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from Lars Syll Can a government go bankrupt? No. You cannot be indebted to yourself. Can a central bank go bankrupt? No. A central bank can in principle always ‘print’ more money. Do taxpayers have to repay government debts? No, at least not as long the debt is incurred in a country’s own currency. Do increased public debts burden future generations? No, not necessarily. It depends on what the debt is used for. Does maintaining full employment mean the government has to increase its...

Alan Krueger And Happiness It took awhile for me to remember after his apparent suicide that the late Alan Krueger was the coauthor of what I consider to be the best paper published on happiness economics, “Develpments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2006, 20(1), 2-24, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/08953300677 .  (I apologize if that link is no good.) This paper was coauthored with is...

from Peter McManners Economics has evolved over the last two centuries, from Adam Smith’s ideas to expand into a colossus which is now the dominant driver of policy. This has set the world on a track of extraordinary success, as measured by GDP and wealth. Continuing down this track, defined by economic objectives, leads to levels of consumption beyond our dreams and beyond the capacity of the planet. Success today comes at the price of downfall in the future, as “economic civilisation”...

from Maria Alejandra Madi My last post on Behavioural Economics arose some interesting questions about the rationality of the neoliberal governance of the self and its relation to the current research about psychology and cognitive theories. (https://rwer.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/beyond-behavioral-economics-the-self-governance-of-nudging/#comment-150149) The neoliberal governance of self-care (or neoliberal governance of the self) relies on Dual Process Cognitive Theories (DPTs),...

In an earlier post, My Education In Going to College, I commented: what was done most recently by some wonderfully-over-funded people in an effort to get their children into a Tier one school certainly did not have to happen in the manner it did. They could have just approached school authorities and with a “Thornton Mellon’s” (Back to School’s – Rodney Dangerfield) audacity, offered to pay full ride and make a sizeable donation to the school. Maybe I am...

from Asad Zaman Why did No One See It Coming? We start by posing the question “Why did no one see it coming?” which the Queen of England asked at the London School of Economics. To answer, we must consider the evolution of macroeconomic thought. This involves the rejection of Keynes, the rise of monetarism of Friedman, the extremism of Lucas, New Monetary Consensus of Bernanke, Efficient Markets of Fama, Laissez-Faire approach to financial regulation. The book starts with a beautiful...

from Herman Daly Of all things knowledge is that which should be most freely shared, because in sharing it is multiplied rather than divided. Knowledge is a non-rival good and should be also non excludable. Yet, as already noted, our trade theorists have rejected Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that “Knowledge is the common property of mankind” in exchange for a muddled doctrine of “trade related intellectual property rights” by which they are willing to grant private corporations monopoly...

from Lars Syll Issue #1: How do you teach the introductory economics courses if you have a dissenting perspective? Mankiw lays out three alternatives, teaching the mainstream and suppressing your own views, teaching minority or fringe views (i.e. your own), or not teaching introductory econ at all. He says the second option is “pedagogical malpractice” … I opted for an approach neither of them consider, to present mainstream economics in the third person: this is what that particular...

from Jason Hickel We can also see the logic of artificial scarcity at work in the realm of consumption. Industrialists who fear that people’s existing needs are too limited to absorb capitalism’s immense productive output must seek to create new needs, or else the juggernaut will grind to a halt. This is accomplished by various means. One is to expand desires through sophisticated advertising campaigns – and to extend these campaigns into all public and private spaces – manipulating...