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Capacity, Scale, and Control

“Cultural theorist Lynn Parramore on the deep social effects of economic precarity, and her article “Epidemic of Despair Could Haunt America Long After COVID” at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/epidemic-of-despair-could-haunt-america-long-after-covid” — Chuck Mertz,This is Hell!

“A recent study by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, painting a wider picture, shows that the effective reduction in emissions due to carbon pricing policy comes to between just 1 and 2.5 percent of the total.” — Ornaldo Gjergji, Osservatorio

“Panics are not needed for banking crises to have severe economic consequences,” says Emil Verner, the MIT professor who helped lead the study. “But when panics do occur, those tend to be the most severe episodes. Panics are an important amplification mechanism for banking crises, but not a necessary condition.” Indeed, in an ambitious piece of research, spanning 46 countries and going back to 1870, the study surveys banking crises that occurred with and without panics. When there is a panic and bank run, the research finds, a 30 percent decline in banking-sector equity predicts a 3.4 percent drop in real GDP (gross domestic product adjusted for inflation) after three years. But even without any creditor panic, a 30 percent decline in bank equity predicts a 2.7 percent drop in real GDP after three years.” — Peter Dizikes, MIT News

“Consider the following point made by Institute for New Economic Thinking executive director Rob Johnson during a recent interview when asked about Medicare for All: “Public opinion polls show more than 70 percent of the population is in favor of Medicare for All. It’s not the population that doesn’t want it, and they’re the ultimate voters. It’s vested interests and the struggle that has to do with the relationship between money-raising campaign war chests and the probability of re-election and what you might call the refractory influence of the mainstream media, where pharmaceutical companies in particular and insurance companies as well are very big advertisers.” — Luke Savage, Jacobin

Comment on Paul Krugman’s recent observations on US inflation

Researchers worry the pandemic may have severe after-effects, with deaths of despair impacting more distressed and newly-vulnerable populations

Black women are forfeiting $50 billion/year in the US due to the combined gender and racial wage gap.

Traditional economics, like the ethos of the “American Dream,” tells us that our individual talents and efforts determine whether or not we succeed in life. Yet, an overwhelming body of evidence shows that people of color have been denied the same opportunities to succeed in America. Race is not only a defining feature of social identity and an arbiter of access to power and privilege; for far too many Americans, race - a social construction - is a fundamental determinant of their economic destiny.

Developments in the real economy have persistently challenged central tenets of older economic thinking, such as the supposed close connection between the money supply and inflation.

Rethinking Crime and Inequality with Stratification Economics

“In taking over industrial companies, financial managers focus on the short run, because their salary and bonuses are based on current year’s performance. The “performance” in question is stock market performance. Stock prices have largely become independent from sales volume and profits, now that they are enhanced by corporations typically paying out some 92 percent of their revenue in dividends and stock buybacks.[6]” — Michael Hudson, Naked Capitalism [6]William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity:Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market and Leave Most Americans Worse Off,”Harvard Business Review, September 2014. And more recently, Lazonick and Jang-Sup Shin, Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the U.S. Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored(Oxford: 2020).

Given the mounting need to create good jobs, effect structural change, and transform the economy, what should policy priorities be in the digital era? Is there a role for industrial policy? What new policy options do we need to achieve inclusive prosperity?

The Challenge to Bidenomics

“in addition to the author’s interpretations, there will also be a considerable list of texts and contributions that can be useful for approaching and deepening the economic debate and the developments of the alternative and post-Keynesian theoretical approach, even in its various currents. . The not obvious presence in the public debate of these topics makes the book an important reading in order to interpret the recent economic history of our country starting from the questions that the crisis triggered by the outbreak of the pandemic and the recipes prepared by the European and national institutions pose us. , of which however no shadow is seen in political decisions, having an interpretative key that escapes the mainstream logic is, even more so in this context, of crucial importance.” — Davide Romaniello, Sinistrainrete