The Angry Bear

Via Naked Capitalism is a post by Pavlina R. Tcherneva of Bard College at New Economic Perspectives. Worth reading the whole post… by Pavlina R. Tcherneva   (originally published at New Economic Perspectives) Inequality Update: Who Gains When Income Grows? Growth in the US increasingly brings income inequality.  A striking deterioration in this trend has occurred since the 80s, when economic recoveries delivered the vast majority of income growth to the...

by New Deal democrat March jobs report: participation up, unemployment down, wage growth miserly HEADLINES: +98,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate down 0.2% from 4.7% to 4.5% U6 underemployment rate down 0.3% from 9.2% to 8.9% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now:  up +284,000 from 5.597 million to 5.781 million Part time for economic reasons: down...

Excerpts from Randolph Bourne’s The State: War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. The minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by...

NYT Dealbook points to a how the 2 trillion dollar overseas money can come “home” and how money is spent.  2005 comes to mind the last time repatriation of “overseas money” comes to mind. Linda Beale Repatriation holiday lobbying – Money Speaks and More on repatriation. Taxprof blog here and Senate report here. The Overseas Cash Grab (from Dealbook) Corporate chiefs in the United States have bemoaned for years the taxes that they would face if they brought...

by New Deal democrat Jamie Dimon on labor force participation and disability First of all, sorry for the light posting this week. I’ve had some urgent business I need to attend to irl. But I wanted to post this for future reference. Via Business Insider, this is from Jamie Dimon’s letter to stockholders: If the work participation rate for this group [men ages 25-54] went back to just 93% – the current average for the other developed nations – approximately 10...

by Barkley Rosser  (originally published at  Econospeak) Could Incompetence Lead To Reelection? I know, I know, it is way too early to talk about the presidential election of 2020, so maybe this is more relevant to midterms, and more likely it is just something merely momentary.  Nevertheless, it occurs to me that the increasingly apparent incompetence of our current president could possibly play into helping him get reelected in 2020. His incompetence is...

In case you did not see this, it is my Senator’s opening comments at the Gorsuch hearings.  He sums up just what a 5/4 split court has been doing.[embedded content] This is his discussion on Cspan about his book: Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy

by Sandwichman Why Economists Are Bad At Economics If you want an informed, thoughtful analysis of the effects of robotization on productivity, investment, employment and wages, ask an art school professor. Jason E. Smith’s two-part series, “Nowhere to Go: Automation, Then and Now,” (part one and part two) at Brooklyn Rail cuts through all the statistical aggregation category errors to highlight the accumulation dilemma that economists just don’t seem capable...