Socialdem. 21st Century

These myths can be seen in the video below of Stefan Molyneux’s interview of Lawrence W. Reed on the Great Depression.[embedded content]A quick point that struck me: both seem oblivious to the fact that Keynesian economists do not advocate tax increases in a recession or depression. This doesn’t inspire much confidence in the quality of the analysis.In what follows, I am using a Post Keynesian economic analysis to critique the economic theory underlying the discussion in this video, which...

Serious question in light of this:[embedded content]Note well: the question is not whether Trump will actually do anything after he is elected to raise minimum wages (excuse me while I laugh… because I would be genuinely astonished if he did), but whether, once he’s the official Republican party candidate, he will be smart enough to make a play for all those angry Bernie Bros who hate Hillary, the Democratic establishment and neoliberalism by presenting himself as pro-working class and as...

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In the video below and in his analysis here.[embedded content]Pat Buchanan, whatever the faults of his Paleoconservatism and no doubt you can find plenty of them, “gets it” in a way that most left-wing people do not. Buchanan understands perfectly well the catastrophe of globalisation and neoliberalism. But he also understands, more or less, the disaster of extreme cultural Postmodernist leftism and its bastard offshoots.I hate to break it to people on the left, and it may be a terrible truth...

A career and a job where one does economically and socially useful work is an important part of any successful, healthy and wealthy society. But more than this, it gives people an identity through the job that they have and a social dignity lacking in long-term unemployment.There are of course a lot of difficult, boring, dirty and sometimes dangerous jobs that have to be done, but a technologically advanced society like ours can use its inventive genius to create more and better machines and...

He already called them out on the 2003 Iraq catastrophe. He even said “Bush lied, people died.” He’s distanced himself from their extreme foreign policy.And now Trump savages arch-neocon Bill Kristol in the video below. I’m kind of struck by the way Trump’s fans seem dumbstruck by his abuse of Kristol, however, as though they don’t quite know how to react...[embedded content]But you can bet Trump won’t get any credit from the US left for saying what is essentially correct about Kristol....

Philip Pilkington is interviewed on his Forthcoming Book The Reformation in Economics (due out in October) here.

On multiple levels, in both the Third World and the developed world.[embedded content]It doesn’t have to be a catastrophe, however, since Western governments can implement a large-scale industrial policy to bring back manufacturing and reverse the trend of de-industrialisation.The mass unemployment that will result must be solved by government programs to create socially and economically useful work for decent wages, and maintenance of aggregate demand by fiscal policy.

I know I have my share of Swedish readers from blogger stats and assume that many of these people are left-wing, so I am curious to know what they think of Tino Sanandaji’s assessment of what has gone wrong in Sweden in the last 30 years. I am unclear on precisely what Tino Sanandaji’s economics are, but I assume he is some kind of neoclassical.Nevertheless, I have to say that it all sounds depressingly familiar to me: a Swedish left taken over by Postmodernists and bourgeois cultural...

I have updated my “Debunking Austrian Economics 101” post below. Many new posts are now included, such as, for example, against Austrian price theory, the Rothbardian view of fractional reserve banking, and Austrian apriorism.I have yet to see any substantive Austrian engagement with the Post Keynesian critique of their theories, and this is not really that surprising, since any moderately well-read person with a knowledge of Post Keynesian economics – informed by economic history and some...