EconoSpeak

 Given the massive impetus the presidency of Donald Trump gave to authoritarian and anti-democratic forces around the world, it is worth seeing that his defeat in a democratic election, despite his efforts to illegally overturn it, seems to have been followed by some outbursts of pro-democratic demonstrations in parts of the world, even as we saw a major setback for democracy in Myanmar with the military coup there.Indeed, one of those pushbacks has been in Myanmar, where various groups have...

Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Remember that time is money. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad,...

I share some of Summers' concerns about the magnitude of Biden's proposed stimulus.  The comparison to the January 2009 situation is marred by the fact that we are not now in a Demand-deficient Keynesian-style recession as we were then. What's holding back output now is clearly pandemic-induced supply constraints. On the other hand, if the Ricardian Equivalence theorem holds, perhaps some non-negligible portion of the transfer component of the stimulus will be saved. (Even...

I did indeed post Dilke's work. Then I reposted it. Then, ten years later, Contributions to Political Economy reprinted Dilke's pamphlet, along with an essay about it by Giancarlo de Vivo. And forthcoming in the next issue of CPE is my article on the "Ambivalence of Disposable Time." Thank you, Michael, for asking me to do the world a favor. Rest in Peace.

 I have just learned that old friend Michael Perelman has "passed quietly in his sleep" (not reported of what) on September 21, 2020, having been born on October 1, 1939, so just shy of his 81st birthday.  I knew Michael for a long time and considered him a personal friend, although it has been some time since I have seen him in person.  He long had an active internet list and was officially signed on as one of the people who could post here on Econospeak when it started, and I remember him...

 Actually I think focusing on such questions can be a not very useful exercise, but here I am asking it anyway.  As it is, indeed the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) is indeed Number One on a number of important grounds, although probably the bottom line is that the world is now dominated by a G2, the US and China, with it unclear which is Number One overall.  What has happened is that up until quite recently there was no question: the US was Number One as it had been for a long time.  That...

 You have to read it to believe it.  An excerpt:Whereas history tells us that after George Washington appointed Major General Benedict Arnold to command West Point, Arnold conspired to surrender the fort to the British; andWhereas the ten Republican House members, by voting to impeach President Trump, repeated history by conspiring to surrender our nation to Leftist forces seeking to establish a dictatorship void of all cherished freedoms and liberties....Whereas there is growing evidence...

I certainly hope not, but it is not out of the question.  There is a serious split within the new Biden administration over how to approach getting the US back into the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, which, just for the record, the US withdrew from even though it was the US that had violated it by not fully withdrawing economic sanctions against Iran, a decision made during the Obama administration that negotiated the deal, while Iran was not in violation and continued to adhere to it for...

 Maybe he has now done it, although I have been unable to find any reports of him doing so.  But almost alone among world leaders, I think joined only by Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Mexicos's President known as "AMLO" did not basically immediately congratulate Joe Biden on his inauguration. Even very pro-Trump Brazilian President Bolsonaro did, expressing a hope to have good and beneficial relations between the US and Brazil, and although it was rather perfunctory and unenthusiastic, so did...

 It is not a big headline story among all the other things newly inaugurated Joe Biden is doing, but it is being reported that despite a generally more hostile approach to Russia, he has agreed with what Russian President Putin has said he wants, which is to simply extend the current nuclear weapons START agreement for five more years. It is possible that out of annoyance with Biden Putin might somehow at this point create a roadblock for this very important decision, but given that the...