Consider these excerpts from a recent piece by Jeffrey Tucker at the Brownstone Institute with the understated title “The Purges Have Begin”. Would someone who took these extreme, apocalyptic arguments to heart oppose efforts by a faction of ethno-nationalist Republicans to steal an election or entrench themselves in power? The policies have been bad enough […]
Housing and car sales, oh my! [If last week was a slow week for economic data, this week is a virtual wasteland until Thursday, so I took yesterday off.] Last month I wrote that typically it has taken at least a 20% decline in housing construction to be consistent with an oncoming recession and that […]
Over at 538, Nathaniel Rakich points out that Biden’s approval rating is continuing to decline, despite the fact that Afghanistan coverage has declined. It’s hard to know what is going on here, but my guess is that two factors outside Afghanistan are important. First, the pandemic is dragging on, and people tend to blame the […]
Commenter and Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666, “Trade Deficit Rose 4.2% to a Record High in August on Higher Imports of Pharmaceuticals and Services” Our trade deficit rose by 4.2% in August as the value of both our exports and our imports increased, but the value of our imports increased by four times as much . […]
Michael Smith, Real Farmer and Farm Economist Ooh boy have we got a lot going on in ag world. Run sent me this a little while ago and I think this is important. The Tricky New Way That Big Ag Is Getting Farm Data, The Atlantic, Claire Kelloway, October 5, 2021 Big data collection is […]
EconoSpeak: Will Krysten Sinema Change Parties?, Barkley Rosser, October 5, 2021 I have resisted posting something like this, but while I have yet to see anybody else suggest it, this possibility has been on my mind now for several days. We have never seen to my knowledge a senator refuse to offer their views on […]
Democratizing Work I was a bit skeptical of the Global Forum on Democratizing Work. It seemed to me that rushing into an online conference was perhaps a bit over ambitious and misdirected for a relatively new initiative that arose out of a collective letter to the editors of newspapers. Anyway, I attended three-session today, two […]
Politicians, preachers, and other charlatans have long known people were manipulable. They had achieved their mastery of the craft of manipulation by observation and practice. By craft, they were con artists. In another sense, they were psychologists before there was such. Before 1860, psychology was a branch of philosophy. A German, Wilhelm Wundt, was one […]
Michael Smith on the Open Thread: “‘Found this interesting. Tucked in the reconciliation bill they want to mandate employers with 5+ employees to contribute up to 10% to an IRA. Failure to do so is ‘taxed’.” Hidden In The Reconciliation Bill: A Retirement Plan Mandate That Will Take Most People By Surprise, Forbes, Elizabeth Bauer, […]