Category Archives: Criticism

The Lack of Ultimacy in Price Theory; Prices are Last in the Analysis and Purely Relative

DRAFT

Contents

.1. Preliminaries and preview

.2. Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics is a normative theory

.3. Microeconomics vs. Macroeconomics

.4. The normative systematics of prices is last in the analysis – We are not doing microeconomics

4.a Preliminaries

4.b Reference to other treatments

4.c Prices are treated in several contexts

4.d Prices are formally treated last in the analysis

4.e The intelligibility of prices as real and relative.

4.f “Absorbing several trillion Dollars of Free Money”

4.g Miscellanea

.5. Monetary stability -correlation and concomitance of magnitudes and frequencies with magnitudes and frequencies

.6 Lonergan’s three assumptions in treatment of pure expansion

.7. Inflation due to scarcity or to mistaken anticipations – instances of inflation

8. Divergences of particular flows and the requirement of systematic correction

.9. Miscellanea

.10. CWL 15, Section 28 spreadsheet

.11. Appendix: Indexes of textbooks re prices

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New Foundations in 30 Minutes

New foundations for a new science of macroeconomics are grounded in

  • a scientific, dynamic heuristic
  • the technique of implicit definition
  • precise, purely relational, analytic distinctions between abstract fundamental terms and relations from which a superstructure of complete explanation may be deduced
  • the relativistic, field-theoretic functional interrelations among interdependent, mutually-defining, explanatory functional flows

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Elizabeth Warren’s Advice to Jerome Powell; Sentiment Without Intelligence

The Wall Street Journal of 7/25/2022 featured an article by Senator Elizabeth Warren:  “Jerome Powell’s Fed Pursues a Painful and Ineffective Inflation Cure.” Because she lacks an objectivenormative, abstract, explanatory theory and, thus, fails to understand the functional interdependencies constituting the organic economic process, particular arguments in her article are a) sometimes contaminated by psychopolitical wishful opinions, b) often ignorantly one-sided because she is unaware that some policies have double edges, c) sometimes contradictory of her other arguments, and d) in at least one case, supercilious.

E. Warren suffers from the same plight as Thomas Piketty. To satisfy her responsibility to the public, she needs to achieve a scientific understanding of the organic economic process; she needs to get a “grip.”

We are at the heart of Piketty’s plight: he has no clue of the needed grip on the grounds of the inequality in history.  So, what else can he offer but a centralist solution, taxation, to history’s drunken careening. (McShane, Philip, Picketty’s Plight, 53)

In equity (the basic expansion following the surplus expansion) should be directed to raising the standard of living of the whole society.  It does not.  And the reason why it does not is not the reason on which simple-minded moralists insist.  They blame greed.  But the prime cause is ignorance.  The dynamics of surplus and basic expansion, surplus and basic incomes are not understood, not formulated, not taught….. [CWL 15, 82]

(Continue reading)

More re Piketty’s Plight and Centralist Modern Monetary Theory

In his blog entitled “Piketty in Brief,” dated Sunday, July 24, 2022, N. Gregory Mankiw asks what might be Thomas Piketty’s present thinking about inequality. Has it changed?  If so, how and why?  Also see on this website “Piketty’s Plight.”  in which we quote Philip McShane’s claim that, unless one has a normative explanatory theory yielding precepts as to how enlightened participants in the economic process should adapt and conduct themselves, one can only helplessly and hopelessly suggest harmful bureaucratic centralist solutions – such as disequilibrating taxation and intrinsicallyinflationary deficit spending. Continue reading

Alan S. Blinder re Transitory But Not Permanent

… the prime cause (whether it be of inequity or inflation) is ignorance.  The dynamics … are not understood, not formulated, not taught….. [CWL 15, 82]

man as external agent has not the systematic guidance he needs to operate successfully the machine he controls. [CWL 21, 109]

Academia’s failure threatens economic liberty.

Lonergan realized that failure to understand correctly what is needed if the economic process is to perform well is gravely threatening to democratic liberty.  That is why he undertook his serious study of economics. [CWL 15 Editors’ Introduction, xxx] Continue reading

Modern Monetary Theory Is Backward; It Creates “Illegal” Superposed Circuits

Preliminary note: In this section we are addressing the proper understanding and management of the economic process in normal, non-pandemic times.  We affirm that the recent pandemic called for extraordinary measures.

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Unwittingly, first out of ignorance, more recently as necessitated by a pandemic, and most recently out of continuing ignorance, some nations, including the U.S., have wandered into the ultimate menace to the financial system, the spending without constraint blessed and recommended by unscientific. so-called Modern Monetary Theory. (Click here and here) The systematic result of MMT’s unconstrained printing of money, unjustified by corresponding, concomitant production of goods and services, is rampant inflation in prices for a) goods and services and/or b) financial assets.  (Continue reading)

The Animal Organism and the Economic Organism

CONTENTS:

  1. THE STUDY OF ORGANISMS – ANIMAL AND ECONOMIC
  2. DETERMINISM AND INDETERMINISM – DISAGREEING WITH EINSTEIN
  3. CORRESPONDENCE IN THE CURRENT BASIC DYNAMIC, ORGANIC PROCESS; A DETERMINATE ALGEBRAIC FUNCTION OF THE FIRST DEGREE
  4. CORRESPONDENCE IN THE SURPLUS DYNAMIC, ORGANIC PROCESS; AN INDETERMINATE POINT-TO-LINE CORRESPONDENCE
  5. AVOIDING A VICIOUS CIRCLE OF CRITICISM
  6. THREE IMPLICITLY-DEFINED CIRCULATORY ORGANS
  7. THE TRANSITION TO SYSTEMATIZATION
  8. THE ROLE OF MIND IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN AND THE ECONOMIC ORGANISMS

 .1. THE STUDY OF ORGANISMS – ANIMAL AND ECONOMIC:  (Continue reading)

 

Stagflation Demystified

The general form of so-called stagflation is more money chasing fewer goods in the basic circuit and a dearth of investment in the surplus circuit to keep pace with the strong basic demand. (Click here)

Lonergan gave one theoretical example of stagflation – without calling it that – wherein the principle of concomitance and the condition of equilibrium between the operative circuits of the process is violated: Continue reading

Jamie Dimon’s Challenges to Himself and to the Nation

4/7/2021:  Yahoo Finance today featured an article by Julia La Roche entitled ‘The fault line is inequality’: J.P. Morgan’s Dimon calls for fixing America’s ‘self-inflicted’ problems.  La Roche was reviewing the Public Policy section of Dimon’s 67-page Chairman and CEO Letter to Shareholders.  Mr. Dimon seeks to end the nation’s self-infliction of problems threatening the culture, the economy and the polity.  He particularly regrets “false arguments of fanatics, the certitude of ideologues and cycles of intolerance.” Continue reading

Seminar on “Critical Thinking in Economics”

Presenters John Siegfried and David Colander, and discussants Daron Acemoglu, Melissa S. Kearney, John A List, N. Gregory Mankiw,  Deirdre McCloskey, and Betsey Stevenson recently collaborated in a virtual ASSA meeting entitled “What Does Critical Thinking Mean in Economics, the Big and Little of It?” Handouts from the meeting can be found in an Announcement in a blog of Saturday, January 2, 2021 on N. Gregory Mankiw’s website.

Preliminarily, note the subtitle in Lonergan’s seminal work, Insight: A Study of Human UnderstandingIn the present context we might reword the subtitle A Study of Critical ThinkingA very smart person – learned in  advanced mathematics and theoretical physics – called Lonergan’s book “The Most Significant Book of the Twentieth Century.”       (Continue reading)