Two Good Places for Econ Learning Besides *Free Advice*
Every once in a while I like to give back to the community…
==> I have been picking my way through the new edition of Steve Landsburg’s classic The Armchair Economist. This is truly one of my all-time favorite books. I can remember how much I relished going through it, after I had just finished Hillsdale College and was working in Chicago waiting to start in NYU’s doctoral program. I don’t even agree with everything Steve says in the book; when he’s wrong, I think he’s spectacularly wrong. But even in those cases, he is so darn precise that it helps you to clarify your own thinking on the topic.
Something I got from this reading–I don’t know if this is new material or was in the first version? I can’t remember–is that it has, hands down, the best layperson’s explanation of the Lucas Critique that I have ever read. I don’t want to spoil it by even hinting at his analogy. Let’s just say, not only would my dad and his buddies totally understand the Lucas Critique after reading this, but they might actually be glad they read it. (Note that those are two different statements.)
==> I touted it once before, but if you never checked it out I encourage you once again to look around Tom Woods & Friends’ new Liberty Classroom. They have added economics lectures now (taught by Jeff Herbener), and there are totally free lecture samples in various topics available. [NOTE in the first post, I incorrectly said there is a free Austrian lecture, but I had misunderstood something Tom posted on Facebook.]
I’m already signed in since they launched it, and it really is great stuff! I am doing the history stuff currently. I really enjoy it (no you don’t need to agree to AE to think that the history course is good, it’s just history as far as I have seen), and the price is fantastic for this amount of content!
Though at the moment I am a bit distracted, because I’m hooked on Top Gear. That’s the by far best TV show/Entertainment show I have ever seen! I am currently working through 18 seasons there on Internet streams… It’s about cars, and stars in a reasonably priced car around a track. I’ll wait the day Bob is going around this track, haha 😉
Yet I hope that wears soon a bit off, so that I can return to doing something that really educates me..
TG never wears off. I’ve gone through all episodes 3 or 4 times and simply cannot wait until the next series.
I am not sure whether it’s funded by the British government, but since the crysis hit and mild cost-cutting occured (in the proper Mitt Romney-like understanding of cost-cutting) in public spending, there has been less episodes in each series. If it isn’t private, we surprisingly have a case of governmental success.
I really don’t know how I could miss it for so long. I needed You Tube and my current need to find a new (used) car to notice TG.
Yes that’s strange. The BBC was founded privately but is now financed largely by public funds, so yes it seems so.
Won’t wear off. I am able to re-watch episodes and remain entertained. Have you seen the special in which they travel to the North Pole?
Are you talking about that episode with that awesome Toyota 4×4?
So it really won’t wear off. Ok there are worse things that can happen.
No, didn’t see the North Pole special yet. One of my favorites so far is the one in which Jeremy and Richard were allowed to choreograph a car chase for the movie Sweeney (Season 18 episode 3).
I’ve been watching TG for about 18 years now, and it never gets old. Shoot, I used to actually watch the old version back in the 90s when it was just Jeremy. I used to have to tune in with satellite or buy shows from the black market on VHS, but now Netflix has all episodes from 2002 to today.
Now that I think about it, I’ve actually made references to the show on this blog.
Check out the episode about Mosler cars.
You can read all about them at http://www.moslereconomics.com
Are his cars made out of paper? Or is he still just using it for food?
Don’t forget
http://www.moslereconomics.com
That’s cute.
Dr. Murphy said two places to learn economics.
Comic strips don’t qualify.
I know, but I couldn’t add a 2nd link.
Comic strip second link:
http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/
Warren “Hut Tax” Mosler has said:
Modern Monetary Theory recognizes that certain people need to be empowered to force others into involuntary exchanges. This is an operational reality.
And he said:
The following is not merely a theoretical concept. It’s exactly what happened in Africa in the 1800’s, when the British established colonies there to grow crops. The British offered jobs to the local population, but none of them were interested in earning British coins. So the British placed a “hut tax” on all of their dwellings, payable only in British coins. Suddenly, the area was “monetized,” as everyone now needed British coins, and the local population started offering things for sale, as well as their labor, to get the needed coins. The British could then hire them and pay them in British coins to work the fields and grow their crops.
The first “quote” is not from Mosler.
It’s from Bob Roddis pretending to be Warren Mosler.
From the looks of this:
http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.ca/2011/03/krugman-dumbing-down-economics.html?showComment=1299987547023#c4529622872527495289
Warren Mosler appeared to have written
“Modern Monetary Theory recognizes that certain people need to be empowered to force others into involuntary exchanges. This is an operational reality.”
And from the looks of this:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=hd5UbEkDVD0C&pg=PT17&lpg=PT17&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Warren Mosler definitely wrote:
“The following is not merely a theoretical concept. It’s exactly what happened in Africa in the 1800’s, when the British established colonies there to grow crops. The British offered jobs to the local population, but none of them were interested in earning British coins. So the British placed a “hut tax” on all of their dwellings, payable only in British coins. Suddenly, the area was “monetized,” as everyone now needed British coins, and the local population started offering things for sale, as well as their labor, to get the needed coins. The British could then hire them and pay them in British coins to work the fields and grow their crops.”
Maybe someone was pretending to be Mosler.
Yes. Bob Roddis.
