Real-World Economics Review

from Lars Syll When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as...

from Maria Alejandra Madi Scientific epistemology is a serious business in economics—as it is in any science. Not surprisingly, therefore, discussions about value-ladeness tend to focus on theoretical and methodological issues within the discipline, while the question of the social consequences of science is approached with more reservation. And for many good reasons, one may say, because it is not entirely up to scientists how will the scientific product be disseminated and interpreted...

from Lars Syll While one can understand that some of the elements in DSGE models seem to appeal to Keynesians at first sight, after closer examination, these models are in fundamental contradiction to Post-Keynesian and even traditional Keynesian thinking. The DSGE model is a model in which output is determined in the labour market as in New Classical models and in which aggregate demand plays only a very secondary role, even in the short run. In addition, given the fundamental...

Source: http://politicsthatwork.com/graphs/share-wealth-by-country

Sources: Credit Suisse    Last updated: May 12, 2016

from Lars Syll Ironically, the need for a theory of causation began to surface at the same time that statistics came into being. In fact modern statistics hatched out of the causal questions that Galton and Pearson asked about heredity and out of their ingenious attempts to answer them from cross-generation data. Unfortunately, they failed in this endeavor and, rather than pause to ask “Why?”, they declared those questions off limits, and turned to develop a thriving, causality- free...

Source: https://gshindi.com/category/national-issues/minimum-wage-proposal-big-risk

from Lars Syll The balanced budget paradox is probably one of the most devastating phenomena haunting our economies. The harder politicians — usually on the advice of establishment economists — try to achieve balanced budgets for the public sector, the less likely they are to succeed in their endeavour. And the more the citizens have to pay for the concomitant austerity policies these wrong-headed politicians and economists recommend as “the sole solution.” One of the most effective ways...

from David Ruccio The liberal establishment continues to mourn the death of truth. Everyone else is moving on. Every day, it seems, one or another liberal—pundit, columnist, or scholar—issues a warning that, in the age of Donald Trump, we now live in a post-truth world. In their view, we face a fundamental choice: either return to a singular, capital-t truth or suffer the consequences of multiple sets of beliefs, facts, and truths. For example, just the other day, Keith Kahn-Harris [ht:...