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Open thread Sept. 7, 2021

Dan Crawford | September 7, 2021 6:40 am

Comments (13) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
13 Comments
  • Jim Hannan says:
    September 7, 2021 at 11:30 am

    There has not been much coverage of Peru lately.  Here’s an interesting take on the recent election and Peru history:

    Whither Peru? – Occupied Tucson Citizen

  • Denis Drew says:
    September 7, 2021 at 1:01 pm

    CROSS POSTED FROM https://www.econlib.org/david-autors-mix-of-insight-error-and-confusion/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=david-autors-mix-of-insight-error-and-confusion

    Imagine a world in which buying consumer goods took place only on Mon-Tue-Wed-Thur-Fri — and — pay checks were only issued on Sat-Sun.  (This is called a model — I just viewed The City of Lost Children and Dark City, so maybe I am in the mood for such a model.)

    The places: a labor market where employers with 12.5% labor costs like Target and Walgreens — outliers WalMart and fast food with 7% and 25% labor costs.  Employees double their pay on average: up 50% at fast food, up 2 1/5 X at Walmart.

    To keep it simple prices for goods produced by lower income workers go up about 12.5% across the board — demand falls 12.5% …

    … Mon thru Friday; on that particular Mon thru Fri.

    Sat comes; lower cost workers average double their pay — for producing possibly fewer goods — so far; Mon hasn’t hit yet.

    Mon comes; lower cost workers take all that extra money that they got paid for selling possibly fewer goods — and start using that exact same money (those exact same dollars) to purchase goods and services — probably proportionately more on goods produced by lower wage workers (proportionately more than the overall 100% of consumers would have spent them on).

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    September 7, 2021 at 3:07 pm

    Inflation Is Popping From Sydney to San Francisco

    It May Be a Good Sign.

    Inflation has surged across advanced economies. The shared experience underlines that price gains come from temporary drivers — for now. 

    Price gains are shooting higher across many advanced economies as consumer demand, shortages and other pandemic-related factors combine to fuel a burst of inflation.

    The spike has become a source of annoyance among consumers and worry among policymakers who are concerned that rapid price gains might last. It is one of the main factors central bankers are looking at as they decide when — and how quickly — to return monetary policy to normal.

    Most policymakers believe that today’s rapid inflation will fade. That expectation may be reinforced by the fact that many economies are experiencing a price pop in tandem, even though they used vastly different policies to cushion the blow of pandemic lockdowns.

    The shared inflation experience underscores that mismatches between what consumers want to buy and what companies are able to deliver are helping to drive the price increases. While those may be amplified by worldwide stimulus spending, they are not the simple result of nation-specific policy choices — and they should eventually work themselves out. …

     

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    September 8, 2021 at 10:07 am

    Statue Robert E. Lee is removed in Virginia

    RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A crowd erupted in cheers and song Wednesday as work crews hoisted an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee off the giant pedestal where it has towered over Virginia’s capital city for more than a century.

    The piece, one of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, was lifted away just before 9 a.m. as one of the construction workers who helped strap harnesses to Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted down, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from a crowd of hundreds. …

    The statue was lowered to the ground where it was expected to be cut into pieces so that it can be brought to a secure location, where it will be stored until its final disposition is determined.

    One of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, was taken down from its prominent perch after years of resistance and a long court battle. Among the crowd watching the removal, there did not appear to be any visible counterprotesters. …

    The statue, a 21-foot (6-meter) bronze equestrian sculpture that sits atop a pedestal nearly twice that tall, has towered above a prominent residential boulevard named Monument Avenue since 1890 in this former capital of the Confederacy. …

    • EMichael says:
      September 8, 2021 at 1:18 pm

      I was a big Civil War buff for most of my life. I’ve read everything I could find, and visited a dozen or so battlegrounds.

      I was on business in Richmond 30 years ago and had the afternoon to myself before flying out, so I visited a couple of museums and the Tredegar Ironworks among others.

      What struck my far above anything else was the feeling it seemed like the South won the war. It was bizarre.

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        September 8, 2021 at 5:11 pm

        Supposedly, prior to the Civil War, military officers did not swear to ‘uphold the Constitution…’ .

        Confederate generals didn’t violate oaths

        Lee, it would seem, was a Virginian first, a southerner second, and other loyalties were farther down his list.

