Shahin Ashkiani
@shaahin_a
Lecturer in Data Analytics, Interested in #MMT #PK #EcologicalEcon #Worker_Cooperatives. // “Opinions are mine"
Recently, Angus Deaton wrote an IMF blog post on “rethinking his economics.” He openly acknowledged his shortcomings in the field. The appointment is significant because he is a Nobel laureate and a well-known mainstream economist. In his piece, he emphasizes how ⬇️
🚨 Cops were caught on camera beating anti-ICE protesters on the Ohio–Kentucky state line bridge; then dragging them off in zip-ties like it was open season on dissent. They didn’t de-escalate. They cracked down. And they made sure the cameras saw it. @BreitbartNews
In 1991, Blinder, a mainstream economist, had a wild, “unorthodox” idea: ask actual business decision-makers about their pricing rationale😱 In 1994, he published "Theories Meet the Real World," bc all neoclassical theories were a priori; math models of a fantasy world.
I know it's out of character on Twitter to actually listen to what someone else says before replying, but I can't help myself... 😉
Thanks, Steve, for being so observant! I intentionally used the adj because OERG wasn’t considered mainstream. At least not to me. They were closer to heterodoxy, both methodologically and ideologically Blinder even wrote a whole section justifying his “unorthodox” method
I’m studying Veblen, Commons, Dewey, Mayhew, and others thanks to the fantastic set of materials curated by the wonderful @StevenHailAus in the MA in Economics of Sustainability at @modernmoneylab @TorrensUni. If you ask me, join the program. You won’t regret it.
136 years ago, in 1898, Thorstein Veblen proposed his “evolutionary” approach to economics. But is it still relevant today? "... economics is helplessly behind the times, and unable to handle its subject-matter in a way to entitle it to standing as a modern science." 🧵0/4
In September, we have an anti-austerity conference in Bristol (2 days Fri/Sat) and are then planning MMT workshops in Amsterdam (1 Sunday pm + evening), Sheffield (2 days/weekend) and Vienna (2 days/weekend). I hope you'll come along & engage if nearby. We want to shift debates.
The direction in Neoclassical economics is exactly the opposite: You have a methodology (eg optimization), thus you define the ontology of phenomena to fit it! To hell with reality! People/Firms/Countries are optimizers, price is set by S-D, ...
Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology This figure, by political scientist Colin Hay, gets it right. Methods are very important. But we should not delink our discussions about methods from a consideration of ontological and epistemological questions.
What crisis exactly? How much public debt is too much public debt? How do you calculate it, besides the super idiotic VAR model application? What is the immediate danger of this public debt "crisis"?
Apparently no money to pay doctors £22.67/hr. But £1,300,000,000 to pay management consultants. Now we know where the money is going @Wesstreeting.
Genocidal maniacs
אחרי רפיח, בית חאנון - אין מחסה לטרור.
Economic genius Donald Trump explains how he comes up with tariff rates
"Practitioners decreasingly took problematic situations as they came, but increasingly sought, selected, and distorted them so that favoured techniques[mathematical optimization] could be applied to them."