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A New Way to Learn Economics (newyorker.com)
John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker: With the new school year starting, there is good news for incoming students of economics -- and anybody else who wants to learn about issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change. A group of economists from both sides of the Atlantic, part of a project called CORE Econ, has put together a new introductory economics curriculum, one that is modern, comprehensive, and freely available online. In this country, many colleges encourage Econ 101 students to buy (or rent) expensive textbooks, which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more for some hardcover editions. The project is a collaborative effort that emerged after the world financial crisis of 2008-9, and the ensuing Great Recession, when many students (and teachers) complained that existing textbooks didn't do a good job of explaining what was happening. In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems.
This should be titled "Free Leftist Indoctrination"
I always thought the best way to learn econ was countless hours of Dopewars.
Sybill Trelawney will be your teacher.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"many colleges encourage Econ 101 students to buy (or rent) expensive textbooks, which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more"
at the bookstore.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Forbid our institutions of higher learning teach what works.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
https://www.newyorker.com/news... works for me so, since I don't pay any site for anything on internet, it should work for you.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"...who wants to learn about issues like inequality, globalization, and the most efficient ways to tackle climate change..."
That's not a list of economics subjects, that's a political agenda.
-Styopa
Cronyism. It's CRONYism, dammit! Sheesh, no wonder capitalism is so hard.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
[Golf clap].
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad"
The real adam smith decried capitalism as we understand it, the real adam smith was considered a radical in his time. It's nice how you try to claim adam smith but adam smith was against the kind of massive abuses going on throughout the world.
The real adam smith
The very fact that the first line of this article reads like the beginning of a manifesto for far left causes was the first warning sign. The fact that this tripe goes out of it's way to mention Marxist economics pretty much closes the case. Given the fact that Marxism is probably the worst way to run an economy and society that the human species has yet come up with.
Perhaps most damning is the very fact they spend more time in this article talking about how they're going to influence people than the pros and cons of this new teaching methodology. Good ideas don't need PR nearly as much as starting with your best ideas first than prove that they work with imperial evidence.
Oh wow! Did you know that there actually people who do that? Some absolutly refuse to buy when the market is down, but will give away the farm when it is up.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I'll just stick with playing this for my kids every Christmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Science and economics both corroborate the ideas that right wing ideologies promote. That's why leftists constantly require "safe spaces" to hide from reality in, especially at academic institutions. Their leftist beliefs don't hold up in reality, and that's why they must censor any ideas that don't conform to their faulty narrative. Those on the right don't need "safe spaces" or censorship because they know their ideas hold up perfectly well to extreme scrutiny and analysis, as these ideas are based in fact and and on observation, rather than being derived from feelings and ignorance like the beliefs of leftists are.
What works? Socialism ? BHAHAHAHAHHA
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
which can cost up to three hundred dollars, or even more
I love expressions like this. It encompasses any value from -infinity to +infinity, thus conveying absolutely no information whatsoever. It takes real skill to write something so vacuous.
Just flip a coin. No matter what position you want to take in economics some "expert" can be found to validate it.
What a bunch of drivel. We need more emphasis on free-market doctrines and how/why the system we have currently isn't. The more we try to add Marxist ideology to today's society, the more problems we introduce.
Allow me to point out some of the issues that make show how problematic the free-market ideology really is.
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This is not a "new way of learning economics," it's replacing it with propaganda.
Might as well replace your evolutionary biology classes with lysenkoism or creationism.
From the Article:
" In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems." Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad
To the contrary. For some reason, right-wingers never actually read Adam Smith; they just heard somewhere that he talked about the invisible hand, and they fail to pay attention to all of the many, many parts of Wealth of Nations in which he discusses ways that unregulated free markets fail without government intervention, and that some things can't possibly function well in the free market, so they need to be run by the government for the sake of the greater good.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
can't be taught it. If you haven't learned fundamental things like "there's no free lunch" by the time you turn 15, you're hopeless.
In a true "free market" everything is free and equally available to all participants at equal cost: most importantly knowledge.
False. This assumption assumes that all goods are of equal value and availability and cost the same to make everywhere. Hurricane Irma proved this to be false where normally supplied goods were simply not available. Free Markets allow for price changes to compensate people for supplying goods in short supply that are harder to get during certain circumstances. While we all hate gouging, price freezes keeps additional supply from entering that market, because the cost to bring those goods in isn't rewarded with higher prices. Which leads invariably to ... no supplies at all. (I will give a good example)
profit derived from trade available to merchants and so on is wholly due to the lack of a free market: where both products and information are not available to all participants.
Again, this is patently false. Profit is derived from providing a product or service as a price someone is willing to pay, sufficient to cover the cost of doing business with extra left over. (example following)
Hurricane is bearing down on Florida, government declares "No Price Gouging" (subjective term) and Cases of bottled water sell for the same price as the day before, and pretty soon, all supplies are gone. People buying WAY more water than they need (irrational), and others not able to get any water at any price. The price doesn't matter to those that don't have any water, or the people who have more than they need. Because "No Price Gouging" is the law, nobody is able to take a truck from Atlanta or New Orleans, fill it up with Cases of water and drive to Miami and sell water, because ... there is no "profit" in it at the "No Price Gouging" price (whatever that is)
In a free market, prices adjust to the market conditions. As supplies become rare, the price goes up, as supply is returned because there is higher profits, the price drops back to normal. The information doesn't change, what does change is irrational behavior (I'm buying 199 cases because!!!!) becomes more reasoned (I can't afford $40 case x 199 cases) and others who wanted water can now get the water they need. In the No Price Gouging world, there were no limits placed and plenty of people did without bottled water.
Yes, raw economics is void of any compassion. It is also without any passion. It just is. It accounts for pure rationality when that is the case, and pure irrationality when that is the case (see Dutch Tulip case) Eventually equilibrium happens.
The fact is, we don't live is a economically free environment, we already have plenty of interference and controls placed. And it is never enough. My last example is in regard for the case of Net Neutrality, instead of fixing the problem (government interference in free market, via Franchise agreements) we add in more government controls which won't do what proponents think it will do, and cause more issues than it actually solves. The real solution is to build out last mile in such a way that the free market offers people the services they want, at whatever price the market will bear. I want municipal owned infrastructure, but be able to order the services I want from the vendor of my choice, rather than have my only option be Comcast with Net Neutrality.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My thoughts exactly.
Either you're not replying to me, or you've failed to understand my post.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You can find economists that will say _anything_. It's called the 'dismal science' for a reason.
Who are the 'real economists'? The ones that agree with you?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not at all. Karl Marx and Adam Smith were both writing from the perspective of liberalism, i.e. the Enlightenment. Both failed because both are predicated on the belief of the tabula rasa myth, i.e. that all humans are rational and equally capable. Today, we know that ability is entirely genetic and that it follows a bell curve distribution. The minimum required intelligence to be a productive member of society continues to move to the right, while the overall intelligence distribution mean declines due to technology removing many selective pressures.
Most likely, this article is not about that subject however. In the West, nothing is more taboo. But elsewhere, this is not the case, especially with China.
It is understandable this is a problem in the West however, given the association with National Socialism in the Third Reich.
What are the solutions? I am not entirely sure.
If you will allow me a small rebuttal.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
-- Citation needed. If we bring back the risk to banking institutions and allow them to actually work in a free market, you won't have the huge bubbles that we do now. The collapse in 2008 was brought about because people like Maxine Watters and Al Franklin thought it best to remove the risk to banks to provide very risky home loans to people who should have never obtained them.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
-- Odd that the portions of healthcare that are only free market are far cheaper than the government regulated side. (laser eye surgery) The notion that the free market can't work in healthcare is to be blind to how it actually does work.
* Disaster events: according to the free-market ideology, we shouldn't help those who are now homeless because they did not pay for the proper insurance.
-- Yes, because the free market doesn't allow for charity?!? WTF.
* The prison system: according to the free-market ideology, private prisons should be attempting to maximize the number of inmates by any means. This results in a higher prison population with longer sentences. This is actually happening.
-- This is the one argument I will give you credit for. It really has become much like the fire departments of old. Where they would start fires just to respond to them to make money. I suspect the answer here is more of a change in attitude towards things like illicit drugs and such. Being a libertarian, I do find a need for a small government, and this is one area where I depart ways with my AnCap brethren.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
We need to emphasized the interconnection between the different parts like how workers wages become consumer's demand. Why inequality in income is the major reason why poor countries are poor.
It is important to understand that *no one* advocated a "free market" until the post-war era. You can always tell an economically illiterate person for claiming that is what Adam Smith advocated. It was in fact, the exact opposite.
There is a propaganda function for "free market" propaganda. It misdirects the attention of the people away from who truly has power.
Today, we know that ability is entirely genetic and that it follows a bell curve distribution.
Nothing could reveal a deeper lack of understanding about contemporary biology than that sentence. It simultaneously rejects our actual findings and betrays an erroneous confidence in the power of current methods, all without any apparent irony.
Under other circumstances I would feel compelled to say more, but the parent is either a troll or an ideologue and I don't want to waste the time.
.: Semper Absurda
While I agree that Marxism does not work, neither does the free market. The test of any economic system if it meets the needs of its people. Marxism or at least the communist versions of Marxism failed. Under these systems there were shortages of basic goods such as food and clothes.
Under the U.S. system, while we have plenty of food and clothes many people struggle to make ends meet. Our health care system is a failure with millions of people uninsured and many people with insurance who cannot afford medical care because of deductibles or copays. College is also unaffordable for many. So while we have plenty of food and clothes, many people cannot afford to meet their basic needs, especially when it comes to health care and education.
The systems that seem to work best are the hybrid systems that combine the free market and socialism, such as the Scandinavian. They use the free market where appropriate and they use socialism where appropriate thereby meeting the needs of all or almost all of their citizens.
* The 2008 collapse: according to the free-market ideology, we should have allowed all the banks to fail. The fallout from this would have been an actual depression.
So, instead of a year or three of depression and then a return to a healthier market, we get close to a decade (and still counting) of bitter recession. Plus, we are still set to repeat the collapse again and again, just in different industries/financial institutions as little of real relevance has changed because they weren't forced to and instead got bailouts at taxpayer expense.
* Healthcare: according to the free-market ideology, if you don't like what they are charging for medications or surgeries, you just don't buy it. This has resulted in the untimely death of sick people.
