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

Teachers Pay and Benefits

A new survey underscores the importance of professional salaries and benefits like paid parental leave in keeping educators in the profession—and how collective bargaining can have a major impact. “How Teachers View Their Pay and Benefits” Tim Walker, Senior Writer Ask most K-12 public school teachers what would make them stay in the profession, better […]

Bangkok

I do not recall being in this section of Bangkok. As it is, Bangkok is an interesting city having quite a bit of history to it. The residents are nice to Americans and others. Most are trying to just make a living. They look to foreign visitors to make part of their income. I found […]

no emergency in Louisiana, just redrawing voting districts

“What the Court Did in Callais—And Why It Matters” Civil Discourse  Joyce Vance Absentee-by-mail voting was already underway in Louisiana’s primary elections when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Callais case on Wednesday. Polling places were preparing for in-person early voting to start on Saturday. But today, Louisiana’s Governor said there was an “emergency,” and that […]

Blockbuster initial jobless claims report suggests unemployment could decline all the way to 4.0%

– by New Deal democrat I wasn’t able to get to either the GDP report or the jobless claims report yesterday. I’m going to hold off on the GDP report until next week, because there was a lot going on, but this morning (before the ISM manufacturing Index comes out) let’s take a look at jobless […]

Stagflationary real personal income, real spending on durable goods were recessionary in March, but consumers and manufacturers haven’t retrenched

 – by New Deal democrat Personal income and spending are among the most important monthly indicators of all, because they give us a detailed look at consumption by the broad range of American households. And since consumption leads employment, they also give us an idea of what is likely to happen with regard to jobs […]

Healthcare Costs

The following (Healthcare Cost Increases) is taken from the longer Employ America piece. His portion touches upon healthcare costs and how those costs impact labor income and hiring. An Increase in healthcare and insurance costs is similar to a tax. As it increases, more money must be set aside having an impact on overall overhead. […]

Iran-China Rail Link

This is going to be interesting. Iran has another route in which to secure supplies, food, ammunition. An ocean/sea/straits can do little (none) to blockade an overland route by rail. From what I have read, it appears China has electrified the route. Electricity powered trains would be more efficient smf ;ess endangered by the US, […]

The quandary of housing: almost all signs are classically recessionary; so why hasn’t there been a recession?

– by New Deal democrat As I reiterated the other day, housing is the one long leading signal of the economy that has been soundly negative – indeed frankly recessionary – for the past year. That trend continued in March, although there are signs of it bottoming out. Without having caused a recession.  Let me start […]

Craig Venter RIP

Craig Venter died yesterday at the age of 79. As a grad student, I wondered whether it would be possible to sequence the human genome. As a postdoc, I did both Maxam and Gilbert sequencing and Sanger sequencing (first with E coli Klenow fragment, then reverse transcriptase) a couple hundred nucleotides per reaction, each reaction […]