Making Monetary Policy Great Again by Ryan Avent

Making Monetary Policy Great Again by Ryan Avent

Konczal advice to Dems; Mound on Eisenhower Republicans

The Democrats Are Eisenhower Republicans by Josh Mound

What the stock market’s rise under Trump should teach Democrats by Mike Koczal

THE CRISIS OF POSITIVE-SUM CAPITALISM by Chris Dillow

THE CRISIS OF POSITIVE-SUM CAPITALISM by Chris Dillow

- With savings low and debt high, households might respond to higher wages by saving more. If so, we’ll not get higher aggregate demand and hence incentives to invest. There’s a warning here from the 70s. One reason why the positive-sum game broke down then was that workers saved increasing proportions of their wages. 

These doubts don’t make me side with neoliberalism. They just make me think that wage-led growth is nothing like sufficient.

Medicare, Medicaid

Medicare:

In 2015, Medicare provided health insurance for over 55 million—46 million people age 65 and older and nine million younger people.[2] On average, Medicare covers about half of the health care charges for those enrolled.

payroll tax. universal, expensive, b/c government doesn't negotiate as in other countries.

"Many look to the Veterans Health Administration as a model of lower cost prescription drug coverage. Since the VHA provides healthcare directly, it maintains its own formulary and negotiates prices with manufacturers. Studies show that the VHA pays dramatically less for drugs than the PDP plans Medicare Part D subsidizes.[138][139] One analysis found that adopting a formulary similar to the VHA’s would save Medicare $14 billion a year (over 10 years the savings would be around $140 billion).[140]"

Medicaid cost, care

America's First Postmodern President by Jeet Heer

America’s First Postmodern President by Jeet Heer

Socialize Finance by J.W. Mason

Socialize Finance by J.W. Mason

"We already live in a planned economy. Why not make it a democratic one?"

Beutler and Yglesias go rogue; Reich on jiu-jitsu

Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Left’s Selfless Defense of Obamacare by Brian Beutler

Bernie Sanders is the Democrats’ real 2020 frontrunner by Matt Yglesias

POLITICAL JUJITSU: NOW’S THE TIME FOR MEDICARE FOR ALL by Robert Reich

David Frum interviews Edward Luce

“Western liberalism is under siege”
Frum:

Let's talk about some of the drivers of the changing of society. I see three. You talk a lot about two, and less about the third. 

The first is this giant question about the future of work — what is happening to the economic situation of people who don't own capital or have internationally traded skills.

What an odd way of putting it. Isn't it the job of the Fed to keep unemployment low?

Franc thoughts on Bond Vigilantes by Krugman

Franc Thoughts on Bond Vigilantes
by Paul Krugman
NOVEMBER 23, 2012 12:48 PM

Suzy Khimm writes about the contrast between what financial industry honchos say worries them and what financial markets seem to be saying. The honchos declare that failure to reach a Grand Bargain would

spark a damaging loss of confidence in the U.S. government’s fiscal prospects, a run on Treasury bonds, and a spike in interest rates.

But the bond markets are saying what me worry, with long-term rates at near-record lows.

What Khimm doesn’t note, however, is that the problem with bond vigilante scare tactics runs even deeper than that — because it’s actually quite hard to tell a story in which a loss of confidence in U.S. bonds hurts the real economy. Why wouldn’t it just drive down the dollar, and thereby have an expansionary effect?

Yes, I know, Greece — but Greece doesn’t have its own currency. What’s the model under which a country that does have its own currency and borrows in that currency can experience a slump due to an attack by bond vigilantes? Or failing that, where are the historical examples?

The closest I can come to anything resembling the danger supposedly lurking for America is the tale of France in the 1920s, which emerged from World War I burdened by large debt, and which did in fact face an attack by speculators as a result. Yet the French story does not, if you look at it closely, offer any support to the deficit scare talk we keep hearing.

So, France did indeed have a big debt problem. Here’s debt as a percentage of GDP, from the IMF debt database:

[graph]

How did France achieve that big drop in debt after 1925? Basically by inflating it away.

