Mike Norman Economics

Studies have determined that the Homo economicus personality is an extremely rare one. Instead, most humans are marked by a deep capacity for reciprocity, cooperation and selflessness.… TruthoutHow Economists Tricked Us Into Thinking Capitalism Works Robert R. RaymondSee also In India, the ‘development’ paradigm is premised on moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like...

China is poised to realize a dream that a few decades ago most experts would have dismissed as wishful thinking. For centuries, China dreamed of building a "moderately prosperous society" in all respects. And this year, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, China will realize that dream despite having a population of more than 1.3 billion. Late leader Deng Xiaoping resurrected this ancient but never-realized goal when reform and opening-up were launched. Chinese leaders who...

I would simply add to what Ramanan says in this post that the US is functioning like all previous empires, for good and ill. The good is that empire reduces transaction costs in international trade and the imperial economy, so it is a benefit to belong to that system. On the other hand, it is the empire that formulates and enforces the rules, for the "benefit of the empire," which means in practice that the core comes first rather than the empire as whole being considered as an integrated...

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The implication here is "formal model." But formal models are not the only sort of models. Most models we use are conceptual and they are mostly sufficient to the task. For example, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein showed how a descriptive statement is a model of a fact that allows for comparing the model to the fact observationally to determine it truth-value. He elaborated how the propositional calculus is used to to describe many fact in using the principles of descriptive logic to...

Hey if you're only up 50% you're doing it wrong!!!(He's trying to get all the Neutrals off the fence... gotta be ripping off Mike's stuff... GOTTA be... probably has anonymous Whitehouse staffers successively signing up for free 30-day trials and cancelling...)STOCK MARKET AT ALL-TIME HIGH! HOW ARE YOUR 401K’S DOING? 70%, 80%, 90% up? Only 50% up! What are you doing wrong?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020 DT's!

This is good - and one thing I like about it is that the reporter allows the interviewees all the time they need to express their views. This does lead to some rambling and going over points again, but it's so annoying how in most interviews the reporter will often butt in just when someone is getting to an interesting bit. [embedded content]

Medium (why it matters that the American elite chose the wrong path after WWII left the US the global hegemon.)(How) America Chose the Path of Violence, Capital, and Empire — Instead of Peace, Prosperity, and Democracy Umair Haque Medium (attacking the false logic of equating Zionism as Israeli theocratic nationalism and exceptionalism with anti-semitism as a form of bigotry.) One down, two to go — Zionism, militarism, and American exceptionalism Stan GoffThe Guardian (UK) ("free...

I decided that I would run the CFA Franc series in three consecutive parts to maintain continuity and allow me to edit the final manuscript which Pluto Press will use to finalise the book by Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla. That meant that my usual Wednesday snippets sort of blog post didn’t happen this week. So, given that I have to travel for several hours today, Thursday becomes Wednesday and I just want to write a few comments about the current crisis in Australia (from the...

Cross-posted from The Saker:  Introduction: After posting Michael Hudson’s article “America Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East” on the blog, I decided to ask Michael to reply to a few follow-up questions. Michael very kindly agreed. Please see our exchange below.... Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of NeoliberalismPersian PowerplayMichael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial...