Most Read Realitybase Posts in January

Recent posts:

"Only the little people pay taxes." (strictly domestic US companies pay nominal high federal tax rates while MNCs effectively pay little or nothing)

Obama names fox to head advisory panel on hen house security. (GE's Immelt, a leading offshorer of jobs and proponent of lower US wages, appointed to head panel on jobs and competitiveness)

Did decline of the American middle class "just happen" or is it political? (Alan Blinder says it just happened, but the work of Jacob Hacker, Paul Pierson, Kevin Phillips, et al. demonstrate it's political)

Oldies but goodies:

The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos (key quotations from documents that are being disappeared)

US job creation has been declining since April 2000 and is now in freefall. (features a dramatic graph)

The American Dream died in February 1973 (includes graphs from multiple sources all showing stagnation of inflation-adjusted middle class incomes since the 1970s after steady and substantial post-WWII growth)

The Dysfunction and Corruption of Our Healthcare System, Its Damage to the National Economy and other Basic Healthcare Matters (Guest Post) (describing a system that is destroying the American business economy and our ability to compete globally, which violates fundamental insurance risk principles, and which has inherent conflicts of interest that prevent quality national health care delivery and cost efficiency, and proposing a solution)

One chart refutes three myths about US foreign trade. (about Smoot-Hawley, the post-WWII export "boom," and "self-balancing" trade)

Comparative Advantage—The Unicorn of Free Trade (a collection of sources and analyses demonstrating that the assumptions of classic Ricardian theory rarely if ever align with real-world conditions)