The Angry Bear

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Sunday, December 03, 2017 Republicans Reject the NFL, the CIA and the FBI I forget who said she never expected that, after the national divorce, liberals would get custody of the NFL. But it’s beyond that. Now Republicans reject the CIA and the FBI too. Donald Trump sometimes sounds like a paranoid 60s hippy claiming he is being persecuted by the evil FBI (except some of them really were persecuted).So...

by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddadd blog) The Ugly Picture of US Wage Growth The chart above shows the Y/Y percentage change in the average hourly earnings of nonsupervisory employees.  We can break this data down into two sections.  Due to higher inflation and stronger unions, the pace of growth was far stronger before the 1980s. We see a different dynamic at work during the first three post-1982 expansions.  Wages decline coming out...

The Utterly Terrible GOP Tax “Reform” Scam The Republicans in the House and Senate continue on their downhill rush to pass their so-called “tax reform” plan before the holiday break.  It’s a mad rush to nowhere, a corrupt process of “please the oligarch” that will cause a huge deficit increase (on the scale of $1 to $1.5 TRILLION over ten years) and be used by the Ryan, McConnell and Trump cadre of liars to justify a domino effect of Medicare, Medicaid,...

Hope Lives: Pressing Collins and Corker and Flake on Tax Bill The Republicans’ proposed tax legislation–whether the House or Senate version–is despicable.  It will exacerbate the already devastating income and wealth inequality in this country, leave the federal government without adequate funds for real infrastructure and social safety net needs, and place in almost inviolable power the wealthiest oligarchs of the country (and even the good ones exert...

The August and September hurricanes continue to make their impacts felt in the economic data.  Yesterday’s JOLTS report for October, like the October and November jobs reports, shows a rebound from those impacts.  The best way to look at the data is to average the last two months (and this will be true for the next JOLTS report as well, which will be best viewed by averaging all three months).Let’s start as usual by updating the disconnect between...

Hey: AP Press at 10:23 PM EST declares Jones the winner in Alabama.

Via the International Monetary Fund: Income inequality among people around the world has been declining in recent decades. But the news is not all good. Inequality within many countries has increased, particularly in advanced economies. In addition to income inequality, wealth inequality—what you have accumulated, as opposed to what you earn—is closely related, and reflects differences in savings, inheritances, and bequests. In our Chart of the Week from...

The End Of The “Islamic State.” There are two aspects of this debate, one about the term, “Islamic State,” and the other about the its application. So, until about a month ago the entity calling itself ” al-Dawla al Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa al Sham(s),” was claiming to be the most important Muslim political entity in the world, the center of its “Caliphate” which claimed to be the only legitimate and supreme ruler and polltical state for the entire...

Its been my observation that a surprising amount of research education sucks, either focusing on irrelevant trivia or desperately avoiding logic and common sense at all costs. Every so often, though, you come across something well written and cogent. Here are the first two paragraphs of an article that comes close: Racial-, ethnic-, and language-minority schoolchildren in the United States have repeatedly been reported to be overidentified as disabled and...

This has become a total mess and I moved my algebra over to my personal blog. The point is that the whole discussion depends on the difference in the long term effect of a cut in a tax on capital income on revenue collected from old capital and the effect ofa cut in a tax on capital on revenue collected from old capital. This is an extremely uninteresting issue.