An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
The price to pay for supporting Trump first glance. Tensions are high right now in the US. I'm not surprised that are rifts in the MMT community because of this. I hope you two can reconcile because I've gotten a lot out of both your analyses.
I have my own reservations and low opinion of the guy much of the time, but I'm willing to give credit where credit is due and that doesn't mean shutting out other opinions and perspectives. I will continue to read your blog and watch your vids, Mike and comment on them.
She blocked me years ago because I said criticized some particular words that Minsky wrote. I like Steph and wish her luck but like many professors she wants to lecture and she wants you to listen. She does not want to engage in a conversation as equals.
Ryan, the problem is not a lack of generosity with thoughts, the problem is they don't care about your thoughts.
She's a Sanders gal, so it may have something to do with that. I know Randy Wray tried to have a friend of his, who claimed to have an in at to the transition team, contact the Trump organization, but evidently that went nowhere. Trump has issued some pronouncements to the effect that the Fed can print money to avoid any solvency issues, but as long as Steve Moore is active in setting Trump's economic agenda there is not much hope for MMT there.
Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt? Comment on Michael Norman on ‘Stephanie Kelton BLOCKED ME on Twitter. Wow.’
This is the normal reaction of a scientifically trained non-economists when he is for the first time confronted with standard economics: “What is now taught as standard economic theory will eventually disappear, no trace of it will remain in the universities or boardrooms because it simply doesn’t work: were it engineering, the bridge would collapse.” (McCauley)
Economist, though, are a different species.
(i) The representative economist who takes his academic degree and is convinced that supply-demand-equilibrium provides an acceptable theory of how the economic system works and accepts standard economics (with the usual reservations/disclaimers/excuses) is scientifically incompetent.
(ii) The representative economist who communicates/defends standard economics on his own blog or on the numerous economics blogs propagates a provable false theory. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong.
(iii) The representative economist who is given a proof in the course of a discussion that standard economics is false and does not understand the argument is not only scientifically incompetent but stupid.
(iv) The economist who understands the proof and deletes it from his blog or automatically filters all serious counterarguments out violates scientific standards and undermines the claim that economics is a science as expressed in the title: “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.
The current state of economics is that of a failed science. The propagation of the four main approaches therefore amounts to unintentional disinformation or intentional misinformation.
Which blogs promote serious research/discussion and which are corrupted can only be found out by testing, that is, by submitting well-argued posts. From concrete experience follows this random selection of blogs that block/delete challenging contributions:
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/
The Baseline Scenario https://baselinescenario.com/
Social Democracy For The 21st Century http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.de/
bradford-delong.com: Grasping Reality with Both Hands http://www.bradford-delong.com/
Real-World Economics Review blog https://rwer.wordpress.com/
Lars P. Syll blog https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/
Stumbling and Mumbling http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/
Note that the blog owner is entitled to reject submissions for whatever reason. There is nothing illegal in selecting the content of one’s own blog. What is at issue is the violation of well-known scientific standards.
How to double-check the past and actual intensity of scientific corruption in 3 easy steps: (1) Go to the AXEC blog http://axecorg.blogspot.de/ (2) Click the label zML (ML = missing link). All posts that have been submitted but did not appear or vanished later are selected. (3) Click Blog-Reference at the post’s header for jumping to the discussion thread and looking after the submitted AXEC post.
If you cannot find it this can mean two things: (i) a technical glitch, (ii) censorship.
This exercise confirms in greater detail what is already known since the founding fathers: economics has been hijacked and corrupted by politics. The representative economist as he presents himself on the economics blogs is a rather stupid flag-waving agenda pusher and NOT acceptable in the scientific community.
I’ve been banned my Mike Norman and now he’s been blocked by Ms. Kelton. I guess that means I’m on double secret probation.
Also, I think you are mostly correct in describing how the monetary system “works” in the short run. Austrians really do not understand that, but you guys do not understand the first thing about Austrian analysis either.
That said, I have scanned the headlines of this blog daily since 2012 and note that you have taken what can be described as a “Ron Paulian” position on war. You are to be congratulated for that.
To get banned by Mike, you have to be really over the top annoying. I've said some crazy outrageous stuff here through the years at times, but didn't get blocked. yet.
Sad if it was deliberate and not a mistake. The MMT community is so damn tiny that it's better to disagree without being disagreeable, as some charlatan said in what now seems a distant age.
If true, it's doubly sad because Magic Mike has been an MMT advocate for a very long time, almost from inception, and has taken a lot of hits along the way. And because he's more public, whether online or previously on television, the hits he's taken are far more nasty and brutal than anything the academics have had to endure.
I won't speak for the other bloggers who blocked Egmont Kakarot-Handtke, but I have seen his posts appearing as comments in these two blogs:
Real-World Economics Review blog https://rwer.wordpress.com/
Example:
A Google search for "egmont site:http://rwer.wordpress.com/" returned "About 388 results (0.39 seconds)".
