Saturday, November 16, 2013

Grand Game: Remarkably Dumb Economics Edition

"Discredited marginal productivity economics"?  Seriously?  One can say that there are problems with banks (barriers to entry, overly friendly regulation, etc.) without deciding to just make up your own personal theories of economics, pumpkin.

Enjoy?

5 comments:

Thomas W said...

Actually, I think he's right as he defines terminology.

Reading the three introductory paragraphs, he's asking if Wall Street's income justifies its "marginal contribution to the total value of social output". I'm sure he considers "social output" to include equality of outcomes (equal incomes, equal living standards, etc), not just higher income.

I see this periodically -- justifying an argument of this sort by redefining terms to show that some theory is "false".

W.E. Heasley said...

John Quiggins’s [Australian economist-at-large] essay: Wall Street isn’t Worth it, cutting the banks down to size is good policy and good politics.

It is also worthy to note the number of times social or society was used within the essay:

Society (5)

Social value (5)

Social output (1), social (1), social contribution (1), social democratic (1) and socially useful (1).

Just saying…..

Old Odd Jobs said...

Quiggenomics?

In which "social value" is determined by the degree to which a given proposal flatters or insults John Quiggin's political conceits.

I like it!

Jack Q said...

I like John Quiggin (stuborn old socialist that he is), but this is weird.

DeBeers' existence disproves the marginal revolution in economics? Say what now?

mobile said...

The financial sector has grown massively since the 1970s, whether size is measured in terms of the volume of transactions, the number and remuneration of highly skilled professionals, the share of corporate profits, or, most importantly, the political power of the finance capital.

If you replace "financial" with "technology", then this sentence still makes sense. In fact, maybe the tech sector is more culpable for inequality than finance -- tech hit its stride in the 90s, and we all know that inequality in the 90s-present era is much worse than in the 70s and 80s.