Open Thread May 16, 2023, Angry Bear, angry bear blog Tags: open thread

Videos Aggressive aviation Aviation industry political lobbying is a threat to us all 25 May 2023 Major airliners and airports have been under fire for some time now over their climate wrecking business model but they also do some of the most aggressive political lobbying in the UK. We need to make our...

Properties of arguments — validity and soundness .[embedded content] Using formal mathematical modelling, mainstream economists sure can guarantee that the conclusions hold given the assumptions. However, the validity we get in abstract model worlds does not warrant transfer to real-world economies. Validity may be good, but it is not enough. Mainstream economists are proud of having an ever-growing smorgasbord of models to cherry-pick from (as long as, of...

Financial markets in past fiscal crises; the “gold standard” of employment reports shows big deceleration in Q4 of last year – by New Deal democrat I have a post up at Seeking Alpha on how stocks, bonds, and consumers behaved during the 3 fiscal crises of the last decade. Hint: recessions are always disinflationary. Also of interest: the “gold standard” of employment data is the Quarterly County Employment and Wages report, which is not a...

from Lars Syll Economic theory, like anthropology, ‘works’ by studying societies which are in some relevant sense simpler or more primitive than our own, in the hope either that relations that are important but hidden in our society will be laid bare in simpler ones, or that concrete evidence can be discovered for possibilities which are open to us which are without precedent in our own history. Unlike anthropologists, however, economists simply invent the primitive societies we study, a...

Irrational Exuberance — Robert Shiller’s modern classic At the beginning of the year 2000, a book titled Irrational Exuberance was published. The American economics professor and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller warned that the extensive deregulation in the financial market that had taken place since the Thatcher-Reagan era had led to a rapid credit expansion. Banks and financial institutions saw a skyrocketing increase in lending, and the pursuit of gaining...

Paul Krugman has repeatedly over the years argued that we should continue to use mainstream economics hobby horses like IS-LM and AS-AD models. Here’s one example: So why do AS-AD? … We do want, somewhere along the way, to get across the notion of the self-correcting economy, the notion that in the long run, we may all be dead, but that we also have a tendency to return to full employment via price flexibility. Or to put it differently, you do want somehow to make clear the...

It’s now an article of faith that universalism, like other Enlightenment ideas, is a sham that was invented to disguise Eurocentric views that supported colonialism. When I first heard such claims some fifteen years ago, I thought they were so flimsy they’d soon disappear. For the claims are not simply ungrounded: they turn Enlightenment upside down. Enlightenment thinkers invented the critique of Eurocentrism and were the first to attack colonialism, on the basis of...

Cost-Free Preventive Care Under the ACA Faces Legal Challenge, JAMA | JAMA Network, Gregory Curfman, MD; Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo. The same federal Jackass judge in Texas who struck down the entire ACA (2018) has risen again. In this particular instance, he is taking aim at a core protection of the ACA or Cost-free preventive care. These services range from cancer screening to pregnancy care and have benefited more than 150 million US residents of...

A story . . . Supplier working relationships were always tough in automotive. A lot of politicking going there, lunches, dinners, etc. Kind of difficult to walk a straight line with them and maintain an ethical standard. Yet, I did and was known for doing what I said I would do. I worked for several Tier 1 companies making components for Ford and Chrysler mostly and a bit for GM. There are no good guys here. Whatever they want, they get it....