This week I attended (remotely) the Rethinking Economics Festival and encountered challenging pluralist discourses like a platform economy (noting that most of such work is populated by women), decolonizing the Eurocentric position in disciplines, or “fully-automated luxury communism”. I thought I’d share some resource items and make a few observations. Columbus does need to be…
Category: Economics
AntiCapitalist MeetUp: government deficit is a myth in the eyes of Modern Monetary Theory
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) can (but not will) save the US economy. What with the White House Council of Economic Advisors now reduced to one economist, it’s worth noting that one of their econometric models (Hassett) influenced the prediction that COVID-19 infections in the US would go to zero by June. That is after all,…
a Second task force will run afoul of the Second COVID wave in a laugher of an economic recovery
President Donald Trump is preparing to announce a second coronavirus task force solely focused on reopening the nation's economy, multiple sources told CNN. This now seems to be a trial balloon at present. Making Arthur Laffer the economic recovery Czar could signal the depth of the coming recession. OTOH dinner napkins will do double duty as masks with proper…
Things really important to me
First an apology. My post yesterday on my decision to vote for Warren (which I did at about 9:45 AM) and to contribute to her campaign ($100 online) was my first posting here in more than a month. Some may remember that in mid-November I suffered a stroke, later had surgery to relieve the stenosis…
Piketty on a radical new wealth tax because “There will be another economic crash”
Thomas Piketty’s new book, emphasizes the role of ideology in preserving and challenging capitalism even as “multigenerational wealth transfers, combined with high rates of return on capital, will inexorably create an uberrich capital class.” George Eaton’s article in New Statesman has some useful and current observations. “The key point is that there are no deterministic economic,…
An open question for even undergraduate level economists
I’m not an economist, and didn’t even major in it in college. So I have an honest question for those with some more expertise than me. Background: I just read a very typical article that said that economists conclude that the employer side of the Social Security tax is simply “passed on“ to their employees…
Fortune Cookie economics: Peter Navarro's alter ego is no hand grenade
Like David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, conservatives use (non-) fictional everymen in their writing. WH adviser Peter Navarro is no different: his is the thinly disguised Ron Vara, no different than David Dennison or John Barron. Today the Comical of Higher Education takes Peter Navarro to task for his sinophobia which only got attention from the WH…
Nobel in Economics goes to trio studying poverty, including the second woman to receive the award
Their contributions are in the experimental modeling of poverty in areas including micro-finance, agriculture, and education. Duflo received a MacArthur grant in 2009. Three professors who have done experimental work toward alleviating poverty have been awarded the Nobel in economic sciences: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, both of M.I.T., and Michael Kremer of Harvard https://t.co/kygCEKzt2M pic.twitter.com/G88ULKIe9S…
Terrific piece on taxes by Dave Leonhardt – UPDATED
now up at the New York Times website and titled The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You. I strongly urge everyone to read it. There is a mobile graphic that runs from 1950 to 2018 by mobile I mean the line showing the effective rate of taxation across various income levels changes as…
Leveling The Playing Field: Paying Workers With Credit Lines Backed By Put-Hedged Restricted Stock
A modest proposal. Hear me out. The Problem I’m not even sure this needs to be stated. Income inequality is massive. The difference keeps growing. But let’s look at why. While politicians often rail on about income tax, the reality is that the super-rich generally became super-rich not through income, but through capital gains. Aka,…
Reorienting around the Orient
I know quite a number of Pakistanis being a student at Ohio Wesleyan. Not all of them care that much for politics. But of the few who do, there is a general sentiment that Chinese is the new language of the global market. As the US continues to fall in the respect of Pakistanis, China…
