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from Dean Baker Robert Reich posted a table that tells us a huge amount about the U.S. economy. CEO pay of the largest carmakers in the world Honda: $2.3M Nissan $4.5M Toyota: $6.7M BMW: $5.6M Mercedes: $7.5M Porsche: $7.9M Ford: $21M Stellantis: $25M GM: $29M The reason this table is so informative is that the performance of these foreign automakers would certainly stand up well in comparison to the U.S. Big Three. (In fairness, Stellantis is largely a European company, headquartered in...

from Peter Soderbaum Economists, like other people, are political economic persons guided by their ideological orientation. We are eager to become accepted in some social groups. Just as political parties often are afraid of departing too much from one another, an economist may prefer a comfortable life by positioning herself close to other economists with respect to conceptual framework and ideology. Accepting the norms and standards of neoclassical economics is rewarding and constitutes...

I really don’t have much to add to this excellent article on mosquitoes in Sao Tome and Principe. It includes an explanation of how to make mosquitoes resistant to malaria and maybe eliminate malaria at very low cost. The a non explanation of why this isn’t being done (there is no law against it but it appears that In Sao Tome & Principe as well as Germany everything is forbidden if it isn’t specifically allowed — and the parliament is too busy...

from Blair Fix The rich get richer. It’s a phrase that packs a lot of punch. It’s potent rhetoric, yet surprisingly accurate at describing how rising inequality plays out. Of course, there’s nothing inevitable about the rich getting richer. We just happen to live in an age of growing corporate despotism. And our friends at Forbes have been there to document the disease. Forbes. Forbes who loves the free market. Forbes who loves obscene wealth. Forbes … the unwitting social scientist?...

from Lars Syll If scientific progress in economics — as Robert Lucas and other latter-day followers of Milton Friedman seem to think — lies in our ability to tell ‘better and better stories’ one would of course expect economics journals to be filled with articles supporting the stories with empirical evidence. However, the journals still show a striking and embarrassing paucity of empirical studies that (try to) substantiate these stories and their predictive claims. Equally amazing is...

If you want evidence that #Albanese will never change, check out his response to a Dorothy Dixer asking whether “ea parliament dominated by progressive political forces provided structural opportunity in the event the government pursued additional legislative measure” on renewables. Rather than saying “Yes, we will work with the Parliament” #Albo went straight on attack against the Greens, for forcing him to strengthen his pathetic Housing Fund. He’s a hopeless case. #auspol...

from Dean Baker The media have been giving considerable attention to the national debt in the last year or so. They have some cause, it has been rising rapidly, and more importantly, the interest burden of the debt has increased sharply since the Fed began raising rates last year. But, if we want to be serious, rather than just write scary headlines, we have to ask why the debt is a problem. The first concern to dispel is the idea that the country somehow has to pay off its debt. Our...

from Adam Smith The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour.  The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher [economist] and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as...

It looks as if something has gone skew-whiff with the comment box. I’ll look into it, but it may take me a while. For the moment, if you can’t get WordPress to record your name, just comment anonymously and add your name in the body. I’ll check and approve regularly. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

from Steve Keen The key concept in Keynes’s summary was the impact of expectations upon investment, when those expectations were about what might happen in an uncertain future. Investment is undertaken to augment wealth, and yet the outcome of any investment depends upon economic circumstances in the relatively distant future. Since the future cannot be known, investment is necessarily undertaken on the basis of expectations formed under uncertainty. Keynes was at pains to distinguish...