Aren’t you glad you moved to Arizona? With Kari Lake as Governor and Mark Finchem as Secretary of State, your 2024 presidential vote will not be worth a plugged nickel.
I moved from Michigan to AZ. Similar states in politics, ignorance, violence, etc. I grew up in Chicago, a tough city.
I am known for asking the smart questions (by my counters) when I sat on a Planning and Zoning Commission as Vice Chair. AZ is known as a purple state since the last election. Lets see how it goes. Women are angry for sure.
Am I happy? Yes, we needed a change. In a few months I will start to explore the area.
i’m wondering if inventories are up because after being scared by covid layoffs the people are beginning to understand they don’t need to spend as fast as they earn it.
this would not explain inflation. what seems to me to explain that is that if companies see they are not going to seel as much, they can sell at a higher price to the smaller number of people who really need (want) the stuff.
this runs a bit counter to the supply demand curves they taught in econ 101, but what if the paradigm as changed? or just the particular products in the inventory that people don’t want so much?
Anything can change. Lead times for materials domestically can be long.
If you order from overseas, tack another 5 weeks to it. On hand inventory should always be 5 weeks if the overseas lead time is 5 weeks. You do not order to zero inventory either. If demand decreases, your next decreased order will not have an impact for 5 weeks. You might have one part that takes longer.
With semiconductors, you grow the wafers and the wafers are sent to Fab to be cut, layered with transistors, etc. on each layer.Demand can go up or down.
You really have to know your lead times and what impacts them. It is good to know how your part is made also. Then you can have an intelligent conversation with your supplier.
“an intelligent conversation… i wonder if economists know the details like this.(?)”
[Some economists know where the money goes from ordinary income households (median +/- 40% of overall distribution) such as residence, food, and energy. The rest of household money is a bit more discretionary (meaning varied by preferences instead of necessities), but as the cost of necessities rise then discretionary spending is reduced in sum. The bottom 10% goes hungry, even those that spend more on cheap alcohol, and the top 10% buy toys and “investments” with their spare change.
This is a good time to dust off that “frictions” term as it is the dominant price setter now whether supply chain, sticky prices, or wages and workers. If the Fed sends the US economy to Jiffy Lube, then the frictions would work themselves out in less time, but with much higher inflation. So, why not? The answer is the institutional authority of creditors. Creditors play the music and debtors must dance to it regardless of which political party is in “control,” which is facetious since neither party is ever really in control.]
Automotive builds to a forecast. They also set the capacity of the line to the same forecast. Everything is set to a forecast including paint. In the Tiers, we would/could build the capacity of a tool to the same forecast. Except, we didn’t. We added more capacity as you have better throughput and less costly parts and justify the cost of the tool by doing so (different story).
They really do not know how many they will build. F150s were built to a forecast of 600,000 (2008) when I was planning. For the sills which go into F150s we build a multi-purpose tool to accommodate each version of the F150 (crew cab, etc.). Almost a $million tool. But we did not build three tools.
If they paint F150s yellow, they may not sell them as few want a yellow vehicle. Color is important and a disqualifier. Bare bones vs loaded is another issue. Raptors vs normal F150s. Disel vs gasoline. There are different forecasts which may impact inventory including building to forecast way too many or too few.
People are beginning to sense the economy will change. They may be backing off too. NDd data:
Wages of non-managerial workers
– Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $0.11 to $27.75, which is a 6.2% YoY gain, a further decline of minus 0.2% from last month and its 6.7% peak at the beginning of this year.
Aggregate hours and wages:
– the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers rose by 0.3%, which is above its level just before the pandemic.
– the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose by 0.8%, which is below the average inflation gain of 0.9% in the past 3 months.
Yes, the forecast could be wrong. Have to look to see what Ford is saying. It has been a good year for people due to what Biden and Dems did when he took office. It could have been another 2008 instead.
People could be backing off too. Prices are high on many things. Stretching the household budget and not keeping up with prices.
There have been plenty of articles indicating there was not enough supply of chips to build everything customers wanted, so until there are enough chips, automotive cannot build to forecast.
In the print cartridge business if a supply issue shorted distributors, some would order extra on the hope that they would get the share they wanted. That caused forecasts to be wildly inaccurate. I have to wonder if something similar happened to automotive. I can imagine (even predict) that profit seeking behavior would temporarily lead to an over supply of high profit vehicles. Inventories would be up, not because overall demand was down, but because the mix was poorly managed.
Since automotive fails to maintain orders with the tiers who make the key fobs and the mechanisms within vehicles because they do not want to be responsible for cost, the blame lies with automotive. This is not the first time this has happened. 2008/9/10 was similar and I was chasing those chips.
Dem voters have an abysmal record of paying attention to the importance of the Supreme Court. Efforts must be made by Dem candidates to do everything they can to change that. Dobbs gives them a chance to not only run to overcome the attack on women’s rights, but also to overcome this Supreme Court.
Candidates should certainly campaign on women’s rights, but they must also include a strategy to deal with this monstrous collection of cretins on the Court. Niko Bowie, who clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, has the best thoughts I have read on this:
” I think what that sort of legislation will likely look like is, when Congress enacts laws like a new Voting Rights Act, or like the Women’s Health Protection Act or like a new Clean Air Act, that it just prohibits Courts from undermining that legislation. So the Constitution that we currently have gives Congress the power to regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts; gives Congress the power to regulate what a federal court can do when it sees a law that the individual judge doesn’t like.
