Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference
Under the title “Kalecki Profit Equation”, Brian Romanchuk, presents 5 equations of increasing complexity referring to monetary economies of increasing complexity. This approach is obviously based on two of my posts.#1, #2 Insofar it is correct, however, Brian Romanchuk still gets some essentials wrong.#3, #4 As a result, with his mathematical incompetence, he in effect helps the Kelton-Fraud.#5 Needless to emphasize that a mathematician is supposed to detect and correct logical errors/contradictions and to secure formal consistency by strictly applying the axiomatic-deductive method.
To make matters short, a concise formal summary of the main points, which have been elaborated at length elsewhere, is given on Wikimedia.#6
• First of all, the distinction between monetary profit (coll. money-in-the-cashbox/bank = tangible/measurable balance) and nonmonetary profit (coll. paper profit) is essential. Eq. (i)
• To speak of the “Kalecki Profit Equation” is utterly misleading. Kalecki’s equation is formally defective and this has been demonstrated already in a 2011 working paper.#8.
• Eq. (iv) refutes all Keynesian and After-Keynesian I=S/IS-LM models from Hicks to Krugman and beyond.#9
• From the axiomatically correct Profit Law for the open economy with government and profit distribution, eq. (vi), follows the AXEC balances equation, eq. (vii), (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)−(Q−Yd)=0 which directly compares to the defective MMT balances equation (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)=0.
• The MMT balances equation features prominently in MMT presentations#10 for hiding the macroeconomic fact that Public Deficit = Private Profit.#11
Whether Brian Romanchuk does not realize that his Model 5 equation is inconsistent with the MMT balances equation or whether he intentionally obfuscates the issue is a matter of indifference. What counts at the end of the day is that he is in effect promoting the scientific and political fraud of MMT.#5
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 DSGE and profit―forget it! MMT and profit―forget it!
#2 Rectification of MMT macro accounting
#3 Profit: after 200+ years, economists are still in the woods
#4 The first to leave the sinking MMT ship?
#5 The Kelton-Fraud
#6 Wikimedia AXEC143d Profit Law and Balances Equation
#7 The Profit Theory is False Since Adam Smith
#8 What is Wrong with Heterodox Economics? Kalecki’s Profit Theory as an Example
#9 Keynes’s Missing Axioms
#10 Down with idiocy!
#11 MMT and the magical profit disappearance
Related 'Bill Mitchell, MMT’s fake scientist' and 'MMT: Academic snake oil for the people' and 'Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder' and 'Political economics: Who hijacks British Labour?' and 'MMT: another case of inverted economics'.
Immediately following Truth by definition? The Profit Theory is axiomatically false for 200+ years.
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REPLY to Joe Leote on Jul 7You say: “Applying a national accounting model with specified ‘heroic’ assumptions Minsky uses the Kalecki profit identity to conclude that profits = investment.”
Yes, Kalecki came up with his profit definition and Minsky with his and Keen with his and anybody else with theirs.#1
As the ancient Greeks already observed: “There are always many different opinions and conventions concerning any one problem or subject-matter…. This shows that they are not all true. For if they conflict, then at best only one of them can be true.” (Popper)
The fact is that NONE of them is true. To this day, economists do not get the foundational concept of their subject matter straight.
#1 Heterodoxy, too, is proto-scientific garbage
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REPLY Joe Leote on Jul 7
You say “The majority of statements are neither true nor false.” True, indeed, 99.9 percent of statements are just brain-dead blather. The 0.1 percent is science.
Every layperson who is confronted with the statement: Mr. A has been murdered and you are the murderer, understands immediately the concept of scientific truth. Truth is (i) a binary concept, i.e. there is only true/false with NOTHING in between, and (ii), truth is objective, that is provable in principle, and (iii), that it is worth every effort to find out the truth even if we cannot be absolutely sure that we will be successful.
Scientific truth is well-defined for 2300+ years by formal and material consistency. However, there is the large swamp of cargo cult science (Feynman) where, as Keynes said, “nothing is clear and everything is possible.”
In the swamp, vagueness, indeterminacy, inconclusiveness, confusion dressed up as complexity, unresolved contradictions, storytelling, filibuster, gossip, finicky scholasticism (Popper), known/unknown unknowns, nonentities, vacuous doubt, silly beliefs, and the Humpty Dumpty Fallacy are the prevailing components of communication.
