Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Asad Zaman Summary: My 1000+ word summary of Polanyi’s classic: “The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times” has been wildly popular, remaining constantly among the top ten on the RWER Blog since it was was published nearly five years ago.  I have recently (25/12/26) revised and updated the post to clean up extraneous elements and clarify the substance in light of readers comments as well as my own improved understanding. Perhaps the most important...

from David Ruccio Yesterday, I discussed the mean-spiritedness of the Republican tax cuts—which are being sold as a gift to the middle-class but, in reality, represent a massive transfer to a small group of large corporations and wealthy individuals. But, of course, the real violence associated with the tax-cut gift occurs before federal taxes are even levied, in the pre-tax distribution of income. As is clear from the chart above, since the mid-1970s, the share of income captured by...

from Lars Syll Larry Elliott wrote a Guardian article the other day criticizing mainstream economics, arguing that we should stop treating economics as a science because it is nothing of the sort. A proper science involves testing a hypothesis against the available evidence. If the evidence doesn’t support the theory, a physicist or a biologist will discard the theory and try to come up one that does work empirically. Economics doesn’t work like that. Theories can be shown to work only by...

K-12 Student Loan Industry By MaryAnn Schlegel Ruegger  via AlterNet: The GOP tax bill’s inclusion of 529 plans for K-12 private tuition has been widely criticized as yet one more provision that aids the wealthy. That’s because only wealthy families have enough money on hand to sock away $10,000 a year toward each child’s K-12 private school tuition…. … The 529 provision in the tax bill is more than anything else a boon to the growing K-12 private school...

From a Department of Energy report entitled Revolution… Now; The Future Arrives for Five Clean Energy Technologies – 2016 Update a nifty graph: (click to embiggen) If the graph is remotely accurate, these are large cost reductions. Accompanying the graph is this verbage: Decades of investments by the federal government and industry in five key clean energy technologies are making an impact today. The cost of land-based wind power, utility and distributed...

Same store sales doing a lot better than last year: Confidence remains high: Housing, however, still seems to be going nowhere: Highlights The pending home sales index has been flat and has not been in line with the strength of final sales of existing homes. This may limit the impact of today’s report where the November index managed only a 0.2 percent gain to a 109.5 level that is still below last year’s levels. In contrast, existing home sales, at a 5.810 million...

I am going to make a fool of myself by suggesting that a cryptocurrency might actually be useful. Bitcoin et al have negative social utility. They are pure speculative assets which enable people to gamble. Also bitcoin miners use as much electricity as Denmark. The problem is exactly the aspect which has made bitcoin famous and which bitcoin enthusiasts consider a strength — the enormous increase in the dollar price of bitcoin. This increase, and the...

My 2017 presentation on Ireland and the Eurozone has been uploaded to YouTube. See the previous post for the link to the full conference, which includes the Q&A. [embedded content] Advertisements

Its almost Christmas.  What seems to be different in the last couple of years is that we now have to contend with the joy of violent Christmas plots of one sort or another.  Just the other day, some $#%& with a scheme to shoot up San Francisco for the holidays was arrested.  Not that the growing terrorism in parts of the West is a seasonal thing, mind you. Putting up bollards seems to be a growth industry these days. But there has to be a better way...

from Lars Syll Let’s be honest: no one knows what is happening in the world economy today … Policymakers don’t know what to do. They press the usual (and unusual) levers and nothing happens. Quantitative easing was supposed to bring inflation “back to target.” It didn’t. Fiscal contraction was supposed to restore confidence. It didn’t … Most economics students are not required to study psychology, philosophy, history, or politics. They are spoon-fed models of the economy, based on unreal...