He has two long comments in the comments thread of Asad Zaman's "Is there a core of heterodox economics that we can all believe in?" (btw, a very good post, which heterodox people should read) https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/is-there-a-core-of-heterodox-economics-that-we-can-all-believe-in/
RWER issue 56 contains one of Egmont Kakarot Handtke's pieces: https://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/rwer-issue-56-egmont-kakarot-handtke/
EconoSpeak http://econospeak.blogspot.de/
You guys can search it by yourselves.
----------
One thing is openness to comments, another thing is to abuse that openness.
When will someone be addressing AXEC/EKH's recent posts? Mainstream economics has never agreed upon or advanced a theory of profit.
If one makes a point of complaining about being blocked, as Egmont Kakarot-Handtke does, perhaps one should acknowledge those souls who have engaged one's points of view.
EKH makes no reference to bloggers who did that.
Here is an example from Peter Cooper's "The Monetary Circuit & Compatibility of Marx, Kalecki and Keynesian Macro":
Profit theory is key to understanding and critiquing capitalism, as Marx realized. Marx wanted to show that profit is essentially economic rent.
In the neoclassical model profit is competed away under the restrictive assumptions, just as there is no involuntary employment. Everyone gets what they earn.
These are two very different views and a lot of the debate in economics is related to it in one way or another.
In a sense it lies at the foundation of the orthodox and heterodox views and there are ideological overtones.
Now that debate is heating up with the rise of inequality of incomes and wealth.
So we can expect to be hearing a lot more about it.
I don't see this discussion as off topic at all. It's central to events.
I unfollow if they fill up my newsfeed / inbox with garbage.
I unfollow and/or block if they persist in ad hominem attacks rather than sticking to the issues.
Generally I seek contacts who have something worthwhile to say, and bonus points if they engage in civil 2-way conversations.
I observe a lot of people on social media who only want an audience, not a 2-way conversation.
At the time Steph blocked me, I was criticizing some things Minsky wrote, in response to a Minsky article Steph had posted. I was tough on Minsky, but I was not attacking Steph. Presumably she identified with Minsky and felt that an attack on Minsky was an attack on her. She never responded to any of the specific points I made, instead I was blocked without further ado. That is her right, so I have not lost sleep over it.
In general I no longer spend a lot of time debating with MMT'ers. I am not much of a "joiner" so even though I admire much about MMT, I'm not going to "join" and give up my independence. I take from MMT certain parts that I like, and leave the rest.
Dan: "I was tough on Minsky, but I was not attacking Steph. Presumably she identified with Minsky and felt that an attack on Minsky was an attack on her."
Bill Mitchell's not exactly soft on Minsky and very critical of Keynes. Is Bill going to be shut out? Why make an idol of anyone? Even the greatest theories of the greatest minds in history have had to be subjected to criticism. Why Minksy or anybody else should be exempt is a mystery.
The greatest moral question of our day: Do we act to address rapid ecological collapse or not.
By supporting a science denier and his rabid christian dominionist backers, you have failed biggly.
So, good on Steph. Economists need to be sane, not just about how our monetary system works, but also about how bees are necessary to the real economy. If you don't include the health of our natural world in your economics, you such as an economist as well as a human being.
Someone said something like: When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible.
It doesn't need to also be wrapped MMT. The more MMT distances itself from folks like you, the better.
And that's a fact. Not an alternafact.
Now back to the trumps of the world gagging our scientists, because who needs science when we have the mike normans of the world?
You say: “I take from MMT certain parts that I like, and leave the rest.” This is (i) not very interesting for the rest of the world, (ii) entirely beside the point.
As a matter of principle, everybody has the right to his own opinion no matter how stupid, crazy, wrong, or absurd; the only exception are scientists. The ancient Greeks started science with the distinction between doxa (= opinion) and episteme (= knowledge). Scientific knowledge is well-defined by material and formal consistency. Knowledge is established by proof, belief or opinion count for NOTHING.
Opinion is the currency in the political sphere, knowledge is the currency in the scientific sphere. It is extremely important to keep both spheres separate. Since the founding fathers, though, economists have not emancipated themselves from politics. They claim to do science but they have never risen above the level of opinion, belief, wish-wash, storytelling, soap box propaganda, and sitcom gossip.#1
So, the point with MMT is this: 1. There is a mistake/error/blunder in the formal foundations of MMT. In other words, MMT does not satisfy the scientific criterion of logical consistency.#2 2. The formal proof has been submitted to an MMT blog.#3 3. This proof has NOT been refuted but simply deleted. 4. It is against the most elementary scientific rules to suppress refutation. As everybody knows from Popper “... science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.” 5. MMT is fake science or what Feynman called cargo cult science. The same holds for Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism.
The point is this: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)
Economists do NOT have the true theory and because of this all economic policy proposals are worthless — nothing more than personal opinion and soap box blather.