And markets sort of saw that coming. This study (pdf) by the Bank of France show medium-term interest rates (black line) rising substantially for much of the 1920s, before dropping off sharply:

[graph]

It’s important to note, however, that France wasn’t a depressed economy in the 1920s, and therefore didn’t look much like America today:

[chart]

Meanwhile, the really big effect was a sharp depreciation of the franc, which made France highly competitive and strengthened the economy:

[chart]

But what about the brief but nasty slump in 1927? That wasn’t caused by spiking interest rates; it was, instead, caused by fiscal austerity, by the measures taken to stabilize the franc.

So even when we look at the closest thing I can find to the scenario the deficit scolds want us to fear, it doesn’t play out at all as described.

It’s quite remarkable: our policy discourse remains largely dominated by fears of an event that the fear-mongers can’t explain in theory, and for which they can offer no historical examples in practice.

Comic-Con 2017

Comic-Con 2017 Line-up

Marc Maron and Bill Hicks

Not being a comedy geek, I never put the two together until now.

video of a bit

Marc Maron Opens Up About Friend and Comedian Bill Hicks

Arguably, what stands out most in Maron's description of his old friend is how, unlike most comics, Hicks wasn't desperately eager to please the audience. In fact, he didn't seem to care whether they were pleased. And if you watch old clips on YouTube, you can see that sometimes they weren't. "Bill was very much in his own time zone," Maron says. "He went through his entire presentation, whether people were responding or not. There are a few guys who took his approach to details and description, but not many. It's hard. The stuff Bill wrote is positively Rabelaisian. 

"If I could say anything about Hicks, it's that he was doing his best to destroy anything he perceived as hypocrisy," Maron concludes. "While also revealing stuff that was overly embraced by moralizers. He was a misanthropic moralist, who did his best to get to the bottom of religious hypocrisy, moral hypocrisy, and societal hypocrisy. But he also made you laugh when he did it. That's a tough trick. But it's what Bill did."

moral consequences of economic growth

Vox interview with Benjamin Friedman

Will Wilkinson CATO review

Gregg Easterbrook New York Times review

Economist review

Brad DeLong's review

Krugman and Beauchamp are wrong:

No easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to right-wing populism by Zack Beauchamp Mar 13, 2017

The Case for Countering Right-Wing Populism With ‘Left-Wing Economics’ by Eric Levitz

Populism and the Politics of Health by Paul Krugman March 14, 2017 1:43 PM

And yet, and yet: Trump did in fact win over white working-class voters, who thought they were voting for a populist; Democrats, who did a lot for those voters, got no credit — rural whites, in particular, who were huge beneficiaries of the ACA, overwhelmingly supported the man who may destroy their healthcare. 

This ties in with an important recent piece by Zack Beauchamp on the striking degree to which left-wing economics fails, in practice, to counter right-wing populism; basically, Sandersism has failed everywhere it has been tried. Why? 

The answer, presumably, is that what we call populism is really in large degree white identity politics, which can’t be addressed by promising universal benefits. Among other things, these “populist” voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won’t hear about it or believe it if told. For sure many if not most of those who gained health coverage thanks to Obamacare have no idea that’s what happened.

Any answer to right-wing populism requires left-wing economics: 
Why Zack Beauchamp’s piece arguing otherwise is wrong by eshhou

No Easy Answers, Just Bad History by Marshall Steinbaum

Liberals and diversity by Matt Bruenig

Gillibrand comes out for single-payer

Kirsten Gillibrand becomes latest Democrat to come out in favor of single-payer health care

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

In ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism,’ How Democracy Is Defeating Itself by Michiko Kakutani

...
Instead, he argues in “The Retreat of Western Liberalism,” Trump’s election is a part of larger trends on the world stage, including the failure of two dozen democracies since the turn of the millennium (including three in Europe — Russia, Turkey and Hungary) and growing downward pressures on the West’s middle classes (wrought by the snowballing forces of globalization and automation) that are fomenting nationalism and populist revolts. These developments, in turn, represent a repudiation of the naïve hopes, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that liberal democracy was on an inevitable march across the planet, and they also pose a challenge to the West’s Enlightenment faith in reason and linear progress.
...
The strongest glue holding liberal democracies together, Luce argues, is economic growth, and when that growth stalls or falls, things tend to take a dark turn. With growing competition for jobs and resources, losers (those he calls the “left-behinds”) seek scapegoats for their woes, and consensus becomes harder to reach as politics devolves into more and more of a zero-sum game.

