by Peter Dorman   (originally published at Econospeak) Climate of Complete Incomprehension I finally got around to reading the NY Times new “responsible conservative”, Bret Stephens’, call for skepticism and moderation on climate change.  He adopts an attitude that exudes reasonableness and rejection of hubris.  Complicated modeling is an uncertain business and often fails; just look […]

This isn’t actually news, but it’s news to me, and it’s something you need to know. Greg LeRoy sent me an article by James Meek in London Review of Books (20 April 2017) that he’d been sent by a friend, documenting more EU-permitted job piracy by Poland that preceded the case I discuss at length […]

Bryce Covert and Josh Israel report Last year, 11,717 low-income residents of Mississippi applied to get a meager government benefit to help them make ends meet. The state’s welfare program, part of federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), gives a maximum of just $170 a month to a family of three. These applicants had […]

The litany of shorter work week prophecy is prodigious. Keynes famously predicted a 15-hour work week for “our grandchildren” in 1930. Fifteen years later, in a letter to T.S. Eliot, Keynes parenthetically suggested a 35-hour work week for the U.S. in the immediate post-war period. In 1961, Clyde Dankert cited a New York Times article […]

and I’m not afraid to admit it. I have read more than 700 words of tweets about it. I have two thoughts on the meta discussion. First Jonathan FBD Weisman is a remarkably unpleasant person. In this twitter comment thread he repeatedly typed “you didn’t read the column” in response to criticisms of his criticism […]

The US Federal Government isn’t shutting down. Also it seems that Republicans almost totally caved to Democrats in the deal Kelsey Snell at the Washington Post Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted that they were able to force Republicans to withdraw more than 160 unrelated policy measures, known as riders, including those […]

Earlier this month, the Government Accounting Office released a report entitled Countering Violent Extremism”. Its a great example of how to outright lie using data. (I note that the, um, “analysis” was performed between October 2015 and April 2017, and bears the previous administration’s imprint. The current administration’s inanities lie in an orthogonal direction.) The […]

by  Barkley Rosser Is Authoritarian Nationalism Mostly A Rural Phenomenon? Offhand it looks like maybe it is.  In the US Trump won overwhelmingly in rural areas while losing all of the largest cities.  Yes, he took some mid-size declining industrial ones like Youngstown, OH and Erie, Pa, while losing some rural areas in places like […]