Economics in general, and this includes MMT, has to be thrown out of science because of the 200+ years violation of well-defined and well-known scientific standards.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See ‘Gossip economics’ http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/01/gossip-economics.html #2 See ‘The final implosion of MMT’ http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/10/the-final-implosion-of-mmt.html #3 See ‘Modern moronomic theory’ http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/08/modern-moronomic-theory.html
@Axec, when it comes to values and beliefs, OPINION does matter.
Is economics science, or is economics a philosophical value system? My view is that, once you get past the accounting part, economics is a philosophical value system, with no absolute right or wrong.
For example, the underlying assumption behind MMT is capitalism. MMT is yet another attempt to "save" capitalism from itself. But not everyone wants to save capitalism!
The JG is based on the belief that jobs are a healthy and desirable thing, yet at the beginning of the industrial age, people were largely self-sufficient and did not want jobs, and had to be coerced to take jobs. My view is that we have since been brainwashed to believe that leisure is a sin and that work is virtuous. Even in our current brainwashed age, most people look forward to drawing SS so they can retire and enjoy their hobbies and family rather than working.
The JG is described as a "transition job," with the assumption that the JG should not compete with capitalism, in fact the JG should "serve" capitalism by supplying a ready pool of disciplined and barely-surviving workers. But if one embraces socialism rather than capitalism, then the government could offer permanent, well paid jobs to the unemployed, not merely temporary low-paid "transition" jobs. After all, if there are plenty of JG tasks that are really worth doing, as MMT insists, then shouldn't those tasks be worth doing all the time, not just during downturns?
I agree with you that economics should be thrown out of science. Instead it should be taught as philosophy, ethics, or religion.
"My view is that we have since been brainwashed to believe that leisure is a sin and that work is virtuous."
You've been brainwashed to believe that leisure automatically arises and is always magnificent and pleasurable and that work is somehow painful and unpleasant. That viewpoint has no basis in reality.
In reality leisure is work you pay to do and work is leisure you get paid to do. It's the lack of liquidity in the job market and the power play of firms that makes it painful. Increase the competition and the pain goes away - along with the parasite businesses that are actually the problem.
"After all, if there are plenty of JG tasks that are really worth doing, as MMT insists, then shouldn't those tasks be worth doing all the time"
They are - at the fixed living wage and for the socially acceptable minimum time required to satisfy others in the community that you have contributed. The capitalism bit sits on top of that. Capitalism is permitted to exist and can have as many workers as it can bid off the Job Guarantee and produce whatever it can produce better than the Job Guarantee.
Managing fiat money allows accumulation without cost - giving capitalists a way of keeping score between themselves without actually impoverishing the rest society.
That way MMT managed capitalism allows the benefits of capitalism to arise without the costs associated with it.
Rather than trying to ban it completely and institute a communist centrally planned society as you've just described. We already know that doesn't work.
@Neil, communist Native American societies worked for thousands of years.
Central planning allowed Russia to industrialize and defeat the Nazis. During the 30's, the Russian economy was humming while the West was in the Great Depression. Central planning allowed the U.S. to rapidly industrialize during WWII. Central planning has produced impressive growth in China in recent decades.
Cuba's communist system has not failed. Their health care is better than America's.
Not every regime is well managed, whether it be capitalist or socialist. Any type of economy is subject to failure due to bad management or due to external shocks. All civilizations "fail" eventually.
Industrialized capitalism has only been around for a tiny fraction of human existence, and in that short time it has been characterized by instability, violence, and social dysfunction (suicide, substance abuse, mental illness, crime, incarceration, war, etc.).
I am agnostic about capitalism vs. socialism. I would rather live in a well managed capitalist system than in a poorly managed socialist system, and I would rather live in a well managed socialist system than a poorly managed capitalist system. One strike against capitalism, though, is that its emphasis on selfishness, competition, and materialism results in a very poor quality value system.
Dan Lynch says: “Instead it [economics] should be taught as philosophy, ethics, or religion.”
Now, this is exactly what has happened in the past 200+ years.#1 And this is why economics is a failed science: “... we know little more now about ‘how the economy works,’ ... than we knew in 1790, after Adam Smith completed the last revision of The Wealth of Nations.” (Clower) In the same time span physics went from the Law of Gravity to Quantum Mechanics.
Imagine a philosopher and a guru discussing. Says the philosopher, let’s build an aircraft and fly to a South Sea island and have a good life there. Says the guru, better let’s fly to Tibet and search for spiritual enlightenment there. Enters the physicist with the remark: you folks will go to nowhere because you have no idea of the laws of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, material science, etcetera and because of this you will never get anything off the ground.
The situation in economics is analogous. The discussion about capitalism and communism has always been a pointless distraction because economists do NOT know how the monetary economy works. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong. Economist do not even understand the elementary mathematics of accounting as the discussion about MMT has shown.#2
The primary question is how to get out of the state of a proto-science, fake science, pseudo science, cargo cult science, failed science ... Certainly NOT with more philosophy or religion or more sitcom blathering.#3
A side issue is how did we get into this mess? The most obvious hypothesis is, because both orthodox and heterodox economists are incompetent, stupid, and corrupt. Your brain-dead posts about capitalism and communism corroborate this hypothesis.
