economics

On Socialism

  There are myriad definitions and variations of socialism. If you don’t believe me, check out the term’s Wikipedia page. Things that have been called socialist: publicly owned lands, such as state and national parks [1] eminent domain [1][2] Social Security [1][3] the New Deal [1][5] public housing [1] the civil rights movement [1] bank […]

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The FT on MMT

For the Kansas City Chiefs, a 14-point deficit at half-time is a problem. But that means their opponent has a 14-point surplus. Is that a problem for them? Of course not. The “federal debt” is the private sector’s savings. Personally, I’m happy to have some of those savings. How about you? Read more in this Financial

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Piketty on Sanders

Thomas Piketty thinks a Bernie Sanders’ Presidency would be good for the U.S. economy. That shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who spends any time actually thinking about it. Because of inequality in this country, a lot of wealth is tied up in stocks and bonds, where it does nothing to stimulate the economy. Now consider if some of

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America – land of the predatory monopolies

Will Hutton of The Guardian writes about the diverging directions of the American and European economies, and he attributes it to our broken campaign finance system: Both at federal and state level ever higher campaign donations are correlated with ever fewer actions against monopoly, price fixing and bad corporate behaviour. The results should be familiar

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Motley Fools

One would think that anyone who makes their living writing about money and finances would know all about those subjects. And one would be wrong. Today’s exhibit: The Motley Fool I admit that the Fool has lots of good advice about money and finances, but they appear to be quite ignorant when it comes to

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Incompetence or malice?

An adage I’ve long enjoyed is this one: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. I think it’s better to assume mistakes are not malicious. Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has areas of incompetence. Assume the best before assuming the worst. But there’s another adage I like: Once is accident, twice is

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