“Many of the tools of modern life are increasingly priced beyond most people’s reach,” Luce writes. One study shows it now takes the median worker more than twice as many hours a month to pay rent in one of America’s big cities as it did in 1950; and the costs of health care and a college degree have increased even more. There is rising income inequality in the West; America, which “had traditionally shown the highest class mobility of any Western country,” now has the lowest.” 

As nostalgia for a dimly recalled past replaces hope, the American dream of self-betterment and a brighter future for one’s children recedes. Among the symptoms of this dynamic: a growing opioid epidemic and decline in life expectancy, increasing intolerance for other people’s points of view, and brewing contempt for an out-of-touch governing elite (represented in 2016 by Hillary Clinton, of whom Luce writes: “her tone-deafness towards the middle class was almost serene”).

... 

For Labour, Victory Next Time

For Labour, Victory Next Time by Martin O'Neill

Bernanke and right wing backlash

When Growth is Not Enough by Ben Bernanke

Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn sitting down with President Bernie Sanders no longer sounds so outlandish by Mehdi Hasan

Jefferson quote

"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."

--Thomas Jefferson, 1785           

universal basic income

Love the idea of a universal basic income? Be careful what you wish for by Ellie Mae O'Hagan

Larry Summers comes out for NGDP target

5 reasons why the Fed may be making a mistake by Larry Summers

Many of my friends have recently issued a statement asserting that the Fed should change its inflation target. I suspect, for reasons I will write about in the next few days, that moving away from inflation targeting to something like nominal gross domestic product-level targeting would be a better idea. But I think that this issue is logically subsequent to the question of how policy should be made in the near term with the given 2 percent inflation target.

Evans, Amazon and low inflation

Amazon Has at Least One Fed Official Rethinking Inflation By Matthew Boesler

Game of Thrones Season 7 trailer

Corbynism

Full Corbynism: Constructing a new left Political Economy beyond Neoliberalism

young voting for socialists

Why Are So Many Young Voters Falling for Old Socialists? by Sarah Leonard (June 13, 2017)

At 68, Jeremy Corbyn has been on the Labour Party’s left flank longer than many of his most enthusiastic supporters — the ones who nearly propelled him to an upset victory in this month’s British general election — have been alive. Bernie Sanders, who won more votes from young people in the 2016 primaries than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton combined, is 75, and has a demeanor that, honestly, reminds me of my Jewish grandfather. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Communist-backed candidate who, thanks to support from young people, surged in the polls ahead of the first round of France’s presidential election, is a sprightly 65. 

What has driven so many young people into passionate political work, sweeping old socialists with old ideas to new heights of popularity? To understand what is going on, you have to realize that politicians like Mr. Sanders and Mr. Corbyn have carried the left-wing torch in a sort of long-distance relay, skipping generations of centrists like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, to hand it to today’s under-35s. And you have to understand why young people are so ready to grab that torch and run with it. 

Both Britain and the United States used to have parties that at least pledged allegiance to workers. Since the 1970s, and accelerating in the ’80s and ’90s, the left-wing planks have one by one been ripped from their platforms. Under Mr. Blair, Labour rewrote its famous Clause IV, which had committed the party to the goal of “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” Under Mr. Clinton, the Democratic Party cut welfare programs and pushed anti-worker international trade deals. Writing in 1990, Kevin Phillips, a former strategist for Richard Nixon, called the Democrats “history’s second-most enthusiastic capitalist party.” Elsewhere in Europe, traditional socialist parties became sclerotic and increasingly business-friendly. 

All of this left many voters with a sense that there is no left-wing party devoted to protecting the interests of the poor, the working class and the young. 

Meanwhile, people my age — I’m 29 — are more in need of a robust leftist platform than ever. The post-Cold War capitalist order has failed us: Across Europe and the United States, millennials are worse off than their parents were and are too poor to start new families. In the United States, they are loaded with college debt (or far less likely to be employed without a college degree) and are engaged in precarious and non-unionized labor. Also the earth is melting. 

