The decline of the middle class is causing even more economic damage than we realized →

Op-ed quoted nearly in full:

...The authors — Ali Alichi, Kory Kantenga and Juan Solé — use standard econometric techniques to estimate the impact of declines in middle class incomes on total consumer spending. They find that polarization has reduced consumer spending by more than 3 percent or about $400 billion annually. If these findings stand up to scrutiny, they deserve to have a policy impact.
This level of reduction in spending is huge. For example, it exceeds by a significant margin the impact in any year of the Obama stimulus program. Alone it would be enough to account for a significant reduction in neutral real interest rates. If consumers were spending 3 percent more, there would be scope to maintain full employment at interest rates much closer to normal. And there would be much less of a problem of monetary policy’s inability to respond to the next recession.
What is the policy implication? Principally, it is the macroeconomic importance of supporting middle class incomes. This can be done in a range of ways from promoting workers right to collectively bargain to raising spending on infrastructure to making the tax system more progressive. These are hardly new ideas. And I supported them before seeing this new research. But there is now another powerful argument in terms of mitigating secular stagnation in their favor.

Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet →

First, a little background. If you want to take a network off the Internet, the easiest way to do it is with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). Like the name says, this is an attack designed to prevent legitimate users from getting to the site. There are subtleties, but basically it means blasting so much data at the site that it's overwhelmed. These attacks are not new: hackers do this to sites they don't like, and criminals have done it as a method of extortion. There is an entire industry, with an arsenal of technologies, devoted to DDoS defense. But largely it's a matter of bandwidth. If the attacker has a bigger fire hose of data than the defender has, the attacker wins.
Recently, some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they're used to seeing. They last longer. They're more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure.

Congress overrides Obama’s veto of 9/11 bill →

Quite curious how this happened...

Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override President Obama’s veto of legislation that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue the Saudi Arabian government over its alleged support for the terrorists who carried out the attacks.
It is the first override of Obama’s presidency.

What O. J. Simpson Means to Me →

An amazing essay. Coates reflects on how someone's guilt or innocence--such a simple concept--quickly becomes layered and complex because of the world we live in. A great read for mulling over issues of race and the justice system. And a good reminder of how important careful thought and empathy are.

Whom Should We Blame for Our Deranged Democracy? →

The confusion and hollowness of both political parties has not been a secret. Citizens left, right, and center have been giving up on electoral politics and the two-party system for decades. The nation’s largest political party is the “don’t bother” party—roughly half of the adult population who see no reason to vote, and nothing in it for them. Instead of scolding them, an active political party might look into the cause-and-effect of dysfunctional democracy and try to change it.

Hear, hear.

Uber to Begin Testing Self-Driving Cars in Pittsburgh →

Jobs that can be performed by machines eventually will be performed by machines. That’s been the steady march of progress since the dawn of the industrial revolution. But it really is extraordinary for a CEO to flatly declare that he considers the company’s workforce not to be an asset, but rather a stopgap measure he’s committed to eliminate. Say what you want about the politics of his bluntness, but he certainly deserves points for honesty.
Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.

How the Two Parties Lock Out Alternative Voices From the Debates →

COHEN: Yea well before 1988 it was the League of Women Voters, which was a truly nonpartisan group that sponsored the debates. And the Commission on Presidential Debates was a construct created by the chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties. And at the news conference in 1987 as they were announcing their formation, they both commented this was the Republican chair Frank Fahrenkopf he’s still the co-chair on the Commission on Presidential Debates and the then Democratic chair Paul Kirk, they both said yea basically this thing was set up and they’re not going to look kindly on ever including third party candidates.

It was set up, the Commission on Presidential Debates. It’s not an official body. It’s no more federal than Federal Express. It’s a self-appointed group that took power away from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. They have now done 7 presidential elections and the main purpose for the commission is to make sure that third party candidates, as popular as they are this year, will not be included in the debate.