Oct 9—AP News looks at how third-party presidential contenders Robert F. Kennedy and Cornel West, along with the No Labels movement, could affect the 2024 elections. The Social Democrat highly urges all fellow travelers not to throw away their votes on any choice other than Democratic candidates.

Oct 9—Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, known for her investigations of gender wage discrepancies, has been awarded the Nobel Prize. Goldin's research has shown that, contrary to popular belief on the Left, the difference in earnings between men and women is mainly attributable not to discrimination by employers but to choices about career path and work-life balance. In her latest book, Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity, she pinpoints "greedy" jobs as a major culprit in the professional classes, where exorbitant work hours are rewarded, presenting difficult choices to women who feel responsible for the needs of children at home.

Oct 10—Starting in 2024, purchasers of electric vehicles will be able to take the $7,500 tax credit, mandated by the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, at the dealer, rather than waiting to claim on their income tax filings.

Oct 10—336,000 non-farm jobs were added to the U.S. economy in September, with the unemployment rate steady at 3.8% and year-on-year average hourly earnings up 4.2%.

Oct 8—In a Reuters "Explainer" article, why healthcare workers are striking against Kaiser Permanente.

October 3—California has taken the national lead in increasing wages for fast-food workers. The new minimum of $20 per hour will affect workers at restaurant chains with at least 60 branches nationwide; and the legislation includes a council with power to annually boost the minimum to keep up with inflation. The change will affect about 500,000 California workers, whose current minimum wage is $15.60. In reference to the widely held view that fast-food restaurant jobs are the province of teenagers who don't really need the money, California governor Gavin Newsome said, “That’s a romanticized version of a world that doesn’t exist," noting that most restaurant workers are adults with adult expenses and responsibiities. Social democracy in action!

October 2—The Supreme Court begins its fall session today. Reuters offers a summary of the issues before the Court.

October 2—California governor Gavin Newsome has named Democrat Laphonza Butler, a former labor leader and head of Emily's list who advised Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign, as interim replacement for Senator Diane Feinstein, who died September 29. California voters will select Feinstein's permanent replacement in November 2024.

October 3—Seven California counties will roll out a new program designed to provide care for the seriously mentally ill. The courts, upon petition by family members or first responders, will be able to commit those suffering from untreated schizophrenia to care.

September 15, 2023—3,000 UAW members walked out at manufacturers' plants on Friday (September 15), representing about one tenth of the country's unionized auto workers. The union is asking for significant pay raises as well as assurances that their members will be looked after in the coming transition from internal combustion to electric vehicles. The union made significant concessions to auto manufacturers during the "Great Recession" and argues that assembly plant workers now derserve a greater share of the industry's robust profits.

Economists all agree that at some point, borrowing by the federal government will create inflation and impede productivity and growth. Recent research finds, however, that the level at which government borrowing becomes problematic is certainly greater than what was once thought. With U.S. debt at near-record levels, and the tax plan being pushed by the Trump administration and its congressional allies likely to add more red ink to America's balance sheet, the question is more than academic. This New York Times piece looks at current thinking on the topic. (October 2018)

October 4, 2017—Proposing to add trillions to the national debt in order to deliver tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, Republicans in Congress and the Accidental President continue to retail the discredited claim that lower taxes on the wealthy will spur economic growth. Writing in the New York Times, Eduardo Porter reports on a key study debunking this "voodoo" economics. Acclaimed French economist Thomas Piketty—along with colleagues at U Cal Berkeley and Harvard—found that enriching the wealthy at the cost of cutting social spending actually decreases economic productivity. The article contains a priceless quote from Bruce Bartlett, who served in the Reagan administration. "In 1986 we dropped the top income tax rate from 50 to 28 percent and the corporate tax rate from 46 to 34 percent. It's hard to imagine a bigger increase in incentives that that, and I can't remember any big boost to growth."

Portugal, the land of Fado music, cork orchards and Port wine, brings another gift to civilization: a way out of the insane drug war which has wracked our civilization, wasting untold billions on a quixotic quest to prevent people from using intoxicants, funding murderous drug gangs and incarcerating millions of especially minority Americans. Portugal, which removed criminal penalties for all drugs in 2001, including cocaine and heroine, has lower rates of addiction and 1/50 the number of drug-related deaths as the United States. Portugal's addiction-intervention efforts cost the state less than $10 per person, while the U.S. drug war costs our nation $10,000 per household. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff visted the sunny nation on the edge of Europe to see how they're doing it.

September 23, 2017—In nothing is the American psychic divide (between urban citizens and the—especially—southern hinterland) more on display than in the Republican primary for Alabama's vacant Senate seat. Roy Moore, the  cashiered judge whose prescription for America centers around returning to Jehovah to avoid His wrath—aroused by abortion, gay marriage and women outside the kitchen—stands a fair chance of prevailing over Luther Strange who, as a firm supporter of Donald Trump, may not be reactionary enough for Alabama's Republican voters.

September 9, 2017—A team of researchers led by Professor Sherri Mason at the State University of New York, Fredonia has confirmed the presence of plastic particles in sea salt, following other studies revealing plastic particles in drinking water, beer and seafood. Humanity is now dumping 12.7 million tons of plastics into the world's oceans each year. Much of it, after breaking down into microscopic particles, is finding its way into our food chain.