There’s nothing inherently radical about youth. But our politics have been shaped by an era of financial crisis and government complicity. Especially since 2008, we have seen corporations take our families’ homes, exploit our medical debt and cost us our jobs. We have seen governments impose brutal austerity to please bankers. The capitalists didn’t do it by accident, they did it for profit, and they invested that profit in our political parties. For many of us, capitalism is something to fear, not celebrate, and our enemy is on Wall Street and in the City of London. 

Because we came to political consciousness after 1989, we’re not instinctively freaked out by socialism. In fact, it seems appealing: In a 2016 poll conducted by Harvard, 51 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 rejected capitalism, and a third said they supported socialism. A Pew poll in 2011 showed that the same age bracket had more positive views of socialism than capitalism. What socialism actually means to millennials is in flux — more a falling out with capitalism than an adherence to one specific platform. Still, within this generation, certain universal programs — single-payer health care, public education, free college — and making the rich pay are just common sense. 

At the ballot box, our options have been relatively limited. Clinton- and Blair-era liberals have hobbled their parties’ abilities to confront the ills of capitalism. But while left-of-center parties ran into the waiting arms of bankers, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Corbyn held fast to left-wing politics. 

In May, when Labour’s manifesto calling for free university education and increased spending on the National Health Service was leaked, Britain’s mainstream press responded with derision: “Labour’s Manifesto to Drag Us Back to the 1970s” read a headline in the Daily Mail. (In fact, some of Mr. Corbyn’s proposals, like nationalizing rail and water companies, hark directly back to Labour’s Clause IV commitments.) To some readers it may have sounded like a threat, but to many young people it was a promise. Following the headlines, Labour’s poll numbers surged. In the election on June 8, the party finished with a shocking 40 percent of the vote, its highest share in years. And much of the success was thanks to young voters. 

Of course, Mr. Corbyn, who is famous for cycling to work and being “totally anti-sugar on health grounds,” has a certain ascetic charm. And there’s something appealingly unpretentious about Mr. Sanders’s Brooklyn accent and disheveled appearance. But it seems safe to say that their success with young people has been based on their platforms, not their charisma.
That’s a good thing, too, since, sooner or later, those platforms will need to acquire new representatives. America’s working class is increasingly racially diverse. Hotly contested politics around race, gender and sexuality shape our political terrain (and our experience of downward mobility). Mr. Sanders suffered shortcomings on this front: He freely confessed to not comprehending the scale of American police brutality when he began his campaign; he can sound awkward when it comes to race and gender. 

The upside is that Mr. Sanders’s campaign and Mr. Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party have paved the way for a socialist politics that doesn’t just look like them. 

The day after the election in Britain, I flew to Chicago to speak at the People’s Summit, a national convention of progressive and left-wing activists organized by people from the Bernie Sanders campaign alongside National Nurses United. 

Also attending were a next generation of leftist organizers and candidates: Linda Sarsour, a 37-year-old Palestinian-American organizer from New York known for her skill in building bridges among communities; Dante Barry, the 29-year-old executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice; and Maria Svart, also in her 30s, who became the national director of the Democratic Socialists of America in 2011. 

I encountered many young people who found themselves radicalized over the last couple of years and are now joining campaigns in their communities for state-level single payer health care or for better housing. Those campaigns exist because older campaigners have carried the torch. Out of all this activity, a next generation of socialist candidates who actually reflect America is almost guaranteed to emerge. 

When Mr. Sanders took to the stage, I looked around to see hundreds of young organizers cheering his democratic socialist agenda. I hit the convention floor and saw people my own age tabling for new lefty magazines and organizations. A friend texted me a Corbyn emoji: thumbs up. 

Three days after Britain’s general election, Mr. Corbyn sat down for an interview with Andrew Marr on the BBC. Mr. Marr grilled the Labour leader on the feasibility of turning his platform into governing policy. Was Mr. Corbyn, at this point in his career, really in it for the long haul? “Look at me!” he said. “I’ve got youth on my side.”

voter turnout in French election

voter turnout in French election

49 percent in 2017

Turnout this year was lower than in the past two legislative elections, 57 percent in 2012 and 60 percent in 2007.

