I was watching Family Feud and during the “fast money” sequence, one of the questions was “Name something that goes up every year in America.” The contestant said, “Inflation.” Steve Harvey commented something along the lines of, “You’ve got that right.” The survey said “0”! That didn’t surprise me. Most people don’t think about inflation unless it is out of control. And it isn’t out of control. In fact, it has been decades since it’s been out of control. Inflation is only something that the rich care about now. Harvey is worth an estimated $100 million, so I can see where he might be concerned about inflation.
Of course, inflation does not go up every year. In fact, it has been going down for years. This is one of the many examples of things that everyone knows that just isn’t true. Here is the FRED data since 1980:
The second contestant answered “taxes.” As I discussed about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, it is true that we at the bottom of the income scale have seen our taxes go up even while those at the top go down. But in general, taxes have not gone up as you can see in the following graph. Although there is one thing worth noting: individual taxes have gone up while corporate taxes have done down.
The survey said “33”! So that probably makes taxes the number one answer. Family Feud is a game of perceptions, of course — not reality. There are a lot of things that do go up every year. Population goes up every year. In general, GDP goes up. But there is one thing that definitely goes up each year that I’m sure was not reflected in the survey: inequality. Here is the Gini Coefficient:
A big part of the problem in the United States is that as a people, we don’t really know what’s on. Our taxes stay the same, but we think they are constantly going up because a bunch of rich people — whose taxes are going down — say very loudly that taxes are sky high. Meanwhile, more and more money gets funneled to those at the top and few people engage with this, and most of those who do claim that it doesn’t matter.
Finnish primary school teacher education programs that lead to an advanced, research-based degree are so popular among young Finns that only one in 10 applicants is accepted each year. Those lucky students then have to study for five to six years before they are allowed to teach a class of their own…
This most recent case of John T Booker Jr is just amazing in being like pretty much every other FBI arrest of a home grown terrorist: it starts and ends with the FBI. John Eligon at The New York Times managed to report on the whole thing as though he were totally unaware of the FBI’s history regarding these things, 
So in October 2014, the FBI sent an undercover agent to talk to Booker, who was, as he had been for years, still talking about Jihad. But just as impotent as ever, the FBI decided to set him up with what he needed to carry out his fantasy suicide plot. So without a hint of irony, Eligon reported, “Mr Booker agreed to let the informants make the car bomb and planned to drive it onto the base to detonate it, killing himself in the process, the complaint said.” So really, the extent of Booker’s involvement was his suicide.
Crowdfunding sites are showing themselves to be moral cowards. GoFundMe 
Today, the Apple I is 39 years old. The company itself was started just ten days earlier. It’s interesting that in the public consciousness, Apple is Steve Jobs. Yet the first Apple computer was not built by Steve Jobs. In fact, I don’t think that Steve Jobs ever built a computer. He was the sales guy — the PR man. The Apple I was built by Steve Wozniak. So was the Apple II. Wozniak was the tech guy of the company for as long as the company couldn’t afford to hire tech people from outside.