The Angry Bear

Michael Smith, Real Farmer and Farm Economist Ooh boy have we got a lot going on in ag world. Run sent me this a little while ago and I think this is important. The Tricky New Way That Big Ag Is Getting Farm Data, The Atlantic, Claire Kelloway, October 5, 2021 Big data collection is 100% not in the favor of the farmer by corporations. The more we see John Deere et al get tech heavy where they are collecting data about the equipment used...

EconoSpeak: Will Krysten Sinema Change Parties?, Barkley Rosser, October 5, 2021 I have resisted posting something like this, but while I have yet to see anybody else suggest it, this possibility has been on my mind now for several days. We have never seen to my knowledge a senator refuse to offer their views on possible resolution of a major disagreement involving money.  The contrast to Sen. Sinema is her associate in the Senate in blocking...

Democratizing Work I was a bit skeptical of the Global Forum on Democratizing Work. It seemed to me that rushing into an online conference was perhaps a bit over ambitious and misdirected for a relatively new initiative that arose out of a collective letter to the editors of newspapers. Anyway, I attended three-session today, two of them for their entirety and I was not disappointed. I mean my skepticism was not disappointed. A session on...

Politicians, preachers, and other charlatans have long known people were manipulable. They had achieved their mastery of the craft of manipulation by observation and practice. By craft, they were con artists. In another sense, they were psychologists before there was such. Before 1860, psychology was a branch of philosophy. A German, Wilhelm Wundt, was one of the first to proclaim psychology a science in its own right and the first to proclaim...

Michael Smith on the Open Thread: “‘Found this interesting. Tucked in the reconciliation bill they want to mandate employers with 5+ employees to contribute up to 10% to an IRA. Failure to do so is ‘taxed’.”  Hidden In The Reconciliation Bill: A Retirement Plan Mandate That Will Take Most People By Surprise, Forbes, Elizabeth Bauer, September 25, 2021 “Under the proposal, starting in 2023, employers with five or more employees would have to...

Labor as a Common Pool Resource The everyday experience of working people, economic policies of governments, bargaining priorities of trade unions, and theoretical models of economists refute the idealistic maxim that labor is not a commodity. An early rationale for the proposition was given in 1834 by William Longson of Stockport in his evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Hand-Loom Weavers: – …every other commodity when...

UNITED WE SPEND For 20 Top-Selling Drugs Worldwide, Big Pharma Revenue from U.S. Sales Combined Exceeded Revenue from the Rest of the World, Public Citizen, Rick Claypool and Zain Rizvi, I have written on the high prices of pharmaceuticals in the past on Angry Bear, pointing to a WHO report which showed the costs laid out to bring the drugs to market had been recovered, and hinting on a new approach to increasing profitability by claiming...

US natural gas hits highest price since 2008, closes at 7 1/2 year weekly high; European and Asian prices 5 times higher, Commenter RJS, Focus on Fracking Oil prices rose for a sixth consecutive week as rising global demand amid tight supplies more than offset higher US inventories . . . after rising 3.0% to $73.98 a barrel last week as U.S. crude inventories fell to a 35month low and as global oil supplies tightened, the contract price for US...

In her 2020 book ‘Waste’, Catherine Flowers speaks to the practice in Alabama – throughout the South – of keeping the poor and ignorant poor and ignorant so that there would always be a cheap source of labor on hand. In a September 2021 House Budget Committee hearing, a member from neighboring Georgia patiently explained the economic necessity of cheap labor; how increased wages were a threat to small businesses; and how any increase in wages would...