Mike Norman Economics

When John Maynard Keynes wrote his essay – Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren – which was published in 1930 he considered that workers would be able to work just 15 hours a week because of the likely technological shifts over the 100 years from the date of his publication. He was right about the productivity gains that have been created but wrong about the benefits workers would gain from them. He thought the productivity would be more evenly shared out. He underestimated the...

Things getting really silly. Stay focused and you will be okay. Also...Tesla back in my valuation level. Trade and invest using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/mmt-trader/?s2-ssl=yes/ Download my podcasts! New one every week. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1105286 Mike Norman Twitter https://twitter.com/mikenorman

Cambridge University team say their findings could be used to spot people at risk from radicalisation I tend to like anything new or novel, which is a hallmark of a Liberal. Our brains hold clues for the ideologies we choose to live by, according to research, which has suggested that people who espouse extremist attitudes tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks.“It’s fascinating, because conservatism is almost a synonym for caution,” she said. “We’re seeing that – at the very basic...

This pattern of rising international enrolments in US higher ed was not likely to continue on its pre-pandemic trajectory. Other countries have been building up their higher education options. In addition, if you were a young entrepreneur or professional from China or India, the possibilities for building your career in your home country look a lot better now than they did, say, back in about 1990. But the pandemic has taken what would have been a slower-motion squeeze on international...

I don’t see how there can be real progress unless the Democratic Party is replaced, at least with the DNC leadership that has turned its politics into demagogy. Its identity politics is based on every identity except being a wage-earner.…Michael Hudson explains how the Democrats abandoned workers, became the party of the rich, and retained a sufficient voter base to be competitive using identity politics. Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of NeoliberalismThe Democrats...

The recent power failures in Texas led me to think about a topic I had not thought much about since my electrical engineering undergraduate days -- electricity transmission and generation. In this article, I discuss big picture options for electricity, both from a technology and electricity markets/regulation point of view....Bond EconomicsElectricity OptionsBrian Romanchuk

When we elect governments we should expect that they will do what they promised and represent our best interests. We don’t expect them to represent a small, privileged sector of the economy at the expense of the rest of it. The problem is that we overlay these aspirations onto an economic ownership system which has a different logic to our understanding of the operations of a democratic state. And mainstream economics gives reverence and priority to the logic of capitalism rather than...

High global inequality, otherwise a scourge, can here be used to our advantage. We know that the top decile of world population (call them “the rich”) receives about 45-47% of global income. We also know that the elasticity of carbon emissions with respect to income is about 1 which is a fancy way of saying that as real income goes up by 10%, we generate 10% more emissions. This then implies that the top global decile is responsible for 45-47% of all emissions. That percentage can be...

Precisely how Parliamentary authority to spend ends up as a payment in somebody’s bank account, including the banking transactions that occur across the Government Banking Service to make that happen....New WaylandUK Government Spending - The Gory DetailsNeilW

In a February 18th front page article in the business section of the New York Times, Eduardo Porter surveys the potential for a job guarantee program. After starting with the caveat issued by Republican politicians—why trust your life choices to bureaucrats?—the piece goes on to present opinions of various experts on employment programs.It is noteworthy that even among the specialists, not one has ever been involved in actual fieldwork or research in the various experiments with job...