Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Advocate of Book Burning Becomes Chairman of Virginia School Board

(Dan here…I am reading more examples of this trend of local censorship) From Diane Ravitche’s blog comes this posting: (Quote) Peter Greene tells the ignominious story of the Spottsylvania, Virginia, school board. One of the school board members, Kirk Twigg, is a conservative Christian who is very fearful of books that might have any sexual content. He […]

Book review: “The St. Louis Commune of 1877”

Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Upfront Blog For Christmas 2021, Linda gave me a copy of “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland” by Mark Kruger. The title certainly grabbed my attention. Having read it, there’s somewhat less than meets the eye here. The reason I never heard of this before is that the […]

New Student Loan Payment Schedule

Alan Collinge’s Student Loan Justice Facebook page. I keep talking about how the consolidation fees, late fees, forbearance interest, etc. and the interest on the previous adds up over time. Pretty soon, it surpasses the original loan balance. There are probably worse examples of this occurring. As it is, the non-principal payments are more than […]

Paul Samuelson On Knut Wicksell

Paul Samuelson On Knut Wicksell  Something I have been doing for several years now is serving as Senior Coeditor of the Fourth Edition of the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, with the original one published back in 1894 in London (my coeditors are Matias Vernengo and Esteban Perez). As part of this effort, a multi-year […]

RIP Sharon L. O’Hare

If Barkley is writing about it, it warrants space on AB. RIP Sharon L. O’Hare, Econospeak, Barley Rosser I know, I know, my part of this blog is increasingly resembling an obituary column. But, heck, people I know who are conneted to econ keep dying, although this one was not as well known as others. […]

Low Income Families Spend Tax Credit on Basic Needs and Education

This topic is blowing up in the news. Politicians claiming recipients are laying out cash for drugs and other unneeded things. Funny thing, they didn’t give a damn when 20 million hydrocodone and oxycodone tabs showed up at five pharmacies in 4 small towns having a total population of ~22000 in 2016. Gotta keep those […]

World Covid 19 Vaccination

I am mainly linking to this fairly important article by Dan Diamond in The Washington Post. Diamond quotes many people arguing that the US really should do more to get everyone in the world who is willing to take the vaccine vaccinated. I am going to move on quickly to how this could be done, […]

Letters From An American – Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson

Last night, Professor Heather Cox Richardson discusses the undermining of a citizen’s civil rights by SCOTUS in support of a state law which allows state citizens to infringe upon the rights of other citizens, female citizens within the state even though the actions of the later cause no harm to the former. It is appearing […]