Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Jul 30
There are TWO economixes: political economics and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed.
Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the past 200+ years. This is the track record: provably false
• profit theory, for 200+ years,
• Walrasian microfoundations (including equilibrium), for 150+ years,
• Keynesian macrofoundations (including I=S, IS-LM), for 80+ years.
To play Friedman against Keynes, as Bill Mitchell does, is a pointless exercise because BOTH were utterly incompetent scientists and BOTH Monetarism and Keynesianism is plain proto-scientific rubbish. If there ever were political agenda pushers = fake scientists, then Friedman and Keynes and their respective followers.
Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and ALL approaches got profit theory, employment theory, and the theory of money wrong.
Economics is a systems science. Accordingly, the correct approach is not microfoundations but macrofoundations. The elementary version of the correct (objective, systemic, behavior-free, macrofounded) Employment Law is shown on Wikimedia AXEC62: #1
From this systemic Phillips curve#2 curve follows:
(i) An increase in the expenditure ratio ρE leads to higher employment L (the Greek letter ρ stands for ratio).
(ii) Increasing investment expenditures I exert a positive influence on employment.
(iii) An increase in the factor cost ratio ρF≡W/PR leads to higher employment.
Item (i) and (ii) cover the familiar Keynesian arguments about aggregate demand. The factor cost ratio ρF as defined in (iii) embodies the price mechanism. The fact is that overall employment L INCREASES if the AVERAGE wage rate W INCREASES relative to average price P and productivity R. This is the OPPOSITE of what microfounded economics teaches. From the macroeconomic interdependencies follows that the market economy is an unstable system. And this, in turn, means that there is NO such thing as an equilibrium, NOT in the short run, NOT in long run, NEVER. Equilibrium is a NONENTITY.
By consequence, there is NO such thing as a NAIRU.#3 The bastard Phillips Curve is misspecification since Samuelson/Solow and has to be replaced by the macrofounded systemic Phillips curve which is entirely free of the familiar silly behavioral assumptions (constrained optimization, expectations, etc.).
The discussion between Monetarism and Keynesianism is until this day not more than brain-dead blather of scientifically incompetent agenda pushers.#4 Policy proposals of these two political sects have NO sound scientific foundations. Time to get rid of worthless economics and failed/fake scientists who have gotten nothing right for 200+ years.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Essentials of Constructive Heterodoxy: Employment
#2 Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster
#3 NAIRU and the scientific incompetence of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
#4 How money emerges out of nothing ― the functional account
Related 'Forget Hayek' and 'The myth of economics knowledge' and 'New Economic Thinking: the 10 crucial points' and 'Milton Friedman, fake scientist' and 'Keynes ― the poster boy for the weakness of the economist’s mind' and 'Keynesians ― terminally stupid or worse?'.