Why the hell would I go back to 2019 and cite a Nancy Altman complaint about Trump’s Executive Order? Some Introduction There were already issues with Medicare Advantage in $billions of over charges as Ms. Altman cites in her commentary. Secondly, Medicare Advantage is not “single payer” like Medicare (even without creating hospital budgets, setting […]
I have no special insight on any foreign policy issue, but if you’re interested in a no-nonsense defense of Biden’s policy see this post by Scott Lemieux. His key points are (my interpretation/paraphrase): Long term low-engagement occupation was not a serious option, the only choices on the table were long term escalation or pulling out. […]
Biden Follows Trump On Foreign Policy We are now looking at a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. It looks like the Taliban will probably take control of Kabul and thus Afghanistan in the near future. Reports already show that where they control women cannot go to school and appear in public without a veil in public […]
for Final Demand Goods, Final Demand Services, and Intermediate Services; and a 46 year High for Prices of Intermediate Goods, Commenter and Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666 The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 1.0% in July, as prices for finished wholesale goods rose 0.6% while margins of final services providers rose 1.1%…that increase […]
Politics and the Pandemic: Why I Think Paul Krugman Is Wrong Krugman has a piece in the New York Times today that offers an explanation for why Republicans oppose every measure—vaccination, masking, limits on indoor gathering—that could reverse the pandemic. He says it’s because the Democrats support them and that Biden would take credit for reduced caseloads, […]
June Job Openings at Record High after May Record Revised Higher; Commenter RJS from MarketWatch 666; Record Low Layoffs; Hiring, Quitting, Retiring All Much Higher The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for June from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that seasonally adjusted job openings rose by 590,000, from 9,483,000 in May to 10,073,000 […]
Kamikaze anti-vaxers, Infidel753 blog INFIDEL753, Portland, Oregon, writes at a blog of his own name Infidel 753. Describes himself as an individualist, transhumanist, socialist, atheist, liberal, optimist, pragmatist, and regular guy — it has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of “spirituality” of any kind. I know Infidel from Crooks […]
Antivax Memes Based on various sources, including the recent NY Times podcast with interviews of vaccine resisters/hesitant, here’s my list of common elements. 1. Assuming the sole criterion for whether to take the vaccine is its effect on your own health—not taking into account whether you may infect someone else. Antivax people nearly always justify their choice […]
The most common proposals for pressuring people to vaccinate involve either vaccine mandates or vaccine passports. As some of the comments on my previous post suggest, there is another option, viz., making the unvaccinated responsible for the cost of their covid treatment. In theory, this can be done either by denying insurance coverage to people […]
Peter Singer: The reason is that we are not good at protecting ourselves against very small risks of disaster. Each time we get into a car, the chance that we will be involved in an accident serious enough to cause injury, if we are not wearing a seat belt, is very small. Nevertheless, given the […]