Category Archives: Economics

Why Totalitarians Prefer Crackpots and Fools, as We Are Seeing Under Trump

Posted on Thursday 14 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Lesson for today, from Paul Krugman, from Hannah Arendt: “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” … Continue reading →

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Economics and Flipping the Board

Posted on Monday 4 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

How Trump is economically illiterate; Personal aside about buying my first car in 1982; Wondering again if humanity has hit a conceptual limit; For example: Trump claims prices have been cut by 1500%; An essay by George A. Akerlof asks, … Continue reading →

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Self-destruction, Mafia Politics, TACO, What Aligns the Right, Bread and Circuses

Posted on Wednesday 28 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Paul Krugman on the economic damage of America’s withdrawal from the world; You can get away with anything if you donate enough to Trump; TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out; Zack Beauchamp on how the right isn’t driven by materialism, but … Continue reading →

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How to Fix the Budget; MAGA; Steven Pinker

Posted on Friday 23 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Paul Krugman’s constructive suggestions for fixing the budget; While Trump’s allegiances lie with lower taxes for the rich and cuts to the social safety net for the poor; How MAGA is about bimbos, like Kristi Noem and Sarah Palin, who … Continue reading →

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The Clueless Conservative War on Reality

Posted on Saturday 3 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

MAGA’s war science: Ignorance is Strength!; Trump doesn’t understand the separation of church and state; Trump doesn’t understand how trade deficits worth; Trump thinks Veterans Day should be only about veterans who won wars; Trump doesn’t understand even the Declaration … Continue reading →

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This is how these things happen

Posted on Wednesday 2 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT’s M. Gessen on how the police state has arrived; A WaPo reporter goes looking for the “corrosive ideology” Trump thinks is in the Smithsonian; The next Project 2025 goal is to restore the ideal heterosexual family, and diminish everyone … Continue reading →

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A Post-Pandemic Malaise?

Posted on Tuesday 1 April 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Thoughts about whether the pandemic has led to autocracy around the world; How that, and inequality, have left Americans in a sour economic mood; A graphic illustrating how those who want to privatize everything think everything is about making money; … Continue reading →

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Immigration, Economic Growth, and the Limits of the Planet

Posted on Saturday 18 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT has ideas about regulating immigration, given the assumption that America needs more people; Paul Krugman looks at economic growth (and Scott Bessent); But neither of them addresses the impact of continued economic growth, or expansion of the population, on … Continue reading →

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Lakoff on “Privateering,” and the Consequences of Shrinking the Government

Posted on Friday 17 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

More things are fitting together. Conservatives, be careful what you wish for. Chapter 7 of the Lakoff book, THE POLITICAL MIND, which I passed over in my review, is about what he calls “privateering.”

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Human Rights, and Those Who Would Restrict Them

Posted on Wednesday 11 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

It’s been 76 years since the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in America, conservatives prevent or keep trying to reverse many of those rights; Example of their latest bugaboo: transgenders; How Trump’s cabinet picks would please Putin, whose … Continue reading →

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