Tag Archives: Uncategorized

Since the beginning of this millennium, I’ve been writing critiques of the “generation game”, the idea that people can be divided into well-defined groups (Boomers, Millennials and so on), with specific characteristics based on their year of birth. As I said in my first go at this issue, back in 2000 (reproduced here ) Much of what passes for discussion about the merits or otherwise of particular generations is little more than a repetition of unchanging formulas about different...

from Duncan Austin While Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand has many beneficial attributes, somewhere along the way the Invisible Hand was recast as the Infallible Hand, seeding today’s widespread faith that markets can solve large-scale social and ecological problems they are ill matched for. In the formidable shadow of the Infallible Hand, non-market solutions – policy, regulatory, cultural, behavioural – are often deemed ‘impractical’, so remain under-utilized. ‘Green growth’, ‘sustainable...

Tax Deal Open Thread Theater, Angry Bear, angry bear blog Open Threads can be done weekly if needed. Don’t clutter up posts. I am not the cleaning lady for off topic comments. Every Star Trek Ship For Captain Data After Picard Season 3, screenrant.com. Intriguing series or movie. Data as a Star Ship captain. Especially now with the advent of AI computer beings. ...

I wrote this piece for the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia following a presentation I gave along with other researchers and members of Four Day Week Global. (Video here). A version was published by Independent Australia, under the title A long weekend every week? It’s time. More than 150 years ago, workers in New Zealand, closely followed by Australia, were the first in the world to secure an eight-hour working day. And 75 years ago, we achieved that great boon,...

Lars Syll At the beginning of the year 2000, a book titled Irrational Exuberance was published. The American economics professor and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller warned that the extensive deregulation in the financial market that had taken place since the Thatcher-Reagan era had led to a rapid credit expansion. Banks and financial institutions saw a skyrocketing increase in lending, and the pursuit of gaining larger market shares led to neglecting creditworthiness checks and accepting...

My latest piece in Crikey Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)A year after the Albanese government’s election win, Labor’s strategy for its first term in office is clear. On the issues where the Coalition has historically had an advantage, most notably economics, defence and foreign policy, Labor has adopted those policies and sought (so far successfully) to more competently implement them. On everything else — climate, health, education, human rights — Labor...

from Asad Zaman  Maeshiro (2016) in “The Capitalist Religion and the Production of Idols“, writes that Capital is the God, and Capitalism is the religion of modern society. Gauthier’s review of Nelson’s Economics As Religion states that “economics became the modern theology that replaced traditional theology as the set of doctrines that give meaning to our social reality and hope to our endeavors to improving our lives … (Nelson analyses) the works of the major twentieth century American...

House prices may have bottomed, while YoY price increases (leading inflation) have declined to lower than their 25-year average  – by New Deal democrat Seasonally adjusted house prices through March as measured by both the FHFA (light blue in the graphs below) and Case Shiller (dark blue) Indexes rose, the former by 0.7% and the latter by 0.2%. This is the second straight increase in a row, and suggests that house prices may have bottomed:...

from Lars Syll We are all realists and we all — Mäki, Cartwright, and I — self-consciously present ourselves as such. The most obvious research-guiding commonality, perhaps, is that we do all look at the ontological presuppositions of economics or economists. Where we part company, I believe, is that I want to go much further. I guess I would see their work as primarily analytical and my own as more critically constructive or dialectical. My goal is less the clarification of what...

I’m tinkering with the idea of a kind of periodic table for prices. Below, a very rough sketch of what I have in mind relating to administered prices and market prices as well as the sectors of the national accounts (cost prices, shadow prices etcetera have to be added). Gardiner Means defined the difference between market and administered prices (quoted in Gu (2012) on p. 13): “In an engineering economy prices are fixed by...