Mike Norman Economics

Global InequalityGlobal poverty over the long-term: legitimate issuesBranko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceSee also Our World In DataHow do we know the history of extreme poverty?Joe Hasell and Max Roser

Transparency International EU, is part of TIs “anti-corruption movement” focused on happenings in the European Union. It gets around 40 per cent of its funding from the European Commission, itself, although they claim this does not compromise their “institutional integrity and independence”. Let’s hope not! They have just released a report – Vanishing Act: The Eurogroup’s Accountability (February 5, 2019) – which confirms, in case one wasn’t already aware (looking at the Europhile Left...

Native American genocide, specifically the Cherokee nation. The real history of the United States, which was, by the way, contemporaneous with slavery. And, yes, the president of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" just made a joke about it.Slate“Work of Barbarity”: Here’s What the Trail of Tears Was Like, According to Someone Who Was There Rev. Evan Jones

Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States. From Reuters no less.American soft power is declining. Leader of the free world and beacon of liberty no longer?ReutersClimate change seen as top threat, but U.S. power a growing worry: poll

Wow. 16 million hits, and counting. Leave it to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)  to show how to turn a campaign finance primer into a viral video.  Certainly the first time a congressional hearing on strengthening ethics rules for the executive branch  reached such a huge audience.  This is a must-watch clip. I hesitate to add much commentary, as anything I write will likely not add all that much, and might instead only distract from the original.Nonetheless, full speed...

Trump showing his age in denouncing progressive proposals as "socialist"? Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg (D) on Sunday dismissed President Trump's efforts to portray Democratic policy pitches as "socialism," arguing that the term no longer carries negative connotations. “I think he's clinging to a rhetorical strategy that was very powerful when he was coming of age 50 years ago, but it's just a little bit different right now," Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who has launched...

Finally, some constructive criticism of MMT.  Civil engineer and manager Sig Silber suggests many points that he feels need to be addressed in debate. They are well taken. No doubt many encountering MMT will have similar questions. MMT economists have anticipated a number of them and addressed them already. Some just disappear on correct understanding of MMT. The remaining one are generally political issues as much as economic, which MMT also admits. Such issues have to be decided...

This is a very good post by Chris Dillow.He points out that there are two Marxes, so to speak, one radical and the other conservative. The world is most familiar with Marx the radical revolutionary, who advocated violent revolution to remove the "bourgeoisie" (owners of the means of production) and who further proposed a transition stage of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" as being necessary. But Marx is more than the Communist Manifesto, with which he is most associated.The second Marx...

Will Venezuela become Pinochet's Chile redux? Is there a link running through neoliberalism, neoconservative, neo-imperialism, and neocolonialism that begins with the assumption that economic liberalism is the basis of liberalism and the so-called liberal order? Hausmann has been referred to as the informal mentor to Juan Guiadó. Indirect might be a better word to describe the mentorship, as there is a middleman between Hausmann and Guiadó: Leopoldo López, the leader of Popular Will. It...

John Bolton says Venezuela is one of three countries he considers to be the troika of tyranny. Not Saudi Arabia, Isreal, Britain , or the U.S which have been on a war rampage for decades now attacking one country after another. When you're the 'good guys' you're allowed to kill as many as the 'bad guys' as you want, even if that means dropping napalm on them, blanket bombing them, or destroying their crops, killing millions, women and children too. You see, it's for their good, we're saving...