The Angry Bear

Akin to “I was just following orders.” Such a reason did not work before and people following the orders or the laws in this instance and other instances did not ask questions. The orders and the law gave an excuse to do otherwise. A story as taken from “Anger as pre-historic stones destroyed for French DIY store,” Le Monde,fr. Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near...

Scenes from the employment report: an important trend in self-employment; and real aggregate payrolls  – by New Deal democrat We’re still in the week of drought following the payrolls release last Friday. Today let’s take a look at a few more items of interest from the Household Survey side. As you probably recall, the bottom line employment numbers in the 2 reports diverged sharply in May, with the Establishment survey showing a 339,000...

Open Thread June 4, 2023, Angry Bear, angry bear blog Just a thought, and this new at this moment. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling finding a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. I believe SCOTUS...

It appears Primary Care is becoming a hot market practice for nonhealthcare US retail and healthcare corporations to invest in today. Big corporations are chasing the Primary Care market worth about $260 billion in 2022, which is big enough to attract attention. The other factor is a shift from FFS healthcare model to a Fee For Value healthcare model. There is a potential for increasing costs in the latter. Primary care disruptors could capture...

One of my favorite topics, Inflation, Labor, and how Labor impacts Inflation. Or does it? Have We Whipped Inflation Now? cepr.net, Dean Baker The inflation hawks have been getting their way with the Fed for the last 14 months, but it looks like the Fed is prepared to call at least a temporary truce in its war on inflation, foregoing the opportunity to raise interest rates at its meeting this month. That would be good news for tens of millions...

This is an interesting take on small hospitals and also covering smaller hospitals in small towns or rural areas. It is an issue as the larger hospitals buy them up. Rather than invest in them, they close them down. One reveal is those hospitals closings coming as a result of what private insurance pays for patient care. This is an issue which both state and federal governments. should be addressing. Why are 600+ rural hospitals at risk of...

The consumer may finally be faltering  – by New Deal democrat At this point I think the “smart” econ take is that either any recession is very much delayed, or even not going to happen at all. While everything is possible, I’ve argued in several places that if you date a potential business cycle peak to January of this year, the data doesn’t look so rosy. To wit, below is a graph with all of the main monthly data series the NBER has said it...

Does AI pose a meaningful existential threat to humanity?  If an existential threat is one that can lead to mass death or human extinction, and a risk of extinction is meaningful if it is (say) at least 10% as large as the risk of a nuclear holocaust, my answer is that I have no idea.   But it seems clear that AI does pose a serious threat to democratic stability.  It will give anti-democratic actors a powerful new tool for spreading political...

Angry Bear had written about the forthcoming state Medicaid-Purge the later part of May. The reason for the purge of many Medicaid enrollees was the ending of Joe Biden’s pandemic Medicaid enrollment program. It was a much needed program during the pandemic if one could not afford healthcare insurance and did not have Medicaid. Not being able to afford healthcare insurance was not the only gain from Medicaid. The extension of Medicaid postpartum care...

A grouping of eclectic topics spread across various subtitles supposedly giving them some organization. These show up in my In-Box and I leave them their till I clean up the collection Energy and Business A Beginner’s Guide to Plastic-Free Living, treehugger.com, Katherine Martinko. “You need to write a step-by-step guide to giving up plastic.” Electric Vehicles Have a Public-Charging Problem, The Atlantic, Patrick George. Driving from...