Opinion piece by Commenter Dennis Drew. Unions and Labor have been Dennis’s bailiwick for as long as I have been with Angry Bear. A nice piece on labor, economics, politics, and power. ~~~~~~~~ Labor unions effectively couple employees directly to paying customers – bargaining for the maximum amount they see consumers are willing to part with.  In the same light, non-union businesses sell the labor component of their products at the cheapest...

Here’s your Art Degree figure of speech “price anchor!”  .  Link here.

Eight out of ten of our poorest states are former states of the Confederacy. Less than a handful of the original Confederate states have been able to begin to rise. The ‘again’ was always impossible. Because, in the antebellum South, one percent of the population had all the wealth; most whites were little, if any, better off than slaves. —, politically unstable, economy dependent on the export of one or two products such as agricultural products,...

Pulling another Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront commentary. Been reading Lloyd for a number of years and going back to Slate’s The Fray. Those years could be measured in decades now. I like the older building and worked on some of them in Chicago. The old Union Carbon and Carbide bldg. comes to mind. It became a Hard Rock venture. Later it was taken over becoming a St. Jane hotel. A Burnham Brothers-design Art Deco build by a corporation around...

Alexander Vladimirovich Buzgalin: In memoriam It is with great sorrow that I learned about the recent sudden death of Aleksandr Buzgalin. Just a few weeks ago he was vibrantly discussing Marxist Political Economy at the recent forum of the World Association of Political Economy and energetically planning the way forward. Warm and extremely polite and at the same time witty and unwavering in his views, Aleksandr had an inspiring presence in all international fora that I have met...

Why the index of leading indicators failed: examining the once in a lifetime post-pandemic tailwind  – by New Deal democrat Carl Quintanilla observed the one year anniversary of the following two days ago: I’ve written previously about what confounded that forecast. But let me highlight those issues again. 1. A 40% drop in gas prices, and a generalized 10% drop in commodity prices can do wonders for both producers and consumers. Here’s...

Good evening, hope all is well by you. Two days ago, my wife of 52 years took off to my oldest son’s home to visit and to meet my youngest son’s woman friend. We are very pleased with this and the story behind all of this is long and too enduring to be told here. However here is another story of a man and his family thriving in the US in his own business. The day before my wife went to Chicago, my neighbor Aldofo asked if we would attend...

My latest in the Conversation. I’m linking to my Blogstack, please advise if this works for you. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

The Price of Ignoring Life

The collapse of the existing home market continues in September  – by New Deal democrat September was yet another month in the ongoing collapse of existing home sales. To wit, sales declined another -8,000 on an annualized basis to 3.960 million. This is the lowest number since August 2010. And aside from that one singular month, it is the lowest since 1995! [Note that this is similar to the collapse in purchase mortgage applications, also at...