Mike Norman Economics

My home town (where I was born and still spend a lot of time) is Melbourne, Victoria. It is a glorious place, at least the inner suburbs within about 3-4 kms of the city centre where I hang out mostly. It recently ‘lost’ its top place in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index (most pleasant place to live) to Vienna (Source). One wag thought it might have been because the Economist got confused between Australia and Austria. Economists are easily confused! But the reason...

Paul Craig Roberts writes about Mosanto's Roundup and how it's ingredient glyphosate maybe causing cancer. Monsanto's scientists say no but independent scientists say out does and is now so widespread and in nearly all our food. PCR says that our present capitalist system has become too expensive to be viable where too many costs have been externalised.   Or consider something simple like a pet store. All the pet store owners and customers who sold and purchased colorful 18 to 24 inch...

Not one of his best, but Pepe is always worth the read. It's August, so not much happening to report anyway. Asia TimesSo what will The Sanctioned supergroup do? Pepe Escobar

Quote worth pondering.Lars P. Syll’s BlogEconophysics Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

It’s rare for a fiscal policy wonk to attain political celebrity status, but economist Stephanie Kelton, a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, is one of the hottest names in Washington right now. Though her ideas were considered radical just a few years ago (Paul Krugman flatly rejected the premise of her research in a 2011 New York Times column), several of the policies she helped popularize, such as nationwide student debt cancellation and a federal jobs guarantee, have...

Is there a Deep State in our western liberal democracies? If so, is it a conspiracy or something more ‘interesting’ than that? These are questions that the Left has been traditionally engaged with, especially when facing undercover campaigns to prevent progressives from winning power or, on occasion, to unseat or destabilise left-wing governments. However, more recently, the Alt-Right has begun waging a war of words against the Deep State, with Donald Trump and his supporters doing so most...

The mind of the mass media: Email exchange between myself and a leading Washington Post foreign policy reporter:July 18, 2018 The US says it is not influencing elections but is supporting democracy, but if the wrong person get's elected, well? 'Democray' supports the elite well, like 'free markets' do, because they have to power to influence elections and rig the market. It's like a game of monopoly where once someone has got ahead and started winning it is very difficult to stop them as...

A good enough reason to never live in the US, in my opinion. In my last job I got five weeks and three days paid leave a year. The extra three days were added over a number of years for long term service. After my company got privatized my union could never negotiate the last few days to make it six weeks holiday.Five weeks three days, how can anyone say unions are bad, they served me well? Anyway, what I used to do was take two weeks leave twice a year but take those weeks where there was...

Private banks are failing to serve the public, say the professors, Mark Paul, Thomas Herndon, and so a public solution is needed to compete alongside the private banks. Banks today are increasingly consolidating branch locations, while also moving away from low-cost financial services to high-profit activities, leaving marginalized Americans underserved and left behind in today’s economy. Without access to basic banking services, such as checking and savings accounts or small loans,...

Peter Turchin has studied why civilisations collapse and he says it's when the gap between the rich and poor get's too big the rich can then use their power and influence to avoid paying taxes while at the same time use their monopoly position to force down the wages of the general population and so in the end the average citizen is unable pay enough tax to keep the system going either. Then societies begin to collapse and this can sometimes trigger a civil war, he says.What I found...