I like Bernie Sanders for many reasons, but this isn’t one of them:“As a result of those challenges, Sanders wants to see more Democrats vocally get behind measures like . . . removing the cap on Social Security taxation so the wealthy pay a full share of their income into the program.”This is a mistake. SS benefits are capped like taxes, so if you lift the cap on taxes and don’t lift the cap on benefits, SS becomes welfare instead of insurance.Look,...

by Ten Bears Homeless on the High Desert, August 9, 2024 in g’da said Fifty Years Ago last night, Aug 8th, President Nixon shocked the country & the world in a lengthy address at 9pm est where he announced his resignation, effective the next day. It felt like the system was working. But I’m not sure it was We dropped the ball, my generation, we stopped The War! Our War. Viet Nam But we didn’t stop War. We forced Nixon to...

by Andrew Sprung xpostfactoid Brian Blase, a conservative healthcare scholar at the Paragon Institute, is out with an analysis of 2024 ACA marketplace enrollment (summarized in this WSJ op-ed) claiming that millions of enrollees have mis-estimated their incomes to claim benefits to which they are “not entitled.” Here are the core claims: In nine states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee,...

Something happened after the 2022 Biden unprecedented rate increases to really crush (-32%) the EPS of the NDX100… ?With the implication that this one time discount after the unprecedented Biden rate increases in 2022 might be reversed if those said rate increases were to be reversed…

Workers across the US rally after string of heat-related deaths. Grist This story was originally published by Grist. Ayurella Horn-MullerFor the last two years, Cecilia Ortiz has worked as a passenger service agent at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She typically has to walk 10 to 15 miles a day, up and down ramps, pushing heavy wheelchairs and carrying passengers’ luggage. This summer, temperatures have reached over 110 degrees Fahrenheit...

When the narrative changes every day to justify the direction of the market averages. 

 – by New Deal democrat Last week I pointed out that the YoY increases in initial and continuing jobless claims appeared to be all about Texas in the wake of Beryl. This week there was good news even with some continued hurricane Beryl effects in Texas. Initial claims declined -7,000 to 227,000 for the week, while the 4-week average declined -4,500 to 236,500. Continuing claims with the typical one-week delay declined -7,000 to 1.864 million:...

Speculative Lending Fueled Economic Crises.

Quantitative easing is often seen as a necessary tool for economic recovery. Many believe it stimulates growth and helps everyone. But this belief is fundamentally flawed. It primarily inflates asset prices, benefiting the wealthy. The rich own most shares. So, when asset prices rise, they reap the rewards. Meanwhile, the majority, who own minimal shares, see no benefit. This creates a widening economic divide. Imagine a balloon. When you blow air into it, the balloon...

from Lars Syll To be fair to academia, it has realized that the pure DSGE model is incapable of explaining observable phenomena so they have introduced numerous amendments, known, oddly, as “imperfections” in the model. Long-term nominal contracts, other labour market frictions, imperfection in credit markets, all these and more are prayed in aid and, either rigorously or more usually ad hoc, introduced into the model, generating lags that mean it can be represented as fitting the data....