The Angry Bear

(Hence the correctness of the theory of surplus population and surplus capital…) Marx mentioned, “the theory of surplus population and surplus capital,” parenthetically, in the Grundrisse and “surplus population and surplus capital” in his 1862-63 draft of Capital. Although it isn’t certain what theory exactly he was referring to, the phrase reappears, in reverse order, in chapter 15, section 3 of volume III of Capital, “Surplus Capital alongside...

“30,000 people were trapped inside Shanghai Disneyland on Halloween after one person tested positive for COVID-19,” Business Insider, Sinéad Baker And United States Anti-Vaxers, maskers, and social distancers whine. Excerpt from the article: Disneyland Shanghai shut down after one positive COVID-19 case was found there.The nearly 34,000 visitors and staff had to get tested before they were allowed to leave.Videos showed people lining up and...

“Lump” and “labor” are two words… From: Tom Walker Sent: October 27, 2021 3:49 PM To: scott.a.wolla@ Subject: Lump of labor fallacy Dear Scott, I just came across your article, “Examining the Lump of Labor Fallacy Using a Simple Economic Model,” from November of last year on the St. Louis Fed website. I have done quite a bit of research on this topic and I was dismayed to see the old canard of a fallacy recycled without any...

September Personal Income Fell 1.0%, Spending Rose 0.6%, PCE Price Index Up 0.3%; Savings Rate Lowest Since December 2019, Commenter and Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666 Friday’s release of the September Income and Outlays report was concurrent with the GDP release on Thursday, and all the PCE data in the 3rd quarter GDP report we just covered actually originated with this report . . . and like that GDP report, all the dollar values reported here...

Please! Please! Spare us the charade. No more denials. No more tear-jerking stories about job loss. We know that you fossils are not dumb. That what you fossils really want is to be bought out. With $Trillions of reserves on the block, who can blame you? Buying you out might be best. Certainly better than continuing to burn your products. Better yet, we use the money to develop carbon-free alternatives. Considering that the fossil’s reserves...

Commenter and Blogger RJS, Marketwatch 666, 3rd Quarter GDP Grew at 2.0% Rate even as Real Final Sales of GDP Ticked Lower Our economy grew at a 2.0% rate in the 3rd quarter, quite a bit slower than the growth rate of the second quarter, as increasing consumer outlays for services, greater nonresidential fixed investment, and inventory improvement were offset by decreasing consumer outlays for durable goods, shrinking residential investment, lower...

We are all somewhere on the spectrum. Little doubt. Probably not on the one-dimensional line of dots or Verne’s Green Ray (Le Rayon Vert). More likely on the two-dimensional Venn when a three is needed. A point in space is needed to depict those of us who are alone out there in space; else they appear to be sitting atop something. Verne was one out there, a dot or point, in space from whence he could see a long way. Some, a very, very few, of us are...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 25 – 29 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There are increasing signs that commodity prices are peaking, the latest candidate – but it may just be noise! – is the price of oil. And if commodity prices are peaking, that gives us some important information that the supply chain bottleneck may be beginning to ease even if just slightly for now. As usual,...

À la recherche du socially necessary labour temps perdu How many Trained Marxists™ know there is no “socially necessary labour time” in the Grundrisse? I didn’t. When researching the provenance of the term, I was surprised to discover that it was present in neither the Grundrisse nor Marx’s Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. The latter book had a lot of approximations, though, and a pithy disclaimer about what Marx meant — and didn’t...