Today (Saturday, May 15th) I learned that my EconoSpeak post, “Disposable People” (which has over 2500 views) has been reinstated by Blogger. I never knew it had been removed. If I was a GOP whiner, this would be a prime example of cancel culture in operation. But of course, it’s only an artefact of “moderation […]
Protesters trashed windows at the Oregon State Historical Society and left this graffiti: Credit: Willamette Weekly Econospeak . . .
For just a pocketful of Russia’s rubles, Putin facilitated Brexit, doing irreparable harm to the UK and the EU. With what was left over, he did enormous harm to the US, and weakened NATO. No shots were fired, no missiles were launched, and no missions were flown. No weapons that go bang were deployed, and […]
Hit by “renewed” US sanctions (The Guardian) under trump and a Covid pandemic, Cuba is enduring an economic crisis. Pharmacy shelves are empty, people stand in line for hours to buy chicken, and bread is scarce and hard to find. May 6th Cuba reported 1,060 cases totaling 112,714. Another seven deaths occurred bringing the total to […]
Let me follow up briefly on my post from yesterday on vaccine hesitancy. Demeaning people is the first step towards ignoring their interests or even persecuting them. Jason Brennan urges us to ignore the welfare of the unvaxxed by painting a picture of them as moral terrorists or extortionists. He holds them responsible for their […]
The former actor campaigning for President said, “The government is the problem.” Who needs government? We need it, that’s who. In 1980, any damned fool could look around and see that nations with strong governments succeeded while those with weak governments failed. Yet most of the people believed the damned fool when he told them […]
Maybe I am wrong on BLS Household Numbers? Has anyone looked at aggregate Participation Rate and the Civilian Labor Force numeric? Seasonal Adjusted PR is up 2 tenths of 1% and the Civilian Labor Force increased by 430,000 from March to April. Last year, from January 2020 to end of 2020, PR was down 2% […]
“It Took the Democrats Half a Century to Rediscover Trickle-Up Economics,” The Soap Box, Bruce Barlett Republicans still cling to trickle-down delusions of the wealthy and big business delivering economic progress to the rest of the nation, while Joe Biden revives a philosophy of growth Democrats have not embraced since LBJ . . . Stimulating […]
Matt Yglesias is stimulating heated discussion — that’s his job. Before getting to the point, I think that his $250,000 guaranteed advance from SubStack has stimulated a lot of extremely intense envy (I know I envy him) which tends to add a bit of spice to his provocative posts one of which is Tema Okun’s […]
In a recent post, libertarian political philosopher Jason Brennan argues that “we should ignore the welfare of people who choose not to vaccinate out of paranoia”. We owe them nothing. Brennan reaches this conclusion by analogizing vaccine hesitancy to a heckler’s veto (my bold): The idea of heckler’s veto goes as follows: Take any action, […]