Mike Norman Economics

Weekend reading for those of wide-ranging interests. It's on Daniel Dennett's contribution to the study of consciousness and his synthetic approach that blends many fields, biology and evolutionary theory in particular. Digressions&ImpressionsDennett as Synthetic PhilosopherEric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

I present four claims about Marx's Capital. I strive for topics more general than, for example, squabbles about the transformation problem. I suggest that some of these claims present a useful focus for reading Marx's book, even if part of your focus is arguing why the claim is wrong. If this were more than a blog post, I would need to cite various Marxists and scholars that inspired me. Short. Not wonkish. Worth thinking about, e.g, relative to "normalizing Marx." Implies Marx was a...

Again, follow the money, here the conversion of the Reichsmark to the DM. Very interesting from the monetary point of view — who controls the money, and all that. I think some of you may have heard on more than one occasion about how that bloodthirsty tyrant Stalin set up a blockade of West Berlin in 1948 and how the freedom-loving nations organized the Berlin airlift to circumvent it. But today we’ll let you in on what really happened.... Russia InsiderWho Really Put up the Berlin Wall?...

This is worth watching just for the clip of  Bill Maher and Micheal Moore attacking Col. Larry Wilkerson. Now Col. Larry Wilkerson is a republican and a military man and yet here is talking about making peace with Putin because the US and Russia have too many nuclear weapons aimed at each other and tensions are high. But Bill Maher and Michael Moore are vehemently anti-Russia and are full of it. Clip starts at 29 seconds. It's appalling to see liberals being so hawkish. I used to like...

This article combines tax, survey, and national accounts data to estimate the distribution of national income in the United States since 1913. Our distributional national accounts capture 100% of national income, allowing us to compute growth rates for each quantile of the income distribution consistent with macroeconomic growth. We estimate the distribution of both pretax and posttax income, making it possible to provide a comprehensive view of how government redistribution affects...

Ok, the title is clickbait. But, uncharacteristically of clickbait the article is about much more and it is important. The point is that gender is a complicated concept that does fit simple models like biological appearance. This is a point that Ludwig Wittgenstein sought to elucidate by applying logical analysis. The meaning of many words in ordinary language are more like family resemblances than essences. For example, many words have several entires differentiating the different...

Everyone got QE wrong. They’re getting tariffs and sanctions wrong now too.

All across the United States, students are settling into college – and coming to grips with “Econ 101.” This introductory course is typically taught with a broadly reassuring message: if markets are allowed to work, good outcomes – such as productivity growth, increasing wages, and generally shared prosperity – will surely follow. Unfortunately, as my co-author James Kwak points out in his recent book, Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality, Econ 101 is so far from being the...

Austerity prevails in the West because three powerful political tribes champion it. Enemies of big government have coalesced with European social democrats and tax-cutting US Republicans, to create a cartel-based, hierarchical, financialized global economic system. ATHENS – No policy is as self-defeating during recessionary times as the pursuit of a budget surplus for the purpose of containing public debt – austerity, for short. So, as the world approaches the tenth anniversary of the...

Trump looking very strongly at doing it via Executive action: Bloomberg sat down with Donald Trump today in the Oval Office. Lots of news: he'll bail on WTO if they don't shape up, say Sessions is safe until after the midterms and more. Here's a taste: https://t.co/XXCwjG3s8k — Craig Gordon (@dcraiggordon) August 30, 2018 The capital gains change would slash tax bills for investors when selling assets such as stock or real estate by adjusting the original purchase price for inflation. The...