In the 1930s, when federal judges were going around enjoining labor unions, Congress thought this should not be what federal judges do. So they just took away the power of judges to enjoin labor unions, absent certain conditions. Congress could do the same thing when judges review federal laws, or when it tries to interpret laws like the Clean Air Act.
So I think there’s a lot that Congress could do to limit the power of courts to interfere with the will of a democratic nation — just like almost every other peer democracy does. This is not a radical position anywhere else in the world, except for in the United States of America.”
Justice Kagan in her rebuttal to the Dobbs decision says similar. “As Alexander Hamilton noted in the Federalist Papers, judges have ‘no influence over either the sword or the purse.’ If we lose faith in the court, it has no power to make us adhere to its decisions.” This article (Kagan) was included in my post “What was in My InBox.”
Here is Hamilton’s commentary in the “Federalist Papers” on the power of SCOTUS.
“Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
-The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community.
-The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.
-The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
This simple view of the matter suggests several important consequences. It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power; that it can never attack with success either of the other two; and that all possible care is requisite to enable it to defend itself against their attacks.
It equally proves, that though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that ‘there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.’ And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments; that as all the effects of such a union must ensue from a dependence of the former on the latter, notwithstanding a nominal and apparent separation; that as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security.”
“This simple view…” but what if the judiciary is alligned with the State executive and State legislator, and if, moreover, those bodies are elected in corrupt elections (which we have just proved there may be no remedy for…even if it was the bad guys accusing the good guys of stealing the election.
maybe even more difficult than that… if the court can’t overrule the legislature, how do we get to Brown v Board…or Roe in the first place?
I tend to think..no slam dunk remedies from me today… that we are going to have to get out and meet the people and convince them of where the danger lies. gonna be hard with the MAGAhats, but they are (almost) half the voting population.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Legislators are elected and judges are appointed, so when legislators are cowardly in the face the next election, then it is up to judicial overreach to save the day from lazy pseudo-democracy. Insofar as legislating from the judicial bench is in keeping with the then currently reigning political ideology, then there is happiness and joy for all. Unfortunately though, choices have consequences such ass civil war, racism, yet more racism, and jeopardy of women’s procreative choice. Roe leads to the most ironic of outcomes, since abortion rights empower those most likely to vote for liberals to not raise offspring and the right to life advocates want liberals to be forced to reproduce. When it comes to property law, then elites and their pet sycophants are merely draconian, but when it comes to sex and reproductive law, then elites and their pet sycophants are also ridiculously imbecilic as well as draconian.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.
Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular as the most egregious example in the court’s history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, famously characterized the decision as the court’s great “self-inflicted wound.”…
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Aside from matters of diversity – and, you know, the fact that everybody raps – here are other ways in which the musical differs from real life:
SLAVERY
▪ It’s true that Hamilton was a member of the New York Manumission Society, formed in 1785, that advocated for gradual emancipation of slaves in that state. But before he moved to America, Hamilton worked for a slave trading company in St. Croix. Louisiana State University history professor Nancy Isenberg says Hamilton himself once bought two slaves for $250.
“Imagine if one of the songs in the musical was ‘$250,’ ” Isenberg told the Associated Press. ”This would make everyone in the audience squirm and scream and it would completely undermine the heroic message and the progressive Hamilton that they want and they crave.”
POLITICS
▪ Hamilton liked big banks. He mistrusted the general population of the United States and, at one point, called for a president to have king-like powers and for a Senate that would serve for life. Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz told the New York Times that Hamilton “was more a man for the 1% than the 99%.”
▪ The show gives the impression Thomas Jefferson spent the Revolutionary War in Paris. Jefferson spent the war in the Continental Congress and as governor of Virginia. He didn’t replace Benjamin Franklin as minister to France until 1784.
▪ Hamilton did not ask for Burr’s help to write “The Federalist Papers,” a series of essays published in 1787 and 1788 in support of adopting the new Constitution. Instead, Hamilton wrote 51 of them, John Madison wrote 29 and John Jay wrote five.
▪ John Adams did not fire Hamilton as he did in the show. In fact, Hamilton resigned as Secretary of the Treasury on Dec. 1, 1794, two years before Adams became president….
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
In the ongoing interest of fact checking then the excerpt that I copied above had a glaring error in its text.
“…Instead, Hamilton wrote 51 of them, John Madison wrote 29 and John Jay wrote five…”
John Madison did not write any of the Federalist Papers, but James Madison wrote 29 of them. Aside from Big Daddy George Washington, who was a masterfully accurate judge of human character, then Jame Madison was the only other Founding Father (unless we can count Thomas Paine whom the others bum-rushed off to be jailed in France) for which the respect with which I was indoctrinated in public school partially remained into my adulthood as an autodidact. Sure James Madison was elitist scum just like the rest, but he and Dolly knew how to play the game when it came to herding political cats into a cogent vision for the future that was not always working painfully cross-purposes. He was not so much a good man as he was not a stupid man.
From 2004 on until about 2010, I watched all CSPAN BookTV episodes that covered either economics, financial regulation, Founding Fathers, healthcare, public education, or the Civil War. Hunting for a home and home mortgage in 2004 had tripped my uh-oh wire although I got a great deal on both. By 2010, then I wanted more direct engagement which got me started in a hunt that ended with Economist View where I remained very engaged except for a few months when I had a software bug until Thoma shut down shop in late 2019. I had learned far more from CSPAN BookTV, but the remaining questions that I had were –
1. Given the facts, then why did economists and policy makers decide to do the foolish things that they do?
2. From what planet did the Constitutional original intent crowd originate (law being law made despite the will of the people and all)?
So, then it was easy enough to use Google to find a source on Hamilton and the Federalist Papers that would put them in a more realistic perspective. Likewise, I can do so to support any of my claims despite my information originated from a set of books, mostly biographies, rather than the Internet. I cannot recall the particular books though because there were so many.
In any case, the answers to my two burning questions turned out to be deeply troubling which I did learn from my dialogues at EV, primarily from (Owen) Paine, but also Seth and Goldilocksisableachblonde, and some from Mark Sadowski. Since then it just appears even more helpless a matter from which to emerge without a substantial exogenous event forcing a change.
well, you seem to have done good. it seems to me that it is pretty easy for a person to get lost in google…but reading enough from different authors, if you don’t start out with invincible preconceptions will lead you to at least a more nuanced view of reality (?) or at least history and politics than most people get from “the news”, their favorite commentators, and the simple stories they got in schools heavily burdened by school boards with political agendas.
I started out among slightly crazy people and gradually learned they were less crazy than most people. gave me the idea that craziness was the key. by the time i learned you (I) can’t cure craziness it was too late to learn how to make money…say, by building a better bomb.
I did stumble upon a simple truth about social security, which brought me here…where i have learned you can’t cure craziness, and have come to suspect there is such a thing as evil, and it is far more common than i thought.
i should say, though it won’t do any good, that i am not talking about the owners of AB, or even most of their customers. mostly.
Yes on the multiple authors, but no on Google or even Internet sources as primary. Autodidact is learning from primary sources without the inherent bias of interpretation and filtering by establishment institutions, but if entirely guided by one’s own preconceptions then is nothing more than confirmation bias. My basis was everything about my areas of interest that played on weekend C-SPAN BookTV over the course of about six years regardless of whether they represented the outlook of like-minded individuals or the opposition POV.
I did not read any of the books though. I got all that I wanted from the author’s summaries and the Q&A with their book show audiences. It was the wide net rather that particular details that informed my and also multiple snap shots of many nexus points in history.
Alice O’Connor, a.k.a., Ayssa Rosenbaum, a.k.a. Ayn Rand gets a lot of abuse for someone that was the way she was because of being raped by young Bolsheviks when she was only thirteen years old while her Jewish parents stood by unable to help for fear for their own lives.
I have great sympathy for people who have suffered trauma. But insane is still insane. And the people who buy into her insanity are either just silly college students who think they are smart and misunderstood, or truly evil.
That doesnt mean i want to put them in jail, but it’s funny that when i try to warn people about falling into their nonsense, those people…the ones i am trying to warn… go into hysterical hate mode at me. It doesn’t hurt me, but it’s frustrating and I get tired of it.
However you have put together your view of the world, it seems to agree with mine as much as can be expected, that shows some kind of ability to resist self deception and to “compare and contrast” as they say.
I see my name is still be taken in vain on a related thread. biting my lip.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Just got around to reading that Thom Hartmann article from the link you provided. Libertarians have never intruded on my private life. I have always lived in the wrong neighborhoods for their kind (racially integrated labor class) and associated with the wrong type of people (artists, musicians, and landscapers). After I was laid off from my state IT analyst position by the Northrop Grumman primary outsource management team, then I have never talked to another one. That was just another perk of retirement from paid work.
The Hartmann story of Ayn Rand was same as I have read before. I deduced the rape myself from her relationship with her mother from interviews with each and Edward Crankshaw’s account of the Bolsheviks that confiscated property from Russian Jews. A very pretty lady lent me Atlas Shrugged in the early 80’s, but I knew the background and went directly to the famous soliloquy by Galt and read enough to be sure that her lead character was a sociopath which really meant that she was a sociopath. So, I just returned the book to its owner and never asked her out despite that she was quite a hottie and obviously interested. Everything about Ayn Rand screams of her narcissistic personality disorder and I know the developmental psychology conditions that lead to this outcome.
The behaviorists are almost correct, but they miss the part about the animal that is programmed by environmental influences. They forget that the animal is there, not just a piece of clay to be molded. Skinner falsely believed that he could control it, shape the individual according to his plan. Such brainwashing has worked in a crude way for China and Korea, but it is traumatic and dehumanizing.
In any case, it is wise to avoid sociopaths and their sycophants. It is also a lot easier than avoiding stupid people, which are everywhere. Thankfully sociopaths only account for about 4% to 10% of the overall general population (depending upon the reference source).
I pointed out the Ayn Rand article not so much to say she was a baddie, but to suggest that her prominent followers are baddies.
Trouble with that small percentage of people being sociopaths is that the large percentage of people seem to be quite easily led by them.
i think we have a number of leading persons in our society who cross the line from sociopath to psychopath. The difference between them, according to my view, is that the sociopath is glad to take your money. the sociopath wants to hurt you, enjoys hurting you, and wants you to know it.
While I won’t argue with Justice Kagan, Dobbs seems like an odd choice of cases to highlight this as the decision doesn’t call on any special enforcement hinging on the court’s reputation. Mississippi and other states might have trouble enforcing their laws, but that’s not due to the court’s reputation.
Two short introduction sentences on Hamilton and Federalist #78 by Kagan. Twelve or so sentences (including run-on sentences) by Hamilton on SCOTUS. You wish to concentrate on Kagan two sentences rather than Hamilton defining the power of SCOTUS?
U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said on Friday, an unexpectedly strong gain that shows the labor market is withstanding the economic impact of higher interest rates, at least so far.
