Econoparody: The Cinders of Ayn Rand
The folks at Versus have released a set of holiday econoparodies. This is my favorite:
Read more...The folks at Versus have released a set of holiday econoparodies. This is my favorite:
Read more...Yves here. By happy coincidence, a mere day after Jamie Dimon offered yet another misleading defense of the 1% (among other howlers, claiming that their marginal tax rates were their effective tax rates), the gurus of income inequality, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, say there is no good case for coddling the rich. Their analysis shows that top marginal tax rates could rise to near Eisenhower administration levels (the top tax rate then was 91%) and not hurt growth.
By Thomas Piketty, Professor, Paris School of Economic, Emmanuel Saez Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley and Stefanie Stantcheva, PhD candidate in Economics, MIT. Cross posted from VoxEU
The top 1% of US earners now command a far higher share of the country’s income than they did 40 years ago. This column looks at 18 OECD countries and disputes the claim that low taxes on the rich raise productivity and economic growth. It says the optimal top tax rate could be over 80% and no one but the mega rich would lose out.
Read more...Here are a few code words that you will often see in economic writing followed by their true meaning. The code word is a dog whistle. It acts like an emotional marker only for those attuned to the underlying ‘moral’ issues implied by the code. While you may agree with the logical framework behind the […]
Read more...By Wolf Wagner, Professor of Economics, University of Tilburg. Cross posted from VoxEU
As government advisors and central bankers race through the different options to save the euro, this column argues that one such proposal, Eurobonds, will actually increase the risk that several Eurozone countries fail together. It shows using basic arithmetic that these bonds, sometimes labelled ‘stability bonds’, may actually be more likely to harm Eurozone stability.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
You wanted God’s ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfil your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father.
– Søren Kierkegaard
Political cults often have the strangest and most obscure origins. Take Marxism, for example. Today it is well-known that Marxist doctrine essentially sprang out of the obscure 19th century economic debates over the source of ‘value’. By ‘proving’ – that is, lifting the assumption from classical political economy – that all ‘value’ came from labour, Karl Marx went on to show that it was therefore only logical to assume the existence of something called ‘surplus value’ that was sucked out of labourers by a parasitic capitalist class. From out of this obscure debate flowed an awesome political movement – and a tyranny to match.
What is less well-known is that today’s most popular political cult – that is, libertarianism – was born in very similar circumstances; it too, arrived into the world out of the obscure 19th century debates over economic ‘value’.
Read more...By Jeffrey Sommers, an associate professor of political economy in Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Arunas Juska, associate professor of sociology at East Carolina University and an expert on the Baltics, and Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist and a rofessor at University of Missouri, Kansas City . Cross posted from Counterpunch.
The Baltic states have discovered a new way to cut unemployment and cut budgets for social services: emigration. If enough people of working age are forced to leave to find work abroad, unemployment and social service budgets will both drop.
This simple mathematics explains what the algebra of austerity-plan advocates are applauding today as the “New Baltic Miracle” for Greece, Spain, and Italy to emulate. The reality, however, is a model predicated on economic shrinkage as a result of wage cuts.
Read more...By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience.
Simulposted at The Distributist Review
This is the sixth and final installment of an interview series. For the previous parts, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”
ANDREW: You’ve explained to me how in the libertarian society of the future, everyone will be free and their rights will not be violated. However, many people will be coerced in a noncoercive way, and a lot of people will be effectively slaves in a rights-respecting manner. Some people will be effectively killed in a rights-respecting manner. Why are you dedicating your life to making this society possible?
Read more...By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience.
Simulposted at The Distributist Review
This is the fourth installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”
ANDREW: In the last interview, you told us how GLOs in the Middle Ages were noblemen, publicly recognized as being a cut above the ordinary person. Have the rich people and corporate leaders of today also risen to the top by being natural leaders?
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former New York Fed economist. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side.
In “Lombard Street” published in 1873, Bagehot specified the purpose of a Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) as forestalling bank panics in fractional reserve banking systems. Bagehot also provided criteria that define LOLRs, which remain relatively unchanged. In fact, the Bagehot criteria have become something of a mantra: Lend freely at penalty rates against good collateral to illiquid but solvent banks. Given Bagehot’s purpose and definition, has the crisis of 2008 provided a test of the Fed as an LOLR? If so how well did the Fed perform? What are the ECB’s responsibilities as the LOLR in Europe in 2011?
Read more...This is a short chat with Steve Keen, an Australian economist who is a persistent and articulate critic of the many failings of the discipline.
Enjoy!
Read more...Rob Johnson brings a wide ranging perspective (from politics, as a former Senate staffer; from markets, as a former hedge fund manager; and an economist, by training and via his current role as head of the Institute for New Economic Thinking) to this interview on the immediate and deeper implications of the central bank intervention on behalf of the Eurozone earlier this week. Johnson is deeply skeptical both of the near and longer-term approaches taken to rescue the Euro. This talk has a particularly clear and layperson friendly discussion of the rationale for and failings of austerity.
Read more...By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience.
Simulposted at The Distributist Review
This is the fourth installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”
ANDREW: The GLOs in your future libertarian society will be continuations of GLOs that exist now – basically large corporations and high net worth individuals. And the modern GLOs are continuations of GLOs that existed in the past.
CODE NAME CAIN: True – GLOs have a long and proud history.
ANDREW: In our society and in the past, both GLOs and regular governments have certain legal rights.
CNC: That’s right. But the legal rights of the governments are all completely illegitimate, whereas the legal rights of GLOs are all completely legitimate. That’s why I act morally when I hide my assets from the U.S. government.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
JK Galbraith, remarkably, regards the Federal Reserve as a largely powerless institution; he dismisses the idea that the Fed can end a recession by cutting interest rates as a “quasi-religious conviction” that “triumphs over conflicting experience.”… Because Galbraith believes monetary policy cannot increase demand, however, he has a sort of Depression-era vision of an economy in which anything that increases spending is good… And so Galbraith is oblivious to the most serious problem facing modern liberalism: reconciling social justice with full employment.
As the above, rather embarrassing quote from Paul Krugman’s review of JK Galbraith’s classic book The Affluent Society shows, neoclassical economists and neoclassically-trained central bankers have long been enamoured with monetary policy – and are generally angered when it subject to questioning. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons, some of these are ideological (monetary policy doesn’t stink too badly of nasty government interference with the Holy Market), some of these are purely functional (the central bank has independent control over rates) and some simply have to do with making economists’ silly toy-models work (monetary policy gives neoclassicals a feeling of power over the economy they would otherwise lack).
Anyway, in the present crisis – just as in the great depression – monetary policy has proved completely ineffective. This has caused some – myself included – to question the real efficacy of monetary policy altogether, but it has others continuing the search for that silver bullet.
Read more...By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience.
Simulposted at The Distributist Review
This is the third installment of a six-part interview. For the previous parts, see Part 1 and Part 2. Red indicates exact quotes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed.”
Read more...By Andrew Dittmer, who recently finished his PhD in mathematics at Harvard and is currently continuing work on his thesis topic. He also taught mathematics at a local elementary school. Andrew enjoys explaining the recent history of the financial sector to a popular audience.
Simulposted at The Distributist Review
Recently journalist Philip Pilkington has interviewed authors with unconventional perspectives on economic issues, including Satyajit Das and David Graeber. I thought it would be fun to interview someone too – but the man I interviewed uses a pseudonym. This is a six-part series.
ANDREW: Some people say that you represent a fringe view, and so interviewing you is a waste of time.
CODE NAME CAIN: If people obsessed with inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom underestimate libertarians, so much the better.
Read more...