Real aggregate payrolls and recessions – by New Deal democrat One of my favorite indicators for the overall economic health of the American working and middle classes is real aggregate payrolls for non-supervisory workers. This is kind of self-explanatory. Rather than measure hourly wages, this is the *total* amount of wages paid to non-supervisory workers, […]
On April 1 2022 I wrote “I score Robert 4 Pentagon 0. I currently oppose the F-35 procurement program. No score yet.” I didn’t know that 4 days earlier on March 28 2022 Valerie Insinna had published “F-35 cuts, F-15 boost, and E-3 replacement: Air Force’s $170B budget makes big moves in FY23“ “the biggest […]
First the US poverty gap is on the order of $180 billion per year. That is the sum over all households with income under the poverty line of the amount that household’s income is below the poverty line. That is a small amount of money compared to US GDP or even US Federal Government spending. […]
I am going to give a hostage to fortune. I am going to guess that the preferred policy supported by a majority of US respondents on questions about redistribution of income is that which would directly serve the narrow short term economic interests of a (probably different but overlapping) majority of US respondents. I am […]
This is one of Alan Collinge’s associates who comment on many of his posts. This also reflects a point I bought up a while back on student loan debt. The size of the loan was large and probably could have been handled. The issue is not so much the loan as it is the interest […]
August industrial production declines; overall decelerating trend consistent with recession in 2023 – by New Deal democrat Finishing today’s data dump, industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, declined -0.2% in August, while manufacturing production increased 0.1%. July’s sharp gains in both were revised slightly (-0.1%) downward: While July remains the high water mark for overall […]
Guest Post by Infidel as posted from his Blog of the same name. Intro . . . In the real world, which contains many individuals interacting within a society, overall freedom is maximized when the total ability of all individuals to do whatever they want is maximized. In practice, achieving this involves a vast number […]
As always, I must start by saying I have no expertise and there is no reason anyone should be particularly interested in my thoughts. The question is how will the war in Ukraine end. I guess I have a guess, but it implies it will last a long time. I can think of 3 possibilities, […]
Happy 155th Birthday to volume one of Capital! In his 1965 farewell lecture at Brandeis University, Herbert Marcuse read a long passage from the Grundrisse’s “fragment on machines” and then observed: “But Marx himself has repressed this vision, which now appears as his most realistic, his most amazing insight!” In Time, Labor and Social Domination, published 28 years later, Moishe […]
Positive real retail sales in August, but YoY flatness continues – by New Deal democrat Retail sales, probably my favorite monthly economic datapoint, increased 0.3% in August. Since consumer prices rose 0.1%, real retail sales rose 0.2%: That’s certainly good news. Now here’s the bad news: July’s retail sales were revised downward by -0.4%, so […]