socialist-economics

Marx for me (and hopefully for others too) Branko Milanovic   Yesterday I had a conversation about my work, about how and why I started studying inequality more than 30 years ago, what was my motivation, how it was  to work on income inequality in an officially classless (and non-democratic) society, did the World Bank care about inequality etc. The interviewer and I thus came to some methodological issues and to the inescapable influence of Marx on my work. I want to present it more systematically in this post. The most important of Marx's influences on people working in social sciences is, I think, his economic interpretation of history. This has become so much part of the mainstream that we do no  longer associate it with Marx very much. And surely, he was not the only one or even the first to have defined it. But he applied it most consistently and most creatively. Even when we believe that such an interpretation of history is common-place today, this still is not entirely so. ...

An interesting perspective on winners and losers and does-not-matter in Brexit, with some helpful British history included. Brexit Does Not Matter Dec 31, 2018   SIMON JOHNSON A chaotic Brexit could do great damage to ordinary people, as was the case with Britain's self-ejection from the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System in 1992. But those ordinary people will be overwhelmingly British. The days when Britain could move the world are long gone. WASHINGTON, DC – The contours of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were defined in part by a series of consequential British foreign policy and economic decisions. As recently as 2007-2009, British policy affected global outcomes: whereas deregulation of the City of London contributed to the severity of the global financial crisis, British leadership at the London G20 summit in April 2009 ultimately proved a stabilizing influence. Today, however, despite all the political theater and dramatic rhetoric, Britain...

The Berenstain Bear of Economics charts an economists agenda for the new year. Questions we need answered in 2019 https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/31/questions-we-need-answered/  -- via my feedly newsfeed

A Lazy New Year's Eve Morn on Twitter... https://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/12/a-lazy-new-years-eve-morn-on-twitter.html A fascinating conversation on links between 'anti-monopoly-ism' and libertarianism in the post war world of economics Brad DeLong :  Gee, I Have Argued Myself From Half-Agreeing With @EconMarshall To 90% Agreeing With Him, Haven't I? _: Suresh Naidu : Sorry that came out wrong, deleted. Straightforward: a substantial amount of economic power and inefficiency is not eliminated by deconcentration/free entry. Not clear, lots of problems are made worse by free entry/competition. Low margins mean harder to unionize. Innovation is done by big firms. On simple efficiency grounds things can get worse in market with advantageous selection (eg loans) or with any negative ext. It depends! Mike Konczal : If we are worried about margins being too low, boy do I have exciting news for you: Sure, but between that, Tobin's Q, "profit share", consistent...

Joan Robinson Joan Robinson  studied under the British Marxist Maurice Dobb, but became famous as a prominent post-Keynesian economist ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Keynesian_economics ). She does not mention Marx, but he is present in the thematic and philosophical l linking of judgement, even 'science', to personal or class interests in all but laboratory and mathematical sciences. Joan Robinson on Poets, Mathematicians, Economists, and Adam Smith http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2018/12/joan-robinson-on-poets-mathematicians.html Joan Robinson, in her book   Economic Philosophy  (1962, pp. 26-28), offers a meditation on how Adam Smith perceived poets and mathematicians-- and then on how economist fall in-between Her argument is that mathematicians have an agreed-upon method for evaluating errors. Poets do not. And economists fall in between--which introduces a personal element into all economic controversies. In the passage that follows, I'm especially fond...

an alternative bourgeois view, via Bloomberg, on Trump's trade war with China Trump's China Strategy Isn't Working The administration's scattershot approach is ineffective, if not harmful to U.S. interests. And it's only amplifying Beijing's nationalist tune. By  Anne Stevenson-Yang December 30, 2018, 7:23 PM EST Poking the bear. Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri/AF Anne Stevenson-Yang is co-founder and research director of J Capital Research Ltd., a provider of investment advisory services. Read more opinionFollow @doumenzi on Twitter COMMENTS  41 LISTEN TO ARTICLE  6:24 SHARE THIS ARTICLE  Share  Tweet  Post  Email The Trump administration's willingness to push the Chinese harder on trade has struck a bilateral chord. Beijing is listening. So far, so good. Now the question is what the U.S. wants to achieve. Answer: the total destruction of China as a competitor. That isn't a trade goal, and the demands being made contradict one another. This aim also unnec...

Bloomberg on the shutdown negotiations House Democrats to Vote on Ending Shutdown as They Take Majority https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-31/here-s-how-the-new-congress-could-end-trump-s-shutdown-fight House Democrats will use their new majority Thursday to vote on legislation to end the U.S. government shutdown without adding funds for President Donald Trump's border wall, but the GOP-controlled Senate already has signaled it won't act without White House consent. The plan is to pass two separate bills, one reopening eight departments -- which have been closed since Dec. 22 -- through September 2019 and another temporarily reopening the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, two House Democratic aides said Monday. The partial government shutdown is an unwelcome gift for the new Congress, which opens Jan. 3 with the House and Senate politically split. Nancy Pelosi, who's expected to be elected House speaker Thursday, has said her party would vote on e...