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.
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Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Lars P. Syl — Wage cuts — the ultimate atomistic fallacy
Mass unemployment: economists did it Comment on Lars Syll on ‘Wage cuts — the ultimate atomistic fallacy’
In chapter 2 of the General Theory Keynes claimed that classical economics does not have a theory of employment because it assumes that all resources will be fully employed.
What can be said after 80 years is that Keynesian employment theory, too, is an abject failure.#1 So, after more than 200 years economists still have no valid employment theory.#2
Walrasian, Keynesian, Marxian and Austrian economists are groping in the dark with regard to the two most important features of the market economy, that is, the profit mechanism and the price mechanism. The fault lies in the fact that economists argue from the micro level upwards to the economy as a whole. And here the fallacy of composition regularly slips in. To get out of failed economic theory requires nothing less than a full-blown paradigm shift from accustomed microfoundations to entirely new macrofoundations.
In the following a sketch#3 of the correct employment theory is given. The most elementary version of the objective systemic employment equation is shown on Wikimedia
From this equation follows: (i) An increase of the expenditure ratio rhoE leads to higher employment (the Greek letter rho stands for ratio). An expenditure ratio rhoE greater than 1 indicates credit expansion, a ratio rhoE less than 1 indicates credit contraction. (ii) Increasing investment expenditures I exert a positive influence on employment, a slowdown of growth does the opposite. (iii) An increase of the factor cost ratio rhoF=W/PR leads to higher employment.
The complete employment equation contains in addition profit distribution, public deficit spending, and the trade balance.
Item (i) and (ii) cover Keynes’s well-known arguments about aggregate demand. The factor cost ratio rhoF as defined in (iii) embodies the price mechanism which, however, does NOT work as standard economics hallucinates. As a matter of fact, overall employment INCREASES if the average wage rate W INCREASES relative to average price P and productivity R. This is the opposite of what standard economics teaches.
The systemic employment equation contains nothing but measurable variables and is therefore readily testable. As always in science, a test decides the matter.
In their scientific incompetence both orthodox and heterodox economists are ultimately responsible for the enormous social devastations of mass unemployment. Economists are not only failed scientists but a serous hazard to their fellow citizens.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See ‘Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster’ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2130421
#2 See ‘Why Post Keynesianism Is Not Yet a Science’ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1966438
#3 For details see ‘Essentials of Constructive Heterodoxy: Employment’ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2576867
Mass unemployment: economists did it
ReplyDeleteComment on Lars Syll on ‘Wage cuts — the ultimate atomistic fallacy’
In chapter 2 of the General Theory Keynes claimed that classical economics does not have a theory of employment because it assumes that all resources will be fully employed.
What can be said after 80 years is that Keynesian employment theory, too, is an abject failure.#1 So, after more than 200 years economists still have no valid employment theory.#2
Walrasian, Keynesian, Marxian and Austrian economists are groping in the dark with regard to the two most important features of the market economy, that is, the profit mechanism and the price mechanism. The fault lies in the fact that economists argue from the micro level upwards to the economy as a whole. And here the fallacy of composition regularly slips in. To get out of failed economic theory requires nothing less than a full-blown paradigm shift from accustomed microfoundations to entirely new macrofoundations.
In the following a sketch#3 of the correct employment theory is given. The most elementary version of the objective systemic employment equation is shown on Wikimedia
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC62.png
From this equation follows:
(i) An increase of the expenditure ratio rhoE leads to higher employment (the Greek letter rho stands for ratio). An expenditure ratio rhoE greater than 1 indicates credit expansion, a ratio rhoE less than 1 indicates credit contraction.
(ii) Increasing investment expenditures I exert a positive influence on employment, a slowdown of growth does the opposite.
(iii) An increase of the factor cost ratio rhoF=W/PR leads to higher employment.
The complete employment equation contains in addition profit distribution, public deficit spending, and the trade balance.
Item (i) and (ii) cover Keynes’s well-known arguments about aggregate demand. The factor cost ratio rhoF as defined in (iii) embodies the price mechanism which, however, does NOT work as standard economics hallucinates. As a matter of fact, overall employment INCREASES if the average wage rate W INCREASES relative to average price P and productivity R. This is the opposite of what standard economics teaches.
The systemic employment equation contains nothing but measurable variables and is therefore readily testable. As always in science, a test decides the matter.
In their scientific incompetence both orthodox and heterodox economists are ultimately responsible for the enormous social devastations of mass unemployment. Economists are not only failed scientists but a serous hazard to their fellow citizens.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 See ‘Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster’
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2130421
#2 See ‘Why Post Keynesianism Is Not Yet a Science’
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1966438
#3 For details see ‘Essentials of Constructive Heterodoxy: Employment’
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2576867