EconoSpeak

In 2007 Naomi Klein got quite a bit of attention and mostly favorable comment for her  book, Shock Doctrine.  It promulgated that global elites used periods of crisis around the world to force damaging neoliberal policies derived from the Chicago School and Washington Consensus upon unhappy populations that suffered greatly as a result.  This was "shock therapy" that was more like destructive electroshock than any sort of therapy.  There is a lot of truth to this argument, and it highlighted...

Donald Winnicott develops the concept of transitional objects in a fairly short, remarkably lucid, engaging and, in my view, extremely important paper titled "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena." There is no reason not to read it and thus there is no reason for me to go into a pedantic rehash of Winnicott's argument.In a nutshell, Winnicott is dealing specifically with the objects -- such as a soft toy or a piece of blanket -- that infants adopt as a substitute for the illusion...

I am back from the annual ASSA/AEA meetings in Atlanta.  I learned a new term that on checking I find has been around for about five years. It is "econogenic," coined by George DeMartino, who spoke on this in a session on "Ethics and Economics" held by the Association for Social Economics. It means "harm done by economists," and it is inspired by "iatrogenic," referring to harm done by physicians.  His talk focused on this and claims that the medical profession  is 50 years ahead of the...

I am not somebody who makes endo/beginning of year predictions, and I am not about to stsrt now.  But I have just read a guest post by Jeffrey Frankel on Econbrowser where he brags about making six accurate predictions for 2018 while not reporting on some others he made that did not work out so well.  I happened to largely agree with them when I saw him making them, with some questions on two, while myself quitely making some that failed to come true.  I shall comment.Frankel's six...

When I first started arguing against the degrowthers, I thought they were a small, uninfluential fringe, important only because they had a sway over a portion of the left—what we might call the Naomi Klein left.  That was then.  Today degrowth is entering the mainstream, as can be seen by the latest David Roberts piece in Vox.  Roberts reviews a discussion between several economists on the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) website.  (INET is a Soros-affiliated outfit whose mission...

Outgoing Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte is my Congressman.  I even know him, having had civil almost friendly relations.  He has been in office for 26 years.  But his career exemplifies the degeneration of the Republican Party from a Lincoln-derived progressive force in US politics to the racist and reactionary disaster that it has become with Donald Trump as president. The quick story on this is that he was once an aide to a predecessor, M. Caldwell Butler, a...

Imagine that, instead of the dinosaur of a postal service we have today—the product, among other things, of congressional insistence that no government outfit can compete with private business in lucrative new markets—we had an entrepreneurial, innovative public dynamo.  In this other universe, the USPS was always on the lookout for new opportunities to build on its postal infrastructure, providing better services to the public while broadening its revenue stream.USPSʹ, this better but...

Donald Trump lies about everything including military pay: Trump Brags To Troops About A Fictional Giant Pay Raise He Got Them - The president told military personnel in Iraq that they’ll get a raise of over 10 percent, their first in a decade. But it’s 2.6 percent, and they get a hike every year. Dave Jamieson even notes that Bill Kristol has called out Trump on this whopper. But to me this is not the story. The real story is that Trump thinks our troops are stupid. As I read this sad...

A couple of months ago yours truly complained a bit about some fiscal dishonesty coming from Team Trump: He was basically lying to us hoping the public would be too stupid to realize that when the price level rose by 2.5% during the same period, we are talking about a 2% real decrease in tax revenues. But if we look at customs duties we do see an increase in a category that represents a very modest part of Federal tax collections. Back in the 3rd quarter of 2017, these collections were a...

The other night I was sitting at home, locked in a conversation about climate change and race.  How is this a racial issue, I asked?  I realize that the society I live in has pervasive racism, and one should always keep this in mind, but how specifically is climate change worse for nonwhites?Well, it’s all about first and worst impacts, I was told.  People of color are on the front lines.  They are the one experiencing the most severe consequences, and therefore failure to act against...