Economics of poverty, or the poverty of economics

from David Ruccio

Yesterday, the winners of the 2019 winners of the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics were announced. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer were recognized for improving “our ability to fight global poverty” and for transforming development economics into “a flourishing field of research” through their experiment-based approach.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared:

This year’s Laureates have introduced a new approach to obtaining reliable answers about the best ways to fight global poverty. In brief, it involves dividing this issue into smaller, more manageable, questions–for example, the most effective interventions for improving educational outcomes or child health. They have shown that these smaller, more precise, questions are often best answered via carefully designed experiments among the people who are most affected.

As every year, mainstream economists lined up to laud the choice. Dani Rodrik declared it “a richly deserved recognition.” Richard Thaler, who won the award in 2017 (here’s a link to my analysis), extended his congratulations to the Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer and to the committee “for making a prize that seemed inevitable happen sooner rather than later.” While Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel laureate, refers to it as “a very heartening prize—evidence-based economics with a real social purpose.”

“Maybe we should change the system”

from David Ruccio

On behalf of millions of young people striking on behalf of climate justice, 15-year-old Greta Thunberg excoriated world leaders for “moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess.”

American dreams

from David Ruccio

The American Dream is dead. Long live the American Dream!

Let me explain. The official American Dream, the one that has been produced and disseminated at least as far back as the transition from the farm to the factory (in other words, since the late-nineteenth century), lies in tatters. Americans have long been encouraged to believe that everyone gets what they deserve—and, with equal opportunity, those who start at the bottom have a real chance of working their way to the top. Within generations, all workers had a chance to “make it.” And, between generations, children would likely be better off than their parents.

That promise—let’s call it the capitalist American dream—is now in tatters. It is dead and (almost) buried.

It’s not the first time, of course, that the capitalist American Dream has been called into question. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, American capitalism was not able to deliver the goods, at least for the majority of the population. Widespread unemployment and poverty, as capitalists shuttered their factories were shuttered and banks foreclosed on farms, meant that most Americans were faced with an economic nightmare. And much the same happened after the crash of 2007-08 when, in the midst of the Second Great Depression, millions of Americans were unable to find a decent job or purchase (unless they went further into debt) the necessary goods and services, for themselves and their children.

“Our economic fundamentals are strong.”

from David Ruccio

Talk is cheap

from David Ruccio

The same day I wrote that capitalism was coming apart at the seams, indicated by the shocking disparity between the compensation of corporate CEOs and workers, the Business Roundtable published its new statement of purpose of a corporation.* The 180 or so corporate executives who signed the statement declared that all their stakeholders, not just owners of equity shares, were important to their mission.

Many business pundits, such as Andrew Ross Sorkin, greeted the new statement as a sign that the era of shareholder democracy (what he refers to as “shareholder primacy”) had finally come to an end and that a “significant shift” in corporate responsibility to society would be ushered in. Readers, however, had their doubts, most of them echoing JDK’s response to Sorkin’s piece: “Talk is cheap.”

Coming apart

from David Ruccio

American capitalism is coming apart at the seams.

Truth be told, it’s been coming apart for decades now—and that trend has only continued during the recovery from the worst crash since the 1930s.

Time is running out

from David Ruccio

Richard Reeves is right about one thing: time is crucial to capitalism’s legitimacy. The premise and promise of capitalism are that the future will be better than the present. And “if capitalism loses its lease on the future, it is in trouble.”

The fact is, things are not getting better for the vast majority of American workers. They’re falling behind. For example, as is clear in the chart above, the labor share in the U.S. nonfarm business sector has fallen more than 13 percent since early 2001—and there’s no indication that trend will be reversed anytime in the foreseeable future.

Time is clearly running out on capitalism.

It’s not as though Americans are unaware of this and other related trends, such as the looming climate crisis.*

Econ 101

from David Ruccio

It’s time to get back to blog writing—after a 6-month hiatus during which I taught my final two courses at the University of Notre Dame (A Tale of Two Depressions and Marxian Economic Theory) and prepared for my retirement (which involved, among other things, sorting through, packing up, and moving decades of “stuff”). Now, after 38 years of teaching, I am officially Professor of Economics Emeritus. But, rest assured, I plan to continue this blog and other writing projects. 

For the first time in almost four decades (aside from a few research sabbaticals), I don’t face the prospect of returning to campus and teaching economics. But, I can’t help it, I still worry about what millions of students in the United States and around the world will learn—or at least be subjected to—when they enroll in their economics classes this fall.

One of the major issues for any economics class, especially an introductory or principles course, is how to make it useful for students.

Promises, promises

from David Ruccio

They keep promising, ever since the recovery from the Great Recession started more than eight years ago, that the share of national income going to American workers will finally begin to increase. But it’s not. 

Wages, surplus, and inequality

from David Ruccio

Mainstream economists continue to insist that workers benefit from economic growth, because wages rise with productivity.

Here’s the argument as explained by Donald J. Boudreaux and Liya Palagashvili:

Poverty and inequality—on a global scale

from David Ruccio

It should perhaps come as no surprise that, as capitalism has been called into question and socialism generated increasing interest during the past decade, capitalism’s defenders have resorted to a long historical view. Look, they say, how capitalist growth has decreased poverty and led to improvements in people’s lives around the globe. Just stick with it and all will eventually be well. 

Attacking inequality at its roots

from David Ruccio

 

How else to put it? The levels of economic inequality in the United States are obscene. 

Socialism and exploitation

from David Ruccio

If you listened to or read the text of President Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, you might have been surprised by the explicit mention of socialism.

Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free.

Or maybe not—since just last year the Council of Economic Advisers apparently found it necessary to issue a report, on the cusp of the midterm elections, to push back against the fact that “socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse.” And Fox News is engaged in its own campaign against socialism, since “support for Karl Marx’s collectivist ideas is steadily increasing.”

The irony, of course, is that Trump and his principal media outlet are in part responsible for the growth of support for socialism and for policies that are often associated with socialism (such as raising taxes on the income and wealth of the rich).* Claiming that “our country is vibrant and our economy is thriving like never before” and then scapegoating immigrants in “organized caravans [that] are on the march to the United States,” while ignoring the effects of the largest tax break for large corporations in U.S. history—which, while boosting economic growth, executive salaries, and the stock market, leaves American workers further and further behind—makes the case for socialism even more compelling.

But interest in socialism was growing even before Trump took office, especially among millennials. The question is, why? 

Resolution: mind the gap

from David Ruccio

We’re all done singing to “days gone by” (even though no one really knows the lyrics). But, unless we change our tune and resolve to fundamentally alter the way the economy is organized, we’re going to have to face up to the problem that’s been haunting the United States for decades now: growing inequality.

And it’s only getting worse.

Part of the problem stems from the increase in market concentration in the United States. According to a recent research paper by Joshua Gans et al., the rise in mark-ups by large U.S. corporations is a two-edged sword: it increases the prices consumers pay but, at the same time, rewards shareholders. The problem is, the ownership of corporate stocks is more unequal than consumption—and it’s been getting more unequal in recent decades. Thus, the majority of Americans are forced to pay higher prices for the goods they consume but they don’t own much in the way of corporate equity—and the distribution of income, which was already obscenely unequal, is made even worse. 

Measure for measure*

from David Ruccio

No matter how we measure it, most Americans are falling further and further behind the tiny group at the top.

  

That’s not at all surprising. Whether we compare the growing gap between average wages and Gross Domestic Product per capita (as in the chart on the left) or real median household income and real Gross Domestic Product per capita (as in the chart on the right), it’s clear the average American has been losing out. A growing proportion of what workers produce hasn’t been going to them but to the richest households for decades now.

That does not mean, contra Robert Samuelson, that “the incomes of most Americans have stagnated for decades.” That’s a canard. No one makes that argument.

No, the real issue is that American workers have been producing more and more but getting only a tiny share of that increase. As I explained last year, 

Dollarization in the United States

from David Ruccio

The United States is increasingly becoming dollarized. That’s because, for decades now, those at the bottom have been left behind, forced to attempt to get by in ever more precarious conditions. 

Tale of two depressions

from David Ruccio

Mainstream economists continue to discuss the two great crises of capitalism during the past century like the pillars of society in the brothel—a “house of infinite mirrors and theaters”—in Jean Genet’s The Balcony.* The order they represent is indeed threatened by an uprising in the streets, and the only question is: can they reestablish the illusion of control?

Left behind

from David Ruccio

The historically low black unemployment rate is one of Donald Trump’s favorite applause lines. Even Reuters [ht: ja] declares that Trump is right.

It doesn’t seem to matter that most of the decline in the unemployment rate for African American workers (from a high of 16.5 percent in the beginning of 2010 to a low of 6.3 percent today) occurred before Trump was ever elected.

What does matter is that, even as the rate has dropped (the purple line in the chart above), black workers’ pay (the green line) has barely changed. After falling precipitously (by 10 percent, from the end of 2009 to the middle of 2015), it has only increased slightly (by 3.8 percent). Overall, the real wages of black workers have actually declined (by 6.5 percent, between the end of 2009 to today). 

Markets, policy, and institutions

from David Ruccio

Teaching critical literacy.

That’s what professors do in the classroom. We teach students languages in order to make some sense of the world around them. How to view a film or read a novel. How to think about economics, politics, and culture. How to understand cell biology or the evolution of the universe.

And, of course, how to think critically about those languages—both their conditions and their consequences.

I’ve been thinking about the task of teaching critical literacy as I prepare the syllabi and lectures for my final semester at the University of Notre Dame.

Lately, I’ve been struck by the way mainstream economics is usually taught as a choice between markets and policy. Whenever a problem comes up—say, inequality or climate change—one group of mainstream economists offers the market as a solution, while the other group suggests that markets aren’t enough and need to be supplemented by government policies. Thus, for example, conservative, market-oriented economists teach students that, with free markets, everybody gets what they deserve (so inequality isn’t really a problem) and greenhouse gas emissions will decline over time (by imposing a tax on the burning of carbon-based fuels). Liberal economists generally argue that market outcomes are inadequate and require additional policies—for example, minimum-wage laws (to lower inequality) and stringent regulations on carbon emissions (because allowing the market to work through carbon taxes, or even cap-and-trade schemes, won’t achieve the necessary reductions to avoid global warming).*

That’s the way mainstream economists frame the issues for students—and, for that matter, for the general public. 

“Never have corporate profits outgrown employee compensation so clearly and for so long”

from David Ruccio

Those aren’t my words. The quotation that forms the title of this post is from a recent Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louisblog post.

And they’re important to keep in mind in light of the news coverage (e.g., by the New York Times) of last week’s Labor Department report on hiring and unemployment. Yes, 250 thousand jobs were added in the U.S. economy last month and average earnings did rise by 0.2 percent and are up 3.1 percent over the past year.