Family That Walks On All Fours Not A Product Of ‘Reverse Evolution’, George Dvorsky, io9, July 17, 2014
In Turkey, there’s a family with an apparent genetic disorder that causes them to walk on all fours. Scientists have speculated that they’re an example of “devolution” — a backwards step towards our quadrupedal past. A new paper challenges this assumption, offering a far more reasonable explanation.
[Ed. note: What “scientists” would speculate about something like “devolution”?]
Deadbeat 1 percenters endanger U.S. democracy, Robert Reich, Salon, July 17, 2014
The wealth is coming from those who over the last three decades earned huge amounts on Wall Street, in corporate boardrooms, or as high-tech entrepreneurs.
It’s going to their children, who did nothing except be born into the right family.
The “self-made” man or woman, the symbol of American meritocracy, is disappearing. Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. Just six Walmart heirs have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined (up from 30 percent in 2007).
The U.S. Trust bank just released a poll of Americans with more than $3 million of investable assets.
Nearly three-quarters of those over age 69, and 61 per cent of boomers (between the ages of 50 and 68), were the first in their generation to accumulate significant wealth.
But the bank found inherited wealth far more common among rich millennials under age 35.
This is the dynastic form of wealth French economist Thomas Piketty warns about. It’s been the major source of wealth in Europe for centuries. It’s about to become the major source in America – unless, that is, we do something about it.
Millennials’ Political Views Don’t Make Any Sense, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, July 15, 2014
Millennial politics is simple, really. Young people support big government, unless it costs any more money. They’re for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they’ve heard of. They’d like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn’t run anything.
That’s all from a new Reason Foundation poll surveying 2,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Millennials’ political views are, at best, in a stage of constant metamorphosis and, at worst, “totally incoherent,” as Dylan Matthews puts it.
