Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Class wars—American style

Paul Krugman is correct (which is not something I often have the occasion to write): “that while the election is over, the class war isn’t.”

The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election.

Yes, but. . .

The class wars are not just about fiscal deficits, taxes, and entitlements—although they certainly are about those, to the extent they impinge on how much of the surplus corporations and members of the 1 percent get to keep.

They’re also about what happens long before government taxes and expenditures come into play. As it turns out, U.S. corporate profits reached a record high in the third quarter of this year, even adjusted for inflation, according to a report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

source

Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) increased $67.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with an increase of $21.8 billion in the second quarter. This is particularly significant since corporate profits from the rest of the world actually declined slightly in the third quarter, which means that all of the increase in corporate profits came from U.S. sources.

Yes, class wars are taking place in the United States but, in typical American fashion, the focus is on the debates over the so-called fiscal cliff in Washington, D.C. (where the winner of the presidential election and his allies have a slight edge)—all the while ignoring what is taking place within corporations in the rest of the country (which we never had a chance to vote on).

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

The gift that keeps on giving

The runaway defeat of the Romney-Ryan ticket in last week’s election is a gift that just keeps on giving.

First, there’s Romney’s attempt to explain their loss by Obama’s “gifts” to various groups in the electorate.

What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.

And then there’s the news that Romney and Ryan [ht: ja]—who sought to connect with voters in small- and medium-sized towns across Ohio by repeatedly telling them how much their community had in common with his own hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin—received only 37 percent of the votes of Ryan’s hometown neighbors. Meanwhile, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden got 62 percent of the Janesville vote.

The results were even slightly worse for Ryan from his own polling place at the Hedberg Public Library. Out of 1,428 votes cast there, 65% went for Obama-Biden and just 34% for Romney-Ryan.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Chart of the day

source*

The exit polls also reveal that Romney won a majority of white, male, conservative, married, Republican, suburban voters. So, as the editor of the Future of Capitalism concludes:

Mr. Romney is a 65-year-old who disclosed earning about $21 million a year, so at least he carried his own demographic groups.

*Note: the boxes are sized by the share of each state’s electorate.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention