Bill Mitchel — Unemployment is miserable and doesn’t spawn an upsurge in personal creativity

Here is a summary of another interesting study I read last week (published March 30, 2017) – Happiness at Work – from academic researchers Jan‐Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward. It explores the relationship between happiness and labour force status, including whether an individual is employed or not and the types of jobs they are doing. The results reinforce a long literature, which emphatically concludes that people are devastated when they lose their jobs and do not adapt to unemployment as its duration increases. The unemployed are miserable and remain so even as they become entrenched in long-term unemployment. Further, they do not seem to sense (or exploit) a freedom to release some inner sense of creativity and purpose. The overwhelming proportion continually seek work – and relate their social status and life happiness to gaining a job, rather than living without a job on income support. The overwhelming conclusion is that “work makes up such an important part of our lives” and that result is robust across different countries and cultures. Being employed leads to much higher evaluations of the quality of life relative to being unemployed. And, nothing much has changed in this regard over the last 80 or so years. These results were well-known in the 1930s, for example. They have a strong bearing on the debate between income guarantees versus employment guarantees. The UBI proponents have produced no robust literature to refute these long-held findings.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Unemployment is miserable and doesn’t spawn an upsurge in personal creativity
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Neoliberalism lowers life expectancy — Sharmini Peries interviews Michael Hudson

“Almost all of the British economists of the late 18th century said when you have poverty, when you have a transfer of wealth to the rich, you’re going to have shorter lifespans, and you’re also going to have emigration,” says Michael Hudson, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Many countries, such as Russia, the Baltic States, and now Greece, have seen a massive outflow of their populations due to worsening social conditions after the implementation of neoliberal policy.

Hudson predicts the United States will undergo the same trend, as greater hardship results from the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, changes to social security, and broader policy shifts due to prospective appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and the next presidential cabinet.…

Michael Hudson
Neoliberalism lowers life expectancy

Sharmini Peries interviews Michael Hudson

Oliver Milman — More than half US population lives amid dangerous air pollution, report warns

Not just climate change. I changed my place of residence, previously large cities, in 1973, something I would not have done otherwise. Never looked back. I did some short stints in cities since, working on projects, fortunately never in stinkpots.

The Guardian
More than half US population lives amid dangerous air pollution, report warns
Oliver Milman

Bill Mitchell — Bullshit jobs – the essence of capitalist control and realisation

... in the last few days I have done a few media interviews (radio) on an article that appeared in the local Fairfax press, but was originally published in the Strike! magazine as – On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by LSE anthropologist, David Graeber. The title in the local article had changed to “nonsense jobs” – a sign of the conservatism of our press. The interviews I did were interesting because the article brings together a number of strands that further expose the weakness of the economic theory taught to students in most universities. That is much more interesting to write about here than the tawdry realities of Australian politics at present which can be described as indecent ignorance.



David Graeber article seeks to investigate why the 1930 prediction by John John Maynard Keynes that by the Year 2000, “technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week” has not materialised.

He might have just concluded – Capitalism and realisation of surplus value.....

Does he really answer his basic question – to explain why we are not all working within the technological limits – that is much less hours? He clearly doesn’t provide a good explanation despite the Op Ed being much longer than most. 

To really answer the question and to understand why neo-liberalism has become dominant we have to ground the explanation in the dynamics of the capitalist system, which is why most of the competitive neo-classical theory fails. The latter doesn’t differentiate between the unique characteristics of production systems and thus ignores key dynamics, which yield explanatory capacity.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Bullshit jobs – the essence of capitalist control and realisation
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

Daniel Little — Poverty and economics

How important should the subject of poverty be within the discipline of economics? Some economists appear to think it is a very small issue compared to the magnificent mathematics of general equilibrium theory. Others believe that economics should fundamentally be about the sources of human well-being and misery, and that understanding poverty is absolutely fundamental for economics. How should we try to sort this out?

Understanding Society — Innovative thinking about social agency and structure in a global world
Poverty and economics
Daniel Little | Chancellor, University of Michigan at Dearborn

AFP — U.S. lags behind other wealthy nations in health and life expectancy

The United States spends more per capita on health care than any place in the world but lags behind other wealthy nations in health and life expectancy, according to research published on Wednesday.

Japan still leads the world in terms of living the longest, with average life expectancy at 82.6 years in 2010, up from 79.1 years in 1990.

Americans are living longer too — an average of 78.2 years compared to 75.2 two decades ago — but were outpaced by other developed nations as the US ranking for life expectancy slid from 20th to 27th in the world....

“The United States spends more than the rest of the world on health care and leads the world in the quality and quantity of its health research, but that doesn’t add up to better health outcomes,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and one of the lead authors on the study.

The Raw Story
U.S. lags behind other wealthy nations in health and life expectancy
Agence France-Presse

Jeff Spross — Bombshell IMF Study: United States Is World’s Number One Fossil Fuel Subsidizer

Between directly lowered prices, tax breaks, and the failure to properly price carbon, the world subsidized fossil fuel use by over $1.9 trillion in 2011 — or eight percent of global government revenues — according to a study released this week by the International Monetary Fund.

The biggest offender was by far the United States, clocking in at $502 billion. China came in second at $279 billion, and Russia was third at $116 billion. In fact, the problem is so significant in the U.S. that the IMF figures correcting it will require new fees, levies, or taxes totaling over $500 billion a year, or more than 3 percent of the economy.

Climate Progress
Bombshell IMF Study: United States Is World’s Number One Fossil Fuel Subsidizer
Jeff Spross

As Warren Mosler says, a subsidy is a negative tax. Now we learn that it is necessary not only to eliminate the subsidies but to increase taxes and regulation (which increases costs) in order to save the home planet.

But developing an inexpensive, renewable, clean source of transportable energy is of the highest priority to avoid severe culling of the species.

Japanese economic minister — requirements for a new growth model

At the individual level we have seen unambiguous signs that the economic climate is contributing to discontent. Public sentiment has undergone a distinct shift, and we can be far less certain that a return to previous levels of economic growth can erase this dissatisfaction. Through the Occupy Wall Street movement and other demonstrations, we have heard not only a message of anger at the current situation, but the desire for something else; for something more. The search is underway, particularly among the young people of the world, for a new model of growth.

A fundamental assertion for any new growth model, that is, dynamic and inclusive growth, is that three basic elements -- the economy, society, and the environment -- are each integral and must all contribute to overall improvement. Such thinking is not superfluous or a luxury that can only be afforded during periods of strong economic performance. It is critical to recognize that we must seek to provide not only prosperity, but also leave behind a healthy social and natural environment for future generations.

The new growth model must, in other words, impart more than economic gain. In recent years governments around the world, including Japan, have quietly turned their attention to research into the question of happiness and quality of life. How do we measure, or even define, such a concept? What factors contribute? In an era when so many people face stark economic challenges, does it even matter? Fundamentally, how do we meet the needs of society, and of future generations?

Research and, one could argue, the message from demonstrations around the world, would indicate that the contribution made by society and the environment play an integral role in ensuring our citizens realize their personal goals. Such factors are therefore critical to both prosperity and sustainability; an important part of the new growth model.

Read it at The Huffington Post
The Search for a New Growth Model
Motohisa Furukawa | Japanese Economic Minister

Looks like at least some of the TPTB are listening to the voice of protest and getting the message that globalization is not working based on the model in terms of which it is being applied.

Furukawa also talks about introducing quality rather than only considering quantity, which is border on superstition for most mainstream economists.

He also introduces the economy, society, and the environment as macroeconomic trifecta requiring resolution instead of only the traditional growth of production, employment, and price stability.