Mike Norman Economics

Africa is being looted. We need to radically rethink the notion that Britain is helping Africa to develop. The UK's large aid programme is, among other things, being used to promote African policies from which British corporations will further profit. British policy in Africa, and indeed that of African elites, needs to be challenged and substantially changed if we are serious about promoting long term economic development on the continent. Third, British policy has done nothing to...

Oldie but goodie. Excellent short summary of the contributions of C. Wright Mills.  "Follow the power." Power should be central to economics. Economists recognize that market imperfections arise from asymmetrical market power. These imperfections are the basis of economic rents — financial rent, land rent, natural resources rent, and monopoly-monopsony rent. Market power is also the basis for socializing negative externality, also a from of rent extraction. For example, a way to...

How do you write about a book that is almost 600 pages long (in small print), has 25 pages of references, and the ambition to explain political institutions from the dawn of mankind to the French Revolution, from kinship-based bands of hunters to Voltaire? This was Francis Fukuyama’s objective in this monumental (yet eminently readable) book, “The Origins of PoliticalOrder” (note the plural).My review, given the size and importance of the book, will be done in two parts, First, here, I...

After UK officials have promoted the interests of arms and oil/gas corporations while in office, what do they do when they leave office? They go and work for them. The revolving door is a key aspect of British oligarchy.

The human mind can't handle big numbers very well, says, Dean Baker, and when people hear that $70 Billion had been spent on wekfare, they think that must be 30% of the federal budget, when really it is only a tiny percentage. He says that liberals must work harder to present the true facts, so that people can see that these programs are not expensive and do help a lot of people. If people knew the true cost, many more are likely to support these programs. There really is no other side on...

Roger Waters doesn't read the Guardian, he gets the the real news. [embedded content] Mar. 25, 2019 The attempt by foreign powers to impose regime change in Venezuela has failed, ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has said, adding that final victory over the “evil empire” was on the horizon. In a short video posted to Twitter, the famed English rock star and activist expressed disgust with those who supported Venezuela’s self-declared interim president Juan Guaido and his attempt to push...

Who said all this stuff? NO ONE. Just me.

Richard Wolff gives a simple explanation of MMT, but he has a caveat - the MMTers, he says, don't have much to say about how capitalism can be transformed into something better. [embedded content]

Dan Baum, writing in support of drug legalization at Harper’s, has unleashed a frank 1994 quote from former Nixon policy advisor John Ehrlichman, and as inadvertently salient an argument for legalizing drugs as any I’ve ever seen: At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who,...

[embedded content] Greenspan: "We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like"FEBRUARY 16, 2005 COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE  GREENSPAN: I think we should maintain the principles of Social Security, but I think the existing structure is not working, and that until we can construct a system which creates the savings that are required to build the real assets so that the retirees have real goods and services, we do not have a...