By the way, the economic laws for the monetary economy are the SAME under capitalism and communism just as the laws of aerodynamics are the same whether one flies to the South Sea or to Tibet.#4
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See also ‘Economics: Poor philosophy, poor psychology, poor science’ http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/01/economics-poor-philosophy-poor.html #2 See ‘The final implosion of MMT’ http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/10/the-final-implosion-of-mmt.html #3 See ‘From Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy to Sysdoxy’ http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/03/from-orthodoxy-to-heterodoxy-to-sysdoxy.html #4 See the First Economic Law on Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC06.png and the Profit Law here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC08.png
The greatest moral question of our day: Do we act to address rapid ecological collapse or not.
Although I myself am rather concerned about Trump and about some of his supporters, I will remain neutral on this dispute between Mike Norman and Prof. Kelton. I don't know the details and prefer not to know them.
Having said that, you are very right on that claim. Climate change and loss of biodiversity are a lot more worrying than econo-aficionados (like yours truly) are ready to accept.
My suggestion is that you better don't frame it as a moral question. For one, because it's far from being only or mainly moral. It's an empirical fact that global average temperatures are breaking records:
2016 'hottest on record' in new sign of global warming, Copernicus organisation says
Updated 6 Jan 2017, 5:03pm
Last year was the hottest year on record by a wide margin, with temperatures creeping close to a ceiling set by almost 200 nations for limiting global warming, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service has said.
The data are the first of the New Year to confirm many projections that 2016 will exceed 2015 as the warmest since reliable records began in the 19th century, the Copernicus organisation said in a report. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-06/world-heat-shatters-records-in-2016/8165426
Those worried about a couple million Syrian war refugees knocking at their doors, should pause to think how they would like tens of millions of sea rise refugees.
This may yet be a matter of survival for our civilisation and maybe our own species.
It's to your credit that you are reminding us of that. Thank you for it.
Thanks for your reply. I go for both the economic and moral aspects of addressing rapid ecological collapse when I talk to people.
But the moral issue is important to not loose sight of. It's the only thing that makes my crazy fucked up family that voted Trump stop and think. I'm out of patience for folks like my family in the same way I would be if they voted for Hitler hoping for a better economy and ignoring that little matter of mass murder.
Now, whenever they bring up Trump, or why they like him, or why they voted for him, I reply: "You have committed the greatest moral crime against the younger generations in human history."
That shuts them up at least. So I assume they're thinking when they're not blabbing on about stupid shit like the war on christmas.
Anyway, I like your reply, thanks.
Is there a way for me to find what you write - where you blog, your twitter name, etc?
And suggestion for the guy with a fragile ego: Go sit in a corner and learn to weep for what we have done to our planet and our children.
Once you can learn to mourn for what is worth mourning over, maybe you won't feel so emasculated by a bunch of young women parading around in silly pink caps. That this makes you feel so very emasculated that you can't even get your moral concerns in some sort of proper perspective doesn't actually seem very mature to me. Might be why your ego is so very easily emasculated.
But the moral issue is important to not loose sight of. It's the only thing that makes my crazy fucked up family that voted Trump stop and think. I'm out of patience for folks like my family in the same way I would be if they voted for Hitler hoping for a better economy and ignoring that little matter of mass murder.
Now, whenever they bring up Trump, or why they like him, or why they voted for him, I reply: "You have committed the greatest moral crime against the younger generations in human history."
Being myself probably quite like your old folks, both in age and general circumstances, I'm a lot more charitable to them. :-)
Still, theirs was a tragic mistake, which will come back to haunt them and the younger generations.
For what it might be worth, I blog here
http://aussiemagpie.blogspot.com
But I'm just an old bloke, so I don't do Twitter or Facebook or any of that.
36 comments:
The price to pay for supporting Trump first glance. Tensions are high right now in the US. I'm not surprised that are rifts in the MMT community because of this. I hope you two can reconcile because I've gotten a lot out of both your analyses.
How weak. What a fragile ego.
I have my own reservations and low opinion of the guy much of the time, but I'm willing to give credit where credit is due and that doesn't mean shutting out other opinions and perspectives. I will continue to read your blog and watch your vids, Mike and comment on them.
Why? (Assuming its Trump but would like to see the tweets)
Low opinion of me???
Okay, so this is a 'out of the blue' twitter block.
"Low opinion of me???"
I meant Trump, not you Mike. I said in other comments that I didn't vote for him, but also didn't think Hillary would have been any blessing either.
You're a great economist. Sorry for not making that clear.
Hmmm you don't get it?
Neoliberalism is dead, the centre is gone, it's now progressive v reactionary you picked the latter. Was always going to come to this.
Im surprised. Mosler and everyone else in the MMT community has been unbelievably kind and generous with their thoughts and time.
