EconoSpeak

I spent Memorial Day weekend with extended family members in Santa Cruz, near where many of them live, but with none of them right there  It was most pleasant, but explaining the nature of the place and the University of California branch there led me to think more deeply about its real meaning and foundation.  I am not aware of anybody else saying this before, but it struck me that Santa Cruz is a place where some decades ago Big Sur met Silicon Valley.The place remains a very pleasant...

I don't believe in intellectual property... I don't believe in compound interest... Nobody believes in the lump-of-labor fallacy. Mr. Nadella is engaging in a game of projection and disavowal that is as old as capitalism. He is affirming the reality of an event that only happens in the imagination -- the production of something out of nothing. To perform this usurious hat trick, one must assume something one knows is not true -- that money is fertile. The attribution of a bogus "fallacy"...

The New York Times has a mostly insightful article on the effect of almost a decade of austerity on economic and social conditions in England.  It focuses on Liverpool and provides example after example of savage cuts to the programs and institutions people have depended on all their lives: the National Health Service, income support, libraries, parks and recreation, police and fire departments.  It’s an important story, well told.Except that it flubs the single most important piece, why...

What do I have to show for my sabbatical?  Among other things, this report on the economic and social impact of AIDS I prepared for the International Labor Organization.  It’s just been posted on their website, so it’s yours for the perusing.

How do we get the word out that our underlying conception of how regulations should be designed and enforced needs to change?The New York Times has an ominous article about the overuse of antibiotics by the livestock industry and its risks for animal health and ours.  Flooding our digestive system with these drugs damages the gut microbiome we depend on for nutrition and waste processing, and it promotes the evolution of resistant strains of bacteria.  The upshot, according to this...

Juan Cole reports that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini has responded to Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA and Pompeo's Plan B 12 demands with 6 demands for Europe: 1) condemn the US withdrawal, 2) stop pressing Iran on missile development, 3) criticize any further US boycotts, 4) undo damage to Iran economy of boycotts especially to buy any oil not able to be exported because of them, 5) support financing of Iran economy, and 6) respond rapidly to these demands.  According to Cole...

From "Orientations and Proposals -- The Reduction of Working Time: Issues and Policies" of Andre Gorz's Critique of Economic Reason (1989) translated by Gillian Handyside and Chris Turner. I am posting the section on "The Right to an Income and the Right to Work" in two parts (go to part one). This is part two: The right to work, the duty to work and one's rights as a citizen are inextricably linked. In a Left conception, the point is therefore not to guarantee an income independent of any...

From "Orientations and Proposals -- The Reduction of Working Time: Issues and Policies" of Andre Gorz's Critique of Economic Reason (1989) translated by Gillian Handyside and Chris Turner. I am posting the section on "The Right to an Income and the Right to Work" in two parts. This is part one:The Right to an Income and The Right to Work  When the production process demands less work and distributes less and less wages, it gradually becomes obvious that the right to an income can no longer...

Earlier today ne US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, presented this administration's "Plan B" at the Heritage Foundation on how to deal with Iran following the US's withdrawal from the nuclear deal, the  JCPOA.  Pompeo presented 12 demands and threatened to impose "the strongest economic sanctions in history."  The Trump administration may wish to do the latter, but the  refusal of all the other parties to the JCPOA to go along with this effort will certainly guarantee that even if the...

“The basic idea is that the government can’t run out of money. It creates money just by spending.” -- Stephanie Kelton This is true. Government cannot run out of its own money. But what is money? It is a token or pledge that can be redeemed for something of value. If government creates much more money than there are things of value to redeem it for the prices of those things go up. Not to worry, Zach Carter assures us: But even inflation doesn’t impose a hard limit on policy options. The...