Bill Mitchell — The government really is instrumental in creating growth

Sometimes one reads a press article that is so obviously misleading that it is hard to know where to start with it. But perhaps the conclusion is the best place to start sometimes. Such is the case of a Bloomberg article (January 15, 2016) – What #ResistCapitalism Gets Wrong – written by American academic Noah Smith. Basically, the article attempts to attribute all of the post-Second World War prosperity to the “free market economy”, which he says is “a term many use synonymously with ‘capitalism’”. By the end of the article we learn that in fact that prosperity does not come from ‘free market’ liberalisation and that strong governments are essential for growth and reductions in inequality. The “boring old mixed economy” where, in Noah Smith’s words “government really is instrumental in creating growth”. Start with the conclusion and read backwards is my advice in this case.…

Bill smacks Noah down for purveying conventional wisdom by setting for the facts. But Bill admits that Noah finally comes around in the end and wishes he had begun the post that way.

Considering that the post appeared in Bloomberg View, I think there's a good chance that Noah suckered his audience in with confirmation bias by reiterating the conventional nostrums about "the free market" as synonymous with "capitalism," and then turned it on them in the end. If that is the case, it was a good job of persuasion.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The government really is instrumental in creating growth
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia