Mike Norman Economics

I am currently working through the entire Commissaire Maigret detective series written by Belgian author author Georges Simenon. I read a lot as I travel around and I have 74 (out of 75) Maigret novels to read. But don’t let that fool you, I am already becoming familiar with Maigret’s forensic way of thinking (-:. So for the next two blog posts we will be conducting a forensic examination of data to solve a puzzle that appears to be confusing people. This is the sort of puzzle that people...

Bullish sentiment is up

Many US economists and policymakers cling to the faith that free markets are enough to effectively drive innovation and believe that any national IT strategy would be inappropriate government meddling. Most Chinese government officials are engineers who don't get hung up on such philosophical debates: they do what works.… So it's not surprising that the World Values Survey finds 78% of Chinese residents agree that "more emphasis on the development of technology" is a good thing, compared...

More keeper quotes. The idea behind MMT is as old as the hills. But previously, it was only a possible scenario, whereas MMT describes the existing monetary system since 1971 — the "pure creditary system" that Knut Wicksell had envisioned as a thought experiment.  Keynes said it would be useful to educated people in this in order to remove the shibboleths of the past that prevent proper fiscal response now. How prescient he was. Received knowledge is sticky even when it is shown to be...

Scott Fullwiler comments on Twitter: Scott FullwilerReplying to@BPC_Bipartisan @JJFichtner and@kkcarmodyThank you for providing further evidence that "bipartisan" is currently code for "the same shit we've been doing for decades that got us into this mess in the first place." Followed by: Authors: It's hard to pin MMT down Also authors: We didn't cite any academic MMT literature, only critics of MMT who also didn't cite any academic MMT literature And ... the authors: We actually...

'Turn the other cheek, forgive thy enemy, love your neighbour '  'Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." 'Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth' (World English Bible)  We look into Jeanine Añez, a US-backed right-wing extremist whose fringe party got 4% of votes but now claims to be Bolivia's "president" after a military coup. She is trying to destroy the country's secular...

You can't correct someone making a reification error by employing even more figurative ("pizza!") language: Nope! The federal budget is not like a pizza. With a pizza, cutting someone a bigger ? does indeed leave a smaller pie to ➗ up among everyone else. The gov’t budget is different! It’s not a zero-sum game. We can fund other priorities even as interest payments rise. #HereToHelp https://t.co/FDhBZWDOki — Stephanie Kelton (@StephanieKelton) November 19, 2019 This "pizza!" metaphor will...

[embedded content]                              We Want Dance!People don't always want maximum efficiency. Economists who rely too much on maths to work out the most efficient way to run the economy will end up with everyone feeling miserable, and an economy that dives. Economics involves psychology and sociology - behaviour economics.MMT even has the Job Guarantee because it is a people reoriented economics system. What motivates us? Conventional economic theory doesn't focus on what...

One WorldBolivia Faces Croatian-Style Ethnic Cleansing & South African-Like Apartheid Andrew KorybkoCounterpunchProtestors Massacred in Post-Coup BoliviaOlivia Arigho-Stiles  Internationalist 360ºThousands March in Response to Cochabamba Massacre as the Dictatorship Prepares for a State of Siege teleSUR CounterpunchThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Macho Camacho: Jeffery R. Webber and Forrest Hylton on the Coup in Bolivia Ashley Smith Al JazerraUN calls for talks to end Bolivia crisis as...

Over the years it’s been clear to me that we live in a fictional world when it comes to economic matters. The mainstream has created this world that bears little relationship to reality and which serves the interests of a few at the expense of the majority. But the way in which this fiction is inculcated in the framing and language of our public debates leads the majority to think that the conduct of economic policy is somehow in their best interests, even if, at times, governments claim we...