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

Does Single Payer Pay for Itself?

by ProGrowthLiberal (originally published at Econospeak) Does Single Payer Pay for Itself? Was this the message of the title of the latest from Dean Baker: The economies of a single system can be viewed as analogous to the Social Security system, which has administrative costs that are less than 1/20th as much as privatized systems […]

A Wake-Up Call for Students

Guest Author: Alan Collinge, StudentLoanJustice.Org,Both Alan and I have written various posts on the student loan crisis. Alan has been featured on Angry Bear Blog from time to time. If you are in college and looking for something worthy to fight for today; as a student, you should consider the student loan issue. Student loans […]

2.5 cheers for 2016’s new high in real median income!

2.5 cheers for 2016’s new high in real median household income! Given that I consider jobs and wages for average Americans my #1 focus, it’s only fair that I write about this week’s release of the real median household income for 2016, don’t you think? A few years ago I wrote that real median household […]

Douglas F. Dowd Is Dead

Douglas F. Dowd Is Dead Douglas Fitzgerald Dowd has died at age 97 in Bologna, Italy.  A scholar of Thorstein Veblen and expounder of a radical view of US economic history that strongly influenced Howard Zinn and Daniel Ellsberg, among others, he was also a serious political activist.  After serving as a bomber pilot in […]

How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps

How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps Here’s Kevin Drum advocating for step 1:  the best way to address retirement security is to continue reforming 401(k) plans and to expand Social Security—but only for low-income workers. Middle-class workers are generally doing reasonably well, and certainly as well as they did in the past. We don’t […]

Homicides: Victimizers and Victims

Last year in Chicago: Among the Sun-Times’ findings, based on a review of police and Cook County medical examiner’s reports, court files and interviews: • The vast majority of those killed in Chicago in the first half of this year — 90 percent —died from a gunshot wound. • Seventy-two percent were African-American men, their […]