Tag Archives: free markets

The Pope on Inequality and Unfettered Markets

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By Sam Pizzigati

In plain yet powerful language, Pope Francis is challenging the givens of our deeply unequal world — and helping inspire resistance to it.

A new exhortation from Pope Francis offers a wide-ranging condemnation of the economic gaps that divide us.
A new exhortation from Pope Francis offers a wide-ranging condemnation of the economic gaps that divide us.

Sometimes you don’t have to say anything “new” to make news. Consider, for instance, the “apostolic exhortation” the Vatican released last Tuesday.

This statement from Pope Francis, observers note, didn’t really break any bold new theological ground. But the Pope’s exhortation, the first all his own since he stepped onto the world stage last March, still made front pages the world over — and fully merited all that attention.

What makes this new papal statement so significant? No global religious figure has likely ever before denounced economic inequality with as wide-ranging — and as accessible — an assault.

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Sack the Economists now available

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SackCoverMy ebook Sack the Economists and Disband their Departments is now available.

Mainstream economists completely failed to anticipate the financial market crash of 2007-8.  They then called it an unforeseeable event.  This is a clear admission that they don’t understand how economies work.  Yet many non-mainstream, marginalised economists gave clear warning of the approaching crash.  This book shows how mainstream economics has not one but many fundamental flaws.  It is not a science, it is pseudo-science.  It lacks scholarly rigour and integrity.  Once you understand this, it is not a mystery why the mainstreamers missed the approaching crash, nor why wealth is so unequally distributed, why we are so materialistic and unfulfilled, and why the planet is being destroyed.  But modern knowledge and systems ideas reveal market economies to be self-organising systems, and they can be managed to support dignified livelihoods in equitable societies that can survive into the indefinite future, with nature thriving along with them.

See more at the book’s web site, including how to purchase your copy.

Visit the Facebook page, like it and spread the word.

Sack the Economists

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… and disband their departments

The honourable Alan Greenspan testifies before...

The honourable Alan Greenspan testifies before the House Financial Services Committee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[My silence for some time here has been mainly because I was focussed on re-packaging my economic ideas in a form that might gain more traction.  So, there is a new book manuscript of the above title.  It will help to promote it (to publishers) if I have readers’ reactions.  Therefore, if you will undertake to give me feedback, I will supply you with the draft MS (120 pages, 2.2 Mb pdf).  You don’t have to be expert, it’s for a general audience and so I want feedback from that audience.  Most helpful to me will be comments on its readability and interest.  Of course any discussion of its arguments are also welcome.]

Here is the first part of the introductory chapter.  I will post more in a few days.

Chapter 1.  Economists Don’t Know What They’re Talking About

In 1994 Paul Ormerod published a book called The Death of Economics1.  He argued economists don’t know what they’re talking about.  In 2001 Steve Keen published a book called Debunking Economics: the naked emperor of the social sciences2, with a second edition in 2011 subtitled The naked emperor dethroned?3.  Keen also argued economists don’t know what they’re talking about.

Neither of these books, nor quite a few others, has had the desired effect.  Mainstream economics has sailed serenely on its way, declaiming, advising, berating, sternly lecturing, deciding, teaching, pontificating.  Meanwhile half of Europe and many regions and groups in the United States are in depression, and fascism is making a comeback.  The last big depression spawned Hitler.  This one is promoting Golden Dawn in Greece and similar extremist movements elsewhere.  In the anglophone world a fundamentalist right-wing ideology is enforcing an increasingly narrow political correctness centred on “free” markets and the right of the rich to do and say whatever they like.  “Freedom”, but only for some and without responsibility.

Evidently Ormerod and Keen were too subtle.  It’s true their books also get a bit technical at times, especially Keen’s, but then they were addressing the profession, trying to bring it to its senses, to reform it from the inside.  That seems to have been their other mistake.  They produced example after example of how mainstream ideas fail, but still they had no effect.  I think the message was addressed to the wrong audience, and was just too subtle.  Economics is naked and dead, but never mind the stink, just prop up the corpse and carry on.

