Mike Norman Economics

Short and simple. Pass it on.BloombergQuint (registration may be required)The Climate Case for a Jobs GuaranteeKim Stanley Robinson

Both Canadian and American labour market data for May surprised to the upside, and the Treasury market has been monkey-hammered. My view always was that guessing what would happen this month is a bit of a waste of time, and we won't get a clean read until the June data. A mechanical bounce in employment was always in the cards, the question is when, and at what levels. One data point doesn't establish a trend, but a lot of folks are breathing more easily today. Now let's hope that there...

What an amazing bird! I used to be loads where I lived as a boy. They were stunning to watch in flight. They were really fast. They would just suddenly swoop down, probably catching prey.It is clear that Swifts need our help and they are a bird well worth saving; if not to ensure that the simple sound of summer does not desert our landscape, then for the frankly incredible natural history of this otherwise innocuous bird; a life on the wing that truly astounds, feats of ingenuity that seem...

Dollar hit a 3-month low. There are major implications and profits to be made from this trend. Trade and invest using the concepts and understandings of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/mmt-trader/?s2-ssl=yes/

But whatever tactics are ultimately pursued, it’s key to have an ideological platform underlying the revolution. You can’t just be “against” the current order; you need to stand “for” a constructive vision or set of principles for doing things better. As Buckminster Fuller said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Your platform sets the north star that your movement will organize...

It's always best to think through your strategy leaping in. [embedded content]

In my view, the root of the problem is in the socio-economic system loosely called "capitalism" and it cannot be overcome without a redesign of the system, which is not actual democracy but rather plutocratic oligarchy. If "capitalism" is defined as a socio-economic system (not merely an economic system) that favors "capital" (property ownership), with "land" folded into capital, over the other factors, namely, "labor" and "natural resources," based on the priority of "capital" for...

New one on me. Back in the day, the police just had batons and tear gas. Since then it has evolved to pepper spry, tasers, non-lethal bullets, smoke canisters, sound and water cannons, and now pepper "balls," bullets really. Pepper balls and other irritants are used to disperse or move a crowd in a case of civil disturbance, and authorities might use pepper balls as compared to tear gas canisters for a few different reasons, says Hodgson. Theoretically, he says, they can more accurately...

Brad DeLong makes a frank admission. The smart money has been that our success as an industry is primarily the result of the social-intellectual rather than the formal-intellectual component of higher education. But we are not sure. This problem, however, has been on the back burner for years… generations… perhaps centuries… because our “customers” have long been highly satisfied. But now this knowledge problem of ours has suddenly become urgent. The social-intellectual component of...

Governments save economies. Never let a mainstream economist tell you that government intervention is undesirable and that the ‘market’ will sort things out. Never let them tell you that large-scale government bond purchases by central banks lead to inflation. Never let them tell you that the government, when properly run, can run out of money. There is unlimited amounts of public purchasing capacity. The art is when to apply it and how much to release. That can only be determined by the...