Thanks again to Tom Walker for the links. I'm astonished by Bernanke's smug naivete. But I'll comment on that another time. Today I call your attention to the nonsense of Tyler Cowan on a directly related issue, income inequality and secular stagnation. (Cowan makes me rethink tenure.)
In this link, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/upshot/readers-turn-its-not-the-productivity-its-the-plutocracy.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150407&nlid=9633259&tntemail0=y&abt=0002&abg=1 In that piece I found Tyler Cowan as of July quoted as saying: “If today we had a rate of technological innovation comparable to say 1890-1930, the middle class and the poor would benefit tremendously from those new goods and services. Income inequality might go up or down but we could stop worrying so much about it. “That earlier period brought such innovations as electricity, the automobile, radio, the airplane, basic advances in public health, and much better fertilizers, among many others. In more recent times we’ve had a lot of innovations in the manipulation and storage of information, but this just hasn’t benefited ordinary lives as much.” On the contrary: That period, 1890-1930, did have an astonishingly high rate of technological innovation which drove unemployment up, income equality down, wiped out much of American agriculture and directly fed into the Great Depression. The 1920s were a decade of high unemployment, farmers losing their acres to bank foreclosure, and a peak in income inequality. (The banks later folded as well, for the properties weren't worth much.) The period 1920 to 1940 was twenty years of secular stagnation -- 20 years! -- which might have continued for another twenty without the stimulus of WW II. Bernanke comes off in the debates with Larry Summers almost as clueless as Tyler Cowan. Gene On Apr 4, 2015, at 12:00 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Send pen-l mailing list submissions to > [email protected] > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > [email protected] > > You can reach the person managing the list at > [email protected] > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of pen-l digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: pen-l Digest, Vol 2586, Issue 1 (Eugene Coyle) > 2. Re: pen-l Digest, Vol 2586, Issue 1 (Tom Walker) > 3. Je ne suis pas marxiste (Angelus Novus) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2015 12:28:31 -0700 > From: Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Pen-l] pen-l Digest, Vol 2586, Issue 1 > To: Pen-l Pen-L <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > On Apr 2, 2015, at 12:00 PM, Tom Walker wrote: > >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> >> Message: 6 >> Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2015 07:39:08 -0700 >> From: Tom Walker <[email protected]> >> Subject: [Pen-l] Economists discover the world! >> To: PEN-L list <[email protected]> >> Message-ID: >> <CANz+BQzB5W45S+Ek+7xQJVh=jN9=ht_3gfybxnzcvv5zbaq...@mail.gmail.com> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" >> >> There is a buzz on the econoblogosphere about the debate about secular >> stagnation between Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers and Paul Krugman. Jared >> Bernstein breathlessly sums up the excitement: "we've made important >> diagnostic progress here by bringing the international dimension... into >> the discussion." >> >> You mean to tell me that up to now economists have left out the >> international dimension? >> >> -- >> Cheers, >> >> Tom Walker (Sandwichman) >> -------------- next part -------------- >> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... >> URL: >> http://lists.csuchico.edu/pipermail/pen-l/attachments/20150402/1f72af9e/attachment-0001.html >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> > > I looked for the buzz and didn't find the specific items Tom Walker refers > to, but I did find some exchanges about the diagnosis of secular stagnation > by the buzzers. (buzzards?) > > I was struck by how obvious it is that they all have an underlying foundation > of existing full employment as they analyze the economy. It is all about > adjusting the equilibrium from one spot to another, whether it is where the > demand for money curve crosses the supply of money curve and/or where the > demand for anything shifts from Europe to Asia or North America. It is all > equilibrium, all the time. > > And these are the big name economists, utterly baffled by what's going on. > They differ only in the need for stimulus vs the need for liquidity. Or in > one case, the need to do nothing. > > Gene > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 14:01:48 -0700 > From: Tom Walker <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Pen-l] pen-l Digest, Vol 2586, Issue 1 > To: Progressive Economics <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <CANz+BQxiJ3iyeRJ=goosp4beslho+l_mhfdro5qkft4krsb...@mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Here is the link to Jared Bernstein's post, which links to the others: > http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/full-employment-trade-deficits-and-the-savings-glut-a-fascinating-debate-in-the-macro-blogosphere/ > > And these big names are the best of a bad lot. > > On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 12:28 PM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On Apr 2, 2015, at 12:00 PM, Tom Walker wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> Message: 6 >>> Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2015 07:39:08 -0700 >>> From: Tom Walker <[email protected]> >>> Subject: [Pen-l] Economists discover the world! >>> To: PEN-L list <[email protected]> >>> Message-ID: >>> <CANz+BQzB5W45S+Ek+7xQJVh=jN9= >> [email protected]> >>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" >>> >>> There is a buzz on the econoblogosphere about the debate about secular >>> stagnation between Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers and Paul Krugman. Jared >>> Bernstein breathlessly sums up the excitement: "we've made important >>> diagnostic progress here by bringing the international dimension... into >>> the discussion." >>> >>> You mean to tell me that up to now economists have left out the >>> international dimension? >>> >>> -- >>> Cheers, >>> >>> Tom Walker (Sandwichman) >>> -------------- next part -------------- >>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... >>> URL: >> http://lists.csuchico.edu/pipermail/pen-l/attachments/20150402/1f72af9e/attachment-0001.html >>> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >> >> I looked for the buzz and didn't find the specific items Tom Walker refers >> to, but I did find some exchanges about the diagnosis of secular stagnation >> by the buzzers. (buzzards?) >> >> I was struck by how obvious it is that they all have an underlying >> foundation of existing full employment as they analyze the economy. It is >> all about adjusting the equilibrium from one spot to another, whether it is >> where the demand for money curve crosses the supply of money curve and/or >> where the demand for anything shifts from Europe to Asia or North America. >> It is all equilibrium, all the time. >> >> And these are the big name economists, utterly baffled by what's going >> on. They differ only in the need for stimulus vs the need for liquidity. >> Or in one case, the need to do nothing. >> >> Gene >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > -- > Cheers, > > Tom Walker (Sandwichman) > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.csuchico.edu/pipermail/pen-l/attachments/20150403/74a2f037/attachment-0001.html > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2015 15:32:04 +0000 (UTC) > From: Angelus Novus <[email protected]> > Subject: [Pen-l] Je ne suis pas marxiste > To: "[email protected]" > <[email protected]> > Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>, Progressive > Economics <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > Michael Heinrich argues that Marx was not after a ?Marxism? as an > identity-defining ?truth.? Rather, he was more interested in the critical > business of undermining certainties. > > > https://libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Eje-ne-suis-pas-marxiste%E2%80%9C > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://lists.csuchico.edu/pipermail/pen-l/attachments/20150404/d69f12c8/attachment-0001.html > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > > End of pen-l Digest, Vol 2588, Issue 1 > ************************************** _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