Judis interview with Rodrik

What’s Wrong With Our System Of Global Trade And Finance

John Judis interviews Dani Rodrik

Gillibrand rips Trump

Gillibrand rips Trump: 'Has he kept his promises? No. F--- no'

What Jeremy Corbyn And The UK Election Should Teach Hillary Clinton — And Democrats

What Jeremy Corbyn And The UK Election Should Teach Hillary Clinton — And Democrats by Zach Carter

"Inspirational" Corbyn

'Inspirational' Corbyn offers blueprint for our party, say left-leaning Democrats

Corbyn and fatalism

Corbyn Won Because Hope Turned the Unthinkable Into Reality by Sam Kriss

Dean Baker on employment policies

Economic Populism Doesn't Have to Involve More Government by Dean Baker

Cooper on suburbanites and Dems

Comfortable suburbanites will not save the Democratic Party by Ryan Cooper

less educated voters

The Democrats Lost the ‘Poorly Educated’ and They Need Them Back by Martin Longman
May 31, 2017

Single-payer Democrats?

The Single-Payer Party? Democrats Shift Left on Health Care by ALEXANDER BURNS and JENNIFER MEDINA

Marvin Goodfriend by Klein; Miles Kimball on neg. rates

One of Trump’s potential Fed picks is a huge fan of negative interest rates by Matthew C Klein

How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide by Miles Kimball

Cassidy on Corbyn

JEREMY CORBYN IS SURGING BY USING BERNIE SANDERS’S PLAYBOOK by John Cassidy

Krugman: we don't need stimulus

The Priming of Mr. Donald Trump by Krugman

Mind Your Own Business by Barbara Ehrenreich

Mind Your Own Business by Barbara Ehrenreich

GS on increasing wages

Goldman: U.S. Wages Catching Up With Productivity Is a 'Sobering' Prospect by Luke Kawa

Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche

"He's just the kind of person, if he saw somebody being mistreated, he would have spoken up," GhaneaBassiri said.

The Oregonian/OregonLive

Clinton TV ads policy free

Study: Hillary Clinton’s TV ads were almost entirely policy-free by Jeff Stein

Dayen on HAMP

A Needless Default by David Dayen (February 8, 2015)

The administration’s foreclosure relief program was designed to help bankers, not homeowners. That disgrace will haunt Democrats.

technocratic liberalism

The Stuff of Politics by ROBBIE NELSON

Noah Smith on Fed survery

What Economic Policies Do Americans Need? Just Ask Them by Noah Smith

Taibbi on Democrats

The Democrats Need a New Message by Matt Taibbi

Game of Thrones Season 7 Trailer

2 more seasons.

iPhone 7 Plus - Barbers

Brainard

Why Opportunity and Inclusion Matter to America’s Economic Strength by Lael Brainard

the Fed and job guarantee

A Job Guarantee and the Federal Reserve Board by Dean Baker

Piketty

After Piketty: “A Political Economy Take on W/Y” by Suresh Naidu

Class Struggle Still Gets the Goods by Matt Bruenig

California Democrats battle

Battle in California: No Unity Around the Status Quo by Bob Dreyfuss

A battle of liberal versus more liberal exposes a divided California Democratic Party at state convention by Seema Mehta, Christine Mai-Duc and Phil Willon

Overton Window

A thought for Sunday: the Left is winning the battle of ideas. The right's own man says so by New Deal democrat

Trump: job killer

Donald Trump Is a Job Killer by Bryce Covert

scolding Trump voters

The rise of the Herbal Tea Party

Scolding Trump voters will not carry the Democrats back to power 

The Economist

Jan 26th 2017

government job guarantee

It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job; A new plan from CAP is a promising first step. 

