This chart shows one of humanity's greatest modern accomplishments vox.com/2015/8/13/9145… http://t.co/QSxzps2i3Z—
Vox (@voxdotcom) August 13, 2015
Deirdre McCloskey on Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital, Changed the World
02 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, constitutional political economy, economic growth, economic history, liberalism Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact
The Great Fact simply stated
23 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
“The only people much better off than $3 [a day]…"—@DeirdreMcClosk. See how far we've come: buff.ly/1Bbh5N6 http://t.co/H1W0VGbI8D—
HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) June 12, 2015
Deirdre McCloskey’s speech on ‘Bourgeois Dignity’
03 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights, survivor principle Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, entrepreneurial alertness, industrial revolution, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact
What is the Great Fact?
31 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Fact
Developing countries’ share of economic activity increased from 20% of global GDP in 2000 to 40% in 2013—@JimKim_WBG http://t.co/QxqPkGjzvQ—
World Bank (@WorldBank) June 09, 2015
"Starvation worldwide is at an all-time low & falling…" —@DeirdreMcClosk. Data to explore: buff.ly/1G78cDt http://t.co/598P4mYdzH—
HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) June 09, 2015
Deirdre McCloskey on the Samaritan’s dilemma
30 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, income redistribution, industrial organisation, liberalism, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: Age of Innovation, bourgeoisie deal, capitalism and freedom, Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Equality lacks relevance if the poor are growing richer
17 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, liberalism Tags: capitalism and freedom, Deirdre McCloskey, life expectancies, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact, top 1%
And the rich got richer, who cares
16 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, economics of regulation, economics of religion, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, financial economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle, transport economics, urban economics Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, entrepreneurial alertness, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact, top 1%
"The rich got richer, true. But…" —@DeirdreMcClosk buff.ly/1Imdv4o http://t.co/M3ERx3JTIn—
HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) June 28, 2015
The Great Fact explained
11 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Fact
What happened when the rich got richer under capitalism?
23 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, poverty and inequality, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact, top 1%
Deirdre McCloskey on corruption and economic development
13 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of crime, growth disasters, growth miracles, law and economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: corruption, Deirdre McCloskey, The Industrial Revolution
Deirdre McCloskey on big bills on the sidewalk
08 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, market efficiency Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, efficient markets hypothesis, entrepreneurial alertness, forecasting
HT: Cafe Hayek
The Treason Of The Clerisy: Capitalism And The Intellectuals After 1848
02 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, Marxist economics Tags: capitalism and freedom, Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact
Deirdre McCloskey is of the view that the “the clerisy” has been, with notable exceptions, hostile to capitalism and downright contemptuous of the morals and attitudes of the middle class that has flourished under capitalism:
The Germans called it the Clerisei or later the Bildungsbürgertum, the cultivated and reading as against the commercial and bettering bourgeoisie. In the eighteenth century the members of the clerisy such as Voltaire and Tom Paine had courageously advocated our liberties.
But in the 1830s and 1840s a much enlarged clerisy, mostly the sons of bourgeois fathers, commenced sneering at the liberties the fathers exercised so vigorously in the market and the factory.
On the right the clerisy under the influence of Romance looked back with nostalgia to an imagined medieval time without markets, in which stasis and hierarchy ruled…
On the left, meanwhile, the clerisy, likewise influenced by Romance, and then by historical materialism, developed the illiberal idea that ideas do not matter.
What matters to progress, they declared, is the unstoppable tide of history, aided (they declared further, contradicting themselves) by protests or strikes or even violent revolutions directed at the thieving bourgeoisie, movements to be led of course by the clerisy.
Later, in European socialism and American progressivism, the left proposed to defeat bourgeois monopoly of markets by gathering under regulation or central planning or ownership of the means of production all the monopolies into one big monopoly of violence called the state.
Yet the commercial bourgeoisie so despised by the clerisy left and right made the Great Enrichment and the modern world.
The Enrichment gigantically improved our lives, showing that both social Darwinism and economic Marxism were mistaken. The genetically inferior races and classes and ethnicities proved not to be so. The exploited proletariat was not immiserised but enriched.
and
Forcing in an illiberal way the French style of equality of outcome, cutting down the tall poppies, treating people as sad children to be engineered by the experts of the clerisy, we have found, has often had a high cost in damaging liberty and slowing betterment. Not always, but often.
On the other hand, introducing the Scottish style of equality of liberty and dignity, as in Hong Kong and Norway and France itself, has regularly led to an astounding betterment and to a real equality of outcome—with even the poor acquiring automobiles and plumbing denied in earlier times even to the rich, and acquiring political rights and social dignity denied in earlier times to everyone except the rich
Why do economic consulting firms exist?
02 Feb 2015 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of information, financial economics, law and economics, managerial economics, organisational economics, survivor principle Tags: advice giving industries, corporate law, Deirdre McCloskey, directors duties, economic consultants
Directors’ duties are the reason why the companies hire economic consultants. What consultants say isn’t important; the fact that simply the directors of a company sought advice is what matters. Same goes for the public sector: you must know what you’re doing, you took advice from outside experts.
Central to avoiding being sued if the company goes broke, or otherwise gets into a spot of bother, is the directors show that they acted responsibly.
Central to this is they can show they took advice from esteemed advisers: an accountant, a lawyer and an economist. If they did so, they must be responsible prudent directors because they took advice.
Deirdre McCloskey argued that the advising industry lives off 19th century case law on directors’ and trustees’ duties.
If you take advice – from an accountant, a lawyer or an economist – and the business or investment still fails, it can’t be your fault that you lost the widow’s and orphans’s inheritance.
You took advice. That is what that 19th-century court held with regard to what directors do and do not have to do given the fact that are not involved in the business on a day to day basis.
James Burk, a sociologist and former stockbroker… found that the advice giving industry sprang from legal decisions in the early 19th century.
The courts began to decide that the trustee of the pension fund or a child’s inheritance could be held liable for bad investing if they did not take advice. The effect would have been the same had the court decided that prudent man should consult a Ouija boards or the flight of birds…
America decided through its courts than an industry giving advice on the stock market should come into existence, whether or not it was worthless.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter what you say as a consultant economist to a company, the fact you’ve said something to them is more important to them than what you are saying. Seeking and receiving your advice excused them from being sued for breach of their directors duties for a couple of days.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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