Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Farm income

Here at Sustainability Institute, we develop computer simulation models to investigate such issues. Over the past couple of years we’ve worked with economists and farm leaders to model the corn economy. The insights are sobering. For the past several decades, despite changes in Congress, different presidents, and new farm bills, net income from farm sales […]

Final call on Medicare

Public Agenda, is calling for submissions for another of their blog carnivals, this time on Medicare. If you want to submit an entry, we can put it up here at Angry Bear today.

Spatial Price Index

Spatial Price Index Despite the importance of the CPI and all the discussion about it one of the things we do not have is data to compare the price of living in one city or state as compared to another.Well the Federal statisticians are working on it and the BEA just published a working paper […]

Blaming the Badly Allocated for Choices Not Necessarily Their Own

Tom’s working on explaining Savings 101, so this is specifically to deal with the “issue with” retirement accounts. Via Lawrence G. Lux, we find the A.P. (and maybe the NYT) highlighting a “study” by an investment management firm that “discovers” problems with the way people manage their 401(k)s: Some of the diversification problems stemmed from […]

Semi-Tech Interlude: External Wikipedia Links

I mentioned this at Marginal Utility, but agree with rdan that it’s worth mentioning to the (somewhat larger) AngryBear readership. Kathryn Cramer has done some work with Wikipedia’s External Links tool. The results are interesting, and I suspect the more tech-savvy (or persistent) than I will be able to leverage the work. Discuss amongst yourselves.

In the eye of the beholder

Came across a couple of videos. This first one is an issue of perspective on the thought of what is terroism or what is a terroist act. This second one is just plain funny (at least to me). It spoofs on the Annie Oakley comment by Senator Obama. On the economy side of things using […]

BW on Soc Sec VI: LMS and the Infinite Future

LMS: the Liebman-MacGuineas-Samwick Non-Partisan Social Security Reform Plan. Above we see Tables 1 & 2 of LMS. Its authors are interesting for a couple of reasons. One they are connected at pretty high policy levels to Administrations past, current, and future. In their own self description from LMS: “The three of us – former aides […]

More growth in GDP = more profits for investors?

Hat tip to reader Henry Cobb. The Economist reports an intersting conclusion in how we measure the equation more growth=more profits for investors. None of this is to deny the importance of emerging economies. The booms in India and China will have enormous effects on everything from the wages of unskilled labour to the price […]

Windfall Profits Tax

Again we are getting the right wing line that the windfall profits tax on oil in the 1980s causedoil production to fall and oil imports to rise as Carpe Diem at http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5048766. post a story from Investors Business Daily saying that from 1980 to 1986 oil production fell. Yes, the windfall profits tax was still […]

Basra is better

The NYT reports significant progress in Basra, Iraq. The principal factor for improvement that people in Basra cite is the deployment of 33,000 members of the Iraqi security forces after the March 24 start of operations, which allowed the government to blanket the city with checkpoints on every major intersection and highway. Borrowing tactics from […]