Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Say’s Other Law: “Misery is the inseparable companion of luxury”

It was a dark and stormy global night economy and a spectre task was haunting facing Europe… A new supply-side agenda for the left The task facing Europe is to meet the challenge of the global economy while maintaining social cohesion in the face of real and perceived uncertainty. Rising employment and expanding job opportunities are the best guarantee […]

The Role of Experts in Public Debate

Jonathan Portes asks, “What’s the role of experts in the public debate?” He assumes it is his prerogative, as an expert, to define that role: I think we have three really important functions. First, to explain our basic concepts and most important insights in plain English. Famously, Paul Samuelson, the founder of modern macroeconomics, was asked […]

Dean Baker is Clueless On Productivity Growth

Dean Baker’s screed, Bill Gates Is Clueless On The Economy, keeps getting recycled, from Beat the Press to Truthout to Real-World Economics Review to The Huffington Post. Dean waves aside the real problem with Gates’s suggestion, which is the difficulty of defining what a robot is, and focuses instead on what seems to him to be the […]

Gates & Reuther v. Baker & Bernstein on Robot Productivity

In a comment on Nineteen Ninety-Six: The Robot/Productivity Paradox, Jeff points out a much simpler rebuttal to Dean Baker’s and Jared Bernstein’s uncritical reliance on the decline of measured “productivity growth”: Let’s use a pizza shop as an example. If the owner spends capital money and makes the line more efficient so that they can make […]

The 24 Trillion Dollar Bezzle

At the beginning of 2007, net worth of households and non-profit organizations exceeded its 1947-1996 historical average multiple, relative to GDP, by some $16 trillion. It took 24 months to wipe out eighty percent, or $13 trillion, of that colossal but ephemeral slush fund.

The “Imperative Mandate” — Recall: An Annotated Bibliography

Recall of elected officials is both the essence of Populism, the “imperative mandate” and consistent with good business principles. “You’re fired!, the voters’ version of “The Apprentice”: An analysis of local recall elections in California.” Rachel Weinstein, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, Vol , 15. 2005-2006. The title of this 2005 article contains the delicious irony of […]

Emails from the “Voter Fraud” Crypt

Why, oh why is there not an effective opposition party in the U.S. Congress? The last time “voter fraud” was as high on the GOP’s agenda as it now is on Trump’s, it led to the politically-motivated firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, which caused a scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto […]

Fuck You’s Inaugural Address

Dave Moss: What’s your name?  Blake: Fuck you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? ‘Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. THAT’s my name. Long before Alec Baldwin did his Saturday Night Live impression of Donald J. Trump, Trump appropriated Baldwin’s sadistic “motivational” character, Blake, from Glengarry […]