Book Review: “Slouching Towards Utopia,” J. Bradford DeLong, (foreignaffairs.com), Liaquat Ahamed

I am not going to put all of the review of Brad’s book Slouching Towards Utopia here. I thought I would alert AB readers to it and point to the freebie (for me at least and I believe you too) review at Foreign Affairs.

Brad DeLong’s highly anticipated economic history of the twentieth century, Slouching Towards Utopia, begins with the reminder that economic growth is overwhelmingly a twentieth-century phenomenon. According to the best estimate, between the birth of Jesus and the beginning of the eighteenth century, the living standard of an average person rose by barely one third—1.5 percent every 100 years. Even after 1750, when the economy began

I hope this finds you well, with friends and family, or at least with strangers to celebrate. Be safe.

We will catch up with you on Friday. Feel free to chat below.

Regards.

Dan

Tags: Thanksgiving

“The Bell: When Economic Distress Becomes Terrorism,” thebell.blogspot.com, “Tom Dinger”

What has changed since February 24, 2010? Have things gotten any better since then or 911? Are we still looking at an economic sinkhole for many people? In the last two years, programs were put in place to rescue people in spite of politics. What do you see?

Tom’s point, I believe, is people can be driven to do irrational things. The anger coming when they feel they are deliberately disadvantaged.

I could never duplicate Tom’s eloquence. Of course not, I am a numbers guy. This post is worhty of a rerun as a classic.

Poverty, Rather Than Anti-Anything Ideology, Is the Common Thread

Joseph Stack is not a terrorist in the sense that we apply this

I think I am sitting in the worst possible place one could be pre-election . . . Arizona. The potential insurrectionists were trying to take over the state. We prevailed only by a few votes. People I know are angry Democrats won. By all intents and purposes this is not over. We still need to resolve January 6.

Annie has a good message of hope on this Sunday. I hope you enjoy the read.

“Post-Election Day Musings…The Sun Begins to Shine” – annieasksyou… November 11, 2022

I watched an ebullient President Biden, with spring in his steps, mount the podium Wednesday night to face the press that’s been dismissing him for so long. For an hour, he cheerily responded to questions.

One commentator fondly called it an hour-long “humble-brag.” The

Infidel753: “Immediate post-election observations,” Infidel753 Blog

There was no red wave.  There was no blue wave.  Most incumbents got re-elected.  Whichever side ends up controlling the House and Senate will have a razor-thin margin.

Turnout was very high on both sides and the process ran smoothly pretty much everywhere, so it was a big win for democracy.

If the Republicans get the House majority, the margin will be small and the faction-riddled caucus will be difficult to keep unified.  It may be that Democrats will still be able to pass occasional decent legislation by peeling off a few Republican votes.  The really loopy stuff, like holding the debt ceiling hostage, may not work since just a few Republican defectors could undermine

“Postal workers and allies to protest DeJoy’s Ten-Year Plan at BOG meeting, Save the Post Office, Steve Hutkins

I missed this announcement at Steve Hutkins “Save The Post Office” blog. Apparently a large number of US Post Office supporters went to the Governor’s meeting and expressed their opinion on Postmaster Louis DeJoy’s plan to centralize sorting away from the neighborhood post offices. In effect, this action places a much larger burden on postal workers who will have to travel to these centers, sort their mail, travel back to their routes, and then deliver that mail. It is a cost shift to Labor without compensation for costs and time.

Obviously, I missed the meeting, You may want to listen to the meeting on the link below and the public

This seems appropriate three days before an important election. Are we going to take back our right and not allow a minority to force their will upon a nation. Denying women, the right to decide was just one step in the process.

I think we will take that right back.

Professor Heather Cox – Richardson has a post tonight on women achieving the right to vote and “deciding.” making decisions, determining their future . . . The right to decide for themselves on issues has been taken from them. I am hoping they will turn out in numbers so we can regain the freedom to decide again. Some Sunday Reading.

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November 5, 2022, Letters from an American, Professor Heather Cox Richardson, (substack.com).

Winning the Right to Decide

One

Kind of what I been reading is what Infidel is writing about in this post of his. NYT has a detailed opinion article about the complexity of polling on the 24th (freebie). Even they see polling results as complex.

