Mike Norman Economics

What then is the escape from capitalism? What would be the essential features of a socialist economy, one the would be really achievable? Exactly the right question. It's not just about there but getting from here to there. The former is utopian, the latter involves being realistic. This is not primarily a theoretical question but a practical one.Marx concluded that capitalism is based on a monetary production economy, and that monetary production economies tend toward capitalism, as China...

Eiteman and Guthrie conclude their paper with this statement: “If the beliefs of businessmen in general coincide with those included in this sample, it is obvious that short-run marginal price theory should be revised in the light of reality.” That was in 1952…. Another thing conventional economics reverses and gets backwards. "Reality is a bitch."econoblog 101The problem with the supply curveDirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin  

"But how will we pay for it?" The bill for all the negative externality that has been socialized is coming due.TruthdigThe $70-Trillion Climate Bill Coming Our WayTim Radford / Climate News Network

Behind the scenes: Trump came into office imagining a presidency in which new projects — "built by the Trump administration" — would be erected all over the country, sources close to him tell me."There was a genuine naïveté about the prospect of Democrats and Republicans coming together to do something on a grand scale with infrastructure," a former White House official told me. "It was one of those things where Trump said it was gonna be easy. He really thought so." In an early 2017...

Bill analyzes the US private sector. He doesn't deal with the contribution of government, which is running record deficits, or the sectoral balances in this post.Bill Mitchell – billy blogStrong US growth disguises worrying trendsBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Silly question? Brian is responding to someone who asserted that in effect government does.  Actually, it used to be that government confiscated property to move it to government use, but that is no longer considered "proper," unless the police do it on other pretexts. In a monetary production economy, taxes are payable in "money," that is, the government's currency. What David Andolfatto apparently means is that one's purchasing power declines as a result of taxation, which is true....

Another quote from the recently published MMT textbook. Lars P. Syll’s BlogThe interest rate fallacyLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

George Monbiot says capitalism is not working anymore, especially now as it is destroying the planet. It did for a while help us achieve great growth and improved our standard of living , but many people in the third world had their standard of living crushed as we grabbed their resources to we built our great society on.The One Percent and the next 30% did well out of it, but for the bottom 30% it is hell.In the 1930's people thought automation would produce the leisure society, but...

What is Stiglitz’s solution? “Things don’t have to be that way. There is an alternative: progressive capitalism. Progressive capitalism is not an oxymoron; we can indeed channel the power of the market to serve society.” You see, it is not capitalism that is the problem but vested interests, especially among monopolists and bankers. The answer is to return to the days of managed capitalism that Stiglitz believes existed in the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s.How are we to return to the...

Funny.Zero HedgeOnline Retail War Turns Ugly: Wal-Mart Responds To Amazon With Free 1-Day ShippingTyler Durden