Mike Norman Economics

Maybe time to consider euthanizing all the libertarians?  They are never going to change... WASHINGTON (AP) - House conservatives say there are enough Republican opponents to reject GOP leaders' plan to prevent government shutdown. — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 17, 2018

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining more traction in mainstream discourse, but the academic debate has been heating up for years. One scholar with a sympathetic but critical eye towards basic income still believes it is not the best priority for activists. Philip Harvey, a professor of law at Rutgers, wrote that a job guarantee could eliminate poverty for a fraction of the cost of UBI — $1.5 trillion less.Harvey argued in 2006 that the focus on UBI may be crowding out more realistic...

Setting the record straight.AeonThe real Adam Smith Paul Sagar | lecturer in political theory in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London

When contracts fail, the legal priority is still to pay firms like Carillion. Money is officially more valuable than life The corporations want their cut and have their cronies in government. The market is fine for cans of beans, cars, computers, Hi -Fi, etc, where the price can be evaluated easily and seen whether they are fair, but when it comes to government services even the government can get ripped off. But do governments care when they are the agents of the corporations? The...

[embedded content]                                                                        ******** The Real News: How the US Helped Set 'Ukraine on Fire' Aaron Maté interviews the film's director who says that the Neoconservatives and George Soros, who both use NGO's, are the biggest meddlers in other country's elections around the world. Interview starts at 3:28. [embedded content]

JG at work. In 2015, [neoliberal] Prime Minister Narendra Modi had described the programme as a "testimony to the failures of previous governments". The Telegraph (India)Job scheme swells farm yieldsBasant Kumar Mohanty

In its latest reminder that China is a (for now) happy holder of some $1.2 trillion in US Treasurys, Chinese credit rating agency Dagong downgraded US sovereign ratings from A- to BBB+ overnight, citing "deficiencies in US political ecology" and tax cuts that "directly reduce the federal government's sources of debt repayment" weakening the base of the government's debt repayment. Oh, and just to make sure the message is heard loud and clear, the ratings, which are now level with those of...

Despite its claims to “open-ness,” liberalism in its late modern Western form becomes self-contained to the point of closure. Allied with such power constructs as the “liberal world order,” globalization (a word that came into common usage only after the fall of the Soviet Union) tends towards the homogenization of political space and the radical constriction of pluralism. Notice a trend toward closure? It's affected conventional economics in addition to politics. Plurism, the hallmark of...

Taken together, the Trump strategy is clever two-pronged approach that shrinks capital investment in the country (thereby strangling the economy) while increasing the incitements that are intended to cause the government to overreact and (possibly) scuttle the agreement. Trump’s goal is to trick Iran into terminating the deal because it would be too costly for the US to end its commitment unilaterally.…  The Unz ReviewTrump’s Sinister Plan to Kill the Iranian “Nukes” Deal Mike Whitney...

Liberalism reveals its illiberal underbelly as "liberal democracies' seek to control the narrative by limiting freedom of expression and press freedom in the attempt to limit freedom of thought, which is of the essence of totalitarianism.This push is being led by the US and France, the birthplaces of the revolutions that brought liberalism onto the world stage, and Britain as well, the birthday of liberal philosophy led by John Locke.Ironic betrayal. This is likely not malicious but rather...