        That was changed after the war.

        In 1865 Lee did swear to uphold the Constitution…’

        Lee’s post-war oath

         

        • EMichael says:
          September 9, 2021 at 7:10 am

          Where do you come up with this utter nonsense?

           

          “Upon entering West Point in 1825 as a Cadet, Robert E. Lee took an oath of allegiance: “I, Robert E. Lee …. Do promise upon honor that I will observe and obey the orders of the officers appointed over me… and the regulations that have been established for the government of the Military Academy.” By 1857, the Oath included, “do solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America and that I will serve”.

          When Lee graduated and was commissioned a Brevet Lieutenant in the United States Army in 1829, he took the Officer’s Oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States and the officers over me according to the rules and articles for the Armies of the United States.”

          http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/opinion/article/debating_robert_e._lee_patriot_or_traitor/

           

        • EMichael says:
          September 9, 2021 at 8:24 am

          He was a treasonous traitor.

           

          “When Lee graduated and was commissioned a Brevet Lieutenant in the United States Army in 1829, he took the Officer’s Oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States and the officers over me according to the rules and articles for the Armies of the United States.”

          http://www.sovanow.com/index.php?/opinion/article/debating_robert_e._lee_patriot_or_traitor/

           

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        September 8, 2021 at 5:57 pm

        Lee freed his wife’s slaves (eventually)

        (In 1857 or ’58, Lee acted as) the executor of his father-in-law’s will. His wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee, a descendant of Martha Washington, had recently inherited her father’s estate, Arlington House, along with the slaves who lived there.

        In his will, Ms. Lee’s father, George Washington Parke Custis, said his slaves should be freed five years after his death. …

        In 1862, in accordance with Mr. Custis’s will, Lee filed a deed of manumission to free the slaves at Arlington House and at two more plantations Mr. Custis had owned, individually naming more than 150 of them. …

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      September 8, 2021 at 4:56 pm

      Robert E. Lee Wrote to The NY Times About Slavery in 1858

      NY Times – August 18, 2017

      One day in January, a few years before the Civil War, Robert E. Lee wrote … that the people enslaved on his family’s property, in what was then known as Alexandria County, were not “being sold South,” as had been reported. And he implied that he would free them within five years. …

      His wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee, a descendant of Martha Washington, had recently inherited her father’s estate, Arlington House, along with the slaves who lived there.

      In his will, Ms. Lee’s father, George Washington Parke Custis, said his slaves should be freed five years after his death. …

      Lee joined the secessionists in April 1861. He left Arlington House, and the estate was eventually overtaken by Union soldiers. (The dead were buried in its grounds, which would later become the site of Arlington National Cemetery.) Over the course of the conflict, many slaves were hired out or escaped the property.

      In 1862, in accordance with Mr. Custis’s will, Lee filed a deed of manumission to free the slaves at Arlington House and at two more plantations Mr. Custis had owned, individually naming more than 150 of them. …

       

      “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country,” (Lee) wrote.

      But he added that slavery was “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race” in the United States, and that the “painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction.” …

      Image

       

  • rjs says:
    September 9, 2021 at 12:28 am

    i just noticed UK Covid cases are up 49.6% over the last five weeks:

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

    so much for touting them as a model of how to beat Delta..

    • rjs says:
      September 9, 2021 at 12:29 am

      to clarify, that’s new covid cases…

  • coberly says:
    September 9, 2021 at 11:09 am

    EMichael

    whar would you expect.  people need their pride. even if they have to make it up.  The civil war did free the slaves. reonstruction tried to keep them free, but the country lost interest…and the means to defeat what became Jim Crow. a hundred years later Johnson and Martin Luther King were pretty successful in convincing the country that Jim Crow was wrong and open racism, and legal racism, subsided.  but racism is not easy to kill and the evil weed has sprouted and spread again.  i think the libs are at least partly to blame…pushing for policies not really needed but too close to the bone for a lot of people to accept,  and even anti-racists get tired of a certain level of “poor me” from the professional anti-racist.  i suspect the people who cheered pulling down Robt E Lee statue were not representative of the local population.

    I don’t think it will hep a single person, but will give the racists something to feel sorry for themselves about.  I can imagine some poor white kid telling the press a hundred years from now how bad it makes him feel to walk past the place where they pulled ol’Robert E Lee down.

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