Buy and Bust: Collapse of Private Equity-Backed Rural Hospitals Mired Employees in Medical Bills
Bad enough when private equity hurts customers and communities. Here they stole from employees by defaulting on health insurance
Read more...Category Archives: Guest Post
Does Nature Have Rights? Victorian Polymath John Ruskin Thought So
Jeffrey Spear discusses how the insights of John Ruskin can help create a new paradigm for protecting the planet.
Read more...2:00PM Water Cooler 8/16/2022
~ Today’s Water Cooler ~
Read more...Stagflation: From Tragedy to Farce
Half a century after the 1970s’ stagflation, economies are contracting as prices rise again.
Read more...Is Cold, Hard Cash Making a Comeback?
While cash use has been declining in many places for years, the trend may have reached its apogee. In some countries, including the UK and Spain, it even appears to be making a fragile comeback.
Read more...80% of US Voters Across Party Lines Support Expanding Social Security
Social Security is so popular that an overwhelming majority wants more. But that’s apparently one of the nice things we can’t have.
Read more...“Housing Recession”: NAHB. Homebuilders Cut Prices as Traffic of Prospective New-House Buyers Plunges, Cancellations Spike
Housing sales and prices continuine on their grim slide.
Read more...CDC Rigs Its Own Monkeypox Case Reports by Not Including Questions on Airborne Transmission
A careful examination of CDC’s data collection on monkeypox transmission.
Read more...2:00PM Water Cooler 8/15/2022
~ Today’s Water Cooler: Open Thread ~
Read more...Links 8/15/2022
For Medically Vulnerable Families, Inflation’s Squeeze Is Inescapable
Inflation is putting families with big ongoing medical costs under terrible stress.
Read more...Researchers Ask: Does Enforcing Civility Stifle Online Debate in Social Media?
As toxic as political discourse has become, it seems almost quaint that a little over a decade ago, many social scientists were hopeful that by allowing political leaders and citizens to talk directly to one another, nascent social media platforms would improve a relationship tarnished by distrust.
Read more...A Marine’s Assessment of Russia’s Military “Operation” in Ukraine (a “Profound Appreciation of All Three Realms in Which Wars Are Waged”)
A dissident view on Ukraine. The first of many?
Read more...Links 8/14/2022
Striking a Bargain: Narrative Identification of Wage Bargaining Shocks
Workers and employers bargain over the surplus income generated by an employment relationship. This column uses information about key events in Germany relevant for wage negotiations, like labour strikes and the introduction of a minimum wage, to pinpoint changes in bargaining power between workers and employers. It finds that such wage bargaining ‘shocks’ are important drivers of unemployment and inflation and that their effect on wages is almost fully reflected in prices. Furthermore, they reduce the vacancy rate and increase firms’ profits and the labour share of income in the short run, but not in the long run.
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