Socialist Progressives

If you ask me, Keynes deserves a lot of respect. His analysis provided both a coherent explanation for the state of the economy at the time and reasonably accurate predictions about future results. Additionally, his proposals put him on higher moral ground than a lot of others (a subjective judgment on my part, of course). Not incidentally, those are the same basic criteria by which I judge other economists - i.e., are they being intellectually honest, do their models make good predictions, are the policies they favor morally acceptable to me. But I don't think Keynes was flawless, or the last word, and I doubt he'd make those claims about himself.

I don't have any suggestions of where to start other than to study hard. There's a vast amount of economic disinformation propagated by powerful interests, so I think it's helpful to understand things well enough to call bullshit on that. In general, I'm open to any policy suggestions that promote freedom and egalitarianism. In terms of short to medium term changes, I find value in the work of Dean Baker, Stephanie Kelton, and a number of other heterodox economists. In the long run, I'd prefer a radially different system but I'm not enough of a visionary to be very specific about what that would look like, let alone how to get there from here.

Some questions for you:

You indicate mixed feelings about the welfare state. You say you support its goals and would like to see a higher minimum wage (a wage floor being a key component of the welfare state) but you also describe it as a failed experiment. In what sense do you think it has failed/is failing?

I disagree with your comments on the nature of the economy during the Clinton years. And we can talk about that if you want - the short version of my take is that the economy was driven by an unhealthy asset bubble in tech stocks, and full employment and wage gains were achieved because the Fed didn't raise rates even though unemployment was lower than the conventional wisdom about NAIRU. But I'm mostly curious about your thoughts on neoliberalism. What do you see as the merits of neoliberalism?

You have been emphatic about your belief that learned behavior is not a factor