Tag Archives: Uncategorized

The post-Covid fiscal deficit reduction continues to take its toll: Higher prices automatically result in a spike in tax receipts: Higher prices, now largely from energy prices pushing up costs, reduce the inflation adjusted value of the public debt, which acts like a tax on the economy: With the rate of CPI increase above the rate of deficit spending, the effect is that of a budget surplus: Spiking energy prices as Saudis set prices ever higher shift $ from consumers...

from Lars Syll Science is made possible by the fact that there are structures that are durable and independent of our knowledge or beliefs about them. There exists a reality beyond our theories and concepts of it. Contrary to positivism, yours truly would as a critical realist argue that the main task of science is not to detect event-regularities between observed facts, but rather to identify and explain the underlying structures/forces/powers/ mechanisms that produce the observed...

The highest CO2 Polluters per capita are dominated by oil producing countries who refine oil and emit CO2 in the oil extraction and refining process.

from Peter Soderbaum Climate change is perhaps the most threatening aspect of the ecological crisis but not the only one. Reduced biological diversity, reduced water availability and deteriorating water quality in some regions exemplify other relevant dimensions. On the financial side, the ‘market mechanism’ has been unable to come up to expectations. How can these problems be understood? Many factors have certainly contributed but in my judgment neoclassical economics as disciplinary...

For a while now I’ve been arguing the political crises in the developed world can be understood as the breakdown of a two (dominant) party system in which power alternated between hard (Thatcher) and soft (Clinton) versions of neoliberalism (or market liberalism), with two sides drawing respectively on the votes of the racist/authoritarian right (Trumpists) and the disaffected left (environmentalists, socialists/social democrats etc) who had nowhere else to go, even if they were...

from David Ruccio Inflation continues to run hot—and now, finally, the debate about inflation is heating up. On one side of the debate are mainstream economists and lobbyists for big business, the people Lydia DePillis refers to as having a simple mantra: “Supply and demand, Economics 101.” In their view, inflation is caused by supply and demand in the labor market, which is allowing workers’ wages to increase at an unsustainable rate (a story that, as I showed in April, has no validity),...

from Lars Syll This critique goes beyond the narrowly technical — that the workhorse neoclassical model of the economy was found to be lame when it came to running a real crisis race. The deeper critique is that these models, and the technical language that accompanies them, have played a role in policy and in society that has been disproportionate in two senses. First, disproportionate relative to our state of knowledge. Existing economic frameworks have shouldered a policy weight that...

Leveling off at approximately pre-Covid levels. The growth rate slowed as deficit spending dropped: Still in expansion but it has come way down with the post-Covid war.Drop in deficit spending that has been driving the general deceleration: Not looking good. The parts shortage is largely over, so it is about a lack of demand as deficit spending falls and prices in general rise faster than incomes: Oil prices (not money supply, for example) continue to drive headline...