The impressive performance — which brings total employment back to its level of February 2020, just before the pandemic lockdowns — provides new evidence that the United States has not entered a recession.
Payrolls have fully recovered the jobs lost in the pandemic.
Stocks on Wall Street dropped on Friday, after the far stronger than expected jobs report upended expectations that the Federal Reserve will be able to slow down its campaign to raise interest rates.
The S&P 500 fell about 0.3 percent by midday, recouping some of the morning’s losses.
Friday’s dip comes after stocks had been rallying as investors began to anticipate that the Fed would be able to ease up on its efforts to cool the economy. …
Typically, when such drops happen it is said that the market had previously adjusted to whatever good news had just been announced. One or two have already said the bear market is over.
You might think Wall St might rise a lot today on the IRA passage in the Senate. It was up significantly this morning, now headed down.
Profit taking, already? Or did the market already adjust its thinking since yesterday, and discount any good economic news coming out of the news? Maybe both.
Typically, in recessions, the problem is that businesses don’t want to hire and consumers don’t want to spend. Right now, businesses want to hire, but can’t find the workers to fill open jobs. Consumers want to spend, but can’t find cars to buy or flights to book.
Recessions, in other words, are about too much supply and too little demand. What the U.S. economy is facing is the opposite. Just like North Dakota in 2010.
… The United States was hit by a pandemic, which caused a shift in demand and disrupted supply chains around the world. …
Still, whether local or national, the most obvious consequence is the same: inflation. When demand outstrips supply — whether for steel-toe boots in an oil boomtown or for restaurant seats in the aftermath of a pandemic — prices rise. …
There is also a subtler consequence: uncertainty. No one knows how long the boom will last, or what the economy will look like on the other side of it, which makes it hard for workers, businesses and governments to adapt. …
(At lot of anecdotal material about ‘ Williston, N.D., in about 2010.’ edited out.)
… America’s poor have spent part of the savings they amassed during coronavirus lockdowns, and their wages are increasingly struggling to keep up with — or falling behind — price increases. Because such a big chunk of their budgets is devoted to food and housing, lower-income families have less room to cut back before they have to stop buying necessities. Some are taking on credit card debt, cutting back on shopping and restaurant meals, putting off replacing their cars or even buying fewer groceries.
But while lower-income families spend more of each dollar they earn, the rich and middle classes have so much more money that they account for a much bigger share of spending in the overall economy: The top two-fifths of the income distribution account for about 60 percent of spending in the economy, the bottom two-fifths about 22 percent. That means the rich can continue to fuel the economy even as the poor pull back, a potential difficulty for policymakers. …
Americans with low incomes are pulling back from buying even as their richer counterparts keep spending — with potentially big consequences.
They really did it. The Inflation Reduction Act, which is mainly a climate change bill with a side helping of health reform, passed the Senate on Sunday; by all accounts it will easily pass the House, so it’s about to become law.
This is a very big deal. The act isn’t, by itself, enough to avert climate disaster. But it’s a huge step in the right direction, and sets the stage for more action in the years ahead. It will catalyze progress in green technology; its economic benefits will make passing additional legislation easier; it gives the United States the credibility it needs to lead a global effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
There are, of course, cynics eager to denigrate the achievement. Some on the left rushed to dismiss the bill as a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry posing as environmental action. More important, Republicans — who unanimously opposed the legislation — are shouting the usual things they shout: Big spending! Inflation!
But actual experts on energy and the environment are giddy over what has been accomplished, and serious economists aren’t worried about the effect on inflation.
Start with the environmental side. Many people I talk to assume that President Biden’s environmental agenda, as contained in his original Build Back Better proposal, must have been greatly watered down in the legislation we actually got. After all, didn’t Democrats have to make big concessions to win over Senator Joe Manchin? Aren’t there important giveaways to fossil fuel interests, like aid for a controversial natural gas pipeline?
However, energy analysts believe that any adverse climate effect from these concessions will be swamped by the gains from tax credits for clean energy. The REPEAT Project, compiled by Princeton’s ZERO Lab, has produced a side-by-side comparison of emissions cuts under the Inflation Reduction Act and the earlier House version of Build Back Better. By 2035 the I.R.A., they estimate, will have delivered more than 90 percent of the emissions reductions that B.B.B. would have achieved. After all that legislative drama, Biden’s climate policy has emerged essentially intact. …
They really did it. The Inflation Reduction Act, which is mainly a climate change bill with a side helping of health reform, passed the Senate on Sunday; by all accounts it will easily pass the House, so it’s about to become law.
This is a very big deal. The act isn’t, by itself, enough to avert climate disaster. But it’s a huge step in the right direction, and sets the stage for more action in the years ahead. It will catalyze progress in green technology; its economic benefits will make passing additional legislation easier; it gives the United States the credibility it needs to lead a global effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
There are, of course, cynics eager to denigrate the achievement. Some on the left rushed to dismiss the bill as a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry posing as environmental action. More important, Republicans — who unanimously opposed the legislation — are shouting the usual things they shout: Big spending! Inflation! …
… The Inflation Reduction Act calls for spending less than $500 billion over a decade, compared with the American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion in a single year — and will actually reduce the deficit. That’s why independent analysts find that it will have little effect on inflation.
But if the spending isn’t very large, how can it have such a big impact? The answer is that right now we’re sitting on a sort of cusp. Renewable energy technology has made revolutionary progress, and renewables are already cheaper in many areas than fossil fuels. A moderate push from public policy is all that it will take to transition to a much greener economy. And the Inflation Reduction Act will provide that push.