I believe Roe v Wade will still play a part in how women and others will vote. I am also hoping Alito will keep flapping his lips. It stirs the crowd up and reminds people he was the instigator in Roe V Wade. Six days off now to the election. “Vote!“

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Infidel753: “Polling uncertainty,” Infidel753 Blog.

I’ve never been one of those who dismiss polls as meaningless.  Political parties and campaigns, and the media, pay millions for polls during each election cycle.  If the polls weren’t giving them useful information,

Infidel753, Putin’s war comes home.

For most of the duration of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the majority of Russians have either supported the aggression or at least not objected too energetically.  The war did not affect them much, except insofar as Western sanctions did.  That is now changing, thanks to Putin’s ill-advised and stunningly incompetent mass mobilization.

Authorities are now simply grabbing men more or less at random off the streets, in workplaces, at railway stations — anywhere groups of men can be found.  The victims of these pressgangs are being sent to the front in Ukraine with negligible training, often mere days after being “recruited”, often with grossly inadequate weapons and supplies.  This is a recipe for mass

October 25, 2022, Heather Cox Richardson, (substack.com).

There are quotes, and then there are quotes.

Tonight, in the debate between Democratic candidate John Fetterman and Republican candidate Mehmet Oz as part of their campaigns to replace Republican Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey, who is retiring, Oz said he wanted abortion decisions to be made by “women, doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so that states can decide for themselves.”

His answer seems likely to have been carefully crafted to lead with women and doctors—a signal to pro-choice constituencies—before pivoting to the state’s rights argument at the heart of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s

“They can only “win” by cheating …,” Homeless on the High Desert, Ten Bears.

October 7, 2022 in g’da said

Your Daily Chaos, Morning Digest: Elections ~ Here’s something you don’t see often—or ever: Republican Mike Erickson released an internal poll showing him leading his Democratic opponent, Andrea Salinas, the very same day that he filed a lawsuit demanding Salinas take down an attack ad by citing a law that he recently threatened to use to overturn the election should he lose.

To pick apart this strange turn of events, we’ll start with Erickson’s survey from Cygnal, which shows him beating Salinas 44-39 in Oregon’s brand new 6th District, a seat Joe Biden would have taken 55-42. The last polls we saw out of this district, which is based

Two of the most knowledgeable economists discussing events leading up to this year’s high inflation and the resulting interest rates. Of course, the Fed is reacting to the high inflation rates. If we look out into the future, probably early next year for a recession.

OER should not be used by the Fed in setting policy. The Fed is currently chasing a phantom lagging menace.

“Actual* rents and house prices lead the CPI measures by about a year.” In our neck of the woods, home prices are dropping, sales are down, and mortgage rates are about 6%. Inflation remains high. Hat Tip to New Deal democrat for sending this conversation. Thanks NDd..

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Larry Summers projects his thoughts on Inflation.

Paul Krugman Responds . . .

If you have not seen this application, you will now. I would urge you to quickly apply for loan relief. Apply for it at the link provided before politician asses find some way to block this. The sooner it gets approved, the quicker the relief. It is not much. Once they approve your application, I doubt they will block the relief to you.

Use this Link Debt Relief | Application | Federal Student Aid to get to an Application for Debt Relief.

What this looks like when you get to the Application

What the “Student Loan Debt Relief Form” Looks Like:

More Information needed, a Signature and How To Submit Directions:

Do NOT use this form. Go to the Link Debt Relief | Application | Federal Student Aid and fill out the form there. These pictures

I guess I am going to lose some of my writer reputation now as I look at the aspect of how certain “legal” migrants in San Antonio, Texas were treated by the governor in Florida. These people did not sneak into the US. They were granted asylum after presenting themselves to border guards, registered in the system, and released to a shelter. In turn they were scammed by a representative sent by Florida’s Governor DeSantis to go to Massachusetts where jobs, additional money etc. supposedly waited for them.

Of course, DeSantis used Florida taxpayer funds Covid funds (illegally) to pay $600,000 for the plane trip and also fund other needs besides promises of jobs, etc.. At Martha’s Vinyard, the one who convinced them to go, Perla abandoned them. The

The title is not from Letters from an American. It is just my perception of what I envision having happened to the Republican party. Republicans are acting strangely to say the least. Could it be they slept next to some pods pre-January 6th? I had thought and according to the movie related facts, they would be short lived. Yet here we are two years later with strange thinks occurring. A lack of moral compass, etc. Read on. It is a good recital by Prof. Heather.

