, Cohen spent millions renovating and expanding, adding a massage room, exercise and media rooms, a full-size indoor basketball court, an enclosed swimming pool, a hairdressing salon, and a 6,734-square-foot ice-skating rink. The rink, of course, needs a Zamboni ice-resurfacer which Cohen houses in a 720-square-foot shingle cottage. Munk quotes a visitor to the estate who assured her, “You'd be happy to live in the Zamboni house.”

So would some of the over 650,000 Americans sleeping in shelters or under highway overpasses. [...]

The share of income going to the top 1 percent has doubled since the 1970s, returning to the levels of the 1920s. The greatest gains have gone to the very wealthiest and to executives and managers, especially of financial firms. From 1973 to 2008, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of American households fell even while the rich gained. The wealthiest 1 percent gained 144 percent or over $600,000 per household; and the richest 1 percent of the 1 percent, barely 30,000 people, gained over 455 percent or over $19,000,000.

That's enough to buy a nice doghouse. Or a mansion in Greenwich.

home and all . . .

Folks losing homes . . . some of us looking . . . can be worrisome sometimes wondering where you are to live . . . my home is okay . . . my home is with A . . .

words when pictures don't suffice . . .

Here is a great article on Higgs boson.

The Higgs field is like rain, and there is no place you can go to keep dry. Just like there’s no way to shield yourself from gravitation, there’s no way to hide from the rain that is the Higgs field. If there were no Higgs field, all the fundamental particles would be like dried-out sponges. Massless, dried-out sponges.