Productivity, The Miracle of Compound Interest and Poverty
On the subject of working more, producing more, but going into debt to buy it. Must read by one of the few truly great economists, Michael Hudson.
Suppose you were alive back in 1945 and were told about all the new technology that would be invented between then and now: the computers and internet, mobile phones and other consumer electronics, faster and cheaper air travel, super trains and even outer space exploration, higher gas mileage on the ground, plastics, medical breakthroughs and science in general. You would have imagined what nearly all futurists expected: that we would be living in a life of leisure society by this time. Rising productivity would raise wages and living standards, enabling people to work shorter hours under more relaxed and less pressured workplace conditions.
Why hasn’t this occurred in recent years? In light of the enormous productivity gains since the end of World War II – and especially since 1980 – why isn’t everyone rich and enjoying the leisure economy that was promised? If the 99% is not getting the fruits of higher productivity, who is? Where has it gone?
EU IMF’d
Hudson interview by Lauren Lyster. Video below.
MMT for ECB?
MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) pretty much says forget what you have learnt in school. From Michael Hudson on how MMT could “fix” Europe.
I have just returned from Rimini, Italy, where I experienced one of the most amazing spectacles of my academic life. Four of us associated with the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) were invited to lecture for three days on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and explain why Europe is in such monetary trouble today – and to show that there is an alternative, that the enforced austerity for the 99% and vast wealth grab by the 1% is not a force of nature.
Stephanie Kelton (incoming UMKC Economics Dept. chair and editor of its economic blog, New Economic Perspectives), criminologist and law professor Bill Black, investment banker Marshall Auerback and myself (along with a French economist, Alain Parquez) stepped into the basketball auditorium on Friday night. We walked down, and down, and further down the central aisle, past a packed audience reported as over 2,100. It was like entering the Oscars as People called out our first names. Some told us they had read all of our economics blogs. Stephanie joked that now she knew how The Beatles felt. There was prolonged applause – all for an intellectual rather than a physical sporting event. (Full article here).
Hudson-”In America and Europe, Crime has been Decriminalized”
Hudson giving an overview of current affairs with a fired up Lauren Lyster fresh back from Davos.
Public Infrastructure and Economic Rent Capture
By Hudson.
Reflecting the Progressive Era’s reform agenda Simon Patten (1852–1922) argued that freeing markets from one source of economic rent (by taxing land rent) would merely leave the surplus to be taken by other monopolists and rent extractors (railroads, Wall Street trusts, and basic privatized utilities). To prevent unearned income (economic rent) from adding to the economy’s cost of living and doing business, potentially rent-yielding infrastructure should be kept in the public domain as a “fourth factor of production.” Instead of rentiers making a profit by charging access fees and user fees, the return to public investment should take the form of reducing the economy’s overall price structure.
Full article here.
Obama’s New Populist Fakery-Hudson
Another great article from Mr Hudson. We can’t but agree, the Governments don’t represent the People anymore. This is not Democracy, this is Financial Oligarchy. Welcome to the new order, until people get fed up.
The seeds for President Obama’s demagogic press conference on Thursday were planted last summer when he assigned his right-wing Committee of 13 the role of resolving the obvious and inevitable Congressional budget standoff by forging an anti-labor policy that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and uses the savings to bail out banks from even more loans that will go bad as a result of the IMF-style austerity program that Democrats and Republicans alike have agreed to back.
MENA spreading to US?
Earlier this spring, we wrote extensively on the increasingly polarization of the US society. With Occupy Wall Street, we have seen the green shoots of people fed up with the system. The Melting Pot has just started boiling, and expect more to come. Further great reading After the Empire by the French historian Emmanuel Todd. Below Hudson on implication of Occupy Wall Street.
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