Socialdem. 21st Century

Here:[embedded content]Christopher Hitchens says that, if his wife or married women in general want to work, this is fine and dandy, but, if they don’t, then he believes in supporting his wife, so that she does not have to work. How and why such an obviously reasonable statement causes this feminist to act as if Hitchens has called for genocide is beyond me.Just think about what this feminist is implying: she’s implying that women should go out and work, even if they don’t want to, and that...

Realist Left in a great new video responds to libertarians in this video:[embedded content]This is an excellent critique. I add some points below. I would classify libertarians into the following groups:(1) Randians(2) Austrians(i) the Anarcho-capitalists, like Rothbard and Hoppe;(ii) The minimal state Austrians like Mises (with his praxeology);(iii) Austrian supporters of Hayek’s economics, with a minimal state;(iv) The “orthodox” Austrians (probably supporters of a minimal state) who have...

The updated bibliography below provides a list of the most important books and articles on various topics within Post Keynesian economics.It is divided into the following sections (and there are now links to each section):(1) Introductory Studies(2) Advanced Overviews and Specialised Studies(3) History of Post Keynesian Economics(4) Methodology(5) Uncertainty(6) Endogenous Money(7) Fiscal Policy(8) Inflation(9) Price Theory(10) Trade Theory(11) Cambridge Capital Controversies(12) On the Work...

As stated in this Alt Left video here:[embedded content]This principle, then, is important:Alternative Left Politics, so far confined to the internet and social media, centred around advocacy of a program of protecting Western civilization from decline due to an erosion of humanist values caused by regressive leftism.The “regressive left” is a perversion of everything an intelligent, rational and moral left should stand for.The “regressive left” is an outgrow of all the rotten ideas of...

Recently on RT’s Boom Bust:[embedded content]Note well: it’s actually not necessarily a bad thing if the right-wing parties are in power when these debt crises happen in the West, because this will help to discredit neoliberalism and conservative free market theology.Realist LeftRealist Left on Twitter @realistleftRealist Left on RedditRealist Left BlogRealist Left on YouTubeLord Keynes on FacebookSocial Democracy for the 21st Century: A Realist Alternative to the...

In a great and thought-provoking new video here: [embedded content]Some interesting points:(1) will Gary Johnson take more votes from Clinton or Trump?(2) I 100% agree that Trump’s performance crashed as the debate proceeded, and Trump’s best moments were in the first 30 minutes or so on the economy.(3) there does seem to be evidence that the popular perception was that Clinton won the debate. (4) but a very interesting point is this: are the polls skewed by the possibility that a...

The Alternative Left Facebook group seems to be growing quickly, and I am very glad to see this.So I have some suggestions for them to create a coherent political program. First, the Alt Left needs to get a coherent economic theory. This is extremely important. I urge them to read up on why Classical Marxism is a flawed economic theory here, and why Marxism is based on the mystical labour theory of value.At the same time, practically all other economic schools of thought from neoclassical...

See here:[embedded content]Hillary got hammered on the economy. She never clearly committed to rejecting the disaster of free trade, nor even mentioned the issue of free trade or deindustrialisation *except* when Trump raised it and in response to Trump. In the first few minutes, Trump was all over the disaster of free trade and the catastrophe of deindustrialisation, even if he should have concentrated on protectionism rather than corporate tax policy. Trump was completely correct that...

Unhinged identity politics is one of the worst aspects of the modern world, and the worst is on the left.But, you might ask, isn’t every kind of politics a form of “identity politics”? Well, yes, every type of political movement is ultimately based on some kind of identity, but this is really a trivial sense of “identity politics.”Some “identities” and political movements based on them aren’t really a problem, and, generally speaking, tend to be a very positive force in politics, e.g.,(1)...

We can see them right here, but they just haven’t found the Alt Left / Realist Left yet: We can also see them here in the statistics on European youth unemployment for 2015 (i.e., the number of unemployed people from 15 to 24 years old as a percentage of the youth labour force):Greece | 49.8% Italy | 40.3% Spain | 48.4% Portugal | 31.9% Slovak Republic | 26.4% France | 24.7% Belgium | 22.1% Finland | 22.0% Ireland | 20.9% Poland | 20.8% Sweden | 20.3% Hungary | 17.3% Luxembourg | 17.3%...