It might have been a mistake as she probably clicks off trolls by the dozen and might have been caught up.
She blocked me years ago because I said criticized some particular words that Minsky wrote. I like Steph and wish her luck but like many professors she wants to lecture and she wants you to listen. She does not want to engage in a conversation as equals.
Ryan, the problem is not a lack of generosity with thoughts, the problem is they don't care about your thoughts.
She's a Sanders gal, so it may have something to do with that. I know Randy Wray tried to have a friend of his, who claimed to have an in at to the transition team, contact the Trump organization, but evidently that went nowhere. Trump has issued some pronouncements to the effect that the Fed can print money to avoid any solvency issues, but as long as Steve Moore is active in setting Trump's economic agenda there is not much hope for MMT there.
"like many professors she wants to lecture and she wants you to listen."
Rote teaching methodology... doesnt work in STEM related disciplines....
Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?
Comment on Michael Norman on ‘Stephanie Kelton BLOCKED ME on Twitter. Wow.’
This is the normal reaction of a scientifically trained non-economists when he is for the first time confronted with standard economics: “What is now taught as standard economic theory will eventually disappear, no trace of it will remain in the universities or boardrooms because it simply doesn’t work: were it engineering, the bridge would collapse.” (McCauley)
Economist, though, are a different species.
(i) The representative economist who takes his academic degree and is convinced that supply-demand-equilibrium provides an acceptable theory of how the economic system works and accepts standard economics (with the usual reservations/disclaimers/excuses) is scientifically incompetent.
(ii) The representative economist who communicates/defends standard economics on his own blog or on the numerous economics blogs propagates a provable false theory. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong.
(iii) The representative economist who is given a proof in the course of a discussion that standard economics is false and does not understand the argument is not only scientifically incompetent but stupid.
(iv) The economist who understands the proof and deletes it from his blog or automatically filters all serious counterarguments out violates scientific standards and undermines the claim that economics is a science as expressed in the title: “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.
The current state of economics is that of a failed science. The propagation of the four main approaches therefore amounts to unintentional disinformation or intentional misinformation.
Which blogs promote serious research/discussion and which are corrupted can only be found out by testing, that is, by submitting well-argued posts. From concrete experience follows this random selection of blogs that block/delete challenging contributions:
Economist’s View
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/
EconoSpeak
http://econospeak.blogspot.de/
Uneasy Money
https://uneasymoney.com/
Billy blog
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/
The Baseline Scenario
https://baselinescenario.com/
Social Democracy For The 21st Century
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.de/
bradford-delong.com: Grasping Reality with Both Hands
http://www.bradford-delong.com/
Real-World Economics Review blog
https://rwer.wordpress.com/
Lars P. Syll blog
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/
Stumbling and Mumbling
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/
Note that the blog owner is entitled to reject submissions for whatever reason. There is nothing illegal in selecting the content of one’s own blog. What is at issue is the violation of well-known scientific standards.
How to double-check the past and actual intensity of scientific corruption in 3 easy steps:
(1) Go to the AXEC blog
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/
(2) Click the label zML (ML = missing link). All posts that have been submitted but did not appear or vanished later are selected.
(3) Click Blog-Reference at the post’s header for jumping to the discussion thread and looking after the submitted AXEC post.
If you cannot find it this can mean two things: (i) a technical glitch, (ii) censorship.
This exercise confirms in greater detail what is already known since the founding fathers: economics has been hijacked and corrupted by politics. The representative economist as he presents himself on the economics blogs is a rather stupid flag-waving agenda pusher and NOT acceptable in the scientific community.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
I’ve been banned my Mike Norman and now he’s been blocked by Ms. Kelton. I guess that means I’m on double secret probation.
Also, I think you are mostly correct in describing how the monetary system “works” in the short run. Austrians really do not understand that, but you guys do not understand the first thing about Austrian analysis either.
That said, I have scanned the headlines of this blog daily since 2012 and note that you have taken what can be described as a “Ron Paulian” position on war. You are to be congratulated for that.
"double secret probation"
ok that is funny Bob-o....
When will someone be addressing AXEC/EKH's recent posts? Mainstream economics has never agreed upon or advanced a theory of profit.
To get banned by Mike, you have to be really over the top annoying. I've said some crazy outrageous stuff here through the years at times, but didn't get blocked. yet.
Sad if it was deliberate and not a mistake. The MMT community is so damn tiny that it's better to disagree without being disagreeable, as some charlatan said in what now seems a distant age.
If true, it's doubly sad because Magic Mike has been an MMT advocate for a very long time, almost from inception, and has taken a lot of hits along the way. And because he's more public, whether online or previously on television, the hits he's taken are far more nasty and brutal than anything the academics have had to endure.
Let's be fair here.
