Tag Archives: Featured Stories

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Trump and his minions may not believe in global warming, but people whose livelihoods depend on understanding climate change—bankers, insurance companies and the military—know it’s real. So do non-humans whose livelihoods are compromised by climate change: “Native fish populations will likely continue their decline off of Massachusetts’ coast, while species from further south will move […] The post Seafood says global...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Anterevolution, France was pre-industrial, feudal, and broke.  Broke because its wealth (wealth that had been derived from the labor of serfs at home and slaves in her colonies, and the exploitation of indigenous peoples) had been wasted by its government and aristocracy on wars and extravagance.  By 1789, wars and lifestyle had bled the country […] The post A Tale of Two Economies appeared first on Angry Bear.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Trump problem is not – and never has been – the electoral college The problem is that Donald Trump is a competitive presidential candidate in the United States, despite his manifest unsuitability for office.  There are various reasons for Trump’s competitiveness.  Some of these reasons are structural (the weakness of our parties and our […] The post Six thoughts about the election and democracy appeared first on...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Here at Angry Bear, we’re all about intelligent discourse and diverse viewpoints, as long as the posts are honest and backed by facts and evidence. We will delete comments that support a flat earth, a geocentric solar system or creationism, as well as their political equivalents. We don’t feed trolls here at AB, regardless of […] The post Programming note appeared first on Angry Bear.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]– by New Deal democrat One of the well-established long leading indicators is corporate profits. Typically they peak a year or more before the onset of a recession. And the reason makes sense: if there is profit pressure that lasts longer than a single quarter, i.e., it looks like it may be forming a trend, […] The post Are corporate profits stalling in Q3? appeared first on Angry Bear.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]I am canvassing near Pittsburgh this week with a group of around 30.  The first few days have been relatively uneventful.  The weather has been beautiful.  A few of my co-canvassers reported useful conversations, like one woman who wanted to vote but wasn’t sure who the pro-choice candidate was.  I have had one conversation with […] The post Pennsylvania canvassing report appeared first on Angry Bear.

Kevin Drum has a post up about the present and future of EV charging stalls in the US. As of 2023, the number was 184,000, with public charging stalls outnumbering Tesla stalls 6:1. Is that a lot or a little? Well, lots of people say that they’re holding off buying EVs because of the range, which is still less than most ICE cars. One way to mitigate that concern is to have more charging stalls than gas station nozzles*. So how many gasoline...

if long-term interest rate r is less than the trend growth rate of GDP g Yesterday (technically very early today) I promised a post on why long-term Treasury interest rates are very important. In particular it is very important if the long-term interest rate r is less than the trend growth rate of GDP g. If r<g then the public sector intertemporal budget constraint is not binding. This means that public policy is not even Pareto efficient. In...

Farming is a risky business. Always has been. A federal program to keep farmers in business during droughts seems like a good idea to me. Sadly, it’s also a target for fraud:“On a normal day, the promising storms produced snow or rain that would fall onto a system of official weather stations at airstrips or town halls, into heated “tipping buckets.” When the teeter-totter buckets filled with a thimbleful of water, the seesaw tilted, dropping one...

Suppose that you wake up tomorrow and discover that a sadistic alien has turned you into an economist.  You are just getting over your shock at your new predicament (“How will I make friends?  Will anyone ever trust me again?  At least I’m not a lawyer.”) when Kamala Harris, responding to voter concerns about inflation, makes a vague statement in favor of government restrictions on the price of groceries.  It just so happens that you have a...