The Angry Bear

(Dan here…lifted and reposted) by Mike Kimel How Keynesian Policy Led Economic Growth In the New Deal Era: Three Simple Graphs November 22, 2011 In this post, I will show that during the New Deal era, changes in the real economic growth rate can be explained almost entirely by the earlier changes in federal government’s non-defense spending. There are going to be a lot of words at first – but if you’re the impatient type, feel free to jump ahead to the...

Lifted from comments at Naked Capitalism MC So your solution includes taking money from those who saved and invested, and re-distribute it to those who spent everything they earned? As someone in the “saved and invested” category, I find that plan to be a non-starter. When I was setting aside 15% of my income for savings and investments, paying extra on my mortgage, and driving older cars, I have friends who (at the same income level as my wife and I)...

Steve Roth writes What is the secret to joining the rich country club at Evonomics: By Steve Roth There’s a curious fact about the wealth and growth of nations that you rarely see mentioned: No country has ever joined the modern, high-productivity, rich-country club without massive doses of redistribution, and universal government programs for social support and financial security. Not one. Ever. You can get a rough feel for the scale of those programs here...

Via US News: Less than half of recently polled Trump supporters believe Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer, despite the president’s eldest son admitting he attended the controversial meeting.The latest survey from Public Policy Polling finds that only 45 percent of Trump voters believe Trump Jr. attended a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya .… In spite of confirmation from Trump Jr. himself, 32 percent of respondents said the meeting...

by Dale Coberly DID MAYA MACGUINEAS of CRFB LIE on TIME magazine website OR WAS SHE JUST FOOLIN’ AND DID ANYONE NOTICE Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) which reliably confuses the Federal Budget with the Social Security program.   CRFB claims to want to cut government spending to balance the Budget,  but it spends most of its time arguing for the need to cut Social Security. Social Security is not funded...

Via Alternet, Thom Hartmann writes: …This type of labor system has been the dream of conservative/corporatists, particularly since the “Reagan Revolution” kicked off a major federal war on the right of workers to organize for their own protection from corporate abuse.Unions represented almost a third of American workers when Reagan came into office (and, since union jobs set local labor standards, for every union job there was typically an...

The biggest lie coming out of the Senate today: “’One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote,’ McCain said. He added that Congress must now ‘hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.’” An African-American comes to be President and Republicans vow from day one to obstruct....

Financialized business models sticks to faith based “Market knows best” rule. …The number of MBAs graduating from America’s business schools has skyrocketed since the 1980s. But over that time, the health of American business has decreased by many metrics: corporate R&D spending, new business creation, productivity, and the level of public trust in business in general. There are many reasons for this, but one key factor is that the basic training that...

Angry Bear has over the years described the Pharma industry and its spending on Rand D and stock buybacks, among other developments in comparing US health outcomes to other countries. Via New York Times discussing this study at Ineteconomics. US Pharma’s Financialized Business Model JUL 2017 | Price gouging in the US pharmaceutical drug industry goes back more than three decades. In 1985 US Representative Henry Waxman, chair of the House Subcommittee on...