The Angry Bear

Nature recently published a paper on “degrowth”.  Libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux immediately attacked the paper with his usual collection of pro-market, anti-government arguments.  Fine.  But then Boudreaux published a letter he got from Daniele Struppa, president of Chapman University.  Here is a brief excerpt: It is just a manifesto for a deindustrialization of the west, filled with naïve and simplistic comments. For example “it is...

I have not C & Ped enough of these recitals of present-day history in the making for AB readers to keep up with the House Committee meeting as recited by Prof. Heather. An in-committee vote will be taken to confirm whether a recommendation to prosecute former president trump will be made to the DOJ. My guess is the vote to do so will be unanimous. The committee has gone through great lengths to examine the detail leading up to the attack on...

Commenter Arne asked how we would transition from today’s healthcare system to a Single Payer format. I do not have the answer immediately at hand. I have to look for it. I do want to review what we have learned to date and stated on Angry Bear already. I do have a number of posts of the costs of healthcare. This one I like as it is simple and gets the point across on Drug Costs. I recently did a post of Pharma pricing which I will conclude with...

Weekly Indicators for December 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The coincident indicators, especially employment, are hanging on by the proverbial skin of their teeth. I don’t think they roll over until gas prices stop declining. In any event, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the moment on the status of the carnage, and bring me a little reward for the...

ACA Signups blog and healthcare author, Charles Gaba does a rewrite of an earlier commentary at his site. If you missed it, Angry Bear blog featured “33 Months of COVID In One Image” also. Recently, this writeup’s stats was used by Prof. Paul Krugman in his recent NYT article, “Will 2024 Be a Vaccine Election?” In it, Prof. Krug explains the political partisanship impact on becoming vaccinated or not and the resulting impact as detailed by Charles...

AB writer, commenter and Social Security expert, Dale Coberly provides a different take on whether “President Biden Should Direct the Social Security Administration to Stop Penalizing Marriage.” ~~~~~~~~ Nancy Altman wrote the following piece, which appeared in PROGRESS AMERICA, on December 16, 2022 as well as Common Dreams.  I thought it needed a response because I regard it as dangerous to Social Security.  I have inserted my responses...

What Is The Bielefeld School Of Economics? by Barkley Rosser @ Econospeak  This piece is about a paper I have just written for a special issue to appear in a journal I used to edit about the late economist, Peter Flaschal. Who most of you are probably thinking, although maybe not all of you? He was a heterodox macroeconomist located for his entire career at Bielefeld University in Germany.  He coauthored a lot with a group of economists who...

The status of the coincident indicators  – by New Deal democrat In addition to real GDP, which is only updated quarterly and with a lag, the NBER has indicated that it relies upon four other datapoints in determining the onset month of a recession: payrolls, industrial production, real income less transfer payments, and real manufacturing, wholesale, and retail sales. The below shows all four, with the exception that, because real...

The Political Economy of Effective Altruism by Peter Dorman @ EconoSpeak Back in the day, I used to give talks on child labor.  I would always begin by saying that boycotts and shaming of corporations, while understandable as an emotional response, were unlikely to do much for the world’s children.  This was because very little child labor is employed in making internationally tradeable products.  Moreover, simple prohibitions don’t get at the...

November real retail sales turn down, return to negative YoY  – by New Deal democrat Real retail sales is one of my favorite indicators for both the current economy and the jobs situation 3 to 6 months ahead. This morning nominal retail sales for November were reported down -0.6%, which only takes back about 1/2 of October’s strong +1.3% increase. Since consumer inflation rose +0.1% for the month, real retail sales decreased by -0.5%. Here...