Noah Smith thinks on the implications of a feeling of belonging to America in relation to Fergeson, MI. Edward Harrison’s comments 6:21 PM are worth noting.

Via Daily Kos’s David Jarman comes an interactive graph that offers an intriguing visual experience for migration numbers between states for 2012, designed by Chris Walker and offered here.  There is a 10,000 person cut off point in the visual, so three states are left off, but of course they had population movement.  10,000 was […]

Lifted from Robert Walmann’s… Paul Krugman wrote: The answer all the deficit-panic types offer is basically that we must cut future benefits. But why, exactly, is that something that must be done immediately? If you state the supposed logic, it seems to be that to avoid future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. I’ve […]

Bottled water is not a significant part of water use compared to agricultural use, but certainly has a heavy footprint in plastic bottles. I believe tap water and well water is pretty safe to drink throughout the US, so what is the appeal?? California is suffering through a  record drought. Water is being rationed and […]

Vis the NYT comes this look at the economics of small scale farming:   Don’t let your children grow up to be farmers AT a farm-to-table dinner recently, I sat huddled in a corner with some other farmers, out of earshot of the foodies happily eating kale and freshly shucked oysters. We were comparing business models […]

In my area the Market Basket grocery stores were between 20 to 30% cheaper than the competition given surveys and comparing the items I would shop for. Produce was fresh, name brands available for most any product should you wish. Staff was energetic and polite (often staff at other stores were polite but certainly not […]

Under normal economic conditions, the Fed funds rate would be higher. Yet, the Fed funds rate has been effectively at the zero lower bound for years. Why? Well, the answer is simple… The Fed has lost track of how to measure potential GDP and true slack. The problem is that the Fed has no awareness […]

From Tom Dispatch author Matthew Harwood points out the rapid growth in the use of SWAT teams for regular police functions: In 1984, according to Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26% of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80% and it’s […]

The shooting death by police of Ferguson, MO teenager Michael Brown, and what has happened in the aftermath, has been blanketing the news for the past few days. It’s a story about race, but it’s also become a story about the power of the state and how it’s wielded, and against whom. So my question […]