By David Dayen

Noah Smith on full employment

The Pump's Already Primed So Hold the Tax Cuts by Noah Smith

Star Trek: Discovery

government job guarantee

More Job Guarantee Muddle by Matt Bruenig

Ro Khanna

WILL FRESHMAN CONGRESSMAN RO KHANNA CHART A NEW COURSE FOR DEMOCRATS? by Zaid Jilani

the "alt left"

Why the 'alt-left' will succeed where centrists fail by Bhaskar Sunkara

Esther George: inflation hurts the poor

The Fed's New Excuse for Raising Interest Rates: Helping the Poor by Dean Baker

New Order - Regret

tax reform

Tax reform is stupid. Here's how to make it smart. by Ryan Cooper

Piketty

Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? by Marshall Steinbaum

UBI

The case for and against a universal basic income in the United States by Byrd Pinkerton and Sarah Kliff

Stiglitz

Lessons from the Anti-Globalists by Joseph Stiglitz

The lesson of all of this is something that Scandinavian countries learned long ago. The region’s small countries understood that openness was the key to rapid economic growth and prosperity. But if they were to remain open and democratic, their citizens had to be convinced that significant segments of society would not be left behind. 

The welfare state thus became integral to the success of the Scandinavian countries. They understood that the only sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity. It is a lesson that the US and the rest of Europe must now learn.

universal basic income

No Strings Attached by Ioana Marinescu

Democrats

The Democratic Party Is a Ghost by JACOB BACHARACH

Robots, retraining and solutions by De Costa

Robots are going to take a lot of jobs — here's what we could do about it by Pedro da Costa

Gillbrand, Sawicky on taxes

The Shape-Shifter by BRANKO MARCETIC

How would a populist tax? (Spoiler alert: not like Trump) by Max B. Sawicky

Blade Runner 2049 trailer 10.6.17

Larry Summers on Yellen, flat Phillips Curve

Less is more when it comes to Federal Reserve policy by Larry Summers

Flat Phills, all around by Jared Bernstein

unionization drive at colleges

 The Higher-Education Crisis Is a Labor Crisis

" A unionization drive at Vanderbilt University shows how austerity in higher education is hurting educators and students."

Wren-Lewis: rightwing populism, economic determinism

Why are the UK and US more vulnerable to right wing populism? by Simon Wren-Lewis

It seems to me that these various explanations are quite compatible with each other. Where what we might call neoliberal policies had been strong - weak unions, declining welfare state, stagnant wages - these policies created a very large group in society that were looking for someone to blame. In a managed economy that allowed the parties of the right either to use nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric to deflect blame from themselves, or for the far right to capture those parties. As that rhetoric also hit out at globalisation it potentially was a direct threat to global business interests, but those interests could either do nothing about this or felt they could manage that threat.

Krugman on the EU

What’s the Matter With Europe? by Paul Krugman

Which brings me back to the French election. We should be terrified at the possibility of a Le Pen victory. But we should also be worried that a Macron victory will be taken by Brussels and Berlin to mean that Brexit was an aberration, that European voters can always be intimidated into going along with what their betters say is necessary. 

So let’s be clear: Even if the worst is avoided this Sunday, all the European elite will get is a time-limited chance to mend its ways.

Dean Baker on economists

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-wrongest-profession-baker

The Wrongest Profession by Dean Baker

March 2017

OVER THE PAST TWO DECADES, the economics profession has compiled an impressive track record of getting almost all the big calls wrong. In the mid-1990s, all the great minds in the field agreed that the unemployment rate could not fall much below 6 percent without triggering spiraling inflation. It turns out that the unemployment rate could fall to 4 percent as a year-round average in 2000, with no visible uptick in the inflation rate.

As the stock bubble that drove the late 1990s boom was already collapsing, leading lights in Washington were debating whether we risked paying off the national debt too quickly. The recession following the collapse of the stock bubble took care of this problem, as the gigantic projected surpluses quickly turned to deficits. The labor market pain from the collapse of this bubble was both unpredicted and largely overlooked, even in retrospect. While the recession officially ended in November 2001, we didn’t start creating jobs again until the fall of 2003. And we didn’t get back the jobs we lost in the downturn until January 2005. At the time, it was the longest period without net job creation since the Great Depression.

