The Angry Bear

DeSantis’ decision to send migrants to Martha’s Vineyard on false pretenses was clearly repugnant.  In fact, it seems to have been even worse than it appears:  the organizers apparently tried to trick the migrants into reporting their whereabouts to the wrong authorities, which would have jeopardized their status. But over on twitter, Ross Douthat tries to put a bit of lipstick on the pig: This was always the obvious point of the stunt, not to...

I am going to give a hostage to fortune. I am going to guess that the preferred policy supported by a majority of US respondents on questions about redistribution of income is that which would directly serve the narrow short term economic interests of a (probably different but overlapping) majority of US respondents. I am guessing that the majority view is that view which would be the majority view if everyone were selfish (and out and proud...

This is one of Alan Collinge’s associates who comment on many of his posts. This also reflects a point I bought up a while back on student loan debt. The size of the loan was large and probably could have been handled. The issue is not so much the loan as it is the interest fees, interest upon interest, paying back the interest first, etc. A $10,000 forgiveness will go to the interest first on the student loan debt and never touch the principal....

August industrial production declines; overall decelerating trend consistent with recession in 2023  – by New Deal democrat Finishing today’s data dump, industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, declined -0.2% in August, while manufacturing production increased 0.1%. July’s sharp gains in both were revised slightly (-0.1%) downward:  While July remains the high water mark for overall production, manufacturing has not made a...

Guest Post by Infidel as posted from his Blog of the same name. Intro . . . In the real world, which contains many individuals interacting within a society, overall freedom is maximized when the total ability of all individuals to do whatever they want is maximized.  In practice, achieving this involves a vast number of compromises and trade-offs, because there are so many cases where the wants of one person clash with the wants of another...

As always, I must start by saying I have no expertise and there is no reason anyone should be particularly interested in my thoughts. The question is how will the war in Ukraine end. I guess I have a guess, but it implies it will last a long time. I can think of 3 possibilities, Russian victory, Ukrainian victory or a negotiated peace. First, I think it won’t end with Russian victory. Given recent Ukrainian battlefield victories, this...

Happy 155th Birthday to volume one of Capital! In his 1965 farewell lecture at Brandeis University, Herbert Marcuse read a long passage from the Grundrisse’s “fragment on machines” and then observed: “But Marx himself has repressed this vision, which now appears as his most realistic, his most amazing insight!” In Time, Labor and Social Domination, published 28 years later, Moishe Postone addressed the same section from the Grundrisse and...

Positive real retail sales in August, but YoY flatness continues  – by New Deal democrat Retail sales, probably my favorite monthly economic datapoint, increased 0.3% in August. Since consumer prices rose 0.1%, real retail sales rose 0.2%: That’s certainly good news. Now here’s the bad news: July’s retail sales were revised downward by -0.4%, so that real retail sales, reported last month as +0.1%, are now shown down by a little less than...

I have been following New Deal democrat for a long time now. What NDd is reporting in this post is a big deal going into November’s Elections. In spite of all the negativism being reported by political interests, the economy is still moving forward. People are still working. I keep having to remind people about what 2008 was about. The last two years could have been far worse. run75441 Improvement in initial jobless claims continues  – by...