Donald Trump will be the first president since Grover Cleveland, also a New Yorker, to have two non consecutive terms in the presidency. The reasons for this are beyond my abilities to analyze, but it is clear that he did get the votes of people in the lower levels of income, that had voted for Biden in 2020 (but not for Hillary in 2016) and went decisively for Trump. One may say that the populist vote in favor of tariffs, often associated with working class interests, was part of the...
Read More »MMT and its Discontents: Again (Wonkish and Longish)
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been in the news again, and for good reasons. I actually had a post with the same title back in February of 2012, hence the again in the title. But now, with the irruption of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the political scene ,and with the discussion of a Green New Deal (discussed here 7 years ago) and the feasibility of higher taxes (here, also long ago, among the many on the topic) taking the center of the political debate, MMT has become trendy. The rise...
Read More »Jamie Galbraith’s response to the critics of Gerald Friedman’s paper on the impact of Bernie Sanders policies
There has been a debate following the NYTimes piece on left of center economists against Bernie Sanders. Doug Henwood replied here and Dean Baker here. Henwood does not discuss the Gerald Friedman paper that led to the whole discussion. Now Jamie Galbraith provided a nice reply to the left of center economists that suggested that Bernie's plans are not realistic. He says: "What the Friedman paper shows, is that under conventional assumptions, the projected impact of Senator Sanders'...
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