Given all this, however, why did every single Republican senator vote against the I.R.A.? They aren’t all ignorant and innumerate; I’m pretty sure that Romney, for example, knows that he’s talking nonsense.
Nor can we easily invoke differences in ideology. The I.R.A.’s climate push mostly relies on tax credits — and Republicans have themselves used tax credits to achieve social goals, like the (much abused) Opportunity Zone credits in Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut.
Almost surely, what we’re really looking at is the politics of spite. Every Republican in the Senate was willing to kill our best chance at avoiding climate disaster, simply to deny the Biden administration a win.
The good news is that the legislation passed in spite of their spite. And the world is a more hopeful place than it was just a few weeks ago.
Run,
Aren’t you glad you moved to Arizona? With Kari Lake as Governor and Mark Finchem as Secretary of State, your 2024 presidential vote will not be worth a plugged nickel.
Jim:
I moved from Michigan to AZ. Similar states in politics, ignorance, violence, etc. I grew up in Chicago, a tough city.
I am known for asking the smart questions (by my counters) when I sat on a Planning and Zoning Commission as Vice Chair. AZ is known as a purple state since the last election. Lets see how it goes. Women are angry for sure.
Am I happy? Yes, we needed a change. In a few months I will start to explore the area.
Jobs are up. Inventories are up. Prices are up.
It seems the economy is failing to reward firms for figuring out how these added workers want to spend their money. (Or failing to punishing failure).
Arne:
Inventories are up, time to reduce production.
run
i’m wondering if inventories are up because after being scared by covid layoffs the people are beginning to understand they don’t need to spend as fast as they earn it.
this would not explain inflation. what seems to me to explain that is that if companies see they are not going to seel as much, they can sell at a higher price to the smaller number of people who really need (want) the stuff.
this runs a bit counter to the supply demand curves they taught in econ 101, but what if the paradigm as changed? or just the particular products in the inventory that people don’t want so much?
Coberly
Anything can change. Lead times for materials domestically can be long.
If you order from overseas, tack another 5 weeks to it. On hand inventory should always be 5 weeks if the overseas lead time is 5 weeks. You do not order to zero inventory either. If demand decreases, your next decreased order will not have an impact for 5 weeks. You might have one part that takes longer.
With semiconductors, you grow the wafers and the wafers are sent to Fab to be cut, layered with transistors, etc. on each layer.Demand can go up or down.
You really have to know your lead times and what impacts them. It is good to know how your part is made also. Then you can have an intelligent conversation with your supplier.
run
an intelligent conversation. that lets me out. i wonder if economists know the details like this.
Coberly,
“an intelligent conversation… i wonder if economists know the details like this.(?)”
[Some economists know where the money goes from ordinary income households (median +/- 40% of overall distribution) such as residence, food, and energy. The rest of household money is a bit more discretionary (meaning varied by preferences instead of necessities), but as the cost of necessities rise then discretionary spending is reduced in sum. The bottom 10% goes hungry, even those that spend more on cheap alcohol, and the top 10% buy toys and “investments” with their spare change.
This is a good time to dust off that “frictions” term as it is the dominant price setter now whether supply chain, sticky prices, or wages and workers. If the Fed sends the US economy to Jiffy Lube, then the frictions would work themselves out in less time, but with much higher inflation. So, why not? The answer is the institutional authority of creditors. Creditors play the music and debtors must dance to it regardless of which political party is in “control,” which is facetious since neither party is ever really in control.]
What I want to know (or maybe I really don’t) is, are inventories up because they made too many $35K Explorers and not enough $20K Escapes?
Arne:
Automotive builds to a forecast. They also set the capacity of the line to the same forecast. Everything is set to a forecast including paint. In the Tiers, we would/could build the capacity of a tool to the same forecast. Except, we didn’t. We added more capacity as you have better throughput and less costly parts and justify the cost of the tool by doing so (different story).
They really do not know how many they will build. F150s were built to a forecast of 600,000 (2008) when I was planning. For the sills which go into F150s we build a multi-purpose tool to accommodate each version of the F150 (crew cab, etc.). Almost a $million tool. But we did not build three tools.
If they paint F150s yellow, they may not sell them as few want a yellow vehicle. Color is important and a disqualifier. Bare bones vs loaded is another issue. Raptors vs normal F150s. Disel vs gasoline. There are different forecasts which may impact inventory including building to forecast way too many or too few.
People are beginning to sense the economy will change. They may be backing off too. NDd data:
Wages of non-managerial workers
– Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $0.11 to $27.75, which is a 6.2% YoY gain, a further decline of minus 0.2% from last month and its 6.7% peak at the beginning of this year.
Aggregate hours and wages:
– the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers rose by 0.3%, which is above its level just before the pandemic.
– the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose by 0.8%, which is below the average inflation gain of 0.9% in the past 3 months.
Yes, the forecast could be wrong. Have to look to see what Ford is saying. It has been a good year for people due to what Biden and Dems did when he took office. It could have been another 2008 instead.
People could be backing off too. Prices are high on many things. Stretching the household budget and not keeping up with prices.
There have been plenty of articles indicating there was not enough supply of chips to build everything customers wanted, so until there are enough chips, automotive cannot build to forecast.
In the print cartridge business if a supply issue shorted distributors, some would order extra on the hope that they would get the share they wanted. That caused forecasts to be wildly inaccurate. I have to wonder if something similar happened to automotive. I can imagine (even predict) that profit seeking behavior would temporarily lead to an over supply of high profit vehicles. Inventories would be up, not because overall demand was down, but because the mix was poorly managed.
