I read an interesting briefing yesterday (October 13, 2010) from the latest Morgan Stanley “Daily Downunder” report Money for Nothing. I cannot link to it because it is a subscription service. The briefing is notable because while it is thoroughly mainstream in its tack, it does present for the first time an awareness that the underlying national income distribution in favour of an ever increasing profit share is problematic and will not sustain a stable recovery. The report also clearly demonstrates that fiscal policy promoted real income growth over the last few years – the only source of private income growth – but this growth has been captured by profits without commensurate growth in employment. The argument resonates with earlier blogs that I have written and confirms two things: (a) the deficit terrorists who want to push for increasing fiscal austerity are dangerous and if successful will push the world economy back into recession; and (b) apart from sustaining the fiscal support for aggregate demand and private saving there needs to be a comprehensive redistribution of income towards the wage share. As a first step a major policy intervention focused on job creation will help achieve that desired redistribution. But more structural policy interventions are required to reverse the neo-liberal attack on the wage share. Once we realise that we have to reject the whole logic of neo-liberalism. That is the challenge – and the necessity – in the period ahead – if broadly shared prosperity is to return.

Today I provide some alternative insights to to recent (not so) Nobel prize awards in Economics. It is claimed that the work of the three winners has “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” (being the criteria for the award). The reality is that the major insights to be drawn from this trio is that mass unemployment does not exist and that unemployment is largely voluntary or a function of over-generous income support policies by “misguided” governments. The policy recommendations to be drawn from their work focus on cutting the meagre benefits that governments provide to the unemployed in times of strife. The winners’ work tells us that they think workers are lazy and do not search effectively enough, in part, because they have it too good in their jobless state. I rank their work among the most distressing and obscene of all the disgraceful con jobs that the mainstream of my profession has deliberately foisted on the public policy process.

I have some good news that some of you may have already heard about but it is worth repeating. Harvard deficit terrorist Gregory Mankiw, who poisons the minds of millions of economics students with his preposterous textbook is going to work less because he has faces lower income as a result of the temporary Bush high marginal tax rates cuts being terminated. Apparently, he is getting a sudden preference for leisure. While there is a desperate need for more fiscal expansion in the US at present it seems that the US government could help all of us by mixing the net spending injection with some marginal tax rate adjustments targetted towards high income earners. By fine tuning the top marginal rates they should be able to get Gregory to give up work altogether and then the rest of us would be better off as a result. Meanwhile, the UK government also claiming to be against budget deficits thinks it will make its poorest citizens work more by ensuring they have less income. Notwithstanding the lack of jobs the inconsistency of the logic is something else. Go figure!