In the opening sequence of the HBO series, Newsroom, the anchor is participating in a public forum at an East coast US university (in Boston). During the Q&A, he is asked by a student (“a sorority girl”) in the audience, who is suitably bright-eyed and full of American blather, “Is America the greatest country in the world?” He initially blusters but the convener of the forum pushes him for a “human moment” and what follows is 3 classic minutes of TV, starting with “its not the greatest country in the World, Professor, that’s my answer” and concluding with “So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the World, I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Yosemite?”. He then said among other things that “We used to be …”, “we stood up for what was right”, “we waged wars on poverty, not poor people”, “we aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it” and more. The latest shenanigans in the US Congress where the GOP representatives have become a mindless rabble is certainly testimony to the sort of things the mythical Newsroom anchor was talking about in the series. The Sydney Morning Herald article (October 16, 2013) – US shutdown stalemate enters realm of the absurd – reports on how the GOP reps do not “agree either on tactics or strategy” and Boehner announced to the press that there had been “no decisions about what exactly we will do”. This is one day before the lunatic right-fringe of their party is intent on causing mayhem. My prediction – some ridiculous deal will be done and the US government will not default. We will see. But today I am providing a little glimpse into examination processes by using what might have been a first-year answer to an examination question to highlight some important points. I hope you enjoy the little window into life at a university.

There was an interesting Working Paper issued by the ILO – Is aggregate demand wage-led or profit-led? – last year, which finally received some coverage in the mainstream economics press this week. The Financial Times article (October 13, 2013) – Capital gobbles labour’s share, but victory is empty – considered the ILO research in some detail. That lag is interesting in itself given that it was obvious many years ago that the trends reported in the ILO paper and the FT article were part of the larger story – that is, the preconditions – for the global financial crisis. If you look back through the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) literature, dating back to the 1990s, you will see regular reference to the dangers in allowing real wages to lag behind productivity growth. It seems that the mainstream financial press is only now starting to understand the implications of one of the characteristic neo-liberal trends, which was engendered by a ruthless attack on trade unions by co-opted governments, persistent mass unemployment and underemployment, and increased opportunities by firms to off-shore production to low-wage nations. Better late than never I guess.

In the last week, Australians have been reminded yet again of the corruption that exists in the ranks of the corporate sector. Over the last few years we have been following the – unfolding evidence – of illegal practices (including bribery, UN-sanction busting) by companies (Note Printing Australia and Securency), which are owned by our central bank (RBA). Now, we have learned that one of our largest constructions companies appears to be corrupt to the core. They have been accused of “paying kickbacks to Iraqi officials in return for receiving lucrative contracts from the Iraqi regime” (Source). There are a myriad of examples of corporate fraud around the world (I just thought of Enron – “Burn, baby, burn. That’s a beautiful thing”). And then there was the global financial crisis with the cocktail of out-of-control investment banks, ratings agencies and whoever else with very long cheating snouts getting as much as they could for themselves, laws or no laws. And now we learn that a significant proportion of government procurement contracts in Europe are subject to corrupt behaviour. While, this tells me that the processes of government oversight need reworking in significant ways. But, further, it tells me that the root cause of the corruption is not the fact that governments are too big or spend too much money. Rather, an unfettered capitalism will pursue an agenda of greed and corruption and the idea that self-regulating markets (devoid of public oversight) are the best way to organise economic activity is a myth. The “market” is rife with corruption and inefficiency.

I am writing several formal academic papers at present with various presentations coming up as the target and so blogs in the near future might reflect that sort of mission. Today I present some results of some work I am doing with my co-author Joan Muysken, which stems in part from theoretical work we outlined in our 2008 book – Full Employment abandoned. The current work formalises the influence of unemployment duration and underemployment on the inflation process. Initially, we are focusing on Australia (for a December presentation) but the scope of the work will generalise to a broader OECD dataset. A motivation is that underemployment has became an increasingly significant component of labour underutilisation in many nations over the last two decades. In some nations, such as Australia, the rise in underemployment outstripped the fall in official unemployment in the period leading up to the financial crisis. Underemployment is now higher than unemployment in Australia. There is now excellent data available for underemployment from national statistical agencies, which makes it easier to examine its macroeconomic impacts.

There was an article in the UK Guardian (Australian) edition last week (September 27, 2013) which carried the title – Can Labor be blamed for rising unemployment?. The Labor government, which was tossed out of office in Australia on September 14, had been in power since late 2007. They inherited an unemployment rate of 4.4 per cent (which dropped 3 months later to 4 per cent on the tail end of the growth phase), an underemployment rate of 6.2 per cent (total labour underutilisation rate of 10.7 per cent), a participation rate of 65.6 per cent and an employment-population rate of 62.7 per cent. By the time we got sick of them, the unemployment rate was 5.8 per cent and rising, the underemployment rate was 7.8 per cent and rising (total wastage was 13.7 per cent and rising), the participation rate had dropped to 65 per cent (some 114 thousand workers exiting the labour force because of the lack of jobs), and the employment-population ratio had dropped to 61.2 per cent (a loss of 285 thousand relative jobs). The labour force increased by 1147 thousand over this time but employment only rose by 934 thousand, which meant that unemployment rose by 161 thousand more than if the relative scales had been maintained from November 2007. So is Labor to blame for this? Of-course it is – it was the currency-issuing government for 6 years or so. Any rise in the unemployment rate is the fault of the national government because it alone as the complete capacity to offset any reductions in employment arising from other sources such as global financial crisis, the slowdown in the Chinese economy, an appreciated Australian dollar and whatever else. The author of the Guardian article, while mounting a reasonable fight against the conservative view of the changing labour market, feels unable to admit that basic truth. So the Labor Party is obviously to blame because it was in government and could have prevented the rise in the unemployment rate.

Metaphors! They are more than a fancy way of emphasising some point – that is, their power goes beyond meagre linguistic construction. The research suggests they are part of our deep mental or neural capacity, which we draw on to sort out facts and ideas. They are conceptual devices intrinsically linked to the way we think abstractly. Metaphorical language reinforces our ideology (worldview) and so it is no surprise that political parties have become very interested in framing their messages using simple and common metaphors which resonate with the way we feel about things. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, considers we do not make our political choices on the basis of rational dissection of competing facts and arguments but rather respond to central (or grand) metaphors with reinforce our worldview. We thus consider facts or argument within that framework of thought. I am doing a bit of work in this area as a way of understanding why central Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) propositions (which are so patently obvious and have strong explanatory capacity) evade acceptance among people, even those who express liberal perspectives (in this context meaning – are open to new ideas).

There was an UK Guardian article today (September 23, 2013) – The American dream has become a burden for most – which argues that the narratives about the American dream are becoming increasingly recognised as a “delusional myth”. The discussion is relevant for a number of growing research agendas that attempt to construct a new understanding of what has been happening over the neo-liberal period (say, the last 3 decades), how the financial crisis occurred, why it is persisting, who underpins the well-funded campaign against budget deficits as a means of reducing unemployment and redistributing national income towards the bottom of the distribution, and how we might go about reforming/restructuring a global financial order that clearly does not work in the interests of all (make that almost everybody!). One such research agenda is emerging from the field of network analysis and some of the results to date provide a chilling picture of who controls the world financial markets and the governments and central banks that seek to regulate these markets. Essentially, if we want to engage in serious reform we have to unseat the power of some 161 individuals.