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from Asad Zaman What is the nature of the world in which I live? As I look around me, I see walls, windows, doors, and furniture. But these are insignificant parts of the world as constructed by my mind. I conceptualize the world through the teachings of history, according to which human history started in the remote past, with hunter-gatherers. I have a smattering of knowledge of the ancient civilizations of Sumeria and Babylon, and much more of the Roman Empire. The rise of...

Back again with another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...

In a recent post, the blogger/economist Donald Boudreaux expressed deep fear of the people protesting for police reform and of progressive politics generally.  Below is an open letter responding to his post.  It is long (mostly below the fold) but it highlights some of the key issues separating libertarians and classical liberals from progressives and liberal egalitarians.  I hope you’ll take the time to click through!  Comments welcome as always....

from Lars Syll James Heckman, winner of the “Nobel Prize” in economics (2000), did an interview with John Cassidy in 2010. It’s an interesting read (Cassidy’s words in italics): What about the rational-expectations hypothesis, the other big theory associated with modern Chicago? How does that stack up now? I could tell you a story about my friend and colleague Milton Friedman. In the nineteen-seventies, we were sitting in the Ph.D. oral examination of a Chicago economist who has gone on...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for June 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.Almost all of the metrics have improved off of their worst readings. Enough of the short leading indicators have improved so much that the short term forecast was upgraded to neutral as of this week. As usual, clicking over and reading should bring you “up to the moment” on the economy, and it also rewards me with a penny or two for...

from Dean Baker I know I have been pounding on this a lot, but it is important and there is a lot of money at stake. All we need (okay, maybe not all) is some clear thinking. The Washington Post had a good piece this week talking about how a company set up by a hedge fund, with no background or expertise in pharmacology, arranged to get rights to a drug that was developed by researchers at Emory University on a $16 million contract with the government. The drug, EIDD-2801, is thought to...

New and continued jobless claims level off, as spreading secondary impacts and job recalls balance Weekly initial and continuing jobless claims give us the most up-to-date snapshot of the continuing economic impacts of the coronavirus on employment. Three full months after the initial shock, the overall damage remains huge, with recalls to work roughly balanced with spreading new secondary impacts. First, here are initial jobless claims both seasonally...

from David Ruccio They came for him in the morning, before coffee break. — Stewart O’Nan, The Odds This morning, the U.S. Department of Labor (pdf) reported that, during the week ending last Saturday, another 1.5 million American workers filed initial claims for unemployment compensation. That’s on top of the 44.2 million workers who were laid off during the preceding twelve weeks. Here is a breakdown of each week: • week ending on 21 March—3.31 million • week ending on 28...

from David Ruccio “Formal” freedom is the freedom of choice WITHIN the coordinates of the existing power relations, while “actual” freedom designates the site of an intervention which undermines these very coordinates. — Slavoj Žižek, On Belief                            The novel coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated how shallow and restricted the notion of formal freedom is in the United States. After years of pretending that private healthcare and health insurance expanded the freedom...