The Angry Bear

 – by New Deal democrat I saw a graph within the past few days (which unfortunately I did not make a copy of) indicating Biden’s polling problems are not against Trump per se so much as they are the failure of Biden to consolidate support among young voters, especially voters of color, vs. Trump’s having already consolidated his base support. One reason, is the huge generational divide in how the Israel/Palestine issue is viewed. But the other...

Parking where you should not park with your oversized toy. This picture was also on Reddit. I believe the original pic(s) are from here: “Driver shares photo high-lighting a parking problem with oversized vehicles: ‘These cars are pointless,'” The Cooldown. According to one Planning Commission member in Arizona, sixty percent of the vehicles being purchased are pickup trucks. Most of these vehicles are used for non-work travel. Maybe some...

May 2024 manufacturing report. Manufacturing was up in May after following two months of it being down in April and March. There is belief, manufacturing will be down in June as the FED did not reduce the FED Rate. I also suspect manufacturing will not take off in June. However, I believe it will be no worst then May. The demand is there. In order to meet demand, companies will stay within their budgets to manufacture. Unless there is a price...

This particular graph was pulled from an April 2024 Morning Star article. The source of it being the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It depicts wage growth before during and after the Pandemic. In particular I believe the government did quite well in providing for and protecting its citizens during the pandemic when many people could not work. The stimulus packages may have caused some of the wage growth and inflation. There are other things which are...

Drones are changing warfare. They are cheap and deadly. I am thinking about their use in stopping a marine invasion. The reason is that I am concerned that it is not clear enough to Xi JinPing that an invasion of Taiwan would be a huge error. The problem with anti-ship drones is that they are attacking a target with anti-aircraft defences and one which can survive some explosions. I think this means that a very large number of drones must...

One of the policies with the greatest effect on poverty is the ild tax credit (expanded and made fully refundable by the American Reesue Plan). It caused a 44% reduction of child poverty. UNfortunately it was a tempory one year program (approptiate for stimulus bu not for an always needed prgram). It was not renewed and there was a huge increase in povertyThis is a hugely important policy issue (currently totally impossible with GOP control of the...

 – by New Deal democrat There was good news and not so good news in this morning’s two important data releases.  I’ll start with the good news. Both total industrial production and its manufacturing component increased a sharp 0.9% in May. Even after downward revisions of -0.4% in March and -0.3% in April, both were still up 0.5% compared with where we thought we were one month ago: The only fly in the ointment is that both are still...

It’s all about the words . . . by Steve Roth Originally Published at Wealth Economics This article was first published on Cameron Murray’s great Fresh Economic Thinking. It’s slightly revised here. Maybe I’m just dense, but when I started studying economics roughly twenty years ago, I immediately ran into a bunch of basic concepts that just didn’t make sense to me. It was mostly a problem with economists’ words. They have different,...

Probably, and that’s bad for straightforwardly political reasons.  Arrogant, naively moralistic Justices would be much less effective. Last week the conservative court preserved access to the critical abortion drug mifepristone.  But they relied on a procedural technicality and thus preserved their ability to limit use of the drug after the upcoming election.  Refusing to reach the merits may well have been a savvy political move to limit the risk...

I have following the SWI for a period of time. When I get a newspaper, it makes for some interesting read. This particular article discusses a potential meeting of ninety countries. The peace process was initiated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asking the Swiss to initiate such a conference. I can not imagine what he thought the outcome would be. Maybe it was to create the impression he and Ukraine were hoping to gain additional political...