Thursday, July 3, 2014

Bill Mitchell — New economics – not much will change at the current rate

My upcoming book about Europe is tentatively called ‘European Groupthink: denial on a grand scale’. I have covered the concept of Groupthink before but I have been thinking about this in relation to the economics curriculum, given our textbook is entering its final stages of completion. When I was at the iNET conference in Toronto in early April, there was much to-do about the so-called ‘exciting’ new developments in economics curricula being sponsored by iNET at their Oxford University centre (CORE). Forgive me for being the ‘wet blanket’ but the more I spoke to people at the conference the more I realised that the neo-liberals were reinventing themselves as ‘progressive’ or ‘heterodox’ and hi-jacking the reform process. I mentioned this to one of the iNET Board members who I shared a flight with back to San Francisco. He seemed taken aback. My expectation is that very little of substance will change in this new approach to economics. It will dispense with the most evil aspects of the current dominant framework but will remain sufficiently engaged with it that we will not see a truly progressive teaching approach emerge that can deal with evidence and real world facts. People are scared to break out of the ‘group’.…
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
New economics – not much will change at the current rate
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

' that fails at the most elemental level to understand the role of government in a modern monetary economy'

They don't understand the role of govt period....

They only see govt as a force for good if they agree with the laws...

So you have left libertarians using drugs which are illegal, then they are surprised when prisons are full of drug violators, occupying private property via trespass then they are surprised when they get their ass kicked, etc....

Libertarians do not comply if they don't agree with the laws...

If you REALLY support democracy, then you have to learn how to suck it up when the democratic process doesn't go your way... This is just as important as participating in the process leading up to a democratically reached decision..

So you have these inet pk libertarians working to undermine the govt institution here because they are afraid if govt becomes too powerful, then govt may end up enforcing some law they disagree with...

Rsp

Matt Franko said...
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