I won't speak for the other bloggers who blocked Egmont Kakarot-Handtke, but I have seen his posts appearing as comments in these two blogs:
Real-World Economics Review blog
https://rwer.wordpress.com/
Example:
A Google search for "egmont site:http://rwer.wordpress.com/" returned "About 388 results (0.39 seconds)".
He has two long comments in the comments thread of Asad Zaman's "Is there a core of heterodox economics that we can all believe in?" (btw, a very good post, which heterodox people should read)
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/is-there-a-core-of-heterodox-economics-that-we-can-all-believe-in/
RWER issue 56 contains one of Egmont Kakarot Handtke's pieces:
https://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/rwer-issue-56-egmont-kakarot-handtke/
EconoSpeak
http://econospeak.blogspot.de/
You guys can search it by yourselves.
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One thing is openness to comments, another thing is to abuse that openness.
Bob said...
When will someone be addressing AXEC/EKH's recent posts? Mainstream economics has never agreed upon or advanced a theory of profit.
If one makes a point of complaining about being blocked, as Egmont Kakarot-Handtke does, perhaps one should acknowledge those souls who have engaged one's points of view.
EKH makes no reference to bloggers who did that.
Here is an example from Peter Cooper's "The Monetary Circuit & Compatibility of Marx, Kalecki and Keynesian Macro":
http://heteconomist.com/the-monetary-circuit-compatibility-of-marx-kalecki-and-keynesian-macro/
One may criticise Marx for many things, justly or unjustly. One cannot criticise him for not advancing a theory of profits.
Profit theory is key to understanding and critiquing capitalism, as Marx realized. Marx wanted to show that profit is essentially economic rent.
In the neoclassical model profit is competed away under the restrictive assumptions, just as there is no involuntary employment. Everyone gets what they earn.
These are two very different views and a lot of the debate in economics is related to it in one way or another.
In a sense it lies at the foundation of the orthodox and heterodox views and there are ideological overtones.
Now that debate is heating up with the rise of inequality of incomes and wealth.
So we can expect to be hearing a lot more about it.
I don't see this discussion as off topic at all. It's central to events.
I unfollow if they fill up my newsfeed / inbox with garbage.
I unfollow and/or block if they persist in ad hominem attacks rather than sticking to the issues.
Generally I seek contacts who have something worthwhile to say, and bonus points if they engage in civil 2-way conversations.
I observe a lot of people on social media who only want an audience, not a 2-way conversation.
At the time Steph blocked me, I was criticizing some things Minsky wrote, in response to a Minsky article Steph had posted. I was tough on Minsky, but I was not attacking Steph. Presumably she identified with Minsky and felt that an attack on Minsky was an attack on her. She never responded to any of the specific points I made, instead I was blocked without further ado. That is her right, so I have not lost sleep over it.
In general I no longer spend a lot of time debating with MMT'ers. I am not much of a "joiner" so even though I admire much about MMT, I'm not going to "join" and give up my independence. I take from MMT certain parts that I like, and leave the rest.
Dan: "I was tough on Minsky, but I was not attacking Steph. Presumably she identified with Minsky and felt that an attack on Minsky was an attack on her."
Bill Mitchell's not exactly soft on Minsky and very critical of Keynes. Is Bill going to be shut out? Why make an idol of anyone? Even the greatest theories of the greatest minds in history have had to be subjected to criticism. Why Minksy or anybody else should be exempt is a mystery.
The greatest moral question of our day: Do we act to address rapid ecological collapse or not.
By supporting a science denier and his rabid christian dominionist backers, you have failed biggly.
So, good on Steph. Economists need to be sane, not just about how our monetary system works, but also about how bees are necessary to the real economy. If you don't include the health of our natural world in your economics, you such as an economist as well as a human being.
Someone said something like: When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible.
It doesn't need to also be wrapped MMT. The more MMT distances itself from folks like you, the better.
And that's a fact. Not an alternafact.
Now back to the trumps of the world gagging our scientists, because who needs science when we have the mike normans of the world?
Mike the fragile ego guy who feels emasculated by women marching to maintain their freedom from forced birthers, writes of Steph: What a fragile ego.
God what a waste of a brain. Which might be why you have a small handful of folks who only every once in a while make a comment on your blog.
Dan Lynch
You say: “I take from MMT certain parts that I like, and leave the rest.” This is (i) not very interesting for the rest of the world, (ii) entirely beside the point.
As a matter of principle, everybody has the right to his own opinion no matter how stupid, crazy, wrong, or absurd; the only exception are scientists. The ancient Greeks started science with the distinction between doxa (= opinion) and episteme (= knowledge). Scientific knowledge is well-defined by material and formal consistency. Knowledge is established by proof, belief or opinion count for NOTHING.