October 11, 2022, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, (substack.com).

Last Thursday, October 6, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee tweeted: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”

On Sunday, October 10, after his Instagram account was restricted for antisemitism,

Nobel Peace Prizes were awarded most recently. “The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 103 times to 140 Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2022, 110 individuals and 30 organizations. Since the International Committee of the Red Cross has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize three times (in 1917, 1944 and 1963), and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize two times (in 1954 and 1981), there are 27 individual organizations which have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Winners

Nobel Prize for Peace

Jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski, Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize amid a war in their region that is the

Dale Coberly; USA Today Report of Biden Speech not as bad as it might have been. It still amounts to a lie by Misdirection. On September 27, USA TODAY published an article which AB suggested I review.

“Biden vows to save Social Security and Medicare in face of shortfalls, but offers few details,” Maureen Groppe, USA Today

It has been said that looking at the face of the devil is one of the chief torments of hell. That is the way I feel when I look at the so many lying and ignorant articles about Social Security.

This is going to be my belated review of the USA TODAY article, much shortened for your reading pleasure and my sanity.  Easiest for me to use quotes from USA followed by my ( coberly ) comments.

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USA TODAY: “Biden vows

One Handed Economist David Zetland reviews a review by The Economist of the book Superabundance. I admit I did not read the book or even scan it. I will do so later when I have some time to do so. The subtitle kind of gives it away as it promotes (“The Story of) Population Growth, Innovation and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.”

In the US there is a lot of noise about legal immigrants coming to the US. Our replacement rate has dropped to 1.7 which implies a decreasing population. The population did increase less than 1 million for the first time ever as recorded. It is the lowest increase there has ever been.

However, this does not imply nothing should be done. Carbon extraction should be minimized to where we are more

“Did Biden Lie About Social Security or is Washington Post’s Fact Checker a Damned Liar?“

Dale Coberly:

Well. you won’t find out from me.  I only read about it third hand, and because the “fact checker” …Glenn Kessler….is behind a paywall you are going to have to find it for yourself.

So, I don’t know but I been told that Kessler gave Biden “Four Pinocchios” for saying that the Republicans want to destroy Social Security…just as the Democrats have lied about the Republicans wanting to destroy Social Security every election for as long as man can remember.

I checked on Biden’s speech.  I can’t find any lies about Republicans wanting to destroy Social Security.  Biden did read from a pamphlet that Republican Senator Ron Scott wrote calling

“Computer experts urge Georgia to replace voting machines,” (msn.com), Kate Brumback

Should Georgia replace present voting machines with paper ballots?

CNN — A Republican County official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county’s election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows.The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election.

Since this occurrence, computer and election security experts are urging Georgia election officials to replace the state’s touchscreen voting

Dale Coberly found this excellent analysis on economic happenings by Yanis Varoufakis. How did all of this Inflation come about? Certainly, wages have not been outstripping everything else. Labor is going to take a hit eventually. We do have supply chain issues. Much caused by countries shutting down. Companies not maintaining orders to the manufacturers is also a part. Automotive again shoots itself in this manner and blames everything else. Increased pricing because they can do so. Little to do with out-of-control costs. Much to do because they can get away with it. And there is good old politics.

A good not-so technical read.

“Inflation as a Political Power Play Gone Wrong” – Project Syndicate op-e – Yanis Varoufakis

The blame game over

A collection of interesting reads, news, and articles from the last week.

Healthcare

“Fauci to Retire by End of Biden’s First Term” (medscape.com), “Biden’s chief medical officer (Fauci), who has also been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, told Politico he is not planning to wait for COVID-19 to disappear before retiring.”

“Three Key Strategies for Combatting Nurse Turnover” | MedPage Today, Nat’e Guyton, RN, MSN, “with more than 900,000 nurses expected to permanently leave the profession during that same period due to retirement, burnout, or career change, over half of U.S. states (29) will not be able to fill the demand for nursing talent.”