Arne:
Since automotive fails to maintain orders with the tiers who make the key fobs and the mechanisms within vehicles because they do not want to be responsible for cost, the blame lies with automotive. This is not the first time this has happened. 2008/9/10 was similar and I was chasing those chips.
Dem voters have an abysmal record of paying attention to the importance of the Supreme Court. Efforts must be made by Dem candidates to do everything they can to change that. Dobbs gives them a chance to not only run to overcome the attack on women’s rights, but also to overcome this Supreme Court.
Candidates should certainly campaign on women’s rights, but they must also include a strategy to deal with this monstrous collection of cretins on the Court. Niko Bowie, who clerked for Sonia Sotomayor, has the best thoughts I have read on this:
” I think what that sort of legislation will likely look like is, when Congress enacts laws like a new Voting Rights Act, or like the Women’s Health Protection Act or like a new Clean Air Act, that it just prohibits Courts from undermining that legislation. So the Constitution that we currently have gives Congress the power to regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts; gives Congress the power to regulate what a federal court can do when it sees a law that the individual judge doesn’t like.
In the 1930s, when federal judges were going around enjoining labor unions, Congress thought this should not be what federal judges do. So they just took away the power of judges to enjoin labor unions, absent certain conditions. Congress could do the same thing when judges review federal laws, or when it tries to interpret laws like the Clean Air Act.
So I think there’s a lot that Congress could do to limit the power of courts to interfere with the will of a democratic nation — just like almost every other peer democracy does. This is not a radical position anywhere else in the world, except for in the United States of America.”
https://www.vox.com/2305565…
EM;
Justice Kagan in her rebuttal to the Dobbs decision says similar. “As Alexander Hamilton noted in the Federalist Papers, judges have ‘no influence over either the sword or the purse.’ If we lose faith in the court, it has no power to make us adhere to its decisions.” This article (Kagan) was included in my post “What was in My InBox.”
Here is Hamilton’s commentary in the “Federalist Papers” on the power of SCOTUS.
“Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
-The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community.
-The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.
-The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
This simple view of the matter suggests several important consequences. It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power; that it can never attack with success either of the other two; and that all possible care is requisite to enable it to defend itself against their attacks.
It equally proves, that though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that ‘there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.’ And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments; that as all the effects of such a union must ensue from a dependence of the former on the latter, notwithstanding a nominal and apparent separation; that as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security.”
The Federalist Papers: No. 78
The court can only make judgement. Beyond that it is powerless.
“This simple view…” but what if the judiciary is alligned with the State executive and State legislator, and if, moreover, those bodies are elected in corrupt elections (which we have just proved there may be no remedy for…even if it was the bad guys accusing the good guys of stealing the election.
maybe even more difficult than that… if the court can’t overrule the legislature, how do we get to Brown v Board…or Roe in the first place?
I tend to think..no slam dunk remedies from me today… that we are going to have to get out and meet the people and convince them of where the danger lies. gonna be hard with the MAGAhats, but they are (almost) half the voting population.
Coberly,
Legislators are elected and judges are appointed, so when legislators are cowardly in the face the next election, then it is up to judicial overreach to save the day from lazy pseudo-democracy. Insofar as legislating from the judicial bench is in keeping with the then currently reigning political ideology, then there is happiness and joy for all. Unfortunately though, choices have consequences such ass civil war, racism, yet more racism, and jeopardy of women’s procreative choice. Roe leads to the most ironic of outcomes, since abortion rights empower those most likely to vote for liberals to not raise offspring and the right to life advocates want liberals to be forced to reproduce. When it comes to property law, then elites and their pet sycophants are merely draconian, but when it comes to sex and reproductive law, then elites and their pet sycophants are also ridiculously imbecilic as well as draconian.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Dred-Scott-decision
Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.
Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular as the most egregious example in the court’s history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, famously characterized the decision as the court’s great “self-inflicted wound.”…
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jul/06/fact-checking-musical-hamilton/
…
Aside from matters of diversity – and, you know, the fact that everybody raps – here are other ways in which the musical differs from real life:
SLAVERY
▪ It’s true that Hamilton was a member of the New York Manumission Society, formed in 1785, that advocated for gradual emancipation of slaves in that state. But before he moved to America, Hamilton worked for a slave trading company in St. Croix. Louisiana State University history professor Nancy Isenberg says Hamilton himself once bought two slaves for $250.
“Imagine if one of the songs in the musical was ‘$250,’ ” Isenberg told the Associated Press. ”This would make everyone in the audience squirm and scream and it would completely undermine the heroic message and the progressive Hamilton that they want and they crave.”
POLITICS
▪ Hamilton liked big banks. He mistrusted the general population of the United States and, at one point, called for a president to have king-like powers and for a Senate that would serve for life. Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz told the New York Times that Hamilton “was more a man for the 1% than the 99%.”
▪ The show gives the impression Thomas Jefferson spent the Revolutionary War in Paris. Jefferson spent the war in the Continental Congress and as governor of Virginia. He didn’t replace Benjamin Franklin as minister to France until 1784.
▪ Hamilton did not ask for Burr’s help to write “The Federalist Papers,” a series of essays published in 1787 and 1788 in support of adopting the new Constitution. Instead, Hamilton wrote 51 of them, John Madison wrote 29 and John Jay wrote five.
▪ John Adams did not fire Hamilton as he did in the show. In fact, Hamilton resigned as Secretary of the Treasury on Dec. 1, 1794, two years before Adams became president….
