Some surprising info on this Mint.com chart of which income levels pay what percentage of U.S. income taxes. 47% of American households on the lower end, for example, pay no taxes, while 2% on the upper end pay 40% of all income taxes. Fair? On the other hand, this chart from the book Who Rules [...]

From The Unemployed Life on Recessionwire:

The Starbucks Guide to Job Status (Andrew Lipstein)

Roman bath houses, or thermae, were massive public spheres (the Baths of Diocletian covered almost one and a half million square feet) that served as public gathering spots for every cross-section of society. Today, we have Starbucks.

Economy Bites is an online cooking show dedicated to helping people learn how to make economical, tasty dishes that will last almost all week. The show’s motto: “Cook on Sunday, eat till Thursday.” From the site: We’ve all been there: sluggishly trudging home after a long day at work thinking, “the LAST thing I want [...]

In working up the two posts on Stuyvesant Town in New York City, I came across this rent control debate in the comments section of an article in New York magazine. The two main posters are a long-time resident of the Manhattan housing complex, which includes many rent stabilized apartments, and an opponent of rent [...]

“So for all of those fiduciaries supposed to be investing money for teachers, firemen, the people of Singapore and God, shame on you. This was never a good deal for anyone but Tishman Speyer.” Yesterday, we posted about what’s happening in New York City’s Stuyvesant Town: The companies that bought the apartment complex for $5.4 [...]

Two maps from the Mint.com blog. First, moving from one of the most expensive cities to one of the highest-rated small towns. If you move from San Francisco to Farmington, Utah, for example, see what you’d be gaining in terms of cost of living. Click on the house icons to see specifics. Next, who’s moved [...]

Three years ago, two companies, Tishman Speyer Properties and Black Rock Realty, bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan, an iconic post-war housing complex that is home to 25,000 tenants, many of them with rent-controlled apartments. Last month, in what one observer called “the poster child for the entire housing bubble,” the deal [...]

“…it is not at all clear…that a Special Inspector General should be weighing in on government policy decisions, much less predicting the housing market or economy’s future.” Yesterday we ran a post about the Special Inspector General for TARP’s Quarterly Report to Congress. The report was highly critical of the bailout’s inability to increase bank [...]

Boy, people can get really sarcastic on Craigslist… I’m reaching out to all members of the Bay Area BMW motorcycle riding community for your support of a fellow BMW rider who’s fallen on hard times. Anyone who’s perused the CL motorcycle listings at least once during the past year has seen the posting for the [...]

Time for another go-round — our third — with The Brian Lehrer Show’s Uncommon Economic Indicators web page, where people submit signs of the recession observed around the New York City area. These won’t show up in any government statistics or charts, but they turn the abstract gloom of macroeconomic numbers into a concrete picture [...]