The Angry Bear

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...

by Barkley Rosser {originally published at Econospeak) Which Is More Important, China Or Syria? For the world as a whole and the US in particular, when it is put like that it is pretty obvious: China.  It has the world’s largest population, largest economy in PPP terms, a rising military, expanding interests around the world, including making territorial demands on several neighbors, not to mention being a nuclear superpower as well as cyberpower, and more. ...

by New Deal democrat Prime working age employment up, participation up (finally) – now how about wages? The March jobs report finishes the first quarter, which make it easier to update some labor participation trends, which, along with wages, has really lagged in this nearly 8 year old expansion. In order to eliminate the issue of the huge Baby Boom generation retiring, and to a lesser extent college and graduate students, we have some good data on the prime...

The Sandwichman commented the other day on The Economist article, “Britain’s Green Party proposes a three-day weekend.” Regrettably, though, I didn’t pay much attention to their “rebuttal” to the alleged assumption of a fixed amount of work: In fact, if people worked fewer hours, demand would drop, and so fewer working hours would be on offer. I have seen stupid explanations before of why there is not a fixed amount of work. Layard, Nickell and Jackman...

by Sandwichman Thank God it’s Boilerplate!: It’s Thursday and The Economist is lumping its labour The Economist and Jonathan Portes are at it again. “Lump of labor! Lump of labor!” The occasion? A proposal for a four-day workweek announced by the U.K. Green Party at their convention this week in Liverpool.   The Economist pretended to find “two problems” with the Greens’ proposal: The Greens’ proposals encounter two problems. First, the theory. They argue...

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...