The Angry Bear

by Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.2 Published in 1821, The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties was a major influence on Marx’s analysis of ‘disposable time.’ In an 1851 notebook, Marx logged a 1000 word summary of the pamphlet. He also discussed it extensively in volume 3 of Theories of Surplus Value. His discussion of disposable time in a section of...

It appears that the democratic nomination contest is wrapped up.  People are voting with their wallets.  Pelosi and Obama at one point appeared to favor some kind of competitive process, but Pelosi has evidently thrown her support behind Harris.  Potential rivals are all standing down. Ezra Klein is still making the case for an abbreviated nomination contest.  His strongest points are that we will learn something about Harris by having her compete...

2020 Census: 1 in 6 People in the United States Were 65 and Over, MAY 2023 Added a chart from the Census Bureau to emphasize the point of an aging population. There are a whole lot of us who are just a few years behind Joe Biden, and society isn’t ready for it. What happens when the young-old get old-old by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront I was thinking about getting old this weekend, and not just because of Joe Biden. I was at a...

I had presented Part I and Part II a while back. Part III was difficult to present in a piece-meal way so for now I have set it aside. What is interesting about Part IV is I can beak it apart into segments, still maintain the flow of informatio, and present it in a logical manner. Bear with me. By the time we get to the end, I believe you will be able to piece this together too. In Part IV . . . What Antonio is doing in Part IV is laying the...

Biden’s legacy: a Summary by Noah Smith – an introduction to Noahpinion Noahpinion Joe Biden announced today that he won’t seek reelection for President. We don’t yet know who will replace him, but we know Biden’s tenure in office will soon end. Now is the perfect time to talk about Biden’s legacy as America’s 46th President. How Presidents are judged by history is a complicated question, and I don’t have much confidence in my ability...

by Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.3  Inversion Marx stated repeatedly in the Grundrisse that capital inverts the relationship between necessary and superfluous labour time. Capital both creates disposable time and expropriates it in the form of surplus value, reversing the nature-imposed priority of necessity before superfluity and making the performance of...

Morning . . . One other factor I believe you may have missed (too many factors). The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not pay for itself over the last 10 years. Just a small matter of it passing using Reconciliation which insists it pay for itself (being redundant here). The repeal of it impacts those in the upper 10% (or more) of the taxpayers and more so the 1 percenter who make up a million (taxpayers) or slightly more taxpayers having income...

 – by New Deal democrat Over the weekend Harvard econ professor Jason Furman suggested that the Fed funds rate is not very restrictive: “As inflation has come down the real Federal funds rate has risen and is now the most restrictive it has been this cycle, a point that Austin Goolsbee has emphasized a number of times . . . That is not the way I would look at it. The rates that matter for the economy are long rates. and expected inflation...

Kevin Drum pushes back on the WSJ claim that household debt is a problem in America, and Kevin brings the receipts:“. . . debt as a percent of disposable income . . . is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (9.8% vs. 10%).“. . . household debt as a percent of GDP . . . went up during the pandemic and then back down. It is currently lower than it was at the end of 2019 (76.2% vs. 77.7%).“Total credit card balances today are precisely the same...

Progressives and social democrats should be fighting them tooth and nail, not blithely embracing them. by Steve Roth Originally Posted at Wealth Economics The spreadsheet behind the tables and graphs here is available on request. Drop me a line in the comments or elsewhere. Following the community of Socks (🧦s) or “social democrats” out there on the interwebs (this is definitely my economic tribe), in articles, and in books, there’s a...