Mankiw's characterisation of left versus right
economists illustrate the technique of framing
discourse in such a way that it is conceptually
impossible to seriously discuss
important issues. Notice there is no mention of
capitalism or socialism in any of the different
characterisations.
I would consider that the most important group of
leftist economists are socialists. At best Mankiw's
leftists are progressive "liberals" but who basically
support the capitalist system and haven't the
slightest
intension of replacing it, at most they want to make
it more humane etc.
In describing left versus right the ownership of
the means of production or class relationships do not
even come up. I conclude that Mankiw's typology is
pure ideology that is ideal for an impoverished realm
of discourse that is entrenched in economic discourse
in advanced capitalist societies.
A similar poverty-stricken dualism is evident in
political discourse between liberal and conservative
or at the party level between Democrat and Republican
in the US.
--- Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Wednesday, December 12, 2007 [by Greg "I worked for
> Dubya" Mankiw]
> How do the right and left differ?
> The conclusion of today's ec 10 lecture:
> In today's lecture, I have discussed a number of
> reasons that
> right-leaning and left-leaning economists differ in
> their policy
> views, even though they share an intellectual
> framework for analysis.
> Here is a summary. [I replaced his asterisks with
> "GM," while my
> comments are labelled "JD."]
>
> JD: first of all, I should not that Mankiw is only
> talking about one
> dimension of the political spectrum. I'd define left
> vs. right in
> terms of class, with the left siding with the poor
> and working classes
> and the right siding with Mankiw's employers. This
> left vs. right
> mostly coincides with democracy vs. dictatorship.
> There's also a
> centralized vs. decentralized spectrum, which is
> what Mankiw mostly
> describes. Finally, there's the tradition vs.
> modernism spectrum.
>
> GW: The right sees large deadweight losses
> associated with taxation
> and, therefore, is worried about the growth of
> government as a share
> in the economy. The left sees smaller elasticities
> of supply and
> demand and, therefore, is less worried about the
> distortionary effect
> of taxes.
>
> JD: Mankiw implicitly assumes that taxes "distort"
> markets, i.e., that
> the markets were "perfect" ahead of time. He
> assumes, for example,
> that no deadweight loss arises from the business
> sector. But even in
> the simplest neoclassical theory, it can do so:
> monopolies and
> monopsonies impose deadweight losses.
>
> GW: The right sees externalities as an occasional
> market failure that
> calls for government intervention, but sees this as
> relatively rare
> exception to the general rule that markets lead to
> efficient
> allocations. The left sees externalities as more
> pervasive.
>
> JD: This might be right, i.e. that the difference is
> empirically-based. But it should be mentioned that
> the right also
> likes to use methodological fiat to rule out the
> role of an important
> class of externalities, the pecuniary ones. They'd
> like to ignore such
> events as towns being destroyed economically when
> the major employer
> shuts down its operations, along with the Keynesian
> multiplier effect
> and the like.
>
> GW: The right sees competition as a pervasive
> feature of the economy
> and market power as typically limited both in
> magnitude and duration.
> The left sees large corporations with substantial
> degrees of monopoly
> power that need to be checked by active antitrust
> policy.
>
> JD: This defines the "left" as antitrust liberals.
> It ignores those of
> us who want to replace the capitalist monopoly on
> political power
> (unless we make a big noise) with real democracy,
> both in politics and
> in the economy.
>
> GW: The right sees people as largely rational,
> doing the best the can
> given the constraints they face. The left sees
> people making
> systematic errors and believe that it is the
> government role's to
> protect people from their own mistakes.
>
> JD: The right's notion of "rationality" is close to
> tautological:
> rationality involves people doing what they want to
> do. Individual
> preferences are taken for granted and unexplained. A
> heroin addict is
> "rational" according to the right-wing economists.
> Further,
> "rationality" is totally an individual thing that
> can be expressed
> only in markets. This forgets the role of social
> values, which
> typically cannot be expressed through markets (no
> matter how rational
> they are) but can be expressed via democracy.
>
> GW: The right sees government as a terribly
> inefficient mechanism for
> allocating resources, subject to special-interest
> politics at best and
> rampant corruption at worst. The left sees
> government as the main
> institution that can counterbalance the effects of
> the
> all-too-powerful marketplace.
>
> JD: Again, this "left" is the liberals. It ignores
> the left which
> wants to end the artificial distinction between the
> state (government)
> and the "market" and to subordinate both of these to
> democracy.
>
> GW: There is one last issue that divides the right
> and the left --
> perhaps the most important one. That concerns the
> issue of income
> distribution. Is the market-based distribution of
> income fair or
> unfair, and if unfair, what should the government do
> about it? That is
> such a big topic that I will devote the entire next
> lecture to it.
>
> JD: Is it a "market-based distribution of income"?
> Not according to
> the standard economics which Mankiw professes to
> profess. Standard
> neoclassical economics starts with the distribution
> of _assets_. Then
> the market results reflect that distribution (along
> with differences
> in preferences). At this point, we should bring in
> non-standard
> economics: those with the most assets benefit most
> from the market.
> This allows them to accumulate more assets, so that
> they benefit even
> more from the market. This kind of snowballing
> inequality of
> asset-ownership (and power) can be seen happening
> during the last 27
> or so years of US economic history.
>
> Jim Devine / "The conventional view serves to
> protect us from the
> painful job of thinking." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
>
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
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