Economists are swampies.#1, #2 Economics is a failed science. To this day, economists have NOT gotten the foundational concept of their subject matter ― profit ― right. All microfounded (Walrasian) and macrofounded (Keynesian) models are provably false. Economists do not know how the economy works. Economics is a cargo cult science. The “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” is a fraud.
To claim that there is no truth is an immunizing stratagem (Popper) of failed/fake/ stupid/corrupt proto-scientific blatherers.#3
You are on the wrong side of the demarcation line between science and non-science.
#1 Lousy scientists
#2 Economists ― medics or barber-surgeons?
#3 Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses
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REPLY to Joe Leote on Jul 7
Kalecki’s profit equation is formally defective and this has been demonstrated already in a 2011 working paper.#1 The correct “Kalecki” equation is given with eq. (v) in the Wikimedia compilation.#2
The compilation settles the profit issue.#3
#1 What is Wrong with Heterodox Economics? Kalecki’s Profit Theory as an Example
#2 Wikimedia AXEC143c Profit Law and Balances Equation
#3 For details see cross-references Profit
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REPLY to Brian Romanchuk on Jul 8 and Blog-Reference MNE on Jul 9You say: “From my perspective, the issue is straightforward: do we want to model the operation of the industrial capitalist system that we have? If so, we need to stick with the definition of profit that capitalists use, …”
False! Capitalists know as much about capitalism as fishes know about water ― nothing. This is long known: “… these people who live and move among the facts often, or mostly, cannot of themselves put together any precise reasonings about them.” (Bagehot, 1885)#1
This is why scientists redefine everyday concepts rigorously: “The only way to arrive at coherent languages is to set up axiomatic systems implicitly defining the basic concepts.” (Schmiechen)#2
The elementary production-consumption economy is, for a start, defined by three macro axioms (Yw=WL, O=RL, C=PX), two conditions (X=O, C=Yw), and two definitions (monetary profit/loss Qm≡C−Yw, monetary saving/dissaving Sm≡Yw−C). From this follows Qm≡−Sm, that is, macroeconomic profit comes in the most elementary case from the growth of household sector debt.#3
Capitalists don’t know this. Like goldfishes, they know only how to swim in their little pond but have no idea where the water comes from.
#1 Bagehot’s wisdom and the silliness of modern economists
#2 How to get out of the swamp of ignorance
#3 Profit theory in less than 5 minutes
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REPLY Roger Sparks on Jul 10 and Blog-Reference MNE
You say: “It is hard to distinguish whether owner income comes from investment, hours worked, skill, or some other feature associated with ownership.”
This is entirely beside the point. Obviously, you do not understand how macroeconomic profit and microeconomic profit are related.#1, #2
Profit for the economy as a WHOLE has NOTHING to do with productivity, the wage rate, the working hours, exploitation, competition, innovation, capital, power, monopoly, risk, greed, choice, etcetera. These factors affect only the DISTRIBUTION of profit between firms. Macroeconomic profit is in the most elementary case given with Qm≡−Sm, that is, profit comes from the growth of the household sector’s debt.
The crucial point is this: Brian Romanchuk’s Model 5 equation can immediately be transformed into this balances equation (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)−(Q−Yd)=0 which directly compares to the MMT balances equation (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)=0.
Brian Romanchuk argues: “Now I have no idea what he’s going on about the MMT equation. If I am not mistaken, the MMT equation is a sectoral balances equation, and does not tell us about profit. People who care about accounting identities argue that the ‘senior MMTers’ are pulling some technical legerdemain with the definition of saving used. However, I do not deeply care about accounting identitities, so I really never looked into this alleged controversy.”
So-called accounting identities are elementary algebra. If Brian Romanchuk does not see that his profit equation ⇒ balances equation directly contradicts the MMT balances equation he is an incompetent mathematician.
Worse, the MMT balances equation obscures the fact that Public Deficit = Private Profit and is used to politically deceive the ninety-nine-percenters.#3 Either Brian Romanchuk is an incompetent mathematician or he is complicit in the MMT fraud.
Either way, his two posts about the “Kalecki Profit Equation” go down the scientific drain.
#1 Zero-sum capitalism
#2 Capitalism, poverty, exploitation, and cross-over exploitation
#3 Down with idiocy!
