The Musical Chairs Economy
Ok, for some time, folks have been after me for a formal economics post. What’s going to happen in the future in the US? The answer, for around the next 5 to 6 years, maybe longer, is the musical...
View ArticleObservations on Canadian NDP leader Mulcair and the politics of class
Last weekend, the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) elected a new leader: Thomas Mulcair, an MP from Quebec, who was a minister in the provincial Liberal government there, before he resigned rather...
View ArticleThe left will have its chance in Europe
So, in France Hollande has won, and in Greece, left wing parties have more of the vote than the center or the right (we’ll see if they can form a government, however.) They will now have their chance....
View ArticleWill a man on horseback come to rule America?
I think the US will take longer, but a man-on-horseback can still happen in the US. Remember that virtually the only trusted institution in America is the military. The difference in America, as...
View ArticleSome basics on the economy
1) the majority of new jobs are bad. 2) the economy has still not recovered all lost jobs, either in absolute #s or as a percentage of the population 3) so there are fewer jobs, and what new jobs have...
View ArticleThe Left Wing Case Against Obama and Obama’s Next Term
Matt Stoller’s made the left wing case against Obama, and then responded to his critics, who, he’s right, don’t address his points. The two articles are excellent, and you should read them. I haven’t...
View ArticleSweden v. Canada: Taxation and Inequality
Ok, so Stephen Gordon in MacLeans feels compelled to weigh in on taxes, to suggest that the Nordic countries just redistribute money from the bottom 99% to each other to maintain equality and so Canada...
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The Decline and Fall of Post War Liberalism and the Rise of the Right
In the Anglo-US world post-War liberalism has been on the defensive since the 70s. This is normally shown through various wage or wealth graphs, but I’m going to show two different ones. The first,...
View ArticleThe Beauty of Obama’s Clapper Appointment
As you’ve probably heard, Obama has appointed James Clapper (the man who lied under oath to Congress about NSA spying) to review NSA spying. I am in awe, few things have impressed me this deeply. This...
View ArticleWhy The Republicans Shut The Government Down and Threaten the Debt Ceiling
HBR has an article by Justin Fox on the government shutdown in Washington in game theory terms. It’s good as far as it goes, but it amounts to this: It works, they get some of what they want People...
View ArticleToo Much Money Chasing The Wrong Returns
There is too much money in the world being invested in all the wrong ways. The amount of money being created by the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan and the ECB is dwarfed by the amount of money being...
View ArticleMandela’s NeoLiberal Compromise
South Africa may no longer have apartheid, but the majority of the population still lives in poverty, the heights of the economy are controlled largely by whites, and rich blacks are concentrated in...
View ArticleLiving in a rich society
We, in the West, live in scarcity economies. The key bottleneck resources are scarce, and the decision has been made to keep them scarce. Our entire economic policy from about 1979 can be summarized...
View ArticleIncreasing the Minimum Wage
Ontario is considering tying minimum wage increases to the consumer price index. This is an ok idea, but the CPI is systematically fiddled to decrease stated inflation, because a lot of costs are...
View ArticleThe Right Stuff: What Prosperity Is and Isn’t
Is a society prosperous when everyone has an abundance of good, the usual definition of prosperity? Are you prosperous if you have an abundance of goods, but no time to enjoy them? Are you prosperous...
View ArticleThe Disposable Economy
The most important fact about modern economies is rarely remarked on: they are job societies. The vast majority of the population works for someone else. For those without jobs, poverty, homelessness,...
View Article147 Companies control 40% of the World Economy
Wealth and income are important, but power trumps. What matters is control, and control is even more concentrated than wealth. This study found that control was about ten times more concentrated, in...
View ArticleThe Golden Rule: Why Bankers Are In Charge
In our society, we determine much behaviour, and most economic behaviour, through the medium of money. This is not universal: many societies have not used money as their main means of determining who...
View ArticleYou will never, again, have a good economy for ordinary people so long as...
Reuters on Ben Bernanke’s post-Fed career: Bernanke was paid at least $250,000 for his first public speaking engagement, in Abu Dhabi, since stepping down in January, according to sources familiar with...
View ArticleThe Age of the Obvious: Thomas Piketty’s Capital
The economist Thomas Piketty, who along with Emmanuel Saez has done great work on the concentration of income, has written his magnum opus, Capital(pdf). The title is an obvious reference to Marx’s...
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