Summary of comments on Barkley Rosser on ‘The Legacy of Joan Robinson’
Blog-Reference
It is essential to refocus the issue before tackling the minor points/distractions. The fact of the matter is:
(i) Economics is a failed science.
(ii) The profit theory is provably false.
(iii) By logical consequence, other parts of the theoretical superstructure, e.g. price theory, distribution theory, employment theory, I=S/IS-LM, etc, are false too.
(iv) Because of the failure to get the foundational concepts right, economics is still at the stage of a proto-science.
(v) The rules of conduct of the scientific community demand that the actual state of economics is at all times unambiguously communicated to the general public. This implies, as the very first step, that the word sciences is deleted from the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.
The proof that profit/loss is the complement to dissaving/saving has been given in the post above with the reference to Joan Robinson which shows that she came close to the true profit theory. Economics after Robinson lost this insight and fell into intellectual degeneration.
There is only ONE exception: Maurice Allais got profit right: “Autrement dit l’investissement n’est pas égal à l’épargne spontanée, mais à l’épargne spontanée augmenté du revenue non distribué des entreprises ....” (1993, p. 69). The rest of retarded economists marched even DEEPER into the proto-scientific woods with New Classicals and New Keynesians leading the pack.
It is a ridiculous attempt from Barkley Rosser to filibuster the clear-cut formal proof away with the little rhetorical tricks that are so characteristic for the low-IQ discussions in economics.
So Rosser asks theatrically: “Have you stopped claiming that profits are PR as you did in eq. (5) in your 2011 paper?” Answer: Profit in the 2011 paper ‘Keynes Missing Axioms’ has been defined in Section 11 headed Profit in eq. (23) and it is the same as in the post above. Eq. (5) defines the distributed profit ratio.
So Rosser applies wordplay “item (ii) that declares that there is "market clearing," which is in most peoples’ books another way of saying equilibrium, or supply equals demand, or no changes in inventories. Given that you are assuming equilibrium, it is pretty funny how you proceed later to denounce all those economists who engage in supply-demand analysis,” Equilibrium is a NONENTITY and NOT the same as the condition of market clearing. Because of this, ALL other peoples’ books that contain the concept of equilibrium are scientific junk like all books that contain nonentities like angels, unicorns, and the Easter Bunny. To be quite clear: “Given that you are assuming equilibrium” is provably false. The only statement about equilibrium that you can find in my posts and papers is that equilibrium is one of the landmarks of scientific idiocy of which there is plenty in economics.
The point is, not to get lost in the obvious distractions and evasions of confused confusers (2013) but to expel economics and what Joan Robinson called the ‘throng of superfluous economists’ from the sciences.
The one good deed many economists can do for economics science is to get out of the way — Barkley Rosser explicitly included.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
References
Allais, M. (1993). Les Fondements Comptable de la Macro-Économie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2nd edition.
Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2013). Confused Confusers: How to Stop Thinking Like an Economist and Start Thinking Like a Scientist. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2207598: 1–16. URL
Immediately preceding The overdue public clarification of economics’ actual scientific state.