​”Another Likely Effect of the Roe Reversal:

Pulled from Comments Section. Fred Dobbs Commentary

NY Times magazine – July 17

Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End, NYT, David Marchese 

Growth is the be-all and end-all of mainstream economic and political thinking. Without a continually rising G.D.P., we’re told, we risk social instability, declining standards of living and pretty much any hope of progress. But what about the counterintuitive possibility that our current pursuit of growth, rabid as it is and causing such great ecological harm, might be incurring more costs than gains? That possibility — that prioritizing growth is ultimately a losing game — is one that the lauded economist Herman Daly has been exploring for more than 50 years. In so doing, he

[unable to retrieve full-text content]If This Goes On … | Homeless on the High Desert, Ten Bears June 29, 2022 in g’da said Republicans are absolutely going for the dark, theocratic future America First Legal (AFL), a right-wing group whose team includes several former Trump administration officials, is urging the Supreme Court to do even more to shatter what’s left of the […]
The post If This Goes On … appeared first on Angry Bear.

RJS: Focus on Fracking

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Summary: US oil supplies at an 18 year low, SPR at a 36 year low, total oil + oil products supply at a 13½ year low.

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Detail: The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA 

Sidenote: The US oil data reported this week by the US Energy Information Administration includes updated data for the week ending June 17th, which should have been published last week but wasn’t due to a hardware failure. The new data for the week ending June 24th is published on schedule this week. While we’re going to cover that most recent update as we usually do, we’ll also try to include the most important changes for the week ending June 17th in our narrative…

The EIA’s data for the week ending June

RJS: MarketWatch 666

Summary: modest revision. The internals were revised as much as I’ve ever seen. PCE growth from 3.1% to 1.8%, real gross private domestic investment growth from 0.5% to 5.0%. Mostly due to greater inventories. Those 1st quarter inventories set up the 2nd quarter for a fall.

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1st Quarter GDP Revised to Show Our Economy Shrunk at a 1.6% Rate

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The Third Estimate of our 1st Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that the real output of our goods and services decreased at a 1.6% annual rate in the quarter, revised from the 1.5% contraction rate reported in the second estimate last month, as downward revisions to personal consumption of durable goods and services more than offset upward

“A few thoughts on the abortion ruling,”

by INFIDEL753

There’s no longer any room to pretend that the Supreme Court is a mere non-political referee interpreting the law in a vacuum.  If it ever was that, it’s now just another locus of political power, like the House, Senate, and presidency, a utensil for imposing the will of whichever ideology or group manages to secure control of it.  At present, that control rests with the forces of theocracy.

Biden has re-affirmed that he does not support increasing the number of justices to remedy the situation, even (presumably) if the Democrats were to hold the House and win an enlarged Senate majority making such action possible.  I’m guessing a few million Democrats who were on the fence about

Every once and a while, I wander to various sites to see what is cooking there. Kinda to get a bit of a change to our dialogue at Angry Bear. I found this one post on the Texas Part Platform by Infidel posted a few days ago to be interesting. Infidel had been featuring AB at “Crooks and Liars” too. To which I say, “Thank You.”

“About that Texas Republican platform,” Infidel753

The Texas Republican party platform has become notorious across the internet, mostly via second-hand descriptions and paraphrases.  Rather than put my trust in these, I took a look at the actual document to see what’s really there.  Most of it is pretty conventional boilerplate stuff, and there are some positive provisions, but yes, there is also plenty of material that

RJS, MarketWatch 666

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Summary: Producer Prices Rose 0.8% in May; Record Annual Increase of 16.6% for Final Demand Goods

The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.8% in May, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 1.4% while final demand for services was 0.4% higher. The increase followed a revised 0.4% increase in April, when average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 1.3% while final demand for services was 0.2% lower. Also following a revised 1.6% increase in March, when average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 2.4% and final demand for services rose 1.2% and a revised 1.1% increase in February, when average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 2.2%. Margins

RJS, MarketWatch 666

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Summary: Retail Sales Fell 0.3% in May After March and April Sales Were Revised Lower

Seasonally adjusted retail sales fell 0.3% in May after retail sales for April were revised 0.4% lower. The  Advance Retail Sales Report for May (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated our seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales totaled $672.9 billion for the month, which was a decrease of 0.3 percent (±0.5%) from April’s revised sales of $674.7 billion. This was 8.1 percent (±0.7 percent) above the adjusted sales of May of last year . . . April’s seasonally adjusted sales were revised from the record high $677.7 billion reported last month to $674.7 billion, while March sales were revised from $671.6 billion to