In the ongoing interest of fact checking then the excerpt that I copied above had a glaring error in its text.
“…Instead, Hamilton wrote 51 of them, John Madison wrote 29 and John Jay wrote five…”
John Madison did not write any of the Federalist Papers, but James Madison wrote 29 of them. Aside from Big Daddy George Washington, who was a masterfully accurate judge of human character, then Jame Madison was the only other Founding Father (unless we can count Thomas Paine whom the others bum-rushed off to be jailed in France) for which the respect with which I was indoctrinated in public school partially remained into my adulthood as an autodidact. Sure James Madison was elitist scum just like the rest, but he and Dolly knew how to play the game when it came to herding political cats into a cogent vision for the future that was not always working painfully cross-purposes. He was not so much a good man as he was not a stupid man.
Ron
as usual i agree with much of this, and might find it fun to debate some of the rest…
curious about your sources.
Coberly,
From 2004 on until about 2010, I watched all CSPAN BookTV episodes that covered either economics, financial regulation, Founding Fathers, healthcare, public education, or the Civil War. Hunting for a home and home mortgage in 2004 had tripped my uh-oh wire although I got a great deal on both. By 2010, then I wanted more direct engagement which got me started in a hunt that ended with Economist View where I remained very engaged except for a few months when I had a software bug until Thoma shut down shop in late 2019. I had learned far more from CSPAN BookTV, but the remaining questions that I had were –
1. Given the facts, then why did economists and policy makers decide to do the foolish things that they do?
2. From what planet did the Constitutional original intent crowd originate (law being law made despite the will of the people and all)?
So, then it was easy enough to use Google to find a source on Hamilton and the Federalist Papers that would put them in a more realistic perspective. Likewise, I can do so to support any of my claims despite my information originated from a set of books, mostly biographies, rather than the Internet. I cannot recall the particular books though because there were so many.
In any case, the answers to my two burning questions turned out to be deeply troubling which I did learn from my dialogues at EV, primarily from (Owen) Paine, but also Seth and Goldilocksisableachblonde, and some from Mark Sadowski. Since then it just appears even more helpless a matter from which to emerge without a substantial exogenous event forcing a change.
Ron
well, you seem to have done good. it seems to me that it is pretty easy for a person to get lost in google…but reading enough from different authors, if you don’t start out with invincible preconceptions will lead you to at least a more nuanced view of reality (?) or at least history and politics than most people get from “the news”, their favorite commentators, and the simple stories they got in schools heavily burdened by school boards with political agendas.
I started out among slightly crazy people and gradually learned they were less crazy than most people. gave me the idea that craziness was the key. by the time i learned you (I) can’t cure craziness it was too late to learn how to make money…say, by building a better bomb.
I did stumble upon a simple truth about social security, which brought me here…where i have learned you can’t cure craziness, and have come to suspect there is such a thing as evil, and it is far more common than i thought.
i should say, though it won’t do any good, that i am not talking about the owners of AB, or even most of their customers. mostly.
gonna try to get back to tending my garden.
you might find this interesting. by Thom Hartman on Alternet today. it’s about the influence of Ayn Rand on american politics.
How a serial killer set the stage for the modern GOP | Opinion
Coberly,
Yes on the multiple authors, but no on Google or even Internet sources as primary. Autodidact is learning from primary sources without the inherent bias of interpretation and filtering by establishment institutions, but if entirely guided by one’s own preconceptions then is nothing more than confirmation bias. My basis was everything about my areas of interest that played on weekend C-SPAN BookTV over the course of about six years regardless of whether they represented the outlook of like-minded individuals or the opposition POV.
I did not read any of the books though. I got all that I wanted from the author’s summaries and the Q&A with their book show audiences. It was the wide net rather that particular details that informed my and also multiple snap shots of many nexus points in history.
Alice O’Connor, a.k.a., Ayssa Rosenbaum, a.k.a. Ayn Rand gets a lot of abuse for someone that was the way she was because of being raped by young Bolsheviks when she was only thirteen years old while her Jewish parents stood by unable to help for fear for their own lives.
Ron
I have great sympathy for people who have suffered trauma. But insane is still insane. And the people who buy into her insanity are either just silly college students who think they are smart and misunderstood, or truly evil.
That doesnt mean i want to put them in jail, but it’s funny that when i try to warn people about falling into their nonsense, those people…the ones i am trying to warn… go into hysterical hate mode at me. It doesn’t hurt me, but it’s frustrating and I get tired of it.
However you have put together your view of the world, it seems to agree with mine as much as can be expected, that shows some kind of ability to resist self deception and to “compare and contrast” as they say.
I see my name is still be taken in vain on a related thread. biting my lip.
Coberly,
Just got around to reading that Thom Hartmann article from the link you provided. Libertarians have never intruded on my private life. I have always lived in the wrong neighborhoods for their kind (racially integrated labor class) and associated with the wrong type of people (artists, musicians, and landscapers). After I was laid off from my state IT analyst position by the Northrop Grumman primary outsource management team, then I have never talked to another one. That was just another perk of retirement from paid work.
The Hartmann story of Ayn Rand was same as I have read before. I deduced the rape myself from her relationship with her mother from interviews with each and Edward Crankshaw’s account of the Bolsheviks that confiscated property from Russian Jews. A very pretty lady lent me Atlas Shrugged in the early 80’s, but I knew the background and went directly to the famous soliloquy by Galt and read enough to be sure that her lead character was a sociopath which really meant that she was a sociopath. So, I just returned the book to its owner and never asked her out despite that she was quite a hottie and obviously interested. Everything about Ayn Rand screams of her narcissistic personality disorder and I know the developmental psychology conditions that lead to this outcome.
