Last Call For Talking It Out

Had the honor of being a guest on the Tim Corrimal Show this week with guest host Sarah Cosgrove.  Sarah's a good friend of mine and we had a nice roundtable discussion about what the Democrats need to do in order to win big in 2016 with Sarah, myself, Justice Putnam of Netroots Radio, and Lori Paquette of FlirtyGrrl.com.

Give a listen to Episode 322.  I enjoyed being on the show a lot, hopefully it won't be my last appearance.

The Peak Of The Mountain

Congrats, older Millennials and young Gen Xers like myself!  Your earnings peak is pretty much at age 40 and after that it's all downhill from there.

By age 40 you're done. That's the conclusion of a report from the New York Fed that looks at lifetime earnings from age 25 through retirement.  

The top chart shows average earnings by age. It's a little hard to immediately see how dramatic the income peak is since the y-axis shows the log of earnings, but if you do the arithmetic it demonstrates that, on average, by age 40 you're within about $1,000 of your peak earnings. You'll get inflation adjustments after that, but for the bulk of us, that's it. Real earnings pretty much plateau after age 40. 

Here's the charts they are talking about:

 

The bottom chart illustrates this in a different way. The yellow rectangle shows earnings growth for the bottom 80 percent. The blue line is for ages 25-35, and there's a fair amount of earnings growth except at the very bottom. The red line is for ages 35-45, and it's pretty close to zero. There's virtually no earnings growth for anyone. And the green line is for ages 45-55. It's actually negative. If you put the latter two age groups together, the report concludes that "average earnings growth from ages 35 to 55 is zero." 

Now, outside the yellow box we have the top 20 percent: the well off and the rich. Those folks show a lot of earnings growth when they're young, but they also show fairly healthy growth between ages 35-45. 

And the top 1 percent? That's on the very far right, and as you can see, they show earnings growth at every age level.

So for any early 90's kid like myself, this is about as good as it gets in the paycheck department right about now. You've got 15, maybe 20 years out of college to get to where you're going to be in life, and after that you can expect to make that salary or less from then on out.  If you're a younger Millennial and you're still in retail or food service, well...clock's ticking, guys.

Unless you're a one percenter, that is.  Then the sky's the limit.

Bobby Jindal, Moderate Republican(?)

When pundits look back on the 2016 GOP race, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will hold a special place as a man who not only turned his back on his constituents for political expediency, but also shredded his degree in biology for the same reason.

Planned Parenthood began construction here last year on a clinic that would perform abortions and provide other medical services for women. “High-Quality, Affordable Health Care for New Orleans,” a sign promised. “Seeing Patients Early 2015.”

That sign is now crumpled on the ground behind a chain-link fence at the project’s abandoned construction site, victim of efforts by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and other abortion opponents to block the clinic.

The push against the project began last year, when the Catholic archbishop of New Orleans wrote a public letter threatening to blacklist contractors on the clinic from any of the church’s numerous real estate projects. That led to several subcontractors walking away from the project, delaying work on the facility. An inspector for the State Licensing Board for Contractors also began making weekly visits, which one of the major contractors said was unprecedented.

Then last month Jindal’s administration denied Planned Parenthood an operating license, stating that the group failed to show the need for the clinic. Work has stopped at the site on a busy thoroughfare west of downtown, at least for now, while Planned Parenthood vows to appeal.

There's nothing moderate about Jindal anymore.  He knows his road to the nomination in Cleveland in July 2016 goes through Tea Party central, and he's trying to prove he's the guy who can punish his constituents the most.

In 2010, Louisiana had the sixth-highest rate of unintended pregnancies, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Before opening its $4 million clinic, Planned Parenthood had to undergo a “Facility Need Review” under a 2012 rule created by Jindal’s Department of Health and Hospitals. In its 74-page application, Planned Parenthood used statistical analysis to estimate that its entrance into the market would allow another 2,844 women to get abortions per year. In its rejection, the state agency’s top official said Planned Parenthood had failed to establish the need for another abortion facility.

Of the five that exist in Louisiana, one is in New Orleans and another is in the suburban city of Metairie.

“The safety and protection of women is not an issue of economic debate,” the governor’s press secretary, Mike Reed, said in an e-mail.

So yeah, Jindal has gone full Tea Party these days.  He had before, but now it's official.