Crowding Out and the Social Overhead Costs of Labor Another strange twist in the convoluted lump-of-labor saga. Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor refuted the “Treasury View” — aka “crowding out” — in 1844. O’Connor’s tract is long-winded and sentimentalized an idyllic past but it also contains some cogent analysis of why workers were (and should still […]

Foxconn hit the jackpot with Wisconsin on Wednesday, when CEO Terry Gou and Governor Scott Walker signed a memorandum of understanding for the company to invest $10 billion in southeastern Wisconsin in return for $3 billion in state subsidies and an undetermined amount of local incentives in the form of tax increment(al) financing (TIF).* The […]

(Dan here…I found Yves intro more appealing than the research…) Yves here. While this article gives a very good high-level summary about how inequality is becoming institutionalized in American and the costs to those who see themselves as having lost the most, I wonder about the emphasis on hope as a remedy. Perhaps this is […]

LOOK AT THE BIG DIVERGENCE BETWEEN “SOFT” AND “HARD” DATA … Ummm ..never mind…. Since this year the Doomers haven’t even been able to rouse themselves up enough to call for OMG recession imminent!!!, they have had to settle for how slow the growth in the economy has been.  Their favorite theme has been the […]

  James Kwak writes Introductory economics can be more misleading than it is helpful  (originally in Atlantic magazine).   Tim Worstall responds with  James Kwak sure doesn’t understand the economics of the minimum wage. Peter Dorman explains   Why you should never use a supply and demand diagram for labor markets. Richard Wolff  notes he thinks the debate […]

Via Reuters Wells Fargo drags feet: Wells Fargo last September settled with three regulators after revelations that branch staff set up as many as 2.1 million accounts without customer authorization in order to hit sales targets. Since then, the bank has replaced its CEO and other top executives have either resigned or been fired. The […]

Via Science magazine, Trump’s White House science office still small and waiting for leadership: …Trump has yet to nominate an OSTP director, who traditionally also serves as the president’s science adviser. Nor has he announced his choices for as many as four other senior OSTP officials who would need to be confirmed by the Senate. […]

Via the New York Times Wisconsin and Foxconn: Foxconn’s plan for a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin is certainly good news for President Trump and Republican politicians Gov. Scott Walker and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, whose district the plant would call home. But the deal with Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics supplier, comes with a heavy […]

by Dale Coberly FIX THE DEBT WANTS TO SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY BUT WHY? I received an email a few days ago from Chris Dreibelbis, Fix the Debt, purporting to explain “why the Social Security Trustees urge action.” “Fix the Debt” is a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) which is funded […]

Even though Angry Bear has as an audience of people who are more than beginners in economic thought,  I think it worthwhile to pursue basic stories about what we demand and value from our way of life, which includes the “economy”. I had a recent experience where an acquaintance came up to me and asked […]