Based on this link, I’m going to assume the statement was made by someone pretending to be Mosler. It’s just not his writing style. I withdraw the claim that this particular quote was actually Mosler.
http://tinyurl.com/4sgqqw8
The quote about the hut tax is from Mosler’s book.
Mosler also believes in forced labor?
From “The Mosler Palestinian Development Plan”:
http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/mosler-palestinian-development-plan/
No, but he believes in taxation and public purpose.
And at least he will leave behind a nice piece of engineering, not just papers and blogs like others.
You mean like the Delorean, or the Covair, or maybe the Edsel, ah perhaps the Volt?
I’ll take knowledge over buffoonery anyday, thank you.
“No, but he believes in taxation and public purpose.”
Required 200 hours of public service is forced labor.
The PA will impose a requirement that all residence owners submit receipts for 200 hours of qualifying public service per residence
That’s taxation. Did anyone ever mention that you can’t read?
Apparently you can’t read just one sentence later:
“This requirement is to submit receipts for public service, which means that residence owners have the choice of doing public service work themselves or obtaining the receipts from someone who bought or otherwise obtained the receipts.”
SOMEBODY has to do the public service.
Yeah, you can’t read.
That’s not forced labour, unless you consider all labour forced.
It is forced labor the same way taxation in US dollars enforces a US dollar monetary regime.
One is either appalled by Mosler’s proposals or is not. The same goes for the MMT “vision”. There’s no point in debating someone who is rapturous at the thought of a government “unconstrained” by law, morality or scarcity because it has the alleged ability to print and spend unlimited fiat funny money dollars via keystrokes.
The great Bob Murphy exploded the “deficits create net financial assets” nonsense of the MMTers ages ago:
http://mises.org/daily/2020
The debate is over.
The great Bob Murphy exploded the “deficits create net financial assets” nonsense of the MMTers ages ago:
No, he didn’t. He can’t explode a fact.
The debate is over.
You keep repeating that.
He can’t explode a fact
It isn’t a fact.
“Net financial assets” is silly MMT lingo for money supply, or cash balances. It makes it appear as if more devalued money is somehow an “asset”, rather than just another mechanism of coercive wealth transfer.
ACTUAL financial assets, financial assets that did not exist before but now exist, GIVEN an unchanged money supply, do not require, and are not created by, government deficits.
The only thing that exploded is your head because you cannot understand that NFA in the currency of issue are only created by deficit spending.
Are you in love with me queen? This begins to look like stalking, honestly.
Don’t flatter yourself, and don’t try to redirect your problems onto me.
I don’t play for your team.
“Net financial assets” is just MMT nonsense for “paper dollar inflation.”
Yes, in order for there to be more paper dollars in private sector bank accounts, the government has to spend more than it acquires.
But that doesn’t mean actual net financial assets, like stocks and bonds and other financial assets, cannot be created with a fixed money supply. They can.
The private sector doesn’t need inflation to grow. The private sector doesn’t need “net financial assets” the way MMTers define it, to grow.
Growth can even occur with a fixed money supply and falling costs and prices as more workers go into the workforce and as more wealth is produced.
It seems to me that all that these additional “financial assets” can do is create new claims to existing real world assets in favor of people who by right should have no claim to them at all. It’s just more welfare state communism.
Entrepreneurship creates new wealth, not new “net financial assets”. But MMTers, being totalitarian commies at heart, cannot see this obvious truth.
It seems to me that all that these additional “financial assets” can do is create new claims to existing real world assets in favor of people who by right should have no claim to them at all. It’s just more welfare state communism.
Bingo. They say “net financial assets” to make it appear as something valuable is gained for those whose “financial assets” have been devalued, as if more “financial assets” make people wealthier, as if more medium of exchange for wealth is the same thing as more wealth.
“Net financial assets” is just a marbles in the mouth phrase MMTers use to refer to state issued paper money. They don’t say state issued paper money of course, because they they would be laughed out of the room the way they are laughed out of this blog.
Saying “net financial assets” just sounds better, it sounds like the state is increasing people’s prosperity by printing money for themselves and their friends, which is its ultimate purpose as it pertains to natural selection of ideas in a statist world.
Entrepreneurship creates new wealth, not new “net financial assets”. But MMTers, being totalitarian commies at heart, cannot see this obvious truth.
But if the state does not run deficits, if they don’t spend more than they take in, then the private sector cannot net save! We need “net savings” for the private sector to grow! Without “net savings”, people could only ever increase some bank balances and reduce other bank balances. How can we have production if all that takes place is trading for a fixed money supply? What’s that? Prices and costs can gradually fall as more wealth is produced, making the existing money stock being traded more valuable? Shhhhhh, that would be economic science. Can’t have that. MMT preys on ignorance.
I must say that Dr. Jason Jewell really put a lot of work into his lectures on western civilization (a total of 84 lectures, plus reference material and links). Sure, the other guys did too, but Dr. Jewell went beyond. I am not usually one to join such programs, but the price was awesome for what you get, so I relented. I am very surprised at the quality and thoroughness of Tom’s venture, and I hope that it does well going into the future.
*relented on my prior stance, that is.
Please give a shout out to “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell. I much preferred this over “Armchair Economist”–more engaging, better prose, more structured introduction of economic principles. Mises.org gave a nice review several years ago, I believe.
Here’s the favorable review: http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=192