Mike Norman Economics

Yet almost all white Americans — not just hateful bigots on the right, but liberals, lefties, wishy-washy social democrats — tacitly engage in practices that reinforce that segregation. Bourgeois liberals apologize for the practice, we are not unaware, but once we have kids, we insist they grow up in “nice” neighborhoods with “good” schools, knowing and quietly exploiting correlations between both race and affluence and our scare-quoted notions of quality. One way people try to address this...

Matt Reed looks at Want Anti-Racist Policy to Work on Today? Adequately and Equitably Fund Community Colleges, by Nikki Edgecombe, Kate Shaw and Jessica Brathwaite, and The Deficit Myth, by Stephanie Kelton. He likes what he sees. I’m about halfway through the book [Deficit Myth] now , and I already consider it one of the most important books of the last decade. It’s extraordinary. Inside Higher EdA Productive Mashup Matt Reed

Stephanie Kelton’s new book, ‘The Deficit Myth,’ argues that the path to shared prosperity and achieving progressive goals means no longer asking how we will pay for things, and instead just creating the money to make them happen.... MMT positive.BTW, I don't bother with posting MMT negative stuff unless it makes a contribution or in some way advances informed debate. Most of the mentions are still negative and they use the same flawed reasoning if one can even call attacking a straw man...

Capital as such – self-expanding value, money that has been freed from all natural encumbrances and can finally realize its true, insane [verrückt] destiny, which is to beget more money ad infinitum – does not exist in the physical quantities model. The “metaphysical” objectification of exchange relationships, productive activities, and technical relations in money is an essential fact of capitalism. It is not one of the historical, psychological, or political background conditions of...

Last week, the results of a survey of Australian economists was released which showed that the majority supported freezing minimum wages, which normally are adjusted annually in June. The minimum wage case is currently being heard in the wage setting tribunal (Fair Work Commission) and a host of antagonists have assembled arguments to stop millions of the lowest paid workers getting a pay rise. In effect, they are advocating a real wage cut for these workers given inflation is running at...

What, then, of the empire’s own policing capabilities overseas? Here, the Trump message is a treat of confusion. He wishes to be armed for unilateralism. No more needless policing endeavours in the international arena. No unnecessary use of US armed forces to intervene in the murky, squalid affairs of international relations. The interventionist, policing streak in foreign policy reached its height with the 2005 declaration by President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address that...

One of the roundabouts near me is too dangerous to cycle around so I go underneath it. I sometimes have to pass by people a few feet away, but the risk is low, according to this report. How to avoid the virus as the world reopens | Free to read

Talk to the cops the way many of them talk to people. Assume they are guilty.WATCH: Man with Camera Turns Tables on Cop by Interrogating him like a Cop

Won't work and is really pissing off Germany, which has already rejected extraterritorial sanctions as illegal under international law. German-Russian-Chinese alliance in the making?OilpriceNew U.S. Sanctions Unlikely To Derail Nord Stream 2 Viktor Katona

And What Can Countries like the US or Netherlands Learn from It? Hammer and Dance with an initial aggressive lowdown seems to cause the least harm to the economy.      Sweden has famously followed a different coronavirus strategy than most of the rest of the Developed world: Let the virus run loose, curb it enough to make sure it doesn’t overwhelm the healthcare system like in Hubei, Italy or Spain, but don’t try to eliminate it. They think stopping it completely is impossible....