.[embedded content] As I was writing this song one Sunday, I imagined myself floating into space and looking down at my own body. I was imagining myself dying. Morbidly obsessed with these thoughts, I wrote this song about death. The next day I was told that Guy [Burchett], our 17-year-old messenger boy, had been tragically killed on his motorcycle the day before. Guy died on the day I wrote this song.

from Blair Fix and RWER current issue From the moment the first veins of coal were opened (thousands of years ago), one thing has been certain: the fossil-fuel business would eventually die. But what’s always been uncertain is the when and the how. That’s because there is no law of nature that tells us how much of a non-renewable resource humans will exploit. One possibility is that we will harvest fossil fuels to the point of utter exhaustion. Of course, there will always be some scraps...

Kip Sullivan has been comparing Fee for Service Medicare to Medicare Advantage and Commercial Healthcare Insurance at length calling out the failures of the latter. The results of such comparisons show FFS Medicare is far less costly in providing similar and better healthcare. Expanding Medicare to include all constituents as it is or in a Single Payer format would lower costs and provide better healthcare to all constituents. The “if” here is...

This is a brief and targeted commentary by EPI’s Josh Bivens to which I have added input. The Fed has been flailing away at the economy in the belief Labor is the issue. Josh contends, product or profit markups have been a major issue. He does provide a foundation for his posit. I look to the supply chain issue(s) as the basis for the higher profits. I experienced similar in getting componentry in 2008-2010. With less supply and a lengthen (and...

There’s been yet another big leak of US secret intelligence. As usual, the main result was embarrassment for the US state, from the (re)confirmation that it routinely spies on its allies, and from the publication of some unflattering comments on those allies. The substantive content was uninteresting, revealing no greater insight (and sometimes) than that available to careful observers with no access to secret information (Daniel Drezner has more on this). There don’t seem to be any...

NIH — PubMedMental Health Challenges Related to Neoliberal Capitalism in the United StatesAnna ZeiraCNBCWith inflation stubbornly high, 58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck: CNBC surveyJessica DicklerRT — Question More (Russian state-sponsored media)White House says racism cost US $16 trillion since 2000 [Susan Rice citing Citi report]Global InequalityThe chronicle of the revolutions foretold? [Important. Should-read. Summarizes the work of Peter Turchin.]Branko Milanovic |...

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from Spencer Graves and RWER current issue To the extent that copyrights and paywalls on academic journals are obstacles to “the progress of science and the useful arts”, there are things that individual researchers, academic administrators, and the public can do to help overcome these obstacles: Researchers can submit their work only to open-access journals and refuse to submit their work to journals that will put their work behind a paywall. (No one who wants to be cited wants their...

The limits of DAG formalism There are good reasons to think that moderating causes have an important role general in explaining development and growth. Why? The growth process is apparently strongly affected by what economists call complementarities. Complementarities exist when the action of an agent or the existence of practice affects the marginal benefit to another agent taking an action or to the marginal benefit of another practice. Education is...

This week is a big data week. Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released of the latest labour force data (April 13, 2023) – Labour Force, Australia – for March 2023. The March result is weaker than February’s strong outcome but still relatively robust. Employment rose with a bias towards full-time work and kept pace with population growth such that unemployment fell marginally. The employment to population rose modestly. Overall a good result. Some caution needs to be observed...