Whenever I hear some empirical proposition used by a politician my curiosity is immediately aroused and I go searching for evidence to support or refute the statement. That is the nature of my professional life as a researcher. I often find that politicians twist the facts to suit and when put in context the argument becomes more nuanced to say the least. I also often find out that the politician has just made things up which in other words is referred to as lying. The fiscal austerity push in the US and elsewhere is being justified by a number of erroneous propositions but one of the worst claims is that public workers are so well paid that they are bankrupting governments all over the world. That is a claim that needs investigating and fortunately some credible researchers in the US have done the hard yards and come up with some definitive results. They all show the claims by the austerity proponents to be lies, to say the least. Progressives should focus on these lies and construct simple messages to drown the public in – like – US public sector workers are paid less than their private counterparts! Then we can progress and discuss what deficits mean etc.

The title of today’s blog comes from an interesting article I read today in the UK Guardian (February 14, 2011) – The revenge of trickle-down economics – by retired American economist Richard Wolff. It is worth reading. As Wolff noted the persistently high unemployment, loss of income and output and increased poverty in the US and elsewhere is “an irrational economic absurdity”. The problem is simple to solve from an economic perspective. The US government has all the capacity it needs to offer jobs to all those who want them but are unemployed. The wages they paid would flow back into the spending system and stimulate further job creation. Before long, investment would strengthen and firms would be bobbing up from all over to get a share of the action. All it needs is a kick-start and the government is the only sector that can provide it. The alternative is a slow, muddling recovery with millions left behind jobless and penniless in the process. That is no place to be and is just an irrational economic absurdity.

Today I got around to reading a report – Australia’s Productivity Challenge – which was released last week (February , 2011) from the Grattan Institute, a new research organisation in Australia that aims to provide evidence-based insights into social and economic issues in Australia. The Report is interesting because it exposes some of the bigger lies that are abroad about how well the Australian economy is faring. I have consistently been arguing (over the last 15 odd years) that the neo-liberal policy onslaught that has aimed to erode the power of workers viz capital and create a desperation among the unemployed (making income support harder to get) have created a dumbed down economy – racing to the bottom. One manifestation of this prediction was that productivity would fall as the impact of the budget surpluses (reduced public investment) and legislative changes too their toll. The Report shows that this future is upon us – we are living a delusion – being propped up by China. That is not a sustainable future.

Early in the crisis I wrote this blog – The origins of the economic crisis – which set out some of the underlying dynamics of the neo-liberal era that had combined to establish the preconditions for the resulting collapse of the financial system. There was an interesting article in the UK Guardian on Tuesday (January 18, 2011) – The myth of ‘American exceptionalism’ implodes – by US academic Richard Wolff that bears on the themes I regularly discuss in my blog. The importance of the article is that it clearly outlines why the crisis emerged and further that the game is up – we cannot go back to where we were prior to the crisis. The reality is that a paradigm change is required and it is just a matter of which way things will go now. The signs are ominous that a conservative backlash is coming that will make the neo-liberal period look like a Sunday School picnic. But there is also scope for progressives to seize the moment. The problem is that there isn’t much going on in progressive land. The starting point should be a credible attack on the dominant macroeconomics – that is my little part of the story. Helpers needed.

I am travelling and engaged with commitments today and so am fitting this blog into a shorter time-span than I usually make. The floods in Australia have now become tragic (loss of many lives) but the Prime Minister still is insisting that the Federal government “will bring the budget to surplus in 2012-13, and, yes, that will entail some tough choices” even though it is being predicted that the impact on real growth of the Queensland economy virtually shutting down at present might be of the order of 1 per cent (see this account). Given the tepid economic growth that was revealed in the September quarter this would suggest that we are going back into recession territory. My advice to PM Julia in relation to her surplus aspirations – “automatic stabilisers – learn about them”. You can see the negative impact of the excessive rain over the last few months on coal exports already – see ABS data release yesterday for International Trade in Goods and Services. Anyway, I was thinking about this early today before I started attending to my commitments here (in Melbourne) and it related to something that I read in the New York Times this week. The issue is that so-called progressives often let the team down by using inappropriate constructs in the public debate. I am never absolutely sure whether they use these constructs because they don’t know better or they want some point of intersection with the mainstream debate. I usually conclude the former and there are times when you realise you know they don’t quite get it.

I am travelling for most of this week with a very disrupted working routine – in between commitments. So this blog is shorter than usual and also somewhat unfinished in its conception. But the topic is the current call for the American Economic Association to introduce a code of ethical conduct for professional economists in the light of revelations in recent years about the abominable behaviour that many (academic) economists have displayed where they provide expert opinion in public in their guise as an independent economist but at the same time are being paid stipends of one form or another by corporations who would be affected by policy changes that the economists are talking about. This is usually in the context of such economists calling for more extensive deregulation. My view is that a more serious challenge to my profession has to be made. A code of conduct is fine but when the whole carcass of the profession is corrupted and rotten something more comprehensive is required – a major rethink about how we teach economics – nothing short of a scientific revolution is required. The whole body of mainstream economics needs to be trashed.

It is a beautifully warm and sunny end to the 2010 which in general has been a pretty awful year. Yesterday, US Department of Labor released the latest Jobless Claims data. That was good news and suggested that not only has the fiscal expansion in the US been supporting growth but that the economy may be turning the corner – albeit very slowly. Earlier in the week the extremists – the unrelenting deficit terrorists who don’t understand what has been going on were at it again. Like an old gramophone record stuck in a worn out groove they chanted their mantras about record debt levels and how best to cut the deficit. They appear to be stuck in a pre-1971 monetary system as well and haven’t yet caught up with the fact that times have changed. We have CDs, DVDs, MP3s and a fiat monetary system. Anyway, I guess we know have an inkling as to their problem now – see this blog – We always knew it – their brains are thinner!. They do not seem capable of understanding that if you want deficits to fall then you need growth. Growth occurs because spending equals income – public or private the cash till operators don’t discriminate. When there is insufficient private spending to support robust growth, then you have to supplement it with public spending. End of story.