For most of my adult life, I’ve learned history almost exclusively by reading books. I took American and World history in high school and two quarters of American history in college, but after that, I became a history autodidact. I’ve written several book reviews (and published three of them), but this is the first course […]
Jobless claims: the situation remains, ‘all system go’ – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims declined -2,000 last week to 190,000, while the 4 week moving average increased 1,750 to 193,000. Continuing claims, with a one week delay, increased 5,000 to 1,655,000. All of these remain excellent numbers: To repeat my meme over the […]
History is replete with those times when we got it all catastrophically wrong. Including for sure those times when some deranged soul led a people into the insanity of war; but also those like The Spanish-American War, World War One, The Vietnam War, and The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars where the cues of change were […]
The recent train derailment in Ohio of a Norfolk Southern train has me thinking. As this accident relates to our social order, there is just so many paths, perspectives and questions one can dive into. I almost could not decide what direction to address it all from. We have the capitalism/free market angle. Is this […]
Just finished “Lenin’s Tomb” by David Remnick. The book’s subtitle is “The last days of the Soviet empire.” At ca. 550 pages, it might seem a lot of text to devote to a few days or weeks, but that’s not what the book is really about. Remnick shows us how the history of the Soviet […]
Up from craft workers to those of the large industrials, by the mid-20th Century unions had grown to represent large segments of American workers (density peaked at 35% of workers in 1954, membership at 21 million in 1979). From the mid-1930s through the mid-1960s they played a huge role in the nation’s politics, social order, […]
This Is What Happens When Progressives Look the Other Way – Peter Dorman @Econospeak Recent events in Florida—the “Stop WOKE” Act, the rejection of AP African American Studies, the hostile takeover of New College—and the publication of an excellent op-ed about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the Chronicle of Higher Education have me returning to a […]
. . . called The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, and he was interviewed by Rob Johnson on the Economics & Beyond podcast. Here’s a quote from 50:20 in the pod (my transcription, done before I saw the official transcript at the link): Now a core thesis of my book . . . is that If […]
Index of leading indicators says recession almost certain; so what of the coincident indicators? – by New Deal democrat This week is one of those where almost all of the important data is crammed into one day – in this case, Thursday, when Q4 GDP, initial claims, real manufacturng and trade sales, durable goods orders, […]
Extending Capital to Nature, Reducing Nature to Capital The Biden administration has announced it is inaugurating a program to incorporate the value of natural resources and ecological services into national income accounts. The New York Times article reporting this development predictably portrays the response as divided between two camps: on the one side are environmentalists, who think […]