Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Ezra Klein writes about John Kenneth Galbraith's concept of countervailing power. Ingrid Kvangraven and Carolina Alves are busting myths about heterodox economics. I have written before about economics as a study of the reproduction of society. Ben Holland, of Bloomberg News, writes an article, Marco Rubio puts out a paper citing obscure left-wing economists. Rubio's position paper is here. I do not find, say, Wynne Godlay, Hyman Minsky, Mariana Mazzucato, and many proponents of Modern...

1.0 Summary of Defense Last month, Mike Munger purports to "summarize the basic argument for capitalism" (emphasis added). He acknowledges his argument is superficial. I find it excessively so. Munger argues that capitalism: Supports the division of labor Provides price signals so as to direct production appropriately Promotes economies to scale Ultimately, this defense is that capitalism delivers the goods. Here's a well-expressed, simple defense that, partially, argues along these...

Figure 1: Wage-Rate of Profits Curves Consider a comparison of comparison of stationary states. Net output is taken as given, and a unit of net output is the numeraire. Technology consists of a finite set of techniques. In each technique, net output is produced from inputs of labor and produced circulating capital goods. No fixed capital is used, and land of the best quality is in such abundance that it is free. Also assume constant returns to scale. One can find a wage-rate of profits...

Many years ago, I used to argue, on Usenet, about the Cambridge Capital Controversy. Many mainstream economists used to ignorantly assert, when pretending to respond, that an application of the CCC to labor economics was my idea alone. So I used to demonstrate that this was false by quoting from the literature. As far as I can see, mainstream economists are still mostly trained into ignorance. P. Garegnani: "The idea that demand and supply for factors of production determine...

Fact: If you use the word "carceral" instead of "prison" your argument immediately becomes more persuasive. Good praxis is to use words like "praxis" that nobody understands. -- Matthew Yglesias (5 April 2019, on Twitter) A large academic literature exists around Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Topics discussed include the relationship of civil society to the state, hegemony, the contrast between consent and coercion, class alliances in political parties, Fordism, the contrast...

1.0 Introduction This post is on current events. The plane crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane is arguably about more than a software bug. I point out in this post that you can read about how the United States' Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is supposed to certify software and electronic hardware in airplanes yourself. In some sense, this post is not about software bugs, but rather about software engineering certification processes that fit into a larger systems engineering...

Arindrajit Dube writes an obituary for Alan Krueger, in Slate. Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, at INET, highlights Krishna Bharadwaj's contributions to economics. Longtime commentator Emil Bakkum's web page, collecting a variety of resources, is here. An advocate of Modern Monetary Theory, Brian Romanchuk is apparently writing a book about models supposedly of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium. Some recent posts include: Questions about time scales in DSGE models. Anticipations have a time...

1.0 Introduction By "libertarianism", I mean propertarianism, a right-wing doctrine. In this post, I want to outline some ways of arguing against this set of ideas. (On this topic, Mike Huben has much more extensive resources than I can allude to.) 2.0 On Individual Details I like to use certain policy ideas as a springboard for arguments that they have no coherent justification in economic theory. Unsurprisingly, the outdated nonsense market fundamentalists push does not have empirical...

This is current events, and but post is about current events in Britain in 1920. Lenin comments on reports of a dispute between Lloyd George and H. H. Asquith, both leaders of the Liberal party: [In] the speech delivered by Prime Minister Lloyd George on March 18, 1920... Lloyd George entered into a polemic with Asquith (who had been especially invited to this meeting but declined to attend) and with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations...

The literature on neoliberalism is large. Here are some scholarly books on this subject or on related matters: The power of market fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's critique, by Fred Block & Margaret R. Somers (2016). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution, by Wendy Brown (2015). The great persuasion: Reinventing free markets since the Depression, by Angus Burgin (2015). The strange non-death of neoliberalism, by Colin Crouch (2013). The birth of biopolitics: lectures at...