The Angry Bear

It was actually quite amusing to see an article in my provincial newspaper a while back where two sides were arguing about a reduction in the work week, and you could play bingo with the excuses the anti-side used. There wasn’t an original idea in the whole article, as the pro-side was almost apologizing and got one paragraph of the six on offer. – “Salty,” comment at AngryBear. See also “Boundless Thirst for Surplus Labor”...

A post from 2006 on immigration by Kash Mansori seems timely… The Simpsons on Immigration Kash | March 28, 2006 1:31 pm Simpsons aficionados among you already know that the Simpsons addressed the issue of immigration back in 1996, in the episode “Much Apu About Nothing”. Here’s a summary of the beginning of the episode, thanks to Wikipedia (Btw, I never would have guessed that Wikipedia contains entries on individual Simpsons episodes…) On an ordinary day, a...

Five Thirty Eight‘s Harry Enten offers thoughts on current special elections for Congress: So, keep an eye on the special elections over the weeks and months to come. Next Tuesday, voters in traditionally red Georgia 6 will cast their ballots. If Democrat Jon Ossoff wins, it would be yet another sign that Republicans are in trouble nationally. If Republicans there do better than expected, it could indicate that California 34 and Kansas 4 are outliers....

Via Truthout Published on Mar 23, 2017 In the March 2017 Taxcast: the high price we’re paying for our finance sectors – we look at staggering statistics showing how the US finance sector is a net drag on their economy. [embedded content]Featuring: John Christensen and Alex Cobham of the Tax Justice Network, and Professor of Economics Gerald Epstein of the University of Masachusetts Amhurst. Produced and presented by Naomi Fowler for the Tax Justice Network....

So the notoriously alt-right fringe fake news organization, the BBC, had an article entitled Different Nationalities Really Have Different Personalities. It begins: When psychologists have given the same personality test to hundreds or thousands of people from different nations, they have indeed found that the average scores tend to come out differently across cultures. In other words, the average personality in one country often really is different from the...

by Sandwichman Noah Smith: “Why the 101 model doesn’t work for labor markets” At Noahpinion: A lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that the basic “Econ 101″ model – the undifferentiated, single-market supply-and-demand model – doesn’t work for labor markets. To some people involved in debates over labor policy, the theory is almost axiomatic – the labor market must be describable in terms of a “labor supply curve” and a “labor...

by Barkley Rosser   (Barkley Rosser is now a contributor to Angry Bear) Italy And The Future Of The European Union Given that Trumpfreak may guarantee relatively pro-EU politicians winning in France and Germany in the near term (France less certain than Germany), many are now looking at Italian elections next year as the next time when there may be a serious threat in a major EU nation of a leader being elected who may want to pull the nation out, following...

September 22, 1956 November 7, 1960 QUESTION. This is from Mr. White, Warren, Mich. What is your stand on the 32-hour workweek? Vice President NIXON: Well, the 32-hour workweek just isn’t a possibility at the present time. I made a speech back in the 1956 campaign when I indicated that as we went into the period of automation, that it was inevitable that the workweek was going to be reduced, that we could look forward to the time in America when we might...

Various people have argued that Republicans decided to repeal and (very partially) replace Obamacare before moving on to tax reform, because Obamacare repeal (aka the American Health Care Act aka AHCA) would make it easier to permanently cut tax rates. To me this makes less than zero sense. The argument is that, since AHCA includes tax cuts, tax reform would start from a lower base, so it would be easier to write a tax reform bill which doesn’t add to the...