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That’s the key point of my article in The Guardian this week. The intro focused on aged care and the headline picked that up, but the main points are general There’s nothing inherently desirable about competition. If the alternative is collusion against the public interest, competition is a necessary evil. Far better, when it can be achieved, is cooperation to be the best we can at what we do. That’s the core value of the service professions, professions derided by market reformers...

from Lars Syll The assumption of additivity and linearity means that the outcome variable is, in reality, linearly related to any predictors … and that if you have several predictors then their combined effect is best described by adding their effects together …  This assumption is the most important because if it is not true then even if all other assumptions are met, your model is invalid because you have described it incorrectly. It’s a bit like calling your pet cat a dog: you can try...

Back in 2011 Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho (with the collaboration of Marco Boffo) have edited a Companion to Marxist Economics published by Edward Elgar. I have contributed two chapters in this companion: Mavroudeas S. (2011), ‘The Regulation Approach’ in Fine B. & Saad-Filho A. (eds.) Companion to Marxist Economics, Edward Elgar – translated also to Portuguese as ‘A ABORDAGEM DA REGULAÇÃO’ in Fine B. & Saad-Filho A. (eds.) 2020 DICIONÁRIO DE ECONOMIA POLÍTICA MARXISTA,...

from Jamie Morgan and RWER issue 93 [D]egrowth advocates tend to question the naturalisation of growth and objectification of an economy as though we had no alternative, they do highlight the structural conditions that lead to exploitation in the name of progress. For example, Gerber states: “The ideology of growth – or growthism – is at the core of capitalism. Growthism sustains capitalism politically because it allows avoiding redistribution by giving the impression that everyone will...

from John Benedetoo and RWER issue 93 In the 1980s and early 1990s, mainstream economists railed against heterodox economists and non-economist thinkers for questioning the appropriateness of “free trade” and for advocating national industrial policies. The debate was resolved, at least among the arbiters of acceptability, in favor of the mainstream economists. And yet, the heterodox arguments ring now like the unheeded warnings of prophets, while the mainstream economic view looks more...

This year is the anniversary of the 200 years since Friedrich Engels’ birth. The recent issue of journal International Critical Thought celebrates this occasion by publishing a collection of articles analysing Engels’ theoretical and political contribution to Marxism. I have contributed to this special issue with a paper defending Engels against a host of detractors. The title of the paper is ‘Once Again on the Alleged Differences between Engels and Marx’. Its details are the...

from Yanis Varoufakis . . . . Trump trades on anger, weaponises hatred and meticulously cultivates the dread with which the majority of Americans have been living after the financial bubble burst in 2008. Obscenities and contempt for the rules of polite society were his means of connecting with a large section of American society. The reason 2008 was a momentous year wasn’t just because of the magnitude of the crisis, but because it was the year when normality was shattered...

from Lars Syll DSGE models seem to take it as a religious tenet that consumption should be explained by a model of a representative agent maximizing his utility over an infinite lifetime without borrowing constraints. Doing so is called micro-founding the model. But economics is a behavioral science. If Keynes was right that individuals saved a constant fraction of their income, an aggregate model based on that assumption is micro-founded.Of course, the economy consists of individuals who...

from Dean Baker As it increasingly looks like Joe Biden has won the election, I see many people around me appalled that so many of their fellow citizens can vote for someone as racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive as Donald Trump. Given what we know about the guy, and think everyone else should know about him as well, it is hard not to be appalled. But we will not get anywhere politically by looking at half the country with disgust. Trying to win over some of Trump’s voters doesn’t...