The Angry Bear

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...

LOOK AT THE BIG DIVERGENCE BETWEEN “SOFT” AND “HARD” DATA … Ummm ..never mind…. Since this year the Doomers haven’t even been able to rouse themselves up enough to call for OMG recession imminent!!!, they have had to settle for how slow the growth in the economy has been.  Their favorite theme has been the alleged divergence between the “soft” consumer confidence and ISM survey data, and the “hard” data, like industrial production: Oh, wait!  Never mind …...

James Kwak writes Introductory economics can be more misleading than it is helpful  (originally in Atlantic magazine).   Tim Worstall responds with  James Kwak sure doesn’t understand the economics of the minimum wage. Peter Dorman explains   Why you should never use a supply and demand diagram for labor markets. Richard Wolff  notes he thinks the debate is a distraction    Beyond the minimum wage debate ...

Via Reuters Wells Fargo drags feet: Wells Fargo last September settled with three regulators after revelations that branch staff set up as many as 2.1 million accounts without customer authorization in order to hit sales targets. Since then, the bank has replaced its CEO and other top executives have either resigned or been fired. The bank has been hit with several regulatory inquiries and lawsuits. “The extent of fraud at Wells Fargo was stunning,” Stringer...

Via Science magazine, Trump’s White House science office still small and waiting for leadership: …Trump has yet to nominate an OSTP director, who traditionally also serves as the president’s science adviser. Nor has he announced his choices for as many as four other senior OSTP officials who would need to be confirmed by the Senate.… Still pending is the status of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a body of eminent scientists and...