Opinion is the currency in the political sphere, knowledge is the currency in the scientific sphere. It is extremely important to keep both spheres separate. Since the founding fathers, though, economists have not emancipated themselves from politics. They claim to do science but they have never risen above the level of opinion, belief, wish-wash, storytelling, soap box propaganda, and sitcom gossip.#1
So, the point with MMT is this:
1. There is a mistake/error/blunder in the formal foundations of MMT. In other words, MMT does not satisfy the scientific criterion of logical consistency.#2
2. The formal proof has been submitted to an MMT blog.#3
3. This proof has NOT been refuted but simply deleted.
4. It is against the most elementary scientific rules to suppress refutation. As everybody knows from Popper “... science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected.”
5. MMT is fake science or what Feynman called cargo cult science. The same holds for Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism.
The point is this: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)
Economists do NOT have the true theory and because of this all economic policy proposals are worthless — nothing more than personal opinion and soap box blather.
Economics in general, and this includes MMT, has to be thrown out of science because of the 200+ years violation of well-defined and well-known scientific standards.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See ‘Gossip economics’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/01/gossip-economics.html
#2 See ‘The final implosion of MMT’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/10/the-final-implosion-of-mmt.html
#3 See ‘Modern moronomic theory’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/08/modern-moronomic-theory.html
@Axec, when it comes to values and beliefs, OPINION does matter.
Is economics science, or is economics a philosophical value system? My view is that, once you get past the accounting part, economics is a philosophical value system, with no absolute right or wrong.
For example, the underlying assumption behind MMT is capitalism. MMT is yet another attempt to "save" capitalism from itself. But not everyone wants to save capitalism!
The JG is based on the belief that jobs are a healthy and desirable thing, yet at the beginning of the industrial age, people were largely self-sufficient and did not want jobs, and had to be coerced to take jobs. My view is that we have since been brainwashed to believe that leisure is a sin and that work is virtuous. Even in our current brainwashed age, most people look forward to drawing SS so they can retire and enjoy their hobbies and family rather than working.
The JG is described as a "transition job," with the assumption that the JG should not compete with capitalism, in fact the JG should "serve" capitalism by supplying a ready pool of disciplined and barely-surviving workers. But if one embraces socialism rather than capitalism, then the government could offer permanent, well paid jobs to the unemployed, not merely temporary low-paid "transition" jobs. After all, if there are plenty of JG tasks that are really worth doing, as MMT insists, then shouldn't those tasks be worth doing all the time, not just during downturns?
I agree with you that economics should be thrown out of science. Instead it should be taught as philosophy, ethics, or religion.
"My view is that we have since been brainwashed to believe that leisure is a sin and that work is virtuous."
You've been brainwashed to believe that leisure automatically arises and is always magnificent and pleasurable and that work is somehow painful and unpleasant. That viewpoint has no basis in reality.
In reality leisure is work you pay to do and work is leisure you get paid to do. It's the lack of liquidity in the job market and the power play of firms that makes it painful. Increase the competition and the pain goes away - along with the parasite businesses that are actually the problem.
"After all, if there are plenty of JG tasks that are really worth doing, as MMT insists, then shouldn't those tasks be worth doing all the time"
They are - at the fixed living wage and for the socially acceptable minimum time required to satisfy others in the community that you have contributed. The capitalism bit sits on top of that. Capitalism is permitted to exist and can have as many workers as it can bid off the Job Guarantee and produce whatever it can produce better than the Job Guarantee.
Managing fiat money allows accumulation without cost - giving capitalists a way of keeping score between themselves without actually impoverishing the rest society.
That way MMT managed capitalism allows the benefits of capitalism to arise without the costs associated with it.
Rather than trying to ban it completely and institute a communist centrally planned society as you've just described. We already know that doesn't work.
@Neil, communist Native American societies worked for thousands of years.
Central planning allowed Russia to industrialize and defeat the Nazis. During the 30's, the Russian economy was humming while the West was in the Great Depression. Central planning allowed the U.S. to rapidly industrialize during WWII. Central planning has produced impressive growth in China in recent decades.
Cuba's communist system has not failed. Their health care is better than America's.
Not every regime is well managed, whether it be capitalist or socialist. Any type of economy is subject to failure due to bad management or due to external shocks. All civilizations "fail" eventually.
Industrialized capitalism has only been around for a tiny fraction of human existence, and in that short time it has been characterized by instability, violence, and social dysfunction (suicide, substance abuse, mental illness, crime, incarceration, war, etc.).
I am agnostic about capitalism vs. socialism. I would rather live in a well managed capitalist system than in a poorly managed socialist system, and I would rather live in a well managed socialist system than a poorly managed capitalist system. One strike against capitalism, though, is that its emphasis on selfishness, competition, and materialism results in a very poor quality value system.
Dan Lynch, Neil Wilson
Dan Lynch says: “Instead it [economics] should be taught as philosophy, ethics, or religion.”
Now, this is exactly what has happened in the past 200+ years.#1 And this is why economics is a failed science: “... we know little more now about ‘how the economy works,’ ... than we knew in 1790, after Adam Smith completed the last revision of The Wealth of Nations.” (Clower) In the same time span physics went from the Law of Gravity to Quantum Mechanics.
