You might find this vid informative.

13 Comments

1. 

   Marie3 on March 6, 2016 at 11:13 am

   The opening question for the three of them reinforced why I look to Stiglitz for econ info and not Krugman.  Piketty (who doesn’t consider himself an economist) puts most economists to shame by merely collecting real data and interpreting it without ideological blinders.

   Here’s the embed for those that only want to catch a bit of it:

   • 

     mino on March 6, 2016 at 11:43 am

     Thanks for the embed.

   • 

     seabe on March 6, 2016 at 3:28 pm

     Yep. Notice how Stiglitz segues the recovery directly into the housing crisis and the bubbles that masked the failures of neoliberalism, and that as a result the recovery has not been very good because we’re still papering over the rot that runs deep.

     • 

       Marie3 on March 6, 2016 at 3:47 pm

       Contrasted with Krugman — “yeah, all the things we said would work did work.”  Stiglitz, “not really.”

2. 

   mino on March 6, 2016 at 3:53 pm

   Recently has been whining about loss of productivity in the economy and the tech sector claimed that it was not being captured fully because..blarg.  Well, economists looked at it and indeed, productivity gains are decreasing.  

   No one has manged to link this loss in their little minds with the loss of a vibrant, competitive REAL economy.

   • 

     Marie3 on March 6, 2016 at 4:07 pm

     The economy remains competitive.  US corporations are highly competitive.  US workers have been told that they need to be more competitive if they want manufacturing jobs to return to the US.  

     I don’t buy into the notion that competition leads to a vibrant economy.  Doesn’t even lead to the best product being the best seller.

     • 

       mino on March 6, 2016 at 4:21 pm

       Monopolistic is not competitive.  It is anti-innovative.

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       mino on March 6, 2016 at 4:32 pm

       http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/upshot/silicon-valley-has-not-saved-us-from-a-productivity-slowdow
       n.html

       March 5, 2016

       Silicon Valley Has Not Saved Us From a Productivity Slowdown
       By TYLER COWEN

       American middle class wages haven’t been rising as rapidly as they once were, and a slowdown in productivity growth is probably an important cause.

       In mature economies, higher productivity typically is required for sustained increases in living standards, but the productivity numbers in the United States have been mediocre. Labor productivity has been growing at an average of only 1.3 percent annually since the start of 2005, compared with 2.8 percent annually in the preceding 10 years. Without somehow improving productivity growth, living standards will continue to lag, this widely held narrative concludes…

       Professor Syverson notes that a slowdown has come to dozens of advanced economies, more or less at the same time, which indicates it is a general phenomenon. Furthermore, the countries with smaller tech sectors still have comparably sized productivity slowdowns, and that is not what we would expect if a lot of unmeasured productivity were hiding in the tech industry…

       The productivity slowdown is too big in scale, relative to the size of the tech sector, to be plausibly compensated for by tech progress. Basically, under a conservative estimate, as outlined by Professor Syverson, the productivity slowdown has led to a cumulative loss of $2.7 trillion in gross domestic product since the end of 2004; that is how much more output would have been produced had the earlier rate of productivity growth been maintained.

       When did Ben start his helicopter drops on the common US population? 2002?)

       • 

         Marie3 on March 6, 2016 at 11:31 pm

         A very complicated issue.  But of what use are productivity gains to the ordinary worker if all the profits from the gains go to the top 20% as has happened for the past two decades?

         Many years ago I suggested to my boss that we could automate a portion of the work we did most days.  (How large that portion was depended on how skilled the worker was and how often they performed the task.  One field guy told me that he’d spent two days doing what I could complete in two or three hours.)  Anyway, in response to my suggestion, my boss looked at me as if I were nuts and said, “Do you want to put us out of job?”  Being young and naive, I suggested all sorts of uses for the time all of us could save including reducing the number of hours we worked which in my mind in part of an improved lifestyle.  He was unpersuaded.

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           mino on March 7, 2016 at 10:33 am

           I’d say that profits are not what they used to be and even the plutocrats are having a hard time getting hold of them.  

           A few are beginning to be persuaded that a prostrate consumer economy without cash cannot be milked as well.

3. 

   Marie3 on March 6, 2016 at 11:13 pm

   This diary includes a commentary on Paul Krugman attacking Greider who has long reported/written about economic issues and that I respect.  So, doesn’t surprise me that Krugman would be a dick in his criticism of Greiger.

   • 

     mino on March 7, 2016 at 11:22 am

     Yes, an excellent list of sources for anyone who wants to  understand what has been happening to them.

4. 

   mino on March 8, 2016 at 6:23 pm

   Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics
   Trent H. Hamann, St. John’s University

   http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7EFBbYl5sukJ:ej.lib.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-s
   tudies/article/download/2471/2469+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us