The Angry Bear

by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITY AT BERNIESTOCK Last Sunday I gave a very short talk about Social Security at a political rally and outdoor party called Berniestock in Lebanon, Oregon. It was not a venue conducive to detailed explanations or suggesting ways people could try to tell what was true from what was pretending to be true, so I suggested that those interested in learning more should come to Angry Bear where we could explore the issue more...

In my last post, I noted a positive correlation between the homicide rate in a state and killings by the police in the same state. In states where the risk of homicide is higher, police killings also tend to be higher. But there is a mitigating race component, and one which (not surprisingly for those who care about data) goes against conventional wisdom: for the same state homicide rate, people are less likely to be shot by cops in states where Black people...

In my last post, I noted a positive correlation between the homicide rate in a state and killings by the police in the same state. In states where the risk of homicide is higher, police killings also tend to be higher. But there is a mitigating race component, and one which (not surprisingly for those who care about data) goes against conventional wisdom: for the same state homicide rate, people are less likely to be shot by cops in states where Black...

More Feargus O’Connor (1844) on labour’s objections to machinery: And now, sir, let me state my principal objections to the unrestricted use of machinery. First, it places man in an artificial state, over which the best workman, the wisest man and most moral person, has no control. Secondly, while it leads to the almost certain fortune of those who have capital in sufficient amount to command those profits, made up, as you admit, by the reduction of wages;...

More Feargus O’Connor (1844) on labour’s objections to machinery: And now, sir, let me state my principal objections to the unrestricted use of machinery. First, it places man in an artificial state, over which the best workman, the wisest man and most moral person, has no control. Secondly, while it leads to the almost certain fortune of those who have capital in sufficient amount to command those profits, made up, as you admit, by the reduction of...

I picked up this version 4 BS lies of Trump and Scott Walker’s Imaginary Foxconn Factory on Tom Bozzo’s facebook page where I stopped to see what he had to say as of late. While it is a great attention grabber, a link caught my eye in Wonkette’s article leading to this America and the Foxconn Dream . This morning Ken Thomas has his analysis Foxconn Cashes in for $3 Billion-Plus: Analysis up. The first being the wonkier, the 2nd is a Bloomberg discussion,...

Crowding Out and the Social Overhead Costs of Labor Another strange twist in the convoluted lump-of-labor saga. Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor refuted the “Treasury View” — aka “crowding out” — in 1844. O’Connor’s tract is long-winded and sentimentalized an idyllic past but it also contains some cogent analysis of why workers were (and should still be) wary of the exploitative use of technology by capitalist firms. O’Connor’s critique took the form of a...

Foxconn hit the jackpot with Wisconsin on Wednesday, when CEO Terry Gou and Governor Scott Walker signed a memorandum of understanding for the company to invest $10 billion in southeastern Wisconsin in return for $3 billion in state subsidies and an undetermined amount of local incentives in the form of tax increment(al) financing (TIF).* The basic outline of the deal, sent to me by John Haynes of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, is pretty simple: Foxconn is...

(Dan here…I found Yves intro more appealing than the research…) Yves here. While this article gives a very good high-level summary about how inequality is becoming institutionalized in American and the costs to those who see themselves as having lost the most, I wonder about the emphasis on hope as a remedy. Perhaps this is such a strong cultural bias in the US that there’s no escaping it as a motivator for most people. But I take to heart the interpretation...

Extreme Contempt Donald Trump has engaged in so many outrageous statements and conduct that it has become very difficult to remember which of  those were really the most outrageous, the most morally contemptible, the ones that should have led his supporters to have abandoned but they did not, the ones that merited above all others the most Extreme Contempt. The events of the last 24 hours have clarified for me what was the moment in 2016 when Trump crossed...