Mike Norman Economics

Underscores the importance of targeted government spending, that is, direction of flow toward consumer spending (multiplier effect) rather than adding to the stock of savings (neutralization). Attempting to stimulate business investment fails in the face of lagging demand.Zero HedgeUS Retail Sales Disappoint, Online Spending Growth Hits A Wall As Government Handouts End Tyler Durden

Finnish experiment. The final results from Finland’s experiment are now in, and the findings are intriguing: the basic income in Finland led to a small increase in employment, significantly boosted multiple measures of the recipients’ well-being, and reinforced positive individual and societal feedback loops. The numbers look pretty good. Can it be generalized? This would not suggest that a UBI is a substitute for an MMT JG, however. The rise in employment was small. There would...

Nothing-burger.  The EU wants more than China is willing to give now that it is turning away from its former export-driven model of development and moved on toward building a middle-class consumer economy.BruegelNon-summit shows EU-China ties at new lowAlicia García-Herrero

In this post, I continue the draft of sections of my forthcoming book, “Marxian Economics: An Introduction.” This, like the previous post, is for chapter 1, Marxian Economics Today. Occasional Links & CommentaryTale of two capitalisms David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame See also MR Online1978: Ernest Mandel – We must dream. Anticipation and hope as categories of historical materialism

But a few economics matters first pertaining to the Job Guarantee and the nonsensical arguments I have been seeing in the media about it being a system of enslavement and not better than a system that forces workers into unemployment.... Bill Mitchell – billy blogHow would Job Guarantee wages be set?Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Stansfield Smith mounts an interesting argument that the USD is the only truly sovereign currency in the world taking the present monetary arrangements into account.  Owing to dollar hegemony, all other counties are dollar-dependent to one degree or another, which limits their ability to conduct policy independently in spite of their meeting MMT criteria for currency sovereignty.  So, while the MMT position may be correct technically, there is more to it than that, and this is an...

The Canadian Establishment has launched a full-court press against lax fiscal policy of the Trudeau government. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that they are calling for austerity (at least not immediately), but rumours of policies like Universal Basic Income are causing alarm bells to ring. The Canadian economic establishment is very much wedded to sound finance beliefs, courtesy of the Great Canadian Fiscal Crisis of the early 1990s. Hysteresis is a powerful influence.As an...

Some interesting articles on economic sociology, and economics and law.London School of EconomicsSymposium on Methods

The post is by someone tending toward "free-market anarchism" (anarcho-capitalism) so the commentary is predictable.  But the questions he poses are relevant to anyone that advocates for revolutionary change from either the left or right. The questions can be summarized as, how to get from here to there while articulating clearly what "there" means. Zero HedgeSo You Want To Overthrow The State: Ten Questions For Aspiring Revolutionaries Art Carden via The American Institute for...

Confronting shareholder capitalism, and gender as well.FortuneFortune launches a new community for leaders who want to change business for goodEllen McGirt