The Angry Bear

by Sandwichman Noah Smith: “Why the 101 model doesn’t work for labor markets” At Noahpinion: A lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that the basic “Econ 101″ model – the undifferentiated, single-market supply-and-demand model – doesn’t work for labor markets. To some people involved in debates over labor policy, the theory is almost axiomatic – the labor market must be describable in terms of a “labor supply curve” and a “labor...

by Barkley Rosser   (Barkley Rosser is now a contributor to Angry Bear) Italy And The Future Of The European Union Given that Trumpfreak may guarantee relatively pro-EU politicians winning in France and Germany in the near term (France less certain than Germany), many are now looking at Italian elections next year as the next time when there may be a serious threat in a major EU nation of a leader being elected who may want to pull the nation out, following...

September 22, 1956 November 7, 1960 QUESTION. This is from Mr. White, Warren, Mich. What is your stand on the 32-hour workweek? Vice President NIXON: Well, the 32-hour workweek just isn’t a possibility at the present time. I made a speech back in the 1956 campaign when I indicated that as we went into the period of automation, that it was inevitable that the workweek was going to be reduced, that we could look forward to the time in America when we might...

Various people have argued that Republicans decided to repeal and (very partially) replace Obamacare before moving on to tax reform, because Obamacare repeal (aka the American Health Care Act aka AHCA) would make it easier to permanently cut tax rates. To me this makes less than zero sense. The argument is that, since AHCA includes tax cuts, tax reform would start from a lower base, so it would be easier to write a tax reform bill which doesn’t add to the...

by Barkley Rosser {originally published at Econospeak) Which Is More Important, China Or Syria? For the world as a whole and the US in particular, when it is put like that it is pretty obvious: China.  It has the world’s largest population, largest economy in PPP terms, a rising military, expanding interests around the world, including making territorial demands on several neighbors, not to mention being a nuclear superpower as well as cyberpower, and more. ...

by New Deal democrat Prime working age employment up, participation up (finally) – now how about wages? The March jobs report finishes the first quarter, which make it easier to update some labor participation trends, which, along with wages, has really lagged in this nearly 8 year old expansion. In order to eliminate the issue of the huge Baby Boom generation retiring, and to a lesser extent college and graduate students, we have some good data on the prime...

The Sandwichman commented the other day on The Economist article, “Britain’s Green Party proposes a three-day weekend.” Regrettably, though, I didn’t pay much attention to their “rebuttal” to the alleged assumption of a fixed amount of work: In fact, if people worked fewer hours, demand would drop, and so fewer working hours would be on offer. I have seen stupid explanations before of why there is not a fixed amount of work. Layard, Nickell and Jackman...

by Sandwichman Thank God it’s Boilerplate!: It’s Thursday and The Economist is lumping its labour The Economist and Jonathan Portes are at it again. “Lump of labor! Lump of labor!” The occasion? A proposal for a four-day workweek announced by the U.K. Green Party at their convention this week in Liverpool.   The Economist pretended to find “two problems” with the Greens’ proposal: The Greens’ proposals encounter two problems. First, the theory. They argue...