August jobs report: some weak points, but the underlying very good trend continues While the NBER has declared that the recession ended in April 2020, neither the King nor Queen of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, and jobs, have recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. The former is only off by -0.2%, but the latter – which […]
Why Hospitals and Health Insurers Didn’t Want You to See Their Prices – The New York Times (nytimes.com) Sarah Kliff and Josh Katz Some Background Tipping the balance to single payer? I believe Kliff and Tucker article in the NYT Times on hospitals and insurance helps to tip the balance. It is revealing to see […]
by Dale Coberly Condorcet and Malthusian essay relevant to Social Security and the problem of too much kindness [note, important sentences in the following are quoted from another author because it’s easier for me to write that way. Credit will be given at the end of the article.] Goetzman: “In 1794 as the Reign of Terror raged […]
This is thorough coverage of the background leading up to Roe v. Wade and today’s events with a SCOTUS majority of five shrugging its shoulders ignoring the impact of the Texas law on one state and its meaning to a nation. September 2, 2021, Letters From An American, History Prof. Heather Cox Richardson examines “the […]
“Kavanaugh Helps Gut Roe, Critics Recount All the Times Susan Collins Said He Wouldn’t,” Common Dreams, Jake Johnson I am stealing this from Common Dreams. Senator (sigh) Susan Collins has done this on numerous times in the past and pulls the football away, again when Dems get ready to kick it. She knows she is […]
Producer sector remains on fire, while two most important indicators of consumer sector falter As has been the pattern for the last several months, August data started out with a strong reading on manufacturing, while July ended with weak data on housing construction. As a side note, the latest read on motor vehicle sales also […]
Jobless claims show continuing improvement, now well within normal expansion range Way back at the beginning of spring, I set a goal of initial claims being 400,000 or less by Labor Day as a marker for a good COVID recovery – which I was reminded of because the aforesaid holiday is this weekend. Well, we […]
In a recent post I argued for political pragmatism, which I described as follows: I believe that politicians have some discretion to set policy, and that they should use that discretion to enact the substantively best policies they can, taking account of political and policy constraints. Political constraints include the need to satisfy voters and […]
Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned. The rule of law might have been; The Washington Post, Erwin Chemerinsky Dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky; “The majority was mute on the right to privacy, abandoned its constitutional role and held, indirectly but unmistakably, that the Constitution is a mere […]