From http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2004/12/progressives_di.html
What would @AOC @oxfam @Greenpeace @berniesanders @Greens @NZGreens choose?
15 Sep 2020 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics, history of economic thought, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, Joseph Schumpeter, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, minimum wage, occupational choice, occupational regulation, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, survivor principle, unemployment, unions Tags: The fatel conceit, The Great Enrichment
The Keynesian vision of macroeconomic policy
05 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, organisational economics Tags: forecasting errors, Keynesian macroeconomics, leads and lags on monetary policy, The fatel conceit, The pretence to knowledge
A market economy is subject to fluctuations which need to be corrected, can be corrected, and therefore should be corrected
Franco Modiglani
Milton Friedman’s vision is far more circumspect because of the limits on the information people have and their ability to update that information. His critique has nothing to do with his views on macroeconomics:
The central problem is not designing a highly sensitive [monetary] instrument that offsets instability introduced by other factors [in the economy], but preventing monetary arrangements becoming a primary source of instability…
Keynesians have a host of metaphors in their rhetorical arsenal; one frequently voiced is that a wise government should “lean against the wind” when choosing policy. Friedman jumped on this:
We seldom know which way the economic wind is blowing until several months after the event, yet to be effective, we need to know which way the wind is going to be blowing when the measures we take now will be effective, itself a variable date that may be a half year or a year or two from now. Leaning today against next year’s wind is hardly an easy task in the present state of meteorology
Friedman’s remarks, as even his strong critics admit, strike at the heart of any activist stabilisation policy. By meeting Keynesians on their own theoretical turf and scrutinising their practice, Friedman manages to produce objections that both Keynesians and non-Keynesians must take seriously.
A key part of any response to Friedman rests on the ability of forecasters to do their jobs with tolerable accuracy. After reading the annual reports of the Fed, Milton Friedman noticed the following pattern:
In the years of prosperity, monetary policy is a potent weapon, the skilful handling of which deserves the credit for the favourable course of events; in years of adversity, other forces are the important sources of economic change, monetary policy had little leeway, and only the skilful handling of the exceedingly limited powers available prevented conditions from being even worse
Central banks pay due to the implications of the leads and lags on monetary policy only as an ex-post facto rationalisation for disappointment.
Milton Friedman on what presidents can do to increase the economic growth rate
28 Jun 2014 1 Comment
in economic growth, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman Tags: Milton Friedmand, The fatel conceit, The pretense to knowledge
First of all, I don’t think the president has a great deal to do with keeping the economy going…
I think presidents have a great deal to do with keeping the economy from growing…
I think the economy is largely independent of the government, and what keeps it going is its own internal development.
However, you can short-circuit that internal development. If you impose very high taxes, and eliminate the incentive to innovate, to improve, to take risks, and do things, you’ll kill the economy. And that’s what’s happened over and over again in other countries around the world.
Karl Popper on utopian social engineering versus piecemeal social reforms
27 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
Economic progress versus environmental quality
12 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in development economics, environmental economics, growth miracles Tags: The fatel conceit, The Great Fact
When I was in Japan, I was told that in the 1960s, cities and prefectures welcomed polluting industries because of the better paid jobs they offered.
At that time, shipping companies used like to go to Tokyo because the pollution in Tokyo Bay was so bad that it would clean all the barnacles off their ships. That made them sail faster.
Japanese incomes and wages doubled over the course of the 1960s.
In the early 1970s, the LDP stole the environmental policies of their opponents in a really big crack down on pollution because the country could now afforded them. The Japanese voter was now prepared to support stricter pollution standards and environmental controls.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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