The Angry Bear

Connecticut Representative John Larson Proposes Plan To Destroy Social Security In Order To Save It, by Dale Coberly Connecticut Congressman John Larson introduces H. R. 860, Social Security 2100 Act which will cuts taxes, strengthen benefits, prevents anyone from retiring into poverty, and ensure Social Security remains strong for generations. larson.house.gov It sounds good, but of course he wants it to sound good. In the past we have had to be...

I am thinking about modern macroeconomic methodology again. I am also thinking about the fresh water school of thought. Also I am thinking about aspirin and smallpox. I am going to attempt a nickle summary of the Lucas critique (really a half penny summary or a 5 Turkish Lira summary). Lucas argued that it was unwise to base policy on models which fit the available data, because parameters can be estimated even if they do not describe causal...

June jobs report: excellent establishment survey, mediocre household survey HEADLINES: +224,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate rose 0.1% from 3.6% to 3.7% U6 underemployment rate rose 0.1% from 7.1% to 7.2% Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession   I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown is coming. The following more leading numbers in the report tell us about where...

On Gerrymandering: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” Previously I have written that the Fourteenth Amendment specifically provides for a reduction in representation for any state that engages in voter suppression. Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment provides in part: “[W]hen the right to vote at any election … is denied to any … citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,...

I Think, Therefore I Know: San Francisco Edition Strange as it may seem, the biggest stumbling block on much of the left may be a crude philosophical error, dogmatic subjectivism.  This is a position that holds that subjective experience is the highest form of knowledge, whose claims can’t be challenged by “lesser” criteria like logical analysis or empirical observation.  To the extreme subjectivist, if I feel something to be true there is no legitimate...

Elliott Maraniss It’s with more than average interest that I just read a review of David Maraniss’ new book about his father Elliott, A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father.  I knew Elliott during my years in Madison as a contributing writer to his newspaper, the Capital Times, and as an informal sounding board for his thoughts on the New Left.  The period in question was the early 1970s. First, Elliott was the most visibly nervous person...

In which I nitpick Prof. Jared Bernstein about a consumer “economic tailwind Last Friday, following the release of May’s personal income and spending report, Prof. Jared Bernstein, whom I follow religiously, wrote among other things about some economic headwinds and tailwinds, including the following: Finally, my personal favorite tailwind indicator [pointing to the below graph]: the close tracking between aggregate real earnings and consumer spending....

Iran Nuclear Deal: Better Late Than Never? Monday has seen a curious coincidence that I have seen nobody else comment on regarding the  status of the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal.  On the one hand Iran has apparently now officially violated the agreement in terms of the amount of low level enriched uranium it has, going over the allowed limit, although it remains very far from obtaining in nuclear weapons. On the other the EU, more specifically and...

You can not use inflation data like the CPI to compare living cost is one location to another.  So the BEA has constructed a database  of Regional Price Parities  ( RPP) that allow you do do that for all states and the some 383 Standard Metropolitan Areas in the USA. .  I was preparing to show them when BEA published the 2018 data.  But that data willnot be released until next year so I’m going ahead and showing the 2008 to 2017 data. Note, that in the...