“Spencer England,” In Remembrance, November 8, 2020
Dan here: I received this note from Spencer’s son Matt late afternoon yesterday. Thank you Matt for the note. I knew Spencer as an economist who had a fact-based analysis of industry trends and a direct and clear way of demonstrating and describing a point to the discussion for over a decade. 2011 provides an example. Dean Baker noticed at times. I cannot find Paul Krugman’s mention but here is part of the year 2013.
Matt Spencer sent this note about his dad:
I regret to inform you that Spencer England passed away at 4:30 this morning Nov 8, 2020, due to health related issues.
He was a former Marine, had a love for economics from a very young age, and spent many years with the Central Intelligence Agency dissecting world economies after he served. He then went on to publish subscription-based monthly economic forecast models for major industries around the world until he retired about 2 years ago.
He loved submitting posts to your blog and would often talk about the stories he read here.
We hope that your readers enjoyed his posts as much as he did writing them.
He is survived by his wife, 3 children, and 9 grandchildren. You will be missed, rest in peace Dad.
Matt England
This is sad news. I will miss him.
Matt:
I met your dad about a decade ago when I came to Angry Bear having spent a decade at Slate’s The Fray and Moneybox on topics such a Labor, product costing, throughput analysis, distribution, etc. All of these topics, I had worked or consulted in over the 50 years I had been a part of various companies. I can not say, I made Spencer happy with my views on these topics. We did manage to become comfortable with each other and I used his citations in things I would write. Over the last few years, I was adding the charts and graphs he religiously created on his software and add them to his articles as pictorial evidence backing his words. I know for a fact Spencer was well regarded in the economics circles and from time to time his name would pop up.
From time to time we would exchange emails back and forth. I did not know he was in the Marine Corps also. We probably would have had some other things to talk about beside Angry Bear. He will be remembered at least by this aging X-Marine Sergeant.
Regards,
Bill
Spencer England was always engaging and interesting to read. I read all I found by Spencer for years and assumed there would always be more to think through. Possibly the writings might be collected and opened with a link.
I will remember Spencer.
Hi Anne:
We will keep that suggestion in mind.
Spencer had a great feel for data. That is so rare. His post were almost always no frills, just the facts. Incredible valuable and hard to replace.
Always insightful. He will be missed.
Run
sorry to hear
maybe a few select articles republished here would help us remember.
coberly:
That is not a bad idea. I will talk with Dan.
Always worth reading, always a gentlemen.
At a certain point life becomes a steady stream of this sort of news. I am there. But….
I have been so privileged to know so many great people I must look at the positives.