Via American Pet Products comes these figures on yearly expenditures for product and care of our pets, in the range of over $53 billion a year lately.  It doesn’t look like that includes dog walking. Pet Industry Market Size & Ownership Statistics U.S. Pet Industry Spending Figures & Future Outlook The following spending statistics are […]

Merry Christmas and Holidays from the Bears to our readers.

by Rev. Nathan Detering (Unitarian Universalist Church at First Parish Sherborn, MA) Once upon a time in those days after Thanksgiving when Rt. 9 is transformed from its normal craziness into something like a hornet’s nest after you poke it with a stick,there was a minister, a pastor, who thought it was a good idea […]

by Dale Coberly SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON SOCIAL SECURITY HOW THE “COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET” LIES TO YOU A group that calls itself “Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget” wrote what it claims to be “Setting the Record Straight on Social Security.”  The article needs to be responded to at some length, […]

Enjoy this Christmas because next year Christmas may not be as Merry… As real GDP nears the effective demand limit, we should see some signs of the economy turning the corner toward a contraction. So, do we see any signs? … Well, yes. This graph plots the aggregate profit rate against the savings rate of […]

Today Jared Bernstein published a graph with a red line representing a new normal for potential GDP. I was surprised because the line looks very similar to the line I have been publishing for months for effective demand. Mr. Bernstein does not give an equation for his line, but only a definition… “The other two […]

Via Econospeak Barkley Rosser ponders taxes and distribution: Taxes And Income Distribution: The Way It Was And The Way It Is Got invited on to the local TV station today to discuss income distribution thanks to the recent statements about the matter by President Obama and Pope Francis, only to upset the local anchorman by telling […]

Pro Publica points us to the expendable temp worker trend and with data. Via Truth out comes more: A groundbreaking 2010 study of Washington state’s workers’ comp claims found that temp workers in construction and manufacturing had twice the claims rate of regular workers doing the same type of work. If your injuries were caused […]

Senator Elizabeth Warren introduces bill to stop credit checks in job application process “A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected medical costs, unemployment, economic downturns, or other bad breaks than it is a reflection on an individual’s character or abilities,” Senator Warren said. “Families have not fully recovered from the […]

America’s fastest growing crime problem points us to some numbers: When we talk about crime at the city level, we tend to focus on violent crime and property crime. These two categories don’t encompass the entire universe of illegal behavior, but they cover crimes that a) have victims, and b) local police can actually  investigate. […]