Mike Norman Economics

Total income earned can be divided into what is earned by labor in wages, salaries, and benefits, and what is earned by capital in profits and interest payments. The line between these categories can be a blurry: for example, should the income received by someone running their own business be counted as "labor" income received for their hours worked, or as "capital" income received from their ownership of the business, or some mixture of both?However, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has...

The title signals the strong liberal bias of the authors. The dialectic is actually about traditionalism, which appears negatively as authoritarianism to liberals, versus liberalism, which appears as libertinism to traditionalists. The tell is the admission that the wave of traditionalism is being led by "populism," as in what people actually want. But what the people actually want is supposed to be the hallmark of liberalism. The way liberals counter is this is that the majority...

Michael Roberts looks at past stock market declines from the POV of the profit rate. Different conditions applied in each case, and the contemporary situation is different, too.Michael Roberts BlogStock market crash: 1987, 2007 or 1937? Michael RobertsKeynes.Stumbling and MumblingEmergence in stock marketsChris Dillow | Investors Chronicle Markets in financial instruments are comprised of two principal cohorts. The first cohort is comprised of "investors," who buy to hold longer term....

Donald Trump today used the NHS as a reason not to push for Universal Health Care in the US. The President pointed to demonstrations yesterday in the UK with thousands of Brits taking to the streets to protest the poorly run system. But even though Trump might have a point about the UK, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on in regards to publicly funded health care systems.Indeed, many people have pointed out that some of the best healthcare systems in the World are publicly funded.... The...

Prof. Atilio Boron analyzes the situation in Argentina, where President Macri is pushing drastic neoliberal reforms against widespread resistance from unions and social movements. Sec. of State Rex Tillerson visits to give Macri backing and to urge anti-Venezuela sanctions.... Misleading title. The MO of the neoliberals is to push ahead as hard as possible, then pause when resistance rises, and push ahead again when it dies down. Well, you know, the Macri government is very...proxy of the...

 The bottom line – and the fundamental problem – seems to be clear: inequality rose because the labour movement lost out. Today’s lacking investment means that technology does not substitute for labour – the normal trajectory in capitalism, instead cheap labour substitutes for technology. As a result, productivity stalls. After decades of right-wing policies, stripping away protections for workers, the flexibilisation of labour markets, destroying ‘government rigidities’ and waging wars...

Some years ago, I started collecting information about the so-called Maghreb countries, which typically refers to the region spanned by Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, although sometimes Libya and Mauritania are also included in the aggregation. You will find it referred to as the Barbary Coast in English literature. I was interested (as a long-term project when I get old :-)) to write a book about how nations broke away from the yoke of colonialism only to fall into the hands of the IMF and...

Told ya to wait for it... right on cue:New York Lawmaker Proposes Study of State-Backed Cryptocurrency https://t.co/xoc7HaUO7w pic.twitter.com/vyGU2oTYzF— CoinDesk (@coindesk) February 5, 2018

Yanis Varoufakis as a true liberal is very pro open borders and immigration. His proposals here seem quite good which could help stop economic migration. The idea of economic migrants traveling all around Europe trying to find a decent wage is deeply unpleasant, especially if when they get settled they find that they have to have to move again. People are not like machines or cargo.Research has shown that young children changing too many schools when they are young can psychologically harm...

These trade deals sound terrifying, especially for government run public services. The corporations are all over them seeing what they can pick off. How did it get so complicated, you would think a democratic country could just run its public services without threat from multinational corporations.  KVYanis VaroufakisThe main argument against my Norway Plus proposal is that such an agreement would jeopardise the capacity of the UK government to strike out into the world to bring home a...