Real-World Economics Review

from David Ruccio Right now, after Donald’s Trump surprising victory and in the midst of the messy transition, everyone is curious about how the U.S. economy will change if and when the president-elect’s economic policies are enacted.* But first things first. We need to have a clear understanding of what the U.S. economy looks like now, during the uneven recovery from the Second Great Depression. In particular, it’s important to analyze the class dimensions of that recovery, even before...

from Dean Baker Donald Trump has basically come right out said that he intends to use the presidency to further enrich himself and his family. After refusing to follow long-established precedent and put his assets in a blind trust, he proclaimed, “the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Of course the president absolutely can have a conflict of interest as speakers of the English language use the expression. If a president owns a large business empire, as does Mr. Trump, there...

from David Ruccio Yes, the late Richard Rorty got it spot on: Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point,...

from Asad Zaman The first post on Reading Keynes provided an outline of the reasons why this is a good idea. It is clear that economics is broken. We need a new macroeconomics for the 21st century, one which can solve the massive problems which humanity as a whole is facing on political, social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Keynes faced similar problems, and found solutions which guided economic policy in the mid twentieth century. It is always useful to absorb the insights of...

A new paper by Joseph Stiglitz (it might be that he has been holding these ‘heterodox’ (better: common sense) views for some time already): In the aftermath of the Great Recession, there is a growing consensus, even among central bank officials, concerning the limitations of monetary policy. This paper provides an explanation for the ineffectiveness of monetary policy, and in doing so provides a new framework for thinking about monetary policy and macro-economic activity. What matters is...

Chilled acoustic rendition of the Rod Stewart classic

from Asad Zaman I am planning a sequence of posts on re-reading Keynes, where I will try to go through the General Theory. This first post explains my motivations for re-reading Keynes. As always, my primary motive is self-education; this will force me to go through the book again — I first read it in my first year graduate course on Macroeconomics at Stanford in 1975, when our teacher Duncan Foley was having doubts about modern macro theories, and decided to go back to the original...

So, ‘What’s it going to be then, eh’? Will we let migration wreck the EU or will we opt for sound macro policies? The non-far right should double down on the present freedom of movement of people inside the EU. But only when credible macro-economic demand and welfare policies are installed. Otherwise, the internal inconsistencies of the present macro-economic set up will fracture the EU. Which means that the freedom of capital flows, one of the other EU freedoms, might have to be...

from David Ruccio Are mainstream economists responsible for electing Donald Trump? I think they deserve at least part of the blame. So, as it turns out, does Dani Rodrick.  My argument is that, when mainstream economists in the United States embraced and celebrated neoliberalism—both the conservative and “left” versions—they created the conditions for Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election. As I see it, mainstream economists adopted neoliberalism as a set of ideas (about...

David Ruccio Chris Dillow is right about one thing: citing globalization as the reason for the success of Donald Trump’s campaign, especially among working-class voters, “suits some people very well for foreigners to get the blame rather than for inequality and the health of capitalism to come under scrutiny.” But that doesn’t mean that, alongside many other factors (from the decline in labor unions to increasing automation), globalization—to be precise, capitalist globalization—doesn’t...