Originally published at pluralistic.net Cory Doctorow Reagan turned the country upside-down, in a very bad way. The “Reagan revolution” was indeed revolutionary (or, rather, counter-revolutionary), reversing a half-century of progress on social safety nets, workers’ rights, and environmental protections. When we take stock of the Reagan years, we tend to focus on the actions that […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager Earlier this month in Berlin I participated in the third workshop of the “Doing Debt” research network. I received the invitation back in May and was asked by the organizers to present my research on ownership of the public debt and to think about how this research might […]
Continue Reading
Abstract For more than a century, political economists have sought to understand the nature of capital. The prevailing wisdom is that there must be something ‘real’ — some productive capacity — that underpins capitalized values. This thinking, I argue, is a mistake. Building on Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler’s theory of capital as power, I […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis Recently the Economist published a front-page feature on ‘The Tragedy of Argentina: A Century of Decline‘. By summarising the current scholarship on the ‘Argentine paradox’, the article demonstrates why the study of the country’s history remains so necessary. The article begins with the standard claim that Argentina was rich at the beginning […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager The following piece is based on my State of the Art article in Socio-Economic Review. It was originally published for The Conversation and the World Economic Forum Global Agenda. A Spanish translation can be found here. Why do the richest 1% of Americans take 20% of national income, […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at joefrancis.info Joe Francis I never met my grandsupervisor (the PhD supervisor of my PhD supervisor), but I have enjoyed reading his rants. One in particular made a major impression upon me. In Mickey Mouse Numbers in World History: The Short View D.C.M. Platt (1989) outlined what he believed to be a major malady that […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon Your movie turned out the be a flop? “Nobody knows anything”. You mistakenly believed consumers wanted to see a movie set in the 1920s? “Nobody knows anything”. You thought your casting decisions were going to be loved by all? “Nobody knows anything”. “Nobody knows anything”–this was the […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at dtcochrane.com DT Cochrane I recently saw a misleading presentation of COVID data pertaining to Israel. In this post I’m sharing several graphs that I made to counter this misleading image. Israel is currently a popular object of those committed to an anti-vax narrative because a high proportion of the population is fully […]
Continue Reading
Abstract According to neoclassical economics, the most efficient way to organize human activity is to use the free market. By stoking self interest, the theory claims, individuals can benefit society. This idea, however, conflicts with the evolutionary theory of multilevel selection, which proposes that rather than stoke individual self interest, successful groups must suppress it. […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager I put together Figure 1 for a paper I will be presenting at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in Lyon this summer. The chart captures the patterns of inequality found in the advanced capitalist countries over the past few decades. There are two […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon Part 1 introduced Scorcese’s argument in his Harper’s essay, which was about much more than Fellini. The first part also explained how we can connect Scorcese’s essay to the drive in the Hollywood film business for major film distributors to differentially accumulate, i.e., beat a benchmark that […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager With the academic term winding down, I thought it would be useful to post some reflections on my teaching experiences this past year. In total, I taught three courses. Two of these courses were inherited from previous lecturers: a second-year undergraduate course on the history of political-economic thought, […]
Continue Reading
Reconsidering Systemic Fear and the Stock Market A Reply to Baines and Hager JAMES MCMAHON August 2021 Abstract This article responds to Baines and Hager’s recent critique of the capital-as-power model of the stock market. Proposed by Bichler and Nitzan, this model seeks to explain how financial crises are tied to the concept of ‘systemic […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings is a telling example of Hollywood rationalizing its so-called inability to widen the boundaries of its creativity. In this case, the boundaries concern Hollywood’s tendency to reserve roles for its biggest stars, even when a big star appears unfit for the […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager I’m spending some time during these summer months developing a new undergraduate course on wealth and income inequality. Branko Milanovic’s wonderful new book Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization will be the main text for the course. The first half of the course will […]
Continue Reading
Abstract Recent years have seen the convergence of industries that focus on higher protein foods, such as meat processing firms expanding into plant-based substitutes and/or cellular meat production, and fisheries firms expanding into aquaculture. A driving force behind these changes is dominant firms seeking to increase their power relative to close competitors, including by extending […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon What is more pleasurable: reading Martin Scorcese on cinema or reading reactions to Scorcese on cinema? The reactions compete for our pleasure because they reveal how easy it is for someone’s words to make us jump into a debate with two feet and eyes closed. In the […]
Continue Reading
Originally published on Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix If you listen carefully, you can hear Jeff Bezos getting richer. There’s the sound again. Another billion in Bezos’ coffers. Let’s put some numbers to this sound of money. Since 2017, Bezos’ net worth has grown by about $4 million per hour — roughly 500,000 […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at dtcochrane.com DT Cochrane In Part 2, I looked at the shifts in U.S. household consumption that occurred during WWII. While aggregate consumption increased alongside massive government intervention, the qualitative mix of that consumption changed in some drastic ways. This analysis was intended to augment the analogy made by J.W. Mason and Mike […]
Continue Reading
Originally published at dtcochrane.com DT Cochrane In Part 1, I explained the motivation for this series. I want to use the analogy of WWII, as invoked by economists JW Mason and Mike Konczal in an NYT op-ed, to consider how we ought to manage a potential post-pandemic economic boom. In this post, I will look […]
Continue Reading