When the labor market did finally begin to recover, it was on the back of the housing bubble. Even though the evidence of a bubble in the housing sector was plainly visible, as were the junk loans that fueled it, folks like me who warned of an impending housing collapse were laughed at for not appreciating the wonders of modern finance. After the bubble burst and the financial crisis shook the banking system to its foundations, the great minds of the profession were near unanimous in predicting a robust recovery. Stimulus was at best an accelerant for the impatient, most mainstream economists agreed—not an essential ingredient of a lasting recovery.

While the banks got all manner of subsidies in the form of loans and guarantees at below-market interest rates, all in the name of avoiding a second Great Depression, underwater homeowners were treated no better than the workers waiting for a labor market recovery. The Obama administration felt it was important for homeowners, unlike the bankers, to suffer the consequences of their actions. In fact, white-collar criminals got a holiday in honor of the financial crisis; on the watch of the Obama Justice Department, only a piddling number of bankers would face prosecution for criminal actions connected with the bubble.

There was a similar story outside the United States, as the International Monetary Fund, along with the European Central Bank and the European Union, imposed austerity when stimulus was clearly needed. As a result, southern Europe is still far from recovery. Even after another decade on their current course, many southern European countries will fall short of their 2007 levels of income. The situation looks even worse for the bottom half of the income distribution in Greece, Spain, and Portugal.

Even the great progress for the world’s poor touted in the famous “elephant graph” turns out to be largely illusory. If China is removed from the sample, the performance of the rest of the developing world since 1988 looks rather mediocre. While the pain of working people in wealthy countries is acute, they are not alone. Outside of China, people in the developing world have little to show for the economic growth of the last three and a half decades. As for China itself, the gains of its huge population are real, but the country certainly did not follow Washington’s model of deficit-slashing, bubble-driven policies for developing countries.

In this economic climate, it’s not surprising that a racist, xenophobic, misogynist demagogue like Donald Trump could succeed in politics, as right-wing populists have throughout the wealthy world. While his platform may be incoherent, Trump at least promised the return of good-paying jobs. Insofar as Clinton and other Democrats offered an agenda for economic progress for American workers, hardly anyone heard it. And to those who did, it sounded like more of the same.

basic income

Straw men in the debate on basic income versus targeting by Martin Ravallion

Palley on targeting wage growth

Monetary Policy and the Punch bowl: The Case for Quantitative Policy and Wage Growth Targeting by Thomas Palley

Farrell on Polanyi

The Thousand Day Reich: The Double Movement by Harry Farrell

Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income: A Utopian Idea Whose Time May Finally Have Arrived by Matt Vella

The False Promise of Universal Basic Income by Alyssa Battistoni

The Babys - Isn't It Time - Falling in love could be your mistake

w/ lyrics

Bernanke endorses NGDP targetting

The zero lower bound on interest rates: How should the Fed respond?

Drum OMG the Pentagon is going bankrupt!

Let's Get Rid of the Payroll Tax! by Kevin Drum

Corey Robin and Jedediah Purdy

https://youtu.be/Rv1GLXAd8CY

stiglitz and rodrik on trade

Links for 04-04-17

critiques of Keynes - by Chris Dillow

KEYNES' FLAWS by Chris Dillow

Green Grass and High Tides - Outlaws

Mike the Mad Biologist and Medicare-for-All

Now Would Be A Good Time For A Democratic Healthcare Plan Proposal

DeLong - Republic of the Central Banker

Republic of the Central Banker by Brad DeLong

Krugman on DBCFT

A Party Not Ready to Govern by Krugman

Then there’s corporate tax reform — an issue where the plan being advanced by Paul Ryan, the House speaker, is actually not too bad, at least in principle. Even someDemocratic-leaning economistssupport a shift to a “destination-based cash flow tax,” which is best thought of as a sales tax plus a payroll subsidy. (Trust me.)

But Mr. Ryan has failed spectacularly to make his case either to colleagues or to powerful interest groups. Why? As best I can tell, it’s because he himself doesn’t understand the point of the reform.

The case for the cash flow tax is quite technical; among other things, it would remove the incentives the current tax system creates for corporations to load up on debt and to engage in certain kinds of tax avoidance. But that’s not the kind of thing Republicans talk about — if anything, they’re in favor of tax avoidance, hence the Trump proposal to slash funding for the I.R.S.

