Eric Michael Johnson — What Philanthropic Organizations Need to Know about Giving – Is philanthropy driven by morality or markets?

The notion that philanthropy resulted from the invention of money is a pillar of classical economics. It is also a myth. After more than two centuries of searching for an indigenous society that approximates Adam Smith’s parable of the original barter system, anthropologists have concluded that it can only be imaginary. “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing,” wrote Cambridge anthropologist Caroline Humphrey in a 1985 paper titled “Barter and Economic Disintegration” in the journal Man. Instead, researchers have discovered that philanthropy is far more central to human social organization than economists had ever imagined.

The notion that philanthropy resulted from the invention of money is a pillar of classical economics. It is also a myth.…

This suggests that Adam Smith wasn’t so much chronicling the evolution of modern market economies as he was observing what existed during his time and then projecting it onto the human past.…

Evonomics

What Philanthropic Organizations Need to Know about Giving

Eric Michael Johnson

Lars P. Syll — Keynes vs. Wicksell on loanable funds theory

"The fundamental difference between Keynes and Wicksell and in general the supporters of the LFT [Loanable Funds Theory] lies in the specification of the consequences of the presence of bank money.…

In contrast, Keynes states that the spread of a fiat money such as bank money changes the structure of the economic system. He underscores this point by introducing the distinction between a real exchange economy and a monetary economy.…

Keynes notes that the classical economists formulated an explanation of how the real-exchange economy works, convinced that this explanation could be easily applied to a monetary economy. He believed that this conviction was unfounded …" — Giancarlo Bertocco

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Keynes vs. Wicksell on loanable funds theory
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Steve Roth — Scott Sumner Does Not Understand that S ≠ I

This is basic sectoral accounting, a subject in which neoclassical (and “market monetarist”) economists seem to have received no training.

Asymptosis
Scott Sumner Does Not Understand that S ≠ I
Steve Roth

We knew this already but Steve reminds us of it.

Ramanan posts a clarification of different uses of S = I that can lead to ambiguity and confusion.


The Saving = Investment Identity

Cartoon — Coconuts and fish

Tom the Dancing Bug

A Desert Island Recession

(h/t Clonal via email)

I can only link to the cartoon due to copyright, but it is a must-see.

You can even order a framed print. Yes, it's that good.