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I’ve just received a copy of Lane Kenworthy’s latest back Would Democratic Socialism be Better (Shorter LK: “capitalism, and particularly social democratic capitalism, is betterthan many democratic socialists seem to think”). The book is a follow-up to his Social Democratic Capitalism, which made the case that the USA would be better off moving to a Nordic model of social democracy. I’m hoping to make a longer response soon, but I thought I’d begin by summing up the argument as I...

from Lars Syll Mainstream macroeconomic models standardly assume things like rational expectations, Walrasian market clearing, unique equilibria, time invariance, linear separability and homogeneity of both inputs/outputs and technology, infinitely lived intertemporally optimizing representative household/ consumer/producer agents with homothetic and identical preferences, etc., etc. At the same time, the models standardly ignore complexity, diversity, uncertainty, coordination problems,...

Settling in at pre-Covid levels, and the fiscal collapse depresses growth: Down, but still above 50: Still trending lower from the post-Covid fiscal collapse:

Ukraine applied for EU membership. The application has been accepted, the long journey towards membership has started. Good? Bad? Let’s first be honest about the EU. And the Russian empire – which of course is the main motivator behind the Ukrainian application. We can be short about the Russian empire. It is large, resource rich, not exactly a failed state but governed by a closed self- enriching criminal gang of with fantasies about a Russian greatness which never existed. It’s also...

from Norbert Häring With its Great Reset, the World Economic Forum, the lobby of the world’s largest corporations, supposedly wants to save the world from climate collapse. With a contribution on protecting the climate through Bitcoin, the powerful organisation proves- once again – that distrust is called for when it comes to corporate commitments to social goals. Greenwashing is the order of the day. Scandalously, the World Economic Forum is recognised as an international organisation,...

from Dean Baker I was very disappointed with Ezra Klein’s NYT interview with Bhaskar Sunkara, in large part because I have a high opinion of Sunkara, the founder of Jacobin and now the president of The Nation. My main disappointment stems from his non-answer to one of the main questions raised by Klein. Klein asked why the Democrats, and other liberal/left parties around the world, rely largely on more educated people for their support, while more working-class types have turned to the...

from Lars Syll In 1817 David Ricardo presented — in Principles — a theory that was meant to explain why countries trade and, based on the concept of opportunity cost, how the pattern of export and import is ruled by countries exporting goods in which they have a comparative advantage and importing goods in which they have a comparative disadvantage. Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, however, didn’t explain why the comparative advantage was the way it was. At the beginning of the...

After a post-Covid recovery spike, we have settled back to pre-Covid levels, which was well before the rate hikes: Applications have softened. This is the first up-week since the rate hikes: In many ways, we have yet to recover from the oil capex collapse of about 7 years ago: