i watched the video and don't really know where to start. it would take a long time to disentangle all the things i disagree with, and i would need to read his book footnotes to see what the deal is with some of the evidence he cites that strikes me as dodgy
a few general impressions
- right off the bat his methodological ideas are pretty crazy (that you can analyze the global economy by only looking at the US data because everything else "feeds back through")
- ignores the manipulation of paper profits for tax purposes
- ignores the ability of mncs to take their profits at any point in the supply chain, in any country, and never have them recognized in th US
- ignores offshore finance
- the way he deals with management compensation (and seemingly only in response to marxist critics of his book) is bizarre ("how many top 100 ceos are there? only 100!") and id be curious to take a closer look at his data
in general the whole thing just seems like a selective just-so story meant to prop up his earlier work
rather than just talking shit i'll post a few people & ideas that i believe to be correct
post-keynesian/neo-marxist economists i like
michel kalecki
abba lerner
william vickrey
wynne godley
mainstream economists who have some good ideas
joseph stiglitz
michael woodford
wynne godley is my favourite. i believe this to be a 100% correct analysis of the crisis:
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/sa_dec_08.pdf
recent article in the nyt on godley
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/business/economy/economists-embracing-ideas-of-wynne-godley-late-colleague-who-predicted-recession.html
krugman being really butthurt over the article:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/wynne-godley-and-the-hydraulics/
why these bourgeois economic models lead into marxist class analysis and imply revolutionary socialist politics:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kalecki220510.html
Panopticon posted:what's the deal with the cambridge capital debate? is it actually relevant today or was it minor technical quibbles
my understanding is that it was a minor quibble that was more about drawing battle lines in an academic turf war. it was basically a way of writing off all of left keynesianism in the same way that people are like "LTV bitches, therefore marx is wrong about everything". the funny thing is that i think it's now accepted that the losing side was right, long after they got defunded and it didnt matter anymore
hi im jeffrey sachs. check out my hair helmet. im shitty at economics
furch bing
tabitha monkeycheese
end list.
Lessons posted:i don't think there's anyone here who knows enough about kliman or marxian economics generally to really respond to that, OP
untrue, i believe statickinetics had dinner with kliman and is thus fully qualified
Anyway here's a marxist response to that Kalecki paper so I don't have to bother:
http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/responses-to-readers-austrian-economics-versus-marxism/are-keynes-and-marx-compatible/are-marx-and-keynes-compatible-pt-9/
what i think is garbage is the tendency of marxian economists to shoehorn every economic crisis into those terms, while ignoring a lot of the more interesting ways in which the crisis is rooted in material circumstances unique to this period in history, like the development and management of asian economies. you might even say that their approaches are guilty of a form of ahistoricism (!!!)
i think keynesian analysis is broadly correct and that keynesian solutions would work in a technical sense, but only if you ignore the existence of class. thats to say that i agree: keynesianism is a useless response to the crisis
thanks for the link it looks pretty good
Lessons posted:okay i started watching and you're misunderstanding what he's saying re: his analysis relying on US data. he's explicit that his analysis isn't global, it's all about the US, and his justification for that isn't "it all feeds back into the US anyway" it's that a) it's perfectly legitimate to focus on the US because "it was the epicenter of the crisis" and b) the data for other nations just isn't good. he also claims everyone doing this kind of empirical work is doing the same thing. you're free to dispute any of those points but what you're specifically criticizing him there for is at odds with what he actually said. he does make a point about US data reflecting foreign economics but the way he does it is basically a truism, (and correct as far as i can tell), saying stuff like "the US wage statistics are going to reflect any foreign influence on US wages".
fair enough. i watched it late last night and wrote the post from memory today. still disagree that it is perfectly legitimate to focus on the US data alone because the us is very far from a closed economy and it was a global crisis. i cant imagine that even very many orthodox marxians would agree with him on that
Lessons posted:okay i started watching and you're misunderstanding what he's saying re: his analysis relying on US data. he's explicit that his analysis isn't global, it's all about the US, and his justification for that isn't "it all feeds back into the US anyway" it's that a) it's perfectly legitimate to focus on the US because "it was the epicenter of the crisis" and b) the data for other nations just isn't good. he also claims everyone doing this kind of empirical work is doing the same thing. you're free to dispute any of those points but what you're specifically criticizing him there for is at odds with what he actually said. he does make a point about US data reflecting foreign economics but the way he does it is basically a truism, (and correct as far as i can tell), saying stuff like "the US wage statistics are going to reflect any foreign influence on US wages".
