The Angry Bear

There has always been a lot of misinformation and frank dishonesty surrounding Social Security. Here are three things that Social Security isn’t:1. A retirement investment. Social Security is insurance. It is not meant to be your sole source of income after retirement (although for many Americans, it basically is). Social Security is not a substitute for a pension or 401k, or for personal savings. But if some calamity befalls you and you lose your...

 – by New Deal democrat “it should be no surprise that Biden’s poll numbers have recently improved.” No big economic news today, so let me update a correlation with information from last Friday’s personal income data. To wit, is consumer sentiment about the economy tied to any real metric? With a lot of noise, it does appear to be correlated. The University of Michigan has been measuring consumer sentiment for over half a century. The last...

When I was in college, I took up pipe smoking. I particularly enjoyed Turkish Latakia tobacco, smoked through a long-stemmed church warden clay pipe. But shortly after I got married, my wife told me to stop.Smoking is a particularly dangerous nicotine delivery system. Nowadays, there is vaping, which some see as safer. It may well be, but “safer” isn’t the same as “safe.”“People who self-reported ever having used electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes)...

Brief recital of the costs and efforts of hospitals getting reimbursed by commercial healthcare insurance. It appears to be worsening. And the efforts to collect are costly. A Survey of Healthcare Insurance Practices Survey Methodology – 304 respondents, representing 772 hospitals, completed the survey. Not every respondent answered each question. All respondents are members of the American Hospital Association.– Web-survey...

by Christina Clark Iconic Detroit writer and activist John Sinclair died on Tuesday morning at the age of 82 after spending two weeks at DMC Detroit Receiving Hospital for declining health. His cause of death was congestive heart failure, his publicist told the Detroit News.  An advocate for his art, Sinclair served as the manager for MC5, a rock band from Lincoln Park, between 1966 and 1969, and was well-known for his support of the Civil...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog The JOLTS report for February showed stabilization or slight improvement to all but one of its components, generally suggesting, well, stabilization in the overall jobs market. Starting with the monthly changes, job openings (blue in the graph below), a soft statistic that is polluted by imaginary, permanent, and trolling listings, increased 8,000 from a sharply downwardly revised January number to...

Not 100 percent here. You will have to travel to the rest of the story to get the complete version of the Summary and My Take by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Official Newsletter on recent events. It is interesting and there is enough here to draw a conclusion. 1 When night came, the white waves rolled back and forth in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on the shore. And they felt that they could then...

Happy Easter, or happy whatever way you celebrate the coming of spring. Yesterday the good Christian Tim Walberg, who has ineffectually represented a chunk of southern Michigan in Congress since 2010, apparently called for us to use nuclear weapons in Gaza to “get it over quick.” He was, of course, once a Bible salesman. Jack Lessenberry Tags: Evolution...

by Dale Coberly No. It’s not. Here is why. The argument for ending the tax on Social Security benefits seems to be that “it is a tax on a tax”, double taxing, and not fair. Even the good guys believe this. But they are wrong. Consider,  You pay income taxes on your ordinary income.  Then you may take your after tax income and put some of it in a savings account which earns interest.  Then you pay income tax on the interest you earn. ...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog As usual, the new month’s data starts out with information on manufacturing and construction. To repeat what I have said often recently, these are the two sectors I am paying particular attention to for forecasting purposes this year. The ISM manufacturing index has been a good leading indicator in that sector for 75 years. The difference over time, especially the last 20 years, is that manufacturing...