Monday , December 9 2024
Home / Tag Archives: economics and politics

Tag Archives: economics and politics

Politicians Who Want Us to Live Beyond Our Means — Peter Cooper

Politicians often tell us that we should live within our means. Quite right. Unfortunately, many of them do not appear to understand what this actually entails when it comes to fiscal policy. So far as most economists are concerned, the events of the last decade have thoroughly discredited advocates of austerity. Yet, it remains quite common to hear politicians from across the political spectrum calling for reductions in fiscal deficits or even fiscal surpluses. There appears to be little...

Read More »

Revealed: Americans care more about social needs than deficits — John Duda

A recent poll from the Democracy Collaborative and YouGov reveals that most Americans are ready to spend more for social needs, even if it raises the deficit.  The debate around modern monetary theory (“MMT”) is picking up steam – with its partisans pushing the model further into the public sphere than one might expect, and the old guard of establishment economics, together with some more interesting critical voices, pushing back. The questions at stake can make the average person’s head...

Read More »

Rebecca L. Spang — MMT and Why Historians Need to Reclaim Studying Money

Good read!  Controversy over money is nothing new in US history, since it has been a lively political issue. The arguments are not chiefly about money, although couched in terms of money, economics, and finance, but rather, politics, which involves winners and losers in the policy game. Historically, sound money advocated have been the wealthy, and functional finance people have been ordinary citizens aka "the little people" (h/t Alan Simpson).History News NetworkMMT and Why Historians...

Read More »

Laura Belin – New bill is “clear attempt by MidAmerican to monopolize the sun in Iowa”

A new bill backed by MidAmerican Energy would devastate the ability of Iowans to install solar panels for their homes or businesses. House Study Bill 185 would undo a longstanding policy of net metering, which “allows residential and commercial customers who generate their own electricity from solar power to feed electricity they do not use back into the grid.”Iowans served by monopoly providers MidAmerican or Alliant Energy have been able to use net metering since the 1980s, under rules...

Read More »

Robert Paul Wolff — SOCIALISM?

One of the Anonymati [Anonymouses? Anonymice?] asks that I write a critique of the oh so sober, serious analysis of socialism, complete with charts and graphs, produced by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors....I have read the Executive Summary of the report and scanned through the report itself, but I do not intend to take issue with it, and my reason for not doing so is the real subject of this post. Let me begin by reminding you that Karl Marx, who wrote 5000 pages, more or...

Read More »

Michael Roberts — Socialism and the White House

The Trump White House research team have issued a very strange report. It’s called “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,”. It purports to prove that ‘socialism’ and ‘socialist’ policies would be damaging to Americans because the ‘opportunity costs’ of socialism compared to capitalism are so much higher. What is strange and rather amusing is that the White House advisers to Trump deem it necessary to explain to Americans the failures of ‘socialism’ in 2018. But when you delve into the...

Read More »

Michael Calderbank — Costas Lapavitsas: Socialism starts at home

Michael Calderbank speaks to Marxist economist Costas Lapavitsas ahead of the publication of his provocative new book The Left Case Against the EUCostas Lapavitsas  The book is obviously a critique of the EU as it stands. It’s an assessment of where the union is, what it has become, and its likely direction. It is an attempt to say that the left should have nothing to do with defending this set of institutions. It should assume a critical, rejectionist position. I am asserting that this is...

Read More »