Imagine a philosopher and a guru discussing. Says the philosopher, let’s build an aircraft and fly to a South Sea island and have a good life there. Says the guru, better let’s fly to Tibet and search for spiritual enlightenment there. Enters the physicist with the remark: you folks will go to nowhere because you have no idea of the laws of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, material science, etcetera and because of this you will never get anything off the ground.
The situation in economics is analogous. The discussion about capitalism and communism has always been a pointless distraction because economists do NOT know how the monetary economy works. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and ALL got the foundational concepts of the subject matter, i.e., profit and income, wrong. Economist do not even understand the elementary mathematics of accounting as the discussion about MMT has shown.#2
The primary question is how to get out of the state of a proto-science, fake science, pseudo science, cargo cult science, failed science ... Certainly NOT with more philosophy or religion or more sitcom blathering.#3
A side issue is how did we get into this mess? The most obvious hypothesis is, because both orthodox and heterodox economists are incompetent, stupid, and corrupt. Your brain-dead posts about capitalism and communism corroborate this hypothesis.
By the way, the economic laws for the monetary economy are the SAME under capitalism and communism just as the laws of aerodynamics are the same whether one flies to the South Sea or to Tibet.#4
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See also ‘Economics: Poor philosophy, poor psychology, poor science’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/01/economics-poor-philosophy-poor.html
#2 See ‘The final implosion of MMT’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/10/the-final-implosion-of-mmt.html
#3 See ‘From Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy to Sysdoxy’
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/03/from-orthodoxy-to-heterodoxy-to-sysdoxy.html
#4 See the First Economic Law on Wikimedia
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC06.png
and the Profit Law here
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC08.png
katie said...
The greatest moral question of our day: Do we act to address rapid ecological collapse or not.
Although I myself am rather concerned about Trump and about some of his supporters, I will remain neutral on this dispute between Mike Norman and Prof. Kelton. I don't know the details and prefer not to know them.
Having said that, you are very right on that claim. Climate change and loss of biodiversity are a lot more worrying than econo-aficionados (like yours truly) are ready to accept.
My suggestion is that you better don't frame it as a moral question. For one, because it's far from being only or mainly moral. It's an empirical fact that global average temperatures are breaking records:
2016 'hottest on record' in new sign of global warming, Copernicus organisation says
Updated 6 Jan 2017, 5:03pm
Last year was the hottest year on record by a wide margin, with temperatures creeping close to a ceiling set by almost 200 nations for limiting global warming, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service has said.
The data are the first of the New Year to confirm many projections that 2016 will exceed 2015 as the warmest since reliable records began in the 19th century, the Copernicus organisation said in a report.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-06/world-heat-shatters-records-in-2016/8165426
Those worried about a couple million Syrian war refugees knocking at their doors, should pause to think how they would like tens of millions of sea rise refugees.
This may yet be a matter of survival for our civilisation and maybe our own species.
It's to your credit that you are reminding us of that. Thank you for it.
Hi Magpie, if you see this.
Thanks for your reply. I go for both the economic and moral aspects of addressing rapid ecological collapse when I talk to people.
But the moral issue is important to not loose sight of. It's the only thing that makes my crazy fucked up family that voted Trump stop and think. I'm out of patience for folks like my family in the same way I would be if they voted for Hitler hoping for a better economy and ignoring that little matter of mass murder.
Now, whenever they bring up Trump, or why they like him, or why they voted for him, I reply: "You have committed the greatest moral crime against the younger generations in human history."
That shuts them up at least. So I assume they're thinking when they're not blabbing on about stupid shit like the war on christmas.
Anyway, I like your reply, thanks.
Is there a way for me to find what you write - where you blog, your twitter name, etc?
And suggestion for the guy with a fragile ego: Go sit in a corner and learn to weep for what we have done to our planet and our children.
Once you can learn to mourn for what is worth mourning over, maybe you won't feel so emasculated by a bunch of young women parading around in silly pink caps. That this makes you feel so very emasculated that you can't even get your moral concerns in some sort of proper perspective doesn't actually seem very mature to me. Might be why your ego is so very easily emasculated.
Hi katie
No, thank you for your kind reply.
But the moral issue is important to not loose sight of. It's the only thing that makes my crazy fucked up family that voted Trump stop and think. I'm out of patience for folks like my family in the same way I would be if they voted for Hitler hoping for a better economy and ignoring that little matter of mass murder.
Now, whenever they bring up Trump, or why they like him, or why they voted for him, I reply: "You have committed the greatest moral crime against the younger generations in human history."
Being myself probably quite like your old folks, both in age and general circumstances, I'm a lot more charitable to them. :-)
Still, theirs was a tragic mistake, which will come back to haunt them and the younger generations.
For what it might be worth, I blog here
http://aussiemagpie.blogspot.com
But I'm just an old bloke, so I don't do Twitter or Facebook or any of that.
@Magpie
Came across a bookshop on the GC the other day called 'Bookface'.
Says more about her than it does about you, Mike.
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