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I’ve done my first 60km ride to support this appeal. Need to do 6 more this month to meet my 400km goal, and raise $481 to meet my $1000 fundraising goal. Please give to encourage me and help people living with MS https://www.brissietothebay.com.au/fundraisers/johnquiggin/brissie-to-the-bay Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

from Lars Syll The simple question that was raised during a recent conference … was to what extent has — or should — the teaching of economics be modified in the light of the current economic crisis? The simple answer is that the economics profession is unlikely to change. Why would economists be willing to give up much of their human capital, painstakingly nurtured for over two centuries? For macroeconomists in particular, the reaction has been to suggest that modifications of existing...

from Peter Radford I don’t often comment on politics here, but I want to record my thoughts as I watch the extraordinary convulsions running through America at the moment. First: racism is a basic fact of American life.  It has been apparent to me since I moved here.  White America simply doesn’t want to be forced to engage with it, so it ignores all the plentiful evidence that it exists.  It is too painful and too difficult to deal with, no matter how sympathetic people are, so they want...

I have translated this eulogy on behalf of the Economics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where I have spent many of my years of economic formation. Carlos Lessa is part of a generation of brilliant Brazilian economists that have shaped the public debate and the discipline in Brazil. This is an effort to pay homage and make more visible the work and life of scholars whose writings are hardly ever translated into English but who are extremely important to our...

from Lars Syll Voltaire once said of the Holy Roman Empire that it was “Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”. Something similar might be said of Modern Monetary Theory … It is neither modern, nor genuinely monetary, and it is at least as much a set of policy proposals as a theory. It might be thought that “modern” refers to the fiat money world in which we have lived since major currencies broke with gold convertibility in the 1930s … In fact, however, it is a kind of inside joke,...

From Cato: 79% of Americans support having outside law enforcement agencies investigate police misconduct, rather than leave it to the department to handle. It may surprise some readers to learn that most jurisdictions in the U.S. allow police departments to investigate and discipline their own officers. Instead, most Americans think having some outside oversight could enhance accountability. Majorities across racial groups support this: 81% of whites,...

I highly recommend David Hopkins blog.  Yesterday, he posted a piece on the end of confident conservatism.  It begins like this: After Richard Nixon’s 1968 election, many conservatives came to believe that their movement naturally represented the political views of most Americans. This conservative faith in the wisdom of the average citizen was cemented by Ronald Reagan’s popularity in the 1980s, which was widely interpreted at the time (and not just by...

from David Ruccio Where did all the capitalist surplus in the United States go last year? Well, as in recent years, a large portion was paid to the Chief Executive Officers of the nation’s largest corporations, the ones that make up the S&P 500. According to the Wall Street Journal, median pay of the CEOs of those corporations reached an astronomical $13.1 million, setting a new record for the fifth year in a row. Most S&P 500 CEOs got raises of 8 percent or better during the...

from Peter Radford I was having a conversation this morning in which I argued the word “capitalism” has no meaning.  Or, perhaps, it has too many meanings.  It is a fraught one as well.  People get vexed in its presence.  I ought also have said the same thing about the word “labor”. Both words are relics of the early years of industrialization when they meant more to those throwing them around back then.  In our contemporary economy they mean rather less.  To me they reference things...