The Angry Bear

People flock to trump venues where he stiffs the municipalities and leaves unpaid invoices. And this is ok for his followers? Unpaid invoices could keep Trump rallies at smaller Arizona venues By Camaron Stevenson Copper Courier After the Harris-Walz presidential campaign’s stadium-filled rally in Glendale, Arizona, last week, Trump supporters in the state may wonder when they’ll see a similar event for their candidate. Problem is . ....

GOP’s attack on Americans’ retirement savings just went to the next disgusting level, Opinion, Alternet. “To protect older Americans’ life savings, President Biden pledged in October to crack down on financial advisers who recommend investments just because they pay higher commissions. Then the insurance industry got to work.” Explained: The Controversy Over Tim Walz’s Military Service, Snopes. The claim that Walz “abandoned” his...

 – by New Deal democrat The effects of Hurricane Beryl had just enough of an effect on home building in July to cause me not to hoist a yellow recession caution flag in this important leading sector. While the hurricane had no significant effect on permits, it likely did have an effect on starts and on units under construction, as I’ll go into further below. Let’s start with the overall view. Starts (blue in the graph below), which are noisier...

by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront! The economist John Maynard Keynes purportedly said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” I am considering changing my mind about 3D printed houses. I wrote eight years ago: “I am not a total skeptic about 3D-printed houses. I think there is a place for them—on the moon, for example.” The first commenter noted: “What a stupidly conservative view… the article is absolute garbage.”...

by David Zetland The one-handed economist Benefit-cost accounting (BCA) began with a simple comparison of monetary benefits and costs, e.g., should I invest $100 in exchange for a return of $10 per year. Then people wanted to compare more abstract values, such as the benefit of a vacation or sandwich or education against the costs of those goods. In those cases, the benefits are somewhat subjective — depending on the person, timing, etc. —...

 – by New Deal democrat In the past, industrial production has been the King of Coincident Indicators, since its peaks and troughs tended to coincide almost exactly with the onset and endings of recessions. That weighting has faded somewhat since the accession of China to the world trading system in 1999 an the wholesale flight of US manufacturing to Asia, generating several false recession signals, most notably in 2015-16. But it is still an...

Normally, a sentence that begins “Donald Trump says . . . “ is not worth finishing, and that’s how a recent blog post over at jabberwocking.com begins. But finish it I did, and it turns out that DJT says he wants to eliminate all federal income taxes on Social Security. Currently, if SS is your only income, there already are no federal taxes on it. If you make additional income above your SS distributions, you can be taxed at normal federal rates on...

by Joyce Vance Civil Discourse  David Hogg survived the tragic 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He went on to become one of a generation of student activists who had enough and decided to fight for gun reform instead of just waiting for the next shooting. Hogg was one of the main organizers of the March for Our Lives, the largest single day of protest against gun violence in our country. He has...

 – by New Deal democrat The second point of economic data released this morning, retail sales, were also positive. On a nominal basis, retail sales in July rose 1.0%. After adjusting for inflation, they rose 0.8% to the highest level so far this year. The below graph norms both real retail sales (dark blue) and the similar measure of real personal consumption of goods (light blue) to 100 as of just before the pandemic: Since the end of...

I like Bernie Sanders for many reasons, but this isn’t one of them:“As a result of those challenges, Sanders wants to see more Democrats vocally get behind measures like . . . removing the cap on Social Security taxation so the wealthy pay a full share of their income into the program.”This is a mistake. SS benefits are capped like taxes, so if you lift the cap on taxes and don’t lift the cap on benefits, SS becomes welfare instead of insurance.Look,...