My last post, arguing that the share of US income going to the top 1 per cent of households is now so great that any effective policy must be financed by reducing or more effectively taxing the income of this group produced a range of interesting (and some not so interesting responses). First up, it elicited what appears to be new variants on a couple of standard rightwing talking points. More interesting to me is a response from Matt Yglesias arguing (as I read him) that, even if there is no serious prospect of reversing the shift of income to the top 1 per cent[1], there is still plenty of capacity for progressive political actions based on a broadly neoliberal (US sense) agenda.
Read More »
Month: July 2011
Where the money is
Over at Crooked Timber, there’s been an extensive neoliberalism (mainly, though not exclusively, in the US sense of this term, which is broadly akin to “Third Way” Labor”) and political theory. I’ve been largely on the sidelines. That’s mainly because, observing the US political and economic situation, I have a very clear view on what policies could, in principle, sustain a progressive political movement, but (given my distance from the scene and the absence of anything substantial enough to force its attention on the mass media) no real idea about how such a movement might develop. Here’s a post I put up there, slightly edited to remove some points that led to thread derailment.
Tragedy in Norway
As usual on such occasions, I haven’t had much to say about the horrific events in Norway. It’s generally better, in such circumstances, to pause for reflection, and certainly some who rushed to judgement have gone badly wrong in doing so, here as on previous occasions. This is not the time for judgement, but that time will come.
Monday Message Board
It’s time again for the Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language. Lengthy side discussions to the sandpits, please.
Half marathon update
My training for the half-marathon has been badly disrupted by illness, so I really need some encouragement. Click on the link to the left and put some money in to the Queensland Cancer Council. I’m going to a conference now, which is going to disrupt things further, but I’ll commit to putting in 20km on the treadmill while I’m away if you guys can bring the total donations up to $2500 by Sunday.
I’m still going to do my best to beat two hours, but it’s looking quite a bit harder now
Zombies
Got this in my email this morning inviting contributions to a special issue of a journal (I won’t name it)
Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models have become an established framework of reference in empirical macroeconomics. Because DSGE models combine micro- and macroeconomic theory with formal econometric modeling and inference, they are now widely used in policy analysis and academic discourse to address questions in monetary economics and business cycle research, and to inform policy interventions. The continued success of DSGE models will rest on a sustained ability to meet key challenges and improve upon the main modeling paradigm both in terms of its theoretical foundations and its econometric implementation.
And of course, we can thank DGSE models for predicting that nasty crisis in 2008 and prescribing the policy responses that fixed it so completely. Good think we didn’t have to rely on that old-fashioned Keynesian stuff.
Burying the lede
That’s US press jargon for putting the key item in a story so far down no-one will read and it certainly applies to this David Carr story about NewsCorp in the US. You have to get down to the bottom of the first page to discover that News settled, very generously, a claim in which it was accused of hacking a competitors systems. That seems to undermine the common assumption (including mine) that the specific pathology of hacking was confined to the UK.