This is where in the past private charity stepped in, but those have mostly been replaced by government programs that are horribly inefficient, often fail to provide adequate care, and hold back medical care advances with government red tape.
* Disaster events: according to the free-market ideology, we shouldn't help those who are now homeless because they did not pay for the proper insurance.
Yeah, it was terrible in Houston with all those people who brought boats from across the US demanding cash payments up front and abandoning those who couldn't pay to die...oh, wait....
* The prison system: according to the free-market ideology, private prisons should be attempting to maximize the number of inmates by any means. This results in a higher prison population with longer sentences. This is actually happening.
Yeah, those roving bands of private-prison guards snatching people off the street and throwing them in prison must stop...oh, wait....
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
You're confusing and/or conflating capitalism with crony corruption, which is not unique to capitalism at all. Any sufficiently-large government based on any of the major ideologies (socialism, communism, fascism, capitalism) fall victim to the same corruption and 'good old boy'-ism. It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Neither of which alternatives deterred you from responding as if you had.
To be clear, teaching socialism is teaching failure. Teaching capitalism is teaching they only system demonstrated to be capable of improving the lives of common people.
Neither is perfect. One is oppressive and crushes the spirit. The other holds promise, demonstrated by recent attempts.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In a true "free market" everything is free and equally available to all participants at equal cost: most importantly knowledge.
False. This assumption assumes that all goods are of equal value and availability and cost the same to make everywhere.
There are a number of conditions required by perfect competition. I don't think you've said quite what you meant to say there.
rather than have my only option be Comcast with Net Neutrality.
Net neutrality has nothing to do with broadband competition.
the problem (government interference in free market
The real solution is to build out last mile in such a way that the free market offers people the services they want, at whatever price the market will bear. I want municipal owned infrastructure
Yeah, me too. I'm a bit of a socialist, so it makes sense. What schizophrenic crack pipe did you pick up on your way home from the Church of the Free Market?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
inequality
There is an ongoing debate in macroeconomics about the role of inequality. Does inequality impact growth, and if so negatively or positively? How do we measure inequality, and more generally distribution of resources? How do economic systems, and specific policy choices, influence the distribution of income and resources?
These are fundamental aspects of economic study.
globalization
Again...what is "globalization?" How do we measure it? How has it benefited or harmed different countries and different segments of society within countries? How do we measure that? Why have these effects been visited on these particular groups? Can we build quantitative models around these ideas? Do those models have predictive power? How can we measure their predictive power? How can we establish confidence in model outputs?
Especially given that there are conflicting viewpoints across the political spectrum, it's hard to see an inherent political aim in discussing this important contemporary economic movement (e.g. there are right-wing populists and left-wing populists who write that they oppose globalization, and right- and left-wing thinkers who favor globalization, in both cases often for different reasons).
climate change
How do different climate outlooks effect economic prospects? How does the existence of these outlooks effect economic behavior of individuals, firms, and nations? How do we measure climate risk? What are the economic effects of potential mitigation efforts? What level of risk should motivate what degree of mitigation cost, given various estimates of uncertainty? How can these ideas be placed in a quantitative framework? How can model output be assessed given the scale and ongoing nature of the topic? Are there past climatic events with known economic impacts? How do we measure those impacts? How do they compare to current data? And on and on.
It only takes a moment's reflection to note the importance of these questions, and their relevance to the study of economics. That's probably why there are economists from all over the world, and from all over the political spectrum, who spend their academic (or corporate) lives on just these ideas.
.: Semper Absurda
>> Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad
Uhm ... No. let me think about it ... No. Let me read it again ... NO!
The statement does NOT, again NOT, read "Read: Karl Marx good, Adam Smith Bad". It means just what it said, that is less emphasis on free market and more emphasis on how to solve real freaking problems. Period.
I think that you and the people that modded you up are the main reason why we long lost a problem solving approach to real world issues.
Please keep your nonsensical one liners to the twitter circles where they belong. Thanks.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
LOLwut? These were bought-and-paid-for politicians doing what their masters wanted, which was a bailout at taxpayer expense and with little change to how they do business, which was enabled by the same corrupt politicians to begin with.
It used to be that churches, benevolent organizations, and private charities filled the role of healthcare safety net before the massive expansion of government entitlement programs as regular people could afford to give to charities because they were not being taxed to the edge of insolvency to pay for bloated, corrupt, and hugely wasteful government entitlement programs and the massive bureaucracy that goes hand-in hand with them.
People voluntarily & freely gave of their money, time, and resources. It was the most "free market" possible.
People give more when they aren't forced under threat of deadly force or imprisonment as government "charity" is.
The basic idea of privatization is sound from an economic standpoint, the problem is with trying to implement such a system within a bloated, corrupt government that has grown far too large & powerful as the US government has.
I wrote what I meant. Crony corruption occurs in every form of government. There is 'crony-capitalism', 'crony-communism', 'crony-socialism', etc etc etc. As I stated in my previous post, it occurs when any government becomes too large & powerful. It is not endemic to capitalism, it is endemic to governments which have grown too large & powerful. "Free market" or not is irrelevant.
Well, not too long ago East Germany had this little tourist attraction called the "Berlin Wall". Maybe you've heard of it? I don't recall East Germany building it while they were a capitalist nation.
Selective memory, much?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So many PhDs in economics didn't learn Marx. That man had an impact and did such brilliant work that it illustrates how hollow and poor an economics education has become. Marx was a genius and his work was probably mostly valid but he is forever stained with his FLAWED work which was embraced and extended into big nightmares for the world. Most our economics has been build upon ignorant beliefs about human nature, not just Marx. Today we have a lot of science on humans so informed changes to economics can happen.... but does it? most the field is to pay lip service to the status quo-- which explains why they get bye without Marx; it's not a real education... (more like a theology degree. Yeah, I think nothing of how many angles fit on the head of a pin.) So even if Marx supported all the bad things that were build upon a portion of his work-- his work still is good and as a whole his impact is far too great to ignore. If something is wrong or a dangerous position you do not censor it or slander it, you LEARN and dismantle it logically -- see the flaw and learn to not repeat the mistakes.
No, I'm not a fan, I don't know much myself; but I oppose intellectual bankruptcy and it's spread.
We do similar things with the Nazi, etc. Their positions need to be learned and destroyed in a civil way so people actually understand why it is flawed and so dangerous. But we think it's so dangerous we only slander and shun it while those who lurk in the shadows spread the ideas we do not bring to light. Finding speeches of Hitler was impossible when I was young, they were censored except by the shunned supporters. The little I remember, I can see that the real reason probably wasn't fear of their persuasion but because of how it often reminds you of politicians today...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If economics should not be about these, then what should it be about? Genuine question.
Boring things like understanding how money circulates in an economy, supply and demand, why some economies succeed and others fail, MV=PQ, "Gresham's Law" and various other well-proved economics theory. In an economics 101 class, you should present stuff that is well established.
And tbh if people would get the idea that, "money has no intrinsic value, even if that money is backed by gold" that would already make economics discussions online more interesting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There is an ongoing debate in macroeconomics about the role of inequality.
It's not much of a debate......some economists wish they could prove inequality hurts economic growth, but they've been unsuccessful. If inequality does have an impact on economic growth, it's small enough that it's really hard to measure (getting lost in the noise).
Besides, if you want to research those things, get a PhD. Economics 101 should be teaching the basics, the well-established aspects of economics.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Right, because absolutely none of those are economic issues.
$DIETY, where do you people come from? You're so blinded by ideology that you don't even make sense.
~X~
The other good comparison on healthcare is veterinary care. Prices there aren't regulated. There is (generally) healthy competition between providers. If a provider is too expensive, people switch. This keeps prices lower and customer service higher.
And treatments for your dog or cat can often be more or less identical to those used on humans.
In Canada, you might have to wait 3-6 months for a specialized treatment for yourself thanks to socialized medicine. For your dog or cat, that identical procedure can be arranged within a few days. The service on the human side might be "free", but the service can be terrible.
(Of course, it's not really free. It's paid for by higher taxes. And then rationed, leading often to poor service and outcomes.)
There is no science to economics. It's all propaganda devised by the economic victors to ensure their continued success. People who enroll in a college to "learn" economics are being indoctrinated to think a certain rigid inflexible way that benefits a minority.
A new way to learn economics would be to eject the money-lenders from the classroom, but good luck trying to do that. Even Jesus never fully succeeded.
I just finished Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains". (https://history.duke.edu/book/democracy-chains) I recommend it highly to anyone who thinks the "free market" is the be-all and end-all of economics and economic politics. It is a heavily researched and footnoted, yet very readable account of how the "economic freedom" crowd is incrementally taking over the USA using diabolical strategies hatched over the past 70 years or so. My reading staple lies in the genre of mysteries, horror and the like, but I will say that MacLean's book is the scariest thing I have ever seen.
Hey y'all frogs: enjoy the warm bath!
Not many right-wing people believe in absolutely free markets;
And not many left-wing people believe in absolute Marxism.
It was a straw man from the start.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The core approach isn’t particularly radical. (Students looking for expositions of Marxian economics or Modern Monetary Theory will have to look elsewhere.) But it treats perfectly competitive markets as special cases rather than the norm, trying to incorporate from the very beginning the progress economists have made during the past forty years or so in analyzing more complex situations: when firms have some monopoly power; people aren’t fully rational; a lot of key information is privately held; and the gains generated by trade, innovation, and finance are distributed very unevenly. The core curriculum also takes economic history seriously.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
It would help first to understand that "tabula rasa" translates to "blank slate", literally. It is used in reference to the notion that all knowledge is acquired, not innately possessed. It has nothing to do with rationalism or ability, and it is certainly not a myth unless you are a crazy person. Second,
Today, we know that ability is entirely genetic and that it follows a bell curve distribution.
Nevermind, you are a crazy person. This idea while once, let's say circulated because popular isn't quite the right word, has been thoroughly discredited by pretty much all biological and neuroscience research of the last five decades (at least).
Most likely, this article is not about that subject however.
Indeed, you are correct about that. Maybe you should try reading it.
The real economists are the ones that are (or were before death) habitually correct in their predictions.
There have been more than a couple, like any other field. What you are actually thinking of is economics pundits. In physics there is a bunch of pundits saying cold fusion is right around the corner and so forth. Do you also criticize real physicists for the same bullshit reasons you are criticizing real economists? I thought not. The problem is that you dont know who the real economists are, not that there arent any. The problem is you.
"His name was James Damore."
