The Angry Bear

Let me follow up briefly on my post from yesterday on vaccine hesitancy. Demeaning people is the first step towards ignoring their interests or even persecuting them.  Jason Brennan urges us to ignore the welfare of the unvaxxed by painting a picture of them as moral terrorists or extortionists.  He holds them responsible for their confusion and fears.  He pretends that everyone is well-informed and knows how to evaluate scientific evidence, and...

The former actor campaigning for President said, “The government is the problem.” Who needs government? We need it, that’s who. In 1980, any damned fool could look around and see that nations with strong governments succeeded while those with weak governments failed. Yet most of the people believed the damned fool when he told them that government was the problem. There’s little reason to doubt that he believed it. Question is, who paid him...

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm#Maybe I am wrong on BLS Household Numbers? Has anyone looked at aggregate Participation Rate and the Civilian Labor Force numeric? Seasonal Adjusted PR is up 2 tenths of 1% and the Civilian Labor Force increased by 430,000 from March to April. Last year, from January 2020 to end of 2020, PR was down 2% The nation has recouped 2 tenths of 1% in April. Employed is up ~300,000 and Unemployed is up...

“It Took the Democrats Half a Century to Rediscover Trickle-Up Economics,” The Soap Box, Bruce Barlett Republicans still cling to trickle-down delusions of the wealthy and big business delivering economic progress to the rest of the nation, while Joe Biden revives a philosophy of growth Democrats have not embraced since LBJ . . . Stimulating economic growth and prosperity from the bottom up. Bruce Bartlett takes the reader on a journey to...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 10: stay the course! The story in the US continues to be that vaccinations work!As of today, the 7 day moving average of new cases is down to a new 8 month low of 40,873 per day. The 7 day moving average of deaths is down to a new 11 month low of 667: Cases are down 5/6’s from their wintertime peak. Deaths are down over 80%. And cases are declining, sometimes strongly so, in almost all the 10 worst States,...

Matt Yglesias is stimulating heated discussion — that’s his job. Before getting to the point, I think that his $250,000 guaranteed advance from SubStack has stimulated a lot of extremely intense envy (I know I envy him) which tends to add a bit of spice to his provocative posts one of which is Tema Okun’s “White Supremacy Culture” work is bad a diatribe contra someone of whom I have never heard. I think the tone is harsher than it has to be...

While commenting on Alan Collinge’s Student Loan Justice site about much of what is being revealed here, I pointed out the problem with interest, interest on top of interest, paying interest before principal, etc. . It is a problem. You never touch principle. I am very happy to see the Student Loan Justice site and Alan get the attention it deserves with this article by the Insider. It is unbelievable, people are accruing interest during...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 3 – 7 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. YoY comparisons remain ridiculous, so seasonally adjusted data, plus comparisons with 2019 where available are more informative. That being said, all of the coincident and short leading indicators point towards continued strong expansion. The longer leading forecast is much murkier, partly because of some sharp...

In a recent post, libertarian political philosopher Jason Brennan argues that “we should ignore the welfare of people who choose not to vaccinate out of paranoia”.  We owe them nothing.  Brennan reaches this conclusion by analogizing vaccine hesitancy to a heckler’s veto (my bold): The idea of heckler’s veto goes as follows: Take any action, P, which is permissible. Now imagine that a person makes a credible threat to do something wrongful or bad...