Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Homeownership in the United States

A quick rundown on homeownership and rentals in the United States using graphs and statistics. The time variance is mostly over the last 23 years. The first graph is from 1960 till 2023 and covers the economic issues, gains, or losses which was occurring during that time period. Renting will still take more from your […]

April construction spending continues slight declining trend

– by New Deal democrat Let’s take a look now at construction spending for April. To cut to the chase, in all respects there was a continued decline. In nominal terms, total construction spending declined -0.4%, while the more leading residential construction spending declined -0.9%, the third straight month for declines in both measures: Total […]

Slow Economic Growth

Usually, I place New Deal democrat’s title for his post above. I made it simpler for readers this time to get his point across. Briefly: Between the combination of manufacturing (25% of the economy) and non-manufacturing (75% of the economy), the economic growth of the nation is moving like a slug or as New Deal […]

DOGE accounting

There’s no evidence that DOGE has saved any money so far: “Picking apart the “estimated savings” of $175 billion on the DOGE website, Tolan told me that less than half that figure is backed up with even the most basic documentation. That means it’s possible only even to start investigating about $32 billion of savings […]

Elections in Eastern Europe

Asia is a world apart from Europe or North America. I am curious as to what people are thinking about in Asia when they view the news from either country. I have traveled extensively in Thailand and China as well as Europe. Much of the time, I was there for weeks. There are always questions […]

What Autocrats do

I have been watching this bill “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” slither through the House and move to the Senate. What is occurring here is, Trump trying to kill all opposition to be in control. Or another power play with Republicans backing him up. too afraid of Trump, they are looking the other way as […]

On Distribution

Part I of II Was wealth that brought us this far.  The wealthy say that it was them, but it wasn’t.  It was wealth.  Those first surpluses after the climate stabilized were the genesis of civilization, of the modern world.  Gave mankind more time to think, to make better tools.  Gave us democracy and the […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators for May 26 – 30

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. As I wrote about here this week, the supply chain effects of the tariffs have finally bled through to rail shipments, and probably trucking as well. Meanwhile, despite all the uncretainty, as we saw yesterday with the personal income and spending report, consumers […]

Talking Healthcare Insurance and One State

What occurred over the last few days in our household was a review of our Medicare Supplemental healthcare insurance (backs up Medicare). We have Plan N which is a good plan. We pay the Part B deductible (if needed) of Medicare which is $257 this year. The rest of Part A and B costs are […]