Tag Archives: politics

I am going to give a hostage to fortune. I am going to guess that the preferred policy supported by a majority of US respondents on questions about redistribution of income is that which would directly serve the narrow short term economic interests of a (probably different but overlapping) majority of US respondents. I am guessing that the majority view is that view which would be the majority view if everyone were selfish (and out and proud...

This is one of Alan Collinge’s associates who comment on many of his posts. This also reflects a point I bought up a while back on student loan debt. The size of the loan was large and probably could have been handled. The issue is not so much the loan as it is the interest fees, interest upon interest, paying back the interest first, etc. A $10,000 forgiveness will go to the interest first on the student loan debt and never touch the principal....

August industrial production declines; overall decelerating trend consistent with recession in 2023  – by New Deal democrat Finishing today’s data dump, industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, declined -0.2% in August, while manufacturing production increased 0.1%. July’s sharp gains in both were revised slightly (-0.1%) downward:  While July remains the high water mark for overall production, manufacturing has not made a...

Guest Post by Infidel as posted from his Blog of the same name. Intro . . . In the real world, which contains many individuals interacting within a society, overall freedom is maximized when the total ability of all individuals to do whatever they want is maximized.  In practice, achieving this involves a vast number of compromises and trade-offs, because there are so many cases where the wants of one person clash with the wants of another...

Positive real retail sales in August, but YoY flatness continues  – by New Deal democrat Retail sales, probably my favorite monthly economic datapoint, increased 0.3% in August. Since consumer prices rose 0.1%, real retail sales rose 0.2%: That’s certainly good news. Now here’s the bad news: July’s retail sales were revised downward by -0.4%, so that real retail sales, reported last month as +0.1%, are now shown down by a little less than...

I have been following New Deal democrat for a long time now. What NDd is reporting in this post is a big deal going into November’s Elections. In spite of all the negativism being reported by political interests, the economy is still moving forward. People are still working. I keep having to remind people about what 2008 was about. The last two years could have been far worse. run75441 Improvement in initial jobless claims continues  – by...

How To Dismantle An Empire  My late mother seriously admired the now late Queen Elizabeth II. Not only was she a conservative Anglophiliac with overwhelming British ancestry (all the “nations” of the UK) who had tea in the afternoon at the proper British time in more or less the proper British way, there was also the matter that the queen bore a son her heir only seven months after my mother had me. I was raised to see Charles as a   a sort of...

PPI, without the lagging phantom of Owners Equivalent Rent, declines in August, decelerates YoY  – by New Deal democrat What a difference it makes that PPI does not have a concept like “owners equivalent rent!” Overall PPI declined by -0.1%, following a -0.4% reading in July, together the two lowest readings since the pandemic lockdown months: Core PPI increased by 0.5% (blue in the graph below), which while historically high, was the...

A lot of informational news deposited in my In-Box this week. Nothing this week is taken from anywhere else. I think last week, I included one news article from the outside. Political, Economic, Healthcare news are my mainstays. The usual economics and business news coming from different sources. Yes, inflation is still an issue. I do not believe Powell will not give us a soft landing he thinks he is capable of doing. One issue will help...

Has anyone looked at the Nineth Amendment of the Bill of Rights? Because of what is being said about rights not enumerated in the Constitution by SCOTUS and Carol Stewart is precisely why it exists. Some history: “The Amendment’s origin is fascinating history. James Madison proposed the Amendment to counter the Federalist arguments that a bill of rights was unnecessary or even unwise. The Federalists argued that the government created by the...