Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism lists posts and links to documents on private equity agreements well worth taking the time to read through and comment. The list is extensive so best go there. Dean Baker weighs in today as well in the Wall Street pension scam via Truth Out. We anticipate that some of you […]

Readers of my AB posts know that a recurring theme of mine is the right’s cooptation of the word “freedom” to disembody the word from actual physical freedom–e.g., from imprisonment–or from personal choice, and to instead define it as a Reagan-era Conservative Legal Movement checklist.  And that these folks achieve this by declaring it mandated by the Constitution’s […]

That’s the conclusion of Stuart W. Elliott in his recent paper, “Anticipating a Luddite Revival.” (Hat tip: RobotEconomics.) We’ve seen that scale of transformation before. But this one promises to be roughly four times as fast, dwarfing Luddite-era concerns: …the portion of the workforce employed in agriculture shifted from roughly 80% to just a few […]

I’m encouraged any time government functions. We’re a very philanthropic society. We always want people to have safety nets. Medicaid is meant to be a temporary measure to provide benefits for people who are in difficult circumstances. It’s not meant to be going on forever. — Scott Brown, when Politico reporter Kyle Cheney asked him […]

Update appended. 5/17 at 1:37 p.m. —- I’ve written several times in the last three-plus years about a Supreme Court case called Bond v. U.S. Actually, to be precise, Bond v. U.S. is two Supreme Court cases, although it’s only one lower-court case. This is not unusual, but the case itself is; both the facts and the […]

The problem we have in this country is not income inequality. It’s opportunity inequality. — Chris Christie, today And since there’s no causal relationship whatsoever between income inequality and opportunity inequality, this is sure to be a winning political message in 2016. Christie made the comment “at a ‘fiscal summit’ hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which […]

It is a familiar phrase on college campuses, often meant to serve as conversational kryptonite, the final word in an argument to which there is no response. “Check your privilege.” But Tal Fortgang, a Princeton freshman from Westchester County, had a response. – At Princeton, Privilege Is: (a) Commonplace, (b) Misunderstood or (c) Frowned Upon, […]

Bill Gardner at The Incidental Economist offers a rather decorous, mild reply to the people making [the argument that guaranteed health insurance is an assault on America’s freedom]. I’d put it more forcefully: the pre-ACA system drastically restricted many people’s freedom, because given the extreme dysfunctionality of the individual insurance market, they didn’t dare leave […]

From an interview of North Carolina Republican Senate Candidate Thom Tillis by NBC’s Chuck Todd today: Todd: Do you think [the minimum wage] should be raised in North Carolina? Tillis: I think that’s a decision that the legislature needs to make with businesses. Todd: Well, you’re the speaker. Would you make that decision? Tillis: Right now what […]

David Zetland at Aguanomics writes a note on California’s drought and policies on water use and distribution…price is key. Dealing with drought — three ways to fail BB sent this summary of UC Davis’s “Living with Drought” conference (I got my PhD there), and this bit got my attention: Everyone seemed to agree that solutions […]