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

Book Review: Death in the Haymarket

I was born into an America where the eight-hour workday was widely observed. But what was for me just another fact of life was a hard-won right of the labor movement that cost hundreds of lives. “Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age […]

No, democracy doesn’t lead to socialism

Kevin Drum has a post up at jabberwocking.com about a claim by the chair of the Alabama GOP that democracies lead to socialism. I can’t think of a single example of a socialist country that evolved from democracy to socialism. Russia became socialist when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Kerensky government by violent revolution. Socialism throughout […]

Too Important to Miss . . .

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse does readers a civic duty of offering up the New York Times article about Donald Trump being dangerous to the nation. Included in this article are Law Prof. Joyce Vance’s views on Trump and his actions. In which case, Angry Bear agrees with Civil Discourse. A good read. What is […]

Pharmacy Benefit Managers: The Middlemen Inflating Drug Costs and Squeezing Main Street Pharmacies

There are seventy-one pages to this FTC report. My commentary looks at 5 edited (mine) pages of the report. The intent is to introduce you to Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and the control they have over the market. The services they provide has been integrated with the healthcare insurance companies. Which makes this a dynamic […]

From sufficiency to planned obsolescence … and back?

by Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.6 From sufficiency to planned obsolescence… and back? In the Grundrisse, Karl Marx argued that capital’s response to the barrier to increasing production posed by satiated consumption took three paths: promoting greater consumption of existing products, expanding […]

Why Do Democrats Eat Their Own?

The title is mine. I am wondering why Democrats are so willing to self-destruct. Here we are again, shades of 2016. Some claiming they will vote for others, the Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, the family dog, etc. Do we hear much from the Republican constituents about Trump’s very apparent idiosyncrasies? Rare and […]