right i think he was mostly just building a refutation to this post-marxism stuff that is asserting the cause of the recession was due solely to neoliberalism causing an increased wealth disparity, rather than fundamental economic problems that have been intrinsic to capitalism. the problem of him relying on this imprecise data is also a problem shared by the economists arguing for keynesianism etc... and what he's doing is more so using that data to highlight that the data used doesn't actually lead to the conclusion that keynesianism as panacea
what ive read/seen by him has mostly been him refuting post-marxism and keynesian theories rather than attempting to put forth a new economic model to describing capitalism
babyhueypnewton posted:If you have specific problems with Kliman's methodology you can e-mail him or post on his website, he responds to anything about him on the internet lol. You're specific problems don't really touch on why you think Marxism and the falling rate of profit are "garbage". Seems like a strong statement to make which needs more than a paper by Kalecki the monthlyreview. Obviously you're under no obligation to do so, but weak Keysnianism seems a bit absurd since 2008 imo.
Anyway here's a marxist response to that Kalecki paper so I don't have to bother:
http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/responses-to-readers-austrian-economics-versus-marxism/are-keynes-and-marx-compatible/are-marx-and-keynes-compatible-pt-9/
ya here's another vid by kliman where he argues against some poorly done economics in the monthlyreview
solzhesnitchin posted:
i summoned this shithead on twitter once
solzhesnitchin posted:Lessons posted:okay i started watching and you're misunderstanding what he's saying re: his analysis relying on US data. he's explicit that his analysis isn't global, it's all about the US, and his justification for that isn't "it all feeds back into the US anyway" it's that a) it's perfectly legitimate to focus on the US because "it was the epicenter of the crisis" and b) the data for other nations just isn't good. he also claims everyone doing this kind of empirical work is doing the same thing. you're free to dispute any of those points but what you're specifically criticizing him there for is at odds with what he actually said. he does make a point about US data reflecting foreign economics but the way he does it is basically a truism, (and correct as far as i can tell), saying stuff like "the US wage statistics are going to reflect any foreign influence on US wages".
fair enough. i watched it late last night and wrote the post from memory today. still disagree that it is perfectly legitimate to focus on the US data alone because the us is very far from a closed economy and it was a global crisis. i cant imagine that even very many orthodox marxians would agree with him on that
yeah the point is the other data you want him to look at simply does not exist
swirlsofhistory posted:I want someone to convince me that the falling rate of profit isn't a tautology. It's already in the definition that the 'rate of profit' falls when the 'organic composition of capital' (so defined) rises. That would be fine if this were a scientific theory that gave us something to expect from that, like Newton's second law where we can use it to calculate the torque on a lever. The problem is that the falling rate of profit is itself the thing we're supposed to be convinced of by checking the empirical facts, the thing that's supposed to guarantee the inevitable end of capitalism. To use Wittgenstein's terms: it's to play the role of criterion to symptoms like money profits, payroll, etc., but at the same time it has to be the symptom that hinges on the how the world (capitalism, whatever) really is, and it plainly can't do that given how its truth depends on the defined meaning of its terms alone.
Come get your swirly nerd
Marxist "economics" isn't just an extremely narrow subset of actual economics focused on developing no useful theories beyond anything already obvious to sociology majors
nononono
Edited by nonono ()
jools posted:solzhesnitchin posted:Lessons posted:okay i started watching and you're misunderstanding what he's saying re: his analysis relying on US data. he's explicit that his analysis isn't global, it's all about the US, and his justification for that isn't "it all feeds back into the US anyway" it's that a) it's perfectly legitimate to focus on the US because "it was the epicenter of the crisis" and b) the data for other nations just isn't good. he also claims everyone doing this kind of empirical work is doing the same thing. you're free to dispute any of those points but what you're specifically criticizing him there for is at odds with what he actually said. he does make a point about US data reflecting foreign economics but the way he does it is basically a truism, (and correct as far as i can tell), saying stuff like "the US wage statistics are going to reflect any foreign influence on US wages".
fair enough. i watched it late last night and wrote the post from memory today. still disagree that it is perfectly legitimate to focus on the US data alone because the us is very far from a closed economy and it was a global crisis. i cant imagine that even very many orthodox marxians would agree with him on that
yeah the point is the other data you want him to look at simply does not exist
well from my perspective anyway, then he's essentially saying "the data that would be sufficient to prove my conclusion doesn't exist, therefore you should accept insufficient data as being sufficient to prove my conclusion"
idk... i can see why he started off by referring to how a lot of people have a problem with his whole approach.
dont insult our commander in chief
daddyholes posted:Thanks for starting the thread, looking forward to some great posts.
lol
