BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021–05–05 We: Joe Biden: ’I think they’re going to write about this point in history… about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century. Not a joke <braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…> 1/
PROJECT SYNDICATE: Is þe US Economy Recovering or Overheating?: ‘An absence of price increases would reflect an economy struggling… <braddelong.substack.com/p/project-synd…>
HOISTED FROM ÞE ARCHIVES: Lessons from þe New Deal (2009–03–31): Eric Rauchwa says my 2009–03–31 testimony is damned good!… <braddelong.substack.com/p/lessons-from…>
PODCAST: Hexapodia XIII: "Mandated Interoperability": We Can't Make It Work, or Can We? With Cory Doctorow; Noah Smith & Brad DeLong's 30:00 < Weekly Podcast < 60:00: Key Insights: (1) Cory Doctorow is AWESOME! (2) It is depressing. We once, with... 1/
...the creation of the market economy, got interoperability right. But now the political economy blocks us from there being any obvious path to an equivalent lucky historical accident in our future. (3) The problems in our society are not diametrically opposed: Addressing... 2/
...the problems of one thing doesn't necessarily create equal and opposite problems on the other side—but it does change the trade-offs, and so things become very complex and very difficult to solve. (4) Always keep a trash bag in your car. (5) Hexapodia!
By Noah Smith & Brad DeLong: Joan Robinson to Bob Solow: "I would not be unkind if you would not be pig-headed..."
Key Insights: 1. Getting the rate of profit—the sums that are charged businesses for renting machines and renting space, and for... 1/
... access to the generalized social power to deploy resources that is finance—right is a very, very important thing to do. Why? Because the market economy is a complicated institutional calculating machine for determining how to promote societal wellbeing. It cannot do... 2/
... its job if it cannot see the the constraints imposed on us by nature and current technology. And having the market get the profit rate right is a very important part of that. To say “it’s all ideology” or “it’s all power” or “it’s all distribution” and go the full... 3/
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Souls of White Folk: ‘The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color... 1/
... and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful! This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better... 2/
... than brownness or tan leads to curious acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying “My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor... 3/
@jdportes@Mikepeeljourno@Sime0nStylites@adam_tooze Þere is a big difference between the economic policies þt are appropriate for a time of high real interest rates wiþ substantial gearing between very recent inflation & expectations & one of very low real interest rates wiþ anchored expectations. Þe failure of professional... 1/
@jdportes@Mikepeeljourno@Sime0nStylites@adam_tooze ...Republican economists to even try to design a pro-growth tax cut since... well, since forever... has also been an education, a brutal one. It seems as if we believe in our models & are discipline, while for them it is a grift all þe way down.
All the people who said we... 2/
@jdportes@Mikepeeljourno@Sime0nStylites@adam_tooze ...would get an extra 5%-points of NI of private investment from Trump-McConnell-Ryan, and þt it would boost short-term growth by 0.5%/year & long-term real NI by 10%. Where are þere post-mortems? Where are þere apologies? Where are þere explanations of how their models... 3/
First in-person office hours since the plague began!
Hybrid: 2021-04-13 Tu 14:00-16:00 PDT: Caffè Strada, 2300 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA; & <berkeley.zoom.us/j/7744601602>
And here we go! Back to the university!
Will there be permanent changes to... 1/
...a "hybrid” world as a result of the plague? Discuss, with this—from the days when, as Dan Hon remarks, people still thought cyberspace would be a space—providing some food-for-thought: Walter Jon Williams (1993): Aristoi: ‘Persepolis, the place… reconstructed… sat… 2/
... at the… reconstructed Pulvar and Kor… the (largely symbolic) capital of a reconstructed Earth2…. Behind the City of a Hundred Columns loomed Kuh-e-Rahmat, the Mount of Mercy… grey… a contrast to the bright gold, vermilion, ivory, and turquoise that accentuated... 3/
PODCAST: Hexapodia IX: Banishing Extreme Poverty from þe World
by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong: Key insights: Hexapodia!, of course. Banishing extreme poverty—which we have not done—is not a victory, but would, rather, be the ending of a long defeat... 1/
...Hickel as Leninist, Noah Smith as Burkean. We neoliberals and neoliberal-adjacents need to come up with five significant discrete policies to make the world economy work better to reduce not just extreme but regular poverty over the next generation, rather than rest on... 2/