The behaviorists are almost correct, but they miss the part about the animal that is programmed by environmental influences. They forget that the animal is there, not just a piece of clay to be molded. Skinner falsely believed that he could control it, shape the individual according to his plan. Such brainwashing has worked in a crude way for China and Korea, but it is traumatic and dehumanizing.
In any case, it is wise to avoid sociopaths and their sycophants. It is also a lot easier than avoiding stupid people, which are everywhere. Thankfully sociopaths only account for about 4% to 10% of the overall general population (depending upon the reference source).
Ron
I pointed out the Ayn Rand article not so much to say she was a baddie, but to suggest that her prominent followers are baddies.
Trouble with that small percentage of people being sociopaths is that the large percentage of people seem to be quite easily led by them.
i think we have a number of leading persons in our society who cross the line from sociopath to psychopath. The difference between them, according to my view, is that the sociopath is glad to take your money. the sociopath wants to hurt you, enjoys hurting you, and wants you to know it.
While I won’t argue with Justice Kagan, Dobbs seems like an odd choice of cases to highlight this as the decision doesn’t call on any special enforcement hinging on the court’s reputation. Mississippi and other states might have trouble enforcing their laws, but that’s not due to the court’s reputation.
Hmmmm
Two short introduction sentences on Hamilton and Federalist #78 by Kagan. Twelve or so sentences (including run-on sentences) by Hamilton on SCOTUS. You wish to concentrate on Kagan two sentences rather than Hamilton defining the power of SCOTUS?
U.S. jobs report shows a gain of 528,000 in July
NY Times – Aug 5
U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said on Friday, an unexpectedly strong gain that shows the labor market is withstanding the economic impact of higher interest rates, at least so far.
The impressive performance — which brings total employment back to its level of February 2020, just before the pandemic lockdowns — provides new evidence that the United States has not entered a recession.
Payrolls have fully recovered the jobs lost in the pandemic.
(graph at link)
Stocks drop after the strong jobs report upends expectations for
the Fed’s next move.
Stocks on Wall Street dropped on Friday, after the far stronger than expected jobs report upended expectations that the Federal Reserve will be able to slow down its campaign to raise interest rates.
The S&P 500 fell about 0.3 percent by midday, recouping some of the morning’s losses.
Friday’s dip comes after stocks had been rallying as investors began to anticipate that the Fed would be able to ease up on its efforts to cool the economy. …
strange. the market goes down becuse the economy is too good to keep the Fed from slowing the economy?
Typically, when such drops happen it is said that the market had previously adjusted to whatever good news had just been announced. One or two have already said the bear market is over.
You might think Wall St might rise a lot today on the IRA passage in the Senate. It was up significantly this morning, now headed down.
Profit taking, already? Or did the market already adjust its thinking since yesterday, and discount any good economic news coming out of the news? Maybe both.
How This Economic Moment Rewrites the Rules
NY Times – Aug 6
In an Unequal Economy, the Poor Face Inflation Now and Job Loss Later
NY Times – Aug 8
Americans with low incomes are pulling back from buying even as their richer counterparts keep spending — with potentially big consequences.
Did Democrats Just Save Civilization?
NY Times – Paul Krugman – August 8
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/opinion/climate-inflation-bill.html?smid=tw-share”>Did Democrats Just Save Civilization?</a>
NY Times – Paul Krugman – August 8
They really did it. The Inflation Reduction Act, which is mainly a climate change bill with a side helping of health reform, passed the Senate on Sunday; by all accounts it will easily pass the House, so it’s about to become law.
This is a very big deal. The act isn’t, by itself, enough to avert climate disaster. But it’s a huge step in the right direction, and sets the stage for more action in the years ahead. It will catalyze progress in green technology; its economic benefits will make passing additional legislation easier; it gives the United States the credibility it needs to lead a global effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
There are, of course, cynics eager to denigrate the achievement. Some on the left rushed to dismiss the bill as a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry posing as environmental action. More important, Republicans — who unanimously opposed the legislation — are shouting the usual things they shout: Big spending! Inflation! …
… The Inflation Reduction Act calls for spending less than $500 billion over a decade, compared with the American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion in a single year — and will actually reduce the deficit. That’s why independent analysts find that it will have little effect on inflation.
But if the spending isn’t very large, how can it have such a big impact? The answer is that right now we’re sitting on a sort of cusp. Renewable energy technology has made revolutionary progress, and renewables are already cheaper in many areas than fossil fuels. A moderate push from public policy is all that it will take to transition to a much greener economy. And the Inflation Reduction Act will provide that push.
Given all this, however, why did every single Republican senator vote against the I.R.A.? They aren’t all ignorant and innumerate; I’m pretty sure that Romney, for example, knows that he’s talking nonsense.
Nor can we easily invoke differences in ideology. The I.R.A.’s climate push mostly relies on tax credits — and Republicans have themselves used tax credits to achieve social goals, like the (much abused) Opportunity Zone credits in Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut.
Almost surely, what we’re really looking at is the politics of spite. Every Republican in the Senate was willing to kill our best chance at avoiding climate disaster, simply to deny the Biden administration a win.
The good news is that the legislation passed in spite of their spite. And the world is a more hopeful place than it was just a few weeks ago.
Dobbs
I’m not sure it’s spite. more like politics. they cannot admit to their base that they have been wrong. also they have to remember their sponsors.