I guess one could get by on this salary if one were frugal, could find low-cost housing, maybe used public transportation, ate cheaply, etc. There is not much room for anything else. And yet people still manage to do it. As EPI details, Nineteen percent of workers (9.76 million workers) in 20 states are paid less than $15 per hour, compared with 13% of workers in the 30 states. “Workers are 46% more likely to make below $15 an hour in states...

This is a longish and fairly detailed summary of recent developments in the geopolitical and geoeconomic spheres and their self-augmenting interaction and integration on the way to actualizing the vision of multipolarity based on international law rather than a US-led (imposed) "rules-based-order), that is to say, unipolarity.This is also a more balanced account than some of Pepe Escobar's posts that suffer from confirmation bias. This is more critical than "creative," that is, hyped. It...

The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance – Through Critical Thinking, (substack.com, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Not many people realize the Statue of Liberty has broken chains at her feet. Originally, the chains were going to be placed in her hand, but the tablet eventually replaced that idea. When the Statue’s unveiling celebration took place on October 28, 1886, women’s groups protested the self-congratulatory nature of the day, given that women...

A large part of why they succeeded was due to this...

Bank lending data paints a grim picture for the Eurozone economyUnherdThe coming European recession may be worse than 2008Philip Pilkington

Here from some sad eternally ineffectual UK MMT people with the “musical chairs!” and “takes chairs away!” figurative language:Monetary policy forces the lowest income people to play a game of musical chairs with jobs. The central bank deliberately takes chairs away and the DWP blame the jobless. A Job Guarantee fixes this. https://t.co/XKZGiwLDjAhttps://t.co/P8wWzF4DXQhttps://t.co/2pgn5sTcZJ— MMT Podcast (Christian Reilly) (@MMTpodcast) July 29, 2023 And here from some monetarist people...

Sraffian economics — an unhappy trade-off between rigour and relevance We have continually noted the tendency of Sraffians to subordinate the study of the substantive nature of economic phenomena to the requirements of logical rigor, and for Sraffians rigor equals GET (General Equilibrium Theory), the simultaneous determination of endogenous economic variables. The marriage of Sraffian economics and GET is not a promising avenue for studying past thinkers,...

Driven by the hurricane force disinflationary tailwind, real personal spending and income, and real sales, all increase nicely  – by New Deal democrat In the current economy the personal spending and income report is just as important as the jobs report. That’s because, despite the downturn in manufacturing production and many parts of the housing market, consumer spending especially on services has continued to power the economy forward....

The Fed’s Target Is Workers, Project Syndicate, James K. Galbraith, January 2022 A year and a half later and the Fed is still trying to slay the dragon. They stab it with their steely knives, But they just can’t kill the beast. So it seems, the Feds losing battle is with Labor, direct Labor is the smallest portion of manufacturing. Without labor there is no product, just bets on the outcome of the economy. ~~~~~~~~ By announcing forthcoming...

The deficit lies mainstream economists knowingly tell us .[embedded content] [The interview was given to Mark Blaug in 1995. In transcript: “I think there is an element of truth in the view that the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times [is necessary]. Once it is debunked, [it] takes away one of the bulwarks that every society must have against expenditure out of control. There must be discipline in the allocation of resources or you...