Hey, if you are not listening to this, you should be. It is more along the lines of “what did you know and when did you know it.” One of Mark Meadow’s assistants is reviewing what she knew with the committee.
Read More »The Law of Demand
from Lars Syll Mainstream economics is usually considered to be very ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise.’ And yes, indeed, it’s certainly full of ‘rigorous’ and ‘precise’ statements like “the state of the economy will remain the same as long as it doesn’t change.” Although ‘true,’ this is, however — like most other analytical statements — neither particularly interesting nor informative. As is well known, the law of demand is usually tagged with a clause that entails numerous interpretation...
Read More »Open thread June 28, 2022
What I’ve been doing and saying
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Read More »Neoliberals do not like a free market, but they want you to think they do
from Dean Baker It was very frustrating to read Noam Scheiber’s profile of Jaz Brisack, the person who led the first successful union organizing drive at a Starbucks. Brisack does sound like a very impressive person and it is good to see her getting the attention her efforts warrant. However, Scheiber ruins the story by repeatedly telling readers that the neoliberals, who have dominated political debate in recent decades, want a free market. Nothing could be further from the truth....
Read More »Would Democratic Socialism be Better?
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...
Read More »Mainstream economics — the art of building fantasy worlds
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,...
Read More »Consumer sentiment, new home sales, architecture billing index, light vehicle sales
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:
Read More »Open thread June 24, 2022
Should Ukraine be part the EU?
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...
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