Benefit-Cost Analysis and the Coronavirus — Peter Dorman

A little philosophy (value theory) today.

Personally, I think it would be madness to stick a monetary value on people’s lives and base our policy choices on whether the dollars on one side of the ledger outweigh those on the other. I wrote a book about that a while ago. The considerations that lead us to think primarily in public health terms at a time like this apply just as well to other issues, from food safety to climate change. The economists who crank out monetary values of life and believe all choices should be based on benefit-cost thinking have not yet had the integrity to step forward and make their case. This silence speaks volumes.

Econospeak
Benefit-Cost Analysis and the Coronavirus
Peter Dorman | Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College

See also (dark humor)

Michael Roberts Blog: blogging from a marxist economist — Minsky and socialism

Minsky’s journey from socialism to stability for capitalist profitability comes about because he and the post-Keynesians deny and/or ignore Marx’s law of value, just as the ‘market socialists’, Lange and Lerner, did. The post-Keynesians and MMTers deny/ignore that profit comes from surplus value extracted by exploitation in the capitalist production process and it is this that is the driving force for investment and employment. They ignore the origin and role of profit, except as a residual of investment and consumer spending.Instead they all have a money fetish. With the money fetish, money replaces value, rather than representing it. They all see money (finance) as both causing crises and, also as solving them by creating value!

In my view, far from Minsky providing the “necessary ingredients to a to a rethinking of Marxian theory of capitalist dynamics and crises”, as Bellofiore argues, Minsky’s theory of crises, like all those emanating from the post-Keynesian think tank of the Levy Institute, falls well short of delivering a comprehensive causal explanation of regular and recurring booms and slumps in capitalist production. By limiting the searchlight of analysis to money, finance and debt, Minsky and the P-Ks ignore the exploitation of labour by capital (terms not even used). They fail to recognise that financial fragility and collapse are triggered by the recurring insufficiency of value creation in capitalist accumulation and production.

Moreover, by claiming that capitalism’s problem lies in the finance sector, the policy solutions offered are the regulation and control of that sector, rather than the replacement of the capitalist mode of production. Indeed, that is the very path that Minsky took: from his socialism and ‘’socialisation of investment’’ in the 1970s to ‘stabilising finance’ in the 1990s.

Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economist
Minsky and socialism
Michael Roberts

Brad DeLong — The extremely intelligent Martin Wolf reviews Maria Mazzucato

I would post a link to Martin Wolf's article but it is behind a paywall at the Financial Times. So this will have to do unless you have access.

Somewhat embarrassingly, Brad DeLong gets Mariana Mazzacuto's name wrong. Oh, well, I make mistakes like that, too, on occasion.

Wolf review poses a very pregnant question, "… she forces us to ask ourselves what adds value to society and how to create an economic and social order that promotes that."

WCEG
The extremely intelligent Martin Wolf reviews Maria Mazzucato.

Brad DeLong
Crossposted at Grasping Reality

Neil Wilson — The Job Guarantee: What Will People Do?

If you’ve come here looking for a list, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. The Job Guarantee isn’t a list of things to do, because, unsurprisingly, the people who designed it weren’t fans of central planning.

Instead we’ll go through the Job Guarantee in detail and explain that it is a process, not a destination. We’ll explain what it does and why it is there — using a slightly different viewpoint from normal....

The Job Guarantee is a mechanism for creating jobs of social value. It is a dynamic system that enables and supports the creation of jobs that provide public service to others and that others consider to be of public service.

Nobody has any idea what jobs the Job Guarantee will create or not create because that is left to the Social Entrepreneurs to decide based upon the forces they respond to.

In this view of a JG, the currency issuing government doesn't create the jobs directly by employing people, but rather indirectly by providing the  supporting institutional structure and funding for job creation by social value entrepreneurs operating on the basis of creating social value through innovation instead of market value like the private sector.

Modern Money Matters
The Job Guarantee: What Will People Do?
Neil Wilson

Joe Mellor — 91-Year-Old Believed To Be UK’s Oldest Supermarket Worker

The social value of having a job. Kudos to Asda for providing it.

The London Economic
91-Year-Old Believed To Be UK’s Oldest Supermarket Worker

Joe Mellor

See also

Harvard Business Review

Lifelong Learning Is Good for Your Health, Your Wallet, and Your Social Life

John Coleman

Neil Wilson — It’s not a matter of believing. It is a matter of fact and requirement in society.

Neil has been using the term "social value" lately in contrast to market value. In a market state, value is exclusively market value and if market value cannot be turned into sufficient profit to justify investment, then the project doesn't get done.

The three rolls of the modern state are provision of security, order and welfare. These have high social value but little market value in that the goods they involves are neither rivalrous nor excludable.

These are chiefly public goods that fall under public purpose. A state is chiefly concerned with social value rather than market value, so these matters fall under the purview of the state rather than the private sector.

Maintaining full employment is a social value rather than a market value where the private sector is either unwilling or unable to step up. A currency sovereign is always able to purchase idle resources including labor in excess of job offers.

Modern Money Matters
It’s not a matter of believing. It is a matter of fact and requirement in society.
Neil Wilson