The Ambivalence of Verfügbare Zeit Back in December I posted an excerpt from the Grundrisse, Reichtum ist verfügbare Zeit und nichts weiter, without noticing that in it was a prototype for Marx’s concept of socially necessary labour time (Gesellschaftlich notwendige Arbeitzeit):  Die Schöpfung von viel disposable time außer der notwendigen Arbeitszeit für die Gesellschaft überhaupt und jedes Glied derselben (d.h. […]

How the oligarchs stole our democracy So … . What was the House Un-American Activities Committee (1945-1975, with a few interesting precursors) really all about? Looking back through the lens of history, it was much about distracting the Nation’s attention from the racist atrocities being committed in southern states. Still today, all a red state […]

Housing permits continue decline in June; more challenging YoY comparison First, a brief comment about the NBER’s declaration yesterday that the COVID recession ended in April 2020. I am not surprised at all that they chose that date. It has been clear for a year that the trough in economic activity across the board was […]

Little Good can Come from Private Equity in the Healthcare Industry, Angry Bear, Me @ Angry Bear This is almost two years ago. As if we did not have enough issues with the commercial healthcare insurance industry attempting to supplant single payer Medicare (minus setting hospital budgets, doctor fees, and pharmaceutical costs to the consumer) […]

The Vaccination/Infection/Political Divergence Where I Am  In Virginia, cities and counties are separate, not one containing the other as in most of the US. So I live in the City of Harrisonburg, population about 53,000, which is surrounded by Rockingham County, population about 82,000, both in the Shenandoah Valley about 120 miles southwest of Washington. […]

June retail sales decline after taking inflation into account, but overall pandemic gains “stick” As usual, retail sales is one of my favorite indicators, because it gives us so much information about the consumer economy.  The news for June was mixed. Nominally retail sales were up +0.6% for the month. But after taking into account […]

DUC well report for June, Focus on Fracking, RJS Monday of this past week saw the release of the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report for July, which includes the EIA’s June data for drilled but uncompleted (DUC) oil and gas wells in the 7 most productive shale regions….that data showed a decrease in uncompleted wells nationally for the 13th […]

Socially Ambivalent Labour Time VI: TSV part 3, chapter 21: “Our pamphleteer overlooks two things” Although Marx discussed socially necessary labour time in chapters 4, 8, 9, 16, 17, and 20, he didn’t mention it in chapter 21 where he discussed the 1821 pamphlet, The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties by Charles Wentworth Dilke. Marx’s […]