No, in G.O.P. world, tax ideas always have to be presented as ways to remove the shackles from oppressed job creators. So Mr. Ryan has framed his proposal, basically falsely, as a measure to make American industry more competitive, focusing on the “border tax adjustment” which is part of the sales-tax component of the reform.

This misrepresentation seems, however, to be backfiring: it sounds like a Trumpist tariff, and has both conservatives and retailers like WalMart up in arms.

DNC chair Perez

Progressives Slam Tom Perez’s New DNC Transition Team

center-left and Zack Beauchamp

Any answer to right-wing populism requires left-wing economics

by eshhou

Why Zack Beauchamp’s piece arguing otherwise is wrong

Zack Beauchamp of Vox has written an article entitled “No easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to right-wing populism.” In this piece, he argues that “tacking to the left on economics won’t give Democrats a silver bullet to use against the racial resentment powering Trump’s success [and] could actually wind up [making] Trump [stronger.]” Matt Bruenighas written about the piece’s odd moral implications; I want to discuss some of the evidence Beauchamp provides, and why I don’t find it all that convincing.

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Bottom line

Assuming the Democratic party does not totally abandon redistributive politics, racism will always pose a problem. The question then is: what redistributive programs and policies are most capable of overcoming this and generating cross-racial coalitions? There is little reason to believe that the means-tested programs favored by the Democratic mainstream are more capable of doing this than the more universal programs favored by those on the Left.

Sanders, Vox vs. leftist economics

Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party by Trevor Timm

No Easy Answers, Just Bad History by Marshall Steinbaum

The Great Recession clearly gave rise to right-wing populism by Ryan Cooper

Lisa Hannigan cover of Bowie on Legion

Oh you Pretty Things
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and Papas insane

JW Mason: misc thoughts including on health care

JW Mason:

The health policy tightrope. The Republican plan health care plan, the CBO says, would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 24 million. I don’t know any reason to question this number. By some estimates, this will result in 40,000 additional deaths a year. By the same estimate, the Democratic status quo leaves 28 million people uninsured, implying a similar body count. Paul Ryan’s idea that health care should be a commodity to be bought in the market is cruel and absurd but the Democrats’ idea that heath insurance should be a commodity bought in the market is not obviously less so. Personally, I’m struggling to find the right balance between these two sets of facts. I suppose the first should get more weight right now, but I can’t let go of the second. Adam Gaffney does an admirable job managing this tightrope act in his assessment of the Obama health care legacy inJacobin. (But I think he’s absolutely right, strategically, to focus on the Republicans for the Guardian’s different readership .)

Krugman and the center-left

Populism and the Politics of Health by Krugman

"This ties in with an important recent piece by Zack Beauchamp on the striking degree to which left-wing economics fails, in practice, to counter right-wing populism; basically, Sandersism has failed everywhere it has been tried. Why?

The answer, presumably, is that what we call populism is really in large degree white identity politics, which can’t be addressed by promising universal benefits. Among other things, these “populist” voters now live in a media bubble, getting their news from sources that play to their identity-politics desires, which means that even if you offer them a better deal, they won’t hear about it or believe it if told. For sure many if not most of those who gained health coverage thanks to Obamacare have no idea that’s what happened.

That said, taking the benefits away would probably get their attention, and maybe even open their eyes to the extent to which they are suffering to provide tax cuts to the rich.

In Europe, right-wing parties probably don’t face the same dilemma; they’re preaching herrenvolk social democracy, a welfare state but only for people who look like you. In America, however, Trumpism is faux populism that appeals to white identity but actually serves plutocrats. That fundamental contradiction is now out in the open."

Vox trolls Bernie supporters

No easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to right-wing populism

SNL on Democrats

SNL on Democrats

at about 3:50

But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man / That he didn't, didn't already have

Dillow on productivity and Sandwichman

NEOLIBERALISM & PRODUCTIVITY by Chris Dillow

Ponzilocks and the Twenty-Four Trillion Dollar Question by Sandwichman