The political Left has come up with a new buzzword: “microaggression.” Professors at the University of California at Berkeley have been officially warned against saying such things as “America is the land of opportunity.” Why? Because this is considered to be an act of “microaggression” against minorities and women. Supposedly it shows that you don’t take their grievances seriously and are therefore guilty of being aggressive toward them, even if only on a micro scale. You might think that this is just another crazy idea from Berkeley. But the same concept appears in a report from the flagship campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana. If you just sit in a room where all the people are white, you are considered to be guilty of “microaggression” against people who are not white, who will supposedly feel uncomfortable when they enter such a room.

At UCLA, a professor who changed the capitalization of the word “indigenous” to lower case in a student’s dissertation was accused of “microaggression,” apparently because he preferred to follow the University of Chicago Manual of Style, rather than the student’s attempt to enhance the importance of being indigenous. When a group of UCLA law students came to class wearing T-shirts with a picture of one of their professors who had organized an intramural softball game, those T-shirts were protested as a manifestation of “white privilege.” Why? Because that professor had written a book critical of affirmative action.

“Microaggression” protests have spread to campuses from coast to coast — that is, from California’s Berkeley and UCLA to Harvard and Fordham on the East Coast, and including Oberlin and Illinois in the Midwest. Academic administrators have all too often taken the well-worn path of least resistance, by regarding the most trivial, or even silly, claims of victimhood with great seriousness, even when that involved undermining faculty members held in high esteem by most of their students and by their professional colleagues on campus and beyond.

The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them. This tactic reaches far beyond academia and far beyond the United States. France’s Jean-Paul Sartre has been credited — if that is the word — with calling social conditions he didn’t like “violence,” as a prelude to justifying real violence as a response to those conditions. Sartre’s American imitators have used the same verbal tactic to justify ghetto riots.

Word games are just one of the ways of silencing politically incorrect ideas instead of debating them. Demands that various conservative organizations be forced to reveal the names of their donors are another way of silencing ideas by intimidating people who facilitate the spread of those ideas. Whatever the rationale for wanting those names, the implicit threat is retaliation.

This same tactic was used, decades ago, by Southern segregationists who tried to force black civil-rights organizations to reveal the names of their donors, in a situation where retaliation might have included violence as well as economic losses. In a sense, the political Left’s attempts to silence ideas they cannot, or will not, debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. But this is just one of the Left’s ever-increasing restrictions on other people’s freedom to live their lives as they see fit, rather than as their betters tell them.

Current attempts by the Obama administration to force low-income housing to be built in middle class and upscale communities are on a par with forcing people to buy the kind of health insurance the government wants them to buy — Obamacare — rather than leaving them free to buy whatever suits their own situation and preferences. The Left is not necessarily aiming at totalitarianism. But their know-it-all mindset leads repeatedly and pervasively in that direction, even if by small steps, each of which might be called “micro-totalitarianism.”

The figure suggests that households at the lower end of the income distribution spend more than twice what they make. At the upper end, households spend about two-thirds of what they make. Given this large difference in the propensity to consume between low- and high-income households, we consider the economic impact of levying a $1 tax on the rich and transferring it to the poor. This would reduce the high-income household’s spending by about $0.66 and increase the low-income household’s spending by $2, assuming each group spent additional dollars at their average rates. On net, it would create an increase in spending of more than $1.25. Even if the average for households in the bottom decile is overstated and they simply consume all the income they make, Figure 1 suggests every $1 of redistribution from the top earners to the bottom one-third of the income distribution would boost spending by at least $0.33.

First, let’s focus on the lower end of the income distribution. Figure 1 suggests that spending of the 10% of households with the lowest levels of income is about twice as much as they make a year. Households in the second and third deciles of the income distribution spend, on average, 40% and 26% more than they make, respectively. In fact, taking these data at face value we would conclude that only households in the top 60% of the income distribution have positive saving rates on average. This would imply that a large segment of the population, approximately 40%, is spending well beyond its means.

Another measurement issue that may explain the observed high spending rates of households in the bottom of the income distribution is that they may understate their actual income. This could result from underreporting government transfer payments, as documented in Meyer, Mok, and Sullivan (2009), or other sources of income.

Surveys show low-income households tend to spend a larger share of their income than high-income households. Because of this, temporarily redistributing income from the rich to the poor could stimulate consumption and, through that, the economy as a whole. However, there is evidence that differences in propensities to consume this additional income across households are smaller than commonly assumed.

TUNISIA : Prime Minister, Habib Essid, told on Friday that the Tunisian government plans to shutter 80 mosques that remain beyond the state control kindling violence as a protective measure after the terrorist attack at a hotel in Sousse that killed 39 people.

The Prime Minister announced the clampdown after a gunman blindly opened fire on families and tourists staying at a resort in Sousse city.

Whilst speaking to a news conference, Mr.Habib informed that about 80 mosques outside government control were suspected of “spreading venom” and would be padlocked within a week.


Furthermore, Essid promised to clear the country free of any party or group acting “outside the constitution”.

As per the AFP report, the attack is believed to be the worst in the recent history of the northernmost country of Africa, killing at least 39 people, including tourists and children, on Friday in a bloodbath at a Tunisian tourist beach resort.

The startled holidaymakers reported scenes of utter chaos and confusion as the mass murderer opened fire at them.

Moreover, the interior ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Aroui, confirmed that an armed man entered the hotel from the back and opened fire at the people basking in the sun.

The attack victimized several people, including 15 Britons. Many are also reported to have been hospitalized. The gunman was shot at the scene.

The terrorist attack came only a few months after another attack in Tunis on the Bardo National Museum in March, in which 21 foreign tourists and a policeman bid farewell to their lives.