You can also find physicists that will say _anything_, even ones who have made otherwise good contributions. Take Nikola Tesla for example.
That aside, economics is actually whats called a soft science, but it's by far not alone in having that title, mainly because economic theories rely heavily on another well known soft science: Psychology. In fact, all social sciences are soft sciences, because people are highly unpredictable animals.
Pretty much the only hard natural sciences are all of the physics and chemistry disciplines, with biology *somewhat* being a hard science, but equally a soft one at the same time (look at the controversy over what diet is the best diet, for example.)
It is not the proper role of government to make money.
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Feudalism (n) the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.
Really?
Dominantly capitalist systems tend to degrade toward socialism as two things combine forces: 1.The education system fails to maintain knowledge of the consequences of lack of freedom, and 2 Malicious zealots claiming that altruism is good blame capitalism for the problems caused by government and propose to fix the problems by increasing government control. This doesn't lead to feudalism (that's a truly silly idea), it leads to creeping socialism.
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Aha! Someone else who opposes liberty.
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One of the most significant books of economics from a right view is von Mises' Human Action. Therein, we may find that economic activities, like all activities, are based on human choices. It is human choices that drive economic actions, not economic decisions that drive human actions. In a disaster, people help others as a human choice, knowing that it makes their lives better. When helping in an emergency, economic consequences are not a leading consideration in the decision to help.
Looked at more narrowly, your "proper insurance" claim is silly from the standpoint of timing. Insurance pays off in weeks or months. Government's time frame varies, it guides people during the emergency and provides rescue on an hourly-daily basis, but recovery funds come no faster than insurance companies. Private individual and organized charity actions tend to come faster than government recovery funds, mostly because there's less hierarchy involved. Put succinctly, emergency response is unrelated to insurance.
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The site is www.core-econ.org. I don't know how a story gets written about a cool new free online economics course which you can do right now for free online... and doesn't provide a link to the course.
Microeconomics, the study of individual and business choices to optimize the use of scarce resources (i.e. all resources), the role of supply and demand in setting prices.
Macroeconomics, the study of the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. (wikipedia).
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Those 3 issues are primarily political, and until a person has spent at least a year studying economics, he's not knowledgeable enough to make sense of the economic aspects of those issues. If they're introduced before the student is capable of handling them mathematically, we can be reasonably sure that they will be introduced in a manner that elicits an emotional response.
Oh, the poor! Economics must do something for them. (Or economics must prove that they're victims)
Oh, globalization! Unfair competition (or send all your money to poor countries)
Oh, climate change! Economics must prove that a strong economy will drown us all which will cause a weak economy and everyone will starve
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This is an interesting point, how does it actually work? Who creates demand and supply in the healthcare "market"? How many demand side actors in this market are actually able to come to a reasonably informed decision regarding their needs or form an opinion regarding the quality of the products and services offered by suppliers? Have you ever noticed the difference between say cars or health, where in the former if you are not satisfied with supply or can't afford any of the offerings, you can decide to not buy a car, where in some instances of the latter you'll die if you can't afford what supply can offer or is simply crap? Furthermore, supply side actors can actually create demand, not in the marketing sense by advertising, by making you sick.
To make a long story short: Healthcare is nothing like other markets and shouldn't be a market at all.
I feel so sig.
It is not a problem of jealousy (I think you meant envy, actually), but rather a problem of the people at the top not contributing, by way of tax evasion, investment scams and other methods to ensure they pay very little taxes, or none at all.
I do not have a problem with people having a lot of money, as long as they acknowledge their privilege, and contribute their determined fair share to the continued existence of a healthy society, where no one has to starve, live on the street or forego even basic medical attention. This is not done by sequestering vast sums away in tax shelters, exploiting your employees nor any other antisocial action commonly undertaken by the wealthy elite.
Eat the rich.
Adam Smith even came up with the idea of unconditional basic income, which is like kryptonite to modern day libertarians.
Eat the rich.
I don't agree capitalism is an 'economic system'.
It's what happens when people have economic freedom.
Which means people are allowed to keep the fruits of their labor.
So they will invest in productivity, which they need capital for.
Improving productivity is how we improve our quality of life.
The system they're talking about includes government meddling, which always ends badly.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Your post reads like someone who didn't make it past the first page of Wealth of Nations and could do with another go.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm not touting marxism, I'm just pointing out that capitalism isn't good everywhere like you seem to think it is.
Milton Friedman even said the Free Market Enterprise system is far from perfect and we should endeavor to make it better. He challenged critics to present a better system. To my knowledge, no one has ever done so.
We'll make great pets
Has there ever been a slashdot discussion with a high SNR?
...it's a game. It always has been, always will be. Most it is common sense math. If you want to get more advanced, read about Economic Game Theory. There are winners and losers. It's not a non-zero sum game. The winners are the ones who know best how to play the game to their advantage much like the old game of Monopoly. If you don't try to win, you're guaranteed to lose.
Life has always been a game of competition. Competition for resources, competition for mates and now with free market economics, it's competition for resources in the form of monetary value. Same as it always was.
We'll make great pets
To make a long story short: Healthcare is nothing like other markets and shouldn't be a market at all.
