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, […]
UNITED WE SPEND For 20 Top-Selling Drugs Worldwide, Big Pharma Revenue from U.S. Sales Combined Exceeded Revenue from the Rest of the World, Public Citizen, Rick Claypool and Zain Rizvi, I have written on the high prices of pharmaceuticals in the past on Angry Bear, pointing to a WHO report which showed the costs laid […]
In her 2020 book ‘Waste’, Catherine Flowers speaks to the practice in Alabama – throughout the South – of keeping the poor and ignorant poor and ignorant so that there would always be a cheap source of labor on hand. In a September 2021 House Budget Committee hearing, a member from neighboring Georgia patiently explained […]
Improving Medicare Coverage Act – H.R. 5165 Medicare – Improving Medicare Coverage Act; H,R, 5165, September 3, 2021 130+ House Democrats are co-sponsoring a bill by Pramila Jayapal, the Improving Medicare Coverage Act. The impact of which would drop the Medicare eligibility age to 60 years of age. All well and good, it is about time […]
August Personal Income up 0.2%; 2 Months PCE Would Subtract 0.07 Percentage Points from Q3 GDP, Blogger and Commenter RJS reports at MarketWatch 666 The August report Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis gives us nearly half the data that will go into 3rd quarter GDP, since it gives us 2 months of […]
In October 2020, three public health academics published the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued that policymakers should focus on protecting those most vulnerable to covid, while encouraging those at low risk of death or serious disease to resume normal activities. This would result in a rapid spread of natural immunity through the population, hastening an […]
I don’t know why I’m writing about this when our democracy is on fire. Maybe I need to focus on something cheery, like climate change. The American Prospect has a couple of pieces up on insurance and climate change. One identifies a genuine issue, the other misses the mark. In this piece, Alexander Sammon asks […]
Blogger and Commenter RJS Briefly: even though US Covid infections have been falling since labor day, there’s been anecdotal evidence it’s rising among school age kids . . . at the same time, there are now solid studies showing that the mRNA vaccines administered in the US are losing their effectiveness . . . hence, […]
Prof. Joel Eissenberg has a new post up considering people’s immunity to Covid and what it consists of after vaccination. COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter? (nature.com), September 17, 2021, Elie Dolgin, We can say circulating antibodies do matter for protection from COVID-19. With the innate immune response, they represent […]