Okay, so most of you who don’t live in Iowa (and most of you don’t live in Iowa, since it’s not a populous state) probably are unaware that the outcome of the election to replace retiring progressive Iowa senator Tom Harkin—which in turn may determine party control of the Senate—may turn on a dispute between […]
I have been reading the ebook on Secular Stagnation. It is interesting that two sections in the book have the titles… Three Issues: Potential Growth, Effective Demand and Sclerosis Further on Effective Demand Great! We see the term Effective Demand being used. Yet, Effective demand is never defined in the book. Moreover, the term is […]
The ECB raised its benchmark rate in 2011 from 1.0% to 1.5%. Since then the rate has moved down to 0.15%. After their benchmark rate was raised in 2011, the Euro area went into a recession. Did the ECB cause the recession by raising their benchmark nominal rate? Some say yes. I say the story […]
Sandwichman at Econospeak writes more on the issue of ‘labor’: Lump of Labor Day Special: Advanced (Elementary) Concepts in Mathematics “…if there be but a certain proportion of work to be done; and that the same be already done by the not-Beggars; then to employ the Beggars about it, will but transfer the want from […]
Lifted from open thread Aug. 31, 2014 by Sandwichman. My latest on the lump of labor fallacy takes the story back to the 17th century and John Graunt’s Observations on the Bills of Mortality. Graunt speculated about a certain PROPORTION of work to be done. The fallacy claim alleges the assumption of a fixed QUANTITY […]
Peter Dorman at Econospeak describes a common example of thought experiments on markets and externalities, and concludes with “More complex considerations that take into account dynamics, interaction effects and the like never intrude. What you end up with is an ideological truncation of economics, and, as the Great Airplane Debate illustrates, it is largely ideology […]
Do these books include Keynes’ precious term, “Effective Demand”? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I watch as grand economists explain the current economy… in particular, Olivier Blanchard and Paul Krugman. They miss the eventual fight of labor to increase their share… Olivier Blanchard wrote an article, Where danger Lurks. He mentions the Dark Corners where the economy can function […]
We now come to the exciting conclusion of Thomas Piketty’s monumental work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This is not an exaggeration: the final part of the book contains findings that I consider to be simply bombshells in their significance. In Part 4, “Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Piketty calls for a new “social […]
Recent census date points to a Widening wealth gap: The Census Bureau released updated data this week on the net worth of American households, drawn from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. These totals reflect all assets including money in checking accounts, owned homes, rental properties, 401ks, stocks and vehicles, offset by liabilities like […]
In my last post, I gave an introduction to the massive data work underlying Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as well as two clear results from Piketty’s work. First, he showed that the optimistic Kuznets view after World War II that inequality was well on its way to being conquered was wrong, based on putting […]