Your argument at face value would apply to many things like food, water, housing, electricity, etc. But in reality "healthcare" is a very broad term... Tylenol for a headache is not an essential need that you'll die without. In most respects healthcare is just like every other market, especially in broad strokes. For instance if we make it easier for doctors to get into business by creating more medical schools and allowing more visas for foreign doctors, doctor salaries will fall. Healthcare is enough of a market that you can predict that.
mod up
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
MBS was a result of the easy loans. The government mandated shit loans, those in the business saw it and made mass smack betting on the known eventual failure.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Milton Friedman even said the Free Market Enterprise system is far from perfect and we should endeavor to make it better. He challenged critics to present a better system. To my knowledge, no one has ever done so.
Uhh... what do you call regulation? Besides, the free-market ideology is inappropriate in any area where the customer has no choice. You don't shop around for the best deal when the doctor says you need a quadruple bypass immediately or you are likely to die.
So yeah, there are a LOT of systems better than the free market, it just depends on the context.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
These were bought-and-paid-for politicians doing what their masters wanted, which was a bailout at taxpayer expense and with little change to how they do business
Then shouldn't the first order of business be campaign finance reform?
Citation needed because people are still dying because they can't afford medication.
It used to be that churches, benevolent organizations, and private charities filled the role of healthcare safety net before the massive expansion of government entitlement programs as regular people could afford to give to charities because they were not being taxed to the edge of insolvency to pay for bloated, corrupt, and hugely wasteful government entitlement programs and the massive bureaucracy that goes hand-in hand with them.
That is not a citation, it's a claim.
People give more when they aren't forced under threat of deadly force or imprisonment as government "charity" is.
Citation needed. In order to match taxes, the rich would have to give away waaaay more than anyone else. Some of them do but to my knowledge the vast majority are not so liberal with their money.
The basic idea of privatization is sound from an economic standpoint,
And if the world were purely economics, it would be great. However, the world isn't pure economics because lives are at stake.
the problem is with trying to implement such a system within a bloated, corrupt government that has grown far too large & powerful as the US government has.
Are you claiming that they would not be trying to maximize the number of inmates if the government were smaller? I would love to read the argument for that.
Crony corruption occurs in every form of government. ... It is not endemic to capitalism, it is endemic to governments which have grown too large & powerful.
Yes, corruption occurs in all governments. Then why not see to root out the corruption rather than thinking it will magically go away with fewer people involved?
It's just that at least with capitalism, there probably aren't automated machine gun turrets, concrete walls, moats, and barbed wire to prevent leaving.
Well, not too long ago East Germany had this little tourist attraction called the "Berlin Wall".
I recall... they didn't have automated machine gun turrets because those are still fictional weaponry. Also, that's a single instance out of thousands of years of governments.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
But 97 out of 100 economists agree ... it's settled science.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Nearly EVERY issue is ultimately an economic one. You have no credible argument there.
If you believe that the coverage of these issues by this textbook is going to be simply descriptive and objective, instead of subjective and prescriptive, I have some land in Florida I'd like to sell you.
To suggest that these items need to be covered in the BASICS (this is Econ 101, remember) and to have all these mentioned together explains quite clearly that the authors are going to have a 'stance' presented on each of these issues. I'm not blinded by ideology, you're simply either being naive or disingenuous.
-Styopa
Milton Friedman even said the Free Market Enterprise system is far from perfect and we should endeavor to make it better. He challenged critics to present a better system. To my knowledge, no one has ever done so.
Uhh... what do you call regulation?
There has always been some amount of regulation in free market economics, Milton Friedman even acknowledged this. Watch the video about the Ford Pinto. A liberal calls for the Ford Pinto to be recalled. Milton Friedman argues let the consumer decide whether they want to take the risk and that what's at issue is whether the producer adequately discloses all the information to allow the consumer to make an informed choice. Not doing so is fraud. If no consumers choose the product, the market has sorted out the problem. Having laws against things like fraud is a form of regulation. You'd like to think Libertarians are anarchists or support completely unregulated Capitalism but that's simply not true. That's just misinformation and demagoguery.
We'll make great pets
Though AC, this should be modded up. My perception is very few people know about economics, examples are larger numbers of people in debt, many companies and govt agencies just don't seem to explain budget problems. Though some like Google and FB do well, but for them it ain't economic brilliancy, they just happen to set up a business and the money comes rolling in so they can hire a bunch of people and have them go hog wild spending money on all kinds of projects (some are interesting but these people simply have access to "free money" so they can do whatever they want).
And as you set example, the first arguments are communists vs. capitalists. How many people really know how to read and interpret financial spreadsheets?
mfwright@batnet.com
Your argument at face value would apply to many things like food, water, housing, electricity, etc.
You are beginning to get the picture.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Anyone commenting here on the value of this book actually reading it ? I've read through the first four chapters, and have an old MA in political economics. I'm finding this to be excellent, and a decent intro to general economics. Excellent work.
If anyone seriously believed that would be the case, they wouldn't have voted for the bailouts.
Thus the Tea Party Revolution of 2010.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Milton Friedman argues let the consumer decide whether they want to take the risk and that what's at issue is whether the producer adequately discloses all the information to allow the consumer to make an informed choice. Not doing so is fraud.
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
You'd like to think Libertarians are anarchists or support completely unregulated Capitalism but that's simply not true. That's just misinformation and demagoguery.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent and when all else fails you claim it's "big government"'s fault that XYZ happens. The truth is that corporations are systems that are optimized to extract money from people and the more sociopathic a person is, the more successful they can become by doing what others may consider objectionable. After several cycles of job replacements, you end up with people controlling corporations without empathy. The result is that corporations are extremely opportunistic, quick to exploit and will do anything to avoid responsibility. So when you say it can be done better by private business, you mean you are trusting a sociopaths to do what is in your interest, somehow thinking it's also in there interest when the truth is that their only interest is getting the most money by investing the least amount of work and resources. This is good in theory until you realize they will cut every corner and promote bad customer outcome (including unnecessary deaths) if it means they will get more money. GM saved $0.53 cents on every car and all they had to do was sacrifice the lives of dozens of people. Equifax blames open source for their security woes but didn't invest a dime into investigating if the applications were secure. Corporations don't give a shit about people.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
That may be, but the burden is on you or your elected officials to substantiate the claim and hold them accountable. We are all afforded the same rights of due process of law.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent
No honest Libertarian ever said corporations are all inherently benevolent or malign. That's intellectually dishonest. Corporations are however mostly focused on self interest, as we all are. Be honest, the change you want is based on your own self interest. You want to tip the scales in your favor. There is no noble moral crusade there. You are merely representing a different different competing interest from your subjective perspective. What we are all doing is trying to find compromise among all these competing interests. How's big government working in that regard? Please supply evidence for your claim.
We'll make great pets
Corporations don't give a shit about people.
That may be but I'll tell you what, the government doesn't either. So now what? Shall we complain incessantly about the failure of corporations and governments or shall we take personal responsibility for our own country?
We'll make great pets
"free-market ideology"
The free market is what happens when you take ideology away
Intelligence is determined at least 50% by genetics and the rest by environmental factors
While there is a genetic factor to be sure, I doubt that number you have cited. It is very hard to quantify these things, and it depends to a large extent on how you do the measurement. It also depends on how heavily you rely on correlation to imply heritability. For example, it was once believed that trade skills, like shipbuilding, were heritable traits because one could clearly observe a hereditary correlation among the shipbuilding trade: sons of shipbuilders often went on to become shipbuilders themselves. What was overlooked, of course, was that sons were more likely to learn the family trade and stick with that then they were to strike out and try to do something different. It is very difficult to reduce complex human behaviors to genetic loci. The eugenics crowd relied heavily on correlation as their source of evidence, but it is not sufficient for demonstrating heritability.
those environmental factors are what are called "non-shared" environment
Not necessarily. First, what you need to do is put the same person in two different environments and measure that. But of course you can't actually do that, so instead current research does what you describe where they attempt to normalize environment and look at probabilistic distributions among individuals, but in reality that is a very problematic setting to do science. Whatever you conclude from your study has to take into account that your control and study groups have multiple, probably dependent, non-random and non-uniformly distributed variables. Second, whichever method may be relevant in academic circles, but is fairly useless in a practical sense. You can define intelligence in some arbitrary way and then devise a test for it, but what is more important is understanding the implications. What we call intelligence in practice and ascribe to a person's success or ability rarely has anything to do with IQ as it is measured academically.
where for example identical twins raised together don't have exactly the same environment and it is the "non-shared" environment that contributes to their difference in IQ
This is a good example. You are assuming that identical twins, nominally genetically identical although that is known to not actually be the case, are the appropriate benchmark for determining the role of genetics. They are not. Aside from obvious statistical problems--a sample size of 2 is not statistically significant--the relevant metric to determine whether there is a genetic basis for something is heritability. The question you need to be asking is, "What is the IQ of the parents?" and "Is that IQ heritable"? The answer to that last question is no. IQ between parent and child may be correlated, but that does not equate to heritability. True heritability means we can identify specific genetic loci that determine IQ. So far, while there have been many attempts (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/science/52-genes-human-intelligence.html?_r=0), nobody has succeeded in finding truly deterministic genetic factors for IQ.
Moreover, there is no evidence that any environmental effect can raise a person's intelligence in the long term, only prevent them from achieving their genetic potential.
There is also no evidence that anybody anywhere has come close to reaching their genetic potential, so it is really hard to draw any conclusions from this alone.
I think your definition misses that tabula rasa denies that people have innate tendencies and that different people have different innate tendencies
No, really it doesn't. Tabula rasa, as written by John Locke, means one specific thing: that knowledge is learned. That is it. It has nothing to with innate tendencies or abilities or aptitudes. The philosophy was conceived to rebut the then popular belief in predestina
Not the one you think I'm getting, I suspect.
Corporations don't give a shit about people.
That may be but I'll tell you what, the government doesn't either.
The difference is that the government is not rewarded for cutting corners so they don't cut corners until it hurts.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Corporations don't give a shit about people.
That may be but I'll tell you what, the government doesn't either.
The difference is that the government is not rewarded for cutting corners so they don't cut corners until it hurts.
And your point is? What is the value of making this type of statement to me? Look, I get it. You have what you consider to be some morally superior philosophy. Do you know how many people are running around making this claim and their claims are all different? It's like religion. We have thousands of flavors of religion all claiming to be the best objective morality and yet they all differ. What is the value of that? Do you think that is ever going to be resolved? If so, how? The human race has grappled with this since the dawn of human civilization and yet here we are without a solution. Do you still think you're intellectually superior? If so, fix it. Or you could just get over that the world is not perfect and never has been and do the best you can with the one life you get to live. Your choice.
We'll make great pets
Then every current corporation is currently guilty of fraud on a massive scale because they strictly limit the amount of information about their product.
That may be, but the burden is on you or your elected officials to substantiate the claim and hold them accountable. We are all afforded the same rights of due process of law.
This is exactly why we need regulation which was my point. You are making my point, not disproving it.
No, I simply think that libertarians use naive reasoning in their logic using the assumption that corporations are benevolent
No honest Libertarian ever said corporations are all inherently benevolent or malign. That's intellectually dishonest.
When constructing any system, you should always assume that parts of it may behave improperly thus you should assume that corporations are going to act malevolently. You don't build robust systems by assuming everything is going to do what it claims.
Corporations are however mostly focused on self interest, as we all are. Be honest, the change you want is based on your own self interest. You want to tip the scales in your favor.
Actually, no, I'm not. I want what is best for all people, not just the people that can afford it. I want the human race to succeed as a whole, not small segments of it. I'm not interested in getting a big fancy house or a shiny new thing by taking from or exploiting other people. That kind of thinking is what has gotten our world into it's current position. I'm not looking to build a utopia, just something that is better than what we have now.
You are merely representing a different different competing interest from your subjective perspective. What we are all doing is trying to find compromise among all these competing interests.
No, I'm afraid not everyone thinks the way you do.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The difference is that the government is not rewarded for cutting corners so they don't cut corners until it hurts.
And your point is?
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it. What I'm saying is that privatizing everything is not a good idea because the profit motive can encourage working against the interest of the people.
What is the value of making this type of statement to me?
As I understand it, Libertarians seek to minimize government because they believe businesses will result in a superior outcome and minimize waste. What I'm trying to explain is that this train of thought is flawed.
Look, I get it. You have what you consider to be some morally superior philosophy.
This isn't about morality, it's about what is best for the people.
you could just get over that the world is not perfect and never has been and do the best you can with the one life you get to live.
I'm trying to do what's best for all people because the world is not perfect. I'm trying to help people, not just myself.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You have to look at the benefit they've gained from growing up in a supportive society, with extensive services such as public health, education and infrastructure. These people in their high-paying positions have almost universally reaped the benefits of higher education, sometimes decades of it. They've benefited from a society where you can afford to take chances, because there is a reasonably robust social safety net. They've reaped the benefits of a healthy labor market, where it is easy to hire people and similarly easy to lay off people when needed, with reasonably justification of course. They've reaped the benefits of well-educated and highly-competent workers, thanks to a world-class public education system.
The vast majority of them would not be in their current positions, had they not had the benefit of growing up in a supportive society. that is why they should pay their fair share, to support that same society and make success easier for future generations. By fair share, I mean the set tax rate, without exploiting loopholes for tax dodging and evasion.
Personally, I think progressive taxation is best, but even with a flat tax rate (and reasonable deductions for the lowest income levels), as long as the rich actually pay their damn taxes, that's good enough for me.
They'll still be able to live very comfortable lives in significantly more luxury than the average person. The tax evasion and dodging that they are currently doing is simple sociopathic greed, nothing more.
Eat the rich.
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it.
I think you meant corporations but you're precisely correct. Everyone is free to decide what they want to do within the bounds of the laws of the land. No one can be forcefully coerced to do anything. You seem to favor forceful coercion. I hope you know what that means because when you put those types of policies in place they aren't selectively applied in your favor.
We'll make great pets
My point is that when government does something that they do not have the incentive to do things that are not in your favor in order to profit from it.
I think you meant corporations
No, corporations only have one incentive, money. They have no quibbles about fucking you over in the process of getting more money.
For example, a for-profit corporation that does dialysis also discourages patients from getting a kidney transplant while omitting the fact that a kidney transplant would likely improve your quality, lengthen your lifespan while ultimately costing less. The reason for this? The more patients they treat, the more money they get. That's not hypothetical, it's actually still happening.
You seem to favor forceful coercion.
Not at all. I'm against incentivising people to hurt me when their objective is supposed to be helping me. Behavior is determined by feedback loops and money is a strong feedback loop. This is why you don't pay firefighters based on the number of fires the put out because it's been shown that's a quick way to start having them commit arson.
You need to stop thinking in ideological terms in start thinking in terms of motive (aka feedback loops). Also, don't delude yourself into believing laws will prevent bad behavior when there is a strong motive to break those laws.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Keep telling yourself that. Name one economist that's consistently right?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The veil is directly tied to economics
The fuel monopolists have managed to hide hundreds of billions per year of subsidies in tax laws as in "3 wars for oil in 70 years" each costing trillions has never been reflected directly in oil prices
This ECONOMIC effect is why there is global warming, as efficiency and alternative energy have been forced to compete with the entire tax based war machine.
Your first point is almost a good one, but the last three lines give away the game - you're the politician here.
Real incomes in the US have matched their 1999 levels only this year. That fact represents a radical departure from all postindustrial economic behavior, but to you if students or professors want to talk about why that is - from any perspective - they're already too "political" and should be silenced. Be serious.
.: Semper Absurda