Tag Archives: economics and politics

The eminent Robert Skidelsky identifies three groups of economists who gave what ex post was clearly bad advice, and bad advice that mattered about fiscal policy, from 2009 on: Alberto Alesina and company with their “expansionary austerity” doctrines, Ken Rogoff and company with their “short-term-pain-for-long-run-gain” doctrines, and Ricardo Haussman and company with the “no choice but austerity” doctrines. All three groups, however, had reasons for their arguments and were thinking...

I have a lot more links, especially on financial markets. And I probably will add a few later. But I want to get this post out. So I am going to stop here for now. Credit Writedowns Links: De-dollarization, top down US policy and the new Cold War Edward HarrisonSee also Two European elections – in Germany on 24 September 2017 and Italy on 4 March 2018 – warn that the peoples of Europe are drifting apart. Much of the recent deepening of these divisions can be traced to Europe’s single...

In a new paper, French political economist Thomas Piketty, author of the bestselling 2013 book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," argues that Western political parties on the right and left have both become parties of the "elites." Yet the 65-page paper from the notoriously punctilious economist — titled "Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict" — is more surprising for the lessons it has for the political left in the...

Progressive universalism versus targeting the poor and forgetting the struggling middle class and working poor — the precariat.EconospeakDivide and RulePeter Dorman | Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College

Bill answers the main questions about MMT and a progressive agenda to address wealth inequality. There is no need for a currency issuer to tax to obtain the funds it issues itself. The reasons that a currency issuer should tax excessive wealth is political, in that wealth conveys political power. Neoliberalism differs from classical liberalism (laissez-faire) by harnessing government to promoting the interests of capital rather than reducing government involvement in the economy as...

The history of the board game. JSTOR Daily The Different Meanings of MonopolyLivia Gershon

The Democrats can do this. But first, they must clean house ideologically, and finally abandon the Republican-light, free-market-friendly technocracy that has guided the party for decades. Many on the left will write off the Democratic Party until they do this. But the entrenched politicians will not give up easily. It make take at least a decade for them to retire and be replaced by millennials.  The Week Radical economic populism is the only thing that can save the Democrats now Jeff...

I commented there. Angry BearThe National Debt DisappearedMike Kimel

Interesting article and a relatively short read. Here is the conclusion. Smith’s lesson here has broader applicability. An oligarchic democracy may be worse for the poor than an arbitrary government. A state, relatively autonomous from the elite, may care more about the “general interest” than an ostensibly democratic government that is in reality the government of the rich. Smith highlights, I think, in both his discussion of social cleavage in interests when it comes to colonies and in...

Economic, social and health decline in the industrial Midwest may have been a major factor in the 2016 US presidential election, Monnat and Brown’s INET research finds, with people living in distressed areas swinging behind Trump in greater numbers. Trump performed well within these landscapes of despair – places that have borne the brunt of declines in manufacturing, mining, and related industries since the 1970s and are now struggling with opioids, disability, poor health, and family...