Akin to “I was just following orders.” Such a reason did not work before and people following the orders or the laws in this instance and other instances did not ask questions. The orders and the law gave an excuse to do otherwise. A story as taken from “Anger as pre-historic stones destroyed for French DIY store,” Le Monde,fr. Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near...

For the first time in 81 weeks, individual investors have turned bullish.

from Dean Baker We should be able to work together for the benefit of humanity. John Kerry got the start to his political career when he testified to Congress about the Vietnam War as an anti-war veteran, and asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” The point, of course, was that we were still sending soldiers to Vietnam to fight and risk dying in a war that was widely recognized to be pointless. Rather than just owning up to the mistake, we continued the...

Scenes from the employment report: an important trend in self-employment; and real aggregate payrolls  – by New Deal democrat We’re still in the week of drought following the payrolls release last Friday. Today let’s take a look at a few more items of interest from the Household Survey side. As you probably recall, the bottom line employment numbers in the 2 reports diverged sharply in May, with the Establishment survey showing a 339,000...

Open Thread June 4, 2023, Angry Bear, angry bear blog Just a thought, and this new at this moment. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling finding a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. I believe SCOTUS...

Is historical materialism a deterministic theory? Must all societies (in particular, Russia) go through the same stages, including feudalism, capitalism, and, eventually, socialism? Perhaps Marx says otherwise in the following letter. London, 8 March 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N.W. Dear Citizen, A nervous complaint which has assailed me periodically over the last ten years has prevented me from replying any sooner to your letter of 16 February. I am sorry that...

It appears Primary Care is becoming a hot market practice for nonhealthcare US retail and healthcare corporations to invest in today. Big corporations are chasing the Primary Care market worth about $260 billion in 2022, which is big enough to attract attention. The other factor is a shift from FFS healthcare model to a Fee For Value healthcare model. There is a potential for increasing costs in the latter. Primary care disruptors could capture...

Wildfires from Canada blanketed the city with smoke today. And nearly all metrics of US petroleum report looking weak.

The DIMITRA plan and the financial and political alchemies of G. Varoufakis S.Mavroudeas * & Th. Chatzirafailidis ** *Professor of Political Economy, Department of Social Policy, Panteion University ** PhD candidate , Department of Economics, UoA 1. Verbal ‘saviors’ in times of crisis It is common, in times of crisis, the appearance of ‘saviors’ promising to suffering popular masses salvation through imaginative plans that will reform the system and improve...

from Norbert Häring India’s central bank will withdraw the largest banknote from circulation. The then largest note is only worth about as much as the smallest in the euro area. The move is intended to force people to use electronic money instead of cash. With this, they can be better monitored and controlled and the financial and IT industries get their percentages and data with every purchase. India, as a favorite guinea pig of the global cash abolitionists, often provides the blueprint...