The Angry Bear

The Hidden Cost of Privatization by Nina Shapiro at Institute for New Economic Thinking  is an excellent read. This conception of government, of course, is not new. “Small government” has been a hallmark of the Republican Party for decades, and the privatization of government properties and services has been increasing worldwide since the 1980s. In the earlier period it centered on the privatization of state-owned enterprises, but in more recent times it has...

It’s Sunday, so I take a break from nerdy econ analysis and speak my mind. Last November 9 we woke up to a living nightmare. The next four years were bound to be awful. The only question was, how awful? The very tiny silver lining as of now is that, so far, it has been about as limited an awful as it could reasonably be. The simple fact is, those things that the Executive could worsen all on his own, he is doing so. But those things that require Legislative...

AEI-Brookings recently issued a report on paid medical leave. I found one of the figures in the paper to be especially interesting: Click to embiggen or to show the entire graph.  (You should see four columns in the graph.)

Is Trump’s Apprenticeship Program Like His Infrastructure Program? It looks like it might be in a crucial way.  Both involve lots of rhetoric about expanding programs that many support, apprenticeships and infrastructure.  However, on looking at them closer to the extent we can see anything specific aside from the rhetoric, it looks like they involve actual cuts in funding support for existing programs related to both apprenticeships (and more broadly worker...

I’ve noted a few times that the political center needs to come to grips with research on genes and intelligence or we risk ceding the field to people with scary impulses and frightening goals. I think something like what the center-left position should be is reasonably well articulated by Richard J. Haier. Haier is a professor emeritus in the University of California at Irvine medical school, editor in chief of the journal Intelligence, and he was one of the...

When Somebody Called “Mad Dog” Is The Only Adult In The Room In the last few days it has come to pass that twice US Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis has shown himself to be the only adult in the room in the Trump administration.  His first such exhibition of adulthood came during the bizarre spectacle of Trump’s first full televised cabinet meeting.  Trump openly demanded verbal obeisance from those assembled, promptly delivered by all but one in...

Retail sales disappoint — but don’t hyperventilate about it There certainly is a  lot of information to unpack from this morning’s retail sales and inflation reports, and what they mean for wages and jobs.  I’ll address them in separate posts. First, retail sales.  They certainly were a disappointment, coming in at -0.3% nominally and -0.2% in real terms.  That being said, the monthly reports are somewhat noisy.   We commonly get several of these a year, as...

Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts Trump says AHCA is “Mean” One source said Trump called the House bill “mean, mean, mean” and said, “We need to be more generous, more kind.” The other source said Trump used a vulgar phrase to describe the House bill and told the senators, “We need to be more generous.” AP News I think this “vulgar phrase” baryard metaphor is slang-term-for-reproductive-act-ing idiotic. But I do think the unsurprising news about Trumps...

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Indigenous advocates from around the world are calling on a UN committee to make appropriating Indigenous cultures illegal — and to do it quickly. Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency. Here’s more: Speaking to the committee Monday, James Anaya, dean...