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from David Taylor and WEA Pedagogy Blog After the invention of printing, pedagogy began with Machiavelli’s The Prince teaching politicians to lie, and Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning advising a new king to develop an encyclopedia of science “for the glory of God and the relief of Man’s estate” by “taking things to bits to see how they worked”.  Bacon’s doctor Harvey took men’s bodies to bits and discovered the circulation of the blood.  In France, Descartes took brains to...

from James Galbraith What is to take the place of neoclassical economics and its neoliberal policy offshoot? There is no shortage of candidates, grouped under the broad banner of economic heterodoxy. Some of these successor doctrines – behavioral economics and complexity economics are examples of note – take the neoclassical orthodoxies as a point of departure. They therefore continue to define themselves in relation to those orthodoxies. Others avoided the gravitational pull altogether –...

from Dean Baker With the economy facing substantial bottlenecks, and the continuing spread of the pandemic, it is worth taking a quick look at how lower paid workers have been faring. Nominal wages have been rising rapidly for workers at the bottom of the pay ladder in recent months. This has allowed workers in the lowest paying jobs to see substantial increases in real wages, in spite of the uptick in inflation the last few months. Here’s the picture in retail for production and...

The chaotic scenes now playing out as the Taliban take over Afghanistan have unsurprisingly drawn comparisons to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. But there have been many similar instances, though most were a little slower: the end of Indonesian rule in East Timor (now Timor L’Este), the French withdrawal from Algeria, and the earlier Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. The common feature in all these cases is the attempt by an external (sometimes...

from Richard Norgaard Economism has been modern capitalism’s myth system, or in computer parlance, capitalism’s operating system. It has stressed utilitarian moral beliefs compatible with economic assumptions that are critical to neoclassical economic theories. These beliefs include the idea that society is simply the sum of its individuals and their desires, that people can be perfectly, or at least sufficiently, informed to act rationally in markets, that markets balance individual...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for August 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. For the first time, there are some significant if still minor impacts on the economy showing up due to the Delta wave. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the economy, and help me out a little bit with my lunch money. ...

from Clive Spash and Adrien Guisan    Economics has become increasingly detached from its object of study and the orthodoxy is fundamentally flawed as a social science because it advocates a prescriptive methodology while lacking any serious engagement with epistemology and ontology.  The resulting epistemic fallacy means it promotes a narrow implicit world view as if a factual truth.  Failures here include imposition of limited quantitative methods and mathematically formalist...

For the month of August, I’m running in support of a fundraising appeal for Fred Hollows. It’s a great cause, restoring people’s sight with low-cost operations. You can support me here Not that I’m competive but it would only take a little over $500 to put me into the top 20 individual fundraisers, Share this:Like this:Like Loading...