The Angry Bear

Even though Angry Bear has as an audience of people who are more than beginners in economic thought,  I think it worthwhile to pursue basic stories about what we demand and value from our way of life, which includes the “economy”. I had a recent experience where an acquaintance came up to me and asked about Angry Bear and then proceeded to explain what formed the basics of his economic narrative. In rough form and I think my summation accurate enough for...

The first section of issues McConnell and Republicans must overcome requires 60 votes due to the Parliamentarian ruling the provisions of the BCHA violate the Byrd Rule; consequently, the Reconciliation procedure requiring only 51 votes can not be used to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or waive the Byrd rule. The second set of provisions ruled upon by the Parliamentarian only require 51 or a majority vote to pass these changes. There is little...

Of the two meanings of “Neoliberalism” The use of the term “neoliberal” has recently been criticized as a meaningless epithet, a tabula rasa used to disparage anyone deemed unsatisfactorily conservative. To the contrary, I think the term “neoliberal” is fairly precise, but much like the term “liberal” itself, it has two quite different meanings depending on whether the definition descends from its original European or American incarnation.  The first variety...

In my last post, I linked to a post by Peter Moskos noting that: People, all people, are 1.6 times more likely, per capita, to be shot and killed by police in states that are less than 10 percent black compared to states more than 10 percent African American. Blacks are still more likely than whites, per capita to be shot overall. But this ratio (2.6:1) doesn’t change significantly based on how black a state is. For both whites and blacks, the likelihood of...

Could The US Default Due To A Complexity Catastrophe? Definitely. Front  page story in today’s Washington Post by Damien Paletta reports that “Treasury chief hurtles toward fiasco,” the fiasco being a failure to raise the US debt ceiling in time to avoid a default.  Trump has declared that Sec Mnuchin is responsible for this matter, which he should be, but somehow has not made a sufficiently definitive statement to keep his former Freedom Caucus big cheese...

Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts: Game Of Thrones Guesses 1. I guess from the TV series it is official that John Snow is the son of Lyanna Start and Rhaegar Targaryan 2. I’m a fairly sure that Lyanna Stark is also the night of the laughing tree (and that’s part of the reason Rhaegar loved her so much it caused a civil war). 3. in King’s Landing there is a black cat with one ear who hates Lannisters . I am suspect that he was Rhaenys...

Foxconn aims to break the bank While the head of the illegitimate Trump regime makes multiple headlines telling the New York Times that he is above the law, we have to remember that there are plenty of other issues of concern to the middle class. One of the most striking is the latest huge bidding war for a gigantic Foxconn manufacturing plant (h/t David Haynes), slated to employ a massive 10,000 workers. The linked article interviews an American consultant...

Prominent among the things that the out of touch elite knows about regular Americans in, say Kansas where something is the matter, is that those people oppose means tested programs almost as much as they support Social Security old age and survivor benefits and Medicare. (Another used to be that the didn’t support higher taxes on high income people. One of my angrybear obsessions was noting the solid to overwhelming majorities in all polls dating back to...

Another Personal Observation On Privatized Highways Last month I posted a personal observation on Trump’s plan to privatize infrastructure, noting especially how in the long run privately owned turnpikes in Virginia ended up in government ownership.  In the comments on that post there was discussion of the Indiana Toll Road, privatized a few years ago.  I have just ridden on it (yesterday), and I shall recount as an anecdote datum my less than pleasant...