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How Was Krugman So Wrong On Trade?

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[A good piece from one of my favourite sources, Campaign For America’s Future (formerly TomPaine.com).  Read the Greider piece too, it’s not very long.]

by Dave Johnson

Have our trade policies helped or hurt the country? You can look down at equations and models, or you can look up and see what is happening around you. Equations and models will tell you that “free trade” is a good thing. But if you look up and see what is happening around you … “not so much” is such an understatement. So a comparison of what economists predicted “free trade” would bring with what has actually happened might help us find a way out of the economic mess we are in.

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Finding a Framework for a New Economics

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[In preparing a pitch to some possibly supportive people, I realised I have not spelt out in brief form the argument that economies are complex self-organising systems.  There is a straightforward logic, it is not simply a preference pulled out of the air, or the depths of my psyche.]

Many economists, and more non-economists, agree that economics needs new ideas, given the comprehensive failure of the mainstream to foresee the Global Financial Crisis and its continuing failure to lift the US and Europe out of deep recession or depression.  Yet few seem to know where to start, and there seems to be little agreement on how much the subject needs to change.  When proposals appear that might begin to address fundamental problems, many economists seem to recoil, and others seem simply to fail to recognise that the proposals have any relevance.

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The Rise and Failure of the Radical Right

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[For some time I have been frustrated by the very limited perspective of mainstream political commentary in Australia, and by the difficulty of establishing a longer perspective in the standard 800-word commentary piece.  So I decided just to write until the case was made.  Hence this 6000-word essay.  It refers to the Australian context, but there are parallel stories in other countries.]

The political spectrum is traditionally characterised in terms of Left and Right, but the way these terms are used has changed so much they have become quite misleading.  Today they are more about tribal identification, and their use is more of an epithet than a description.

The main reason for these changes is that the Right has shifted to quite extreme positions, compared with a generation or two ago.  The modern Right not only espouses free-market fundamentalism, it promotes an extreme individualism that overlooks or dismisses the importance of social relationships and even denies the existence of society.  There seems to be no standard of factual basis, sense or consistency required for its claims, so any opinion, however uninformed or misinformed, apparently is to be accorded as much validity in the public domain as any other.

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Eight Elementary Errors of Economics (slightly revised)

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The long, and slightly modified, version of Eight Elementary Errors of Economics is now on SteveKeen’s Debtwatch.  Reblogged on Business Spectator, 22 June and The Bull 23 June.  I consolidated two of the previous points and added what is now the final point on emergent wealth of land. See also on Real World Economics Review Blog, 7 June, with long discussion.

Post edited 4 July:  the full modified version now follows, so it’s all consolidated here.

The Global Financial Crisis, the extreme inequality of wealth world-wide, the materialism of modern life and the dire state of the planet are not accidents, nor just unavoidable consequences of the nature of things.  They are the result of the modern practice of economics, which makes elementary errors of accounting, evidence, perception and theory.

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Eight elementary errors – discussion from Real World Economics

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There has been a lively discussion of Eight Elementary Errors of Economics at Real World Economics Review Blog.  Here are a couple of exchanges that raise good points. (If these commenters respond further I will post them here, in fairness to them.)  There has also been discussion of history, science, love and other topics.  You might like to have a look.

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Flood Up, Trickle Down

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[Wealth redistribution, welfare state, nanny state, class warfare:  all the usual epithets flung about by the right wing apply most of all to … the filthy rich.  A revealing post from The Conversation.]

By Philip Soos, Deakin University

A few weeks ago, a Deakin University academic, Martin Hirst, made some interesting comments about the politics and economics of class warfare and redistribution. He correctly noted that the accusations of class warfare by Coalition politicians and newspaper journalists against the ALP in relation to the recent budget are clearly overblown. The usual rhetoric of socialism, class warfare, envy, punishing success, neglecting wealth creation and so on were bandied about.

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