Mark Thoma’s page links up the historic answer to a question we’ve been wondering about, summed up something like this: Consider all the wealth created while the output of the entire country has grown over the last 30 years or so; consider that wages and salaries of most of us have been little more than flat; where did the money go? It must have gone largely to the rest of us at the top. That is a mind-numbing pile of riches. But clearly not beyond the dreams of avarice, as dreamed by the GOP today. They want to pile up more and more forever. But history shows how it all falls down again and again.
The traditional way, here: http://vimeo.com/glenmilner/birthofabook. I hear there is renewed interest in hand-bound books. Our printer Thomson-Shore has acquired the Bessenberg Bindery, who specialize in hand-craftsmanship.
Here’s a link to an article in The Nation with some graphs showing the dramatic attacks by Republicans on democracy and jobs in the places where they live, as compared with the rest of the country. Democrats must do a better job of understanding how to effectively counter Republican self-destructive tendencies. An attack on a democratic government as such is basically an attack on democracy itself and on one’s own community and habitat.
Paul Krugman provides the definitive data for Keynesian economics. A chapter in Unicycle on the “asymmetric economy” focuses on the reasons why you can’t step outside the market or the economy. When we pretend that we can, we lose track of where we are.
This article represents something of a breakthrough in a number of ways, being titled Modern Monetary Theory, an unconventional take on economic strategy in the Washington Post. Lives and livelihoods depend on our leaders getting this right. So it is good to read that there is a popular surge of interest in economics in the blogosphere, along with a resurgence of Keynesian economics and an appreciation of the factual analysis that goes with it. Another thing: this stuff is really not that complicated, though it lends itself to being made so by the misuse of mathematics. Economics is closer to everyday reasoning than many other things we all tend to know about in various degrees of detail, like what’s under the hood of our cars, for example. A widespread understanding of the basics is likewise vital to survival.
Who cares how we fare? Economics is way more accessible than some economists would have us believe. Here’s a link to Punk Economics by David McWilliams, posted by Henning Meyer, who adds that lesson 1 explains “the European economic crisis in 10 minutes and pretty much all of it is spot on. A great way to visualise the very complex nature of the current predicament.”
Here is an article by Simon Tilford who is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. It’s a fine example of using a few numbers to clarify a political issue. With the French election on the horizon, President Sarkozy is telling the French people they need to be more like the Germans.
So much of what is happening in Europe provides a painful lesson in the way the educated mind can think up elaborate theories and excuses to get what it wants, even though the “thinkers” and leaders are faced with a mountain-chain of evidence to get round. Witness the abject failure of “expansionary contraction” or “austerity.” At which point I will just refer to the blogs of Paul Krugman, Jared Bernstein, Brad DeLong, or Social Europe, and the many mountaineers who know what they are doing, or more specifically, this article by Vicente Navarro.
Meanwhile, feel free to explore Unicycle: The Book of Fictitious Symmetry and Non-Random Truth (page link on the right), which forms the basis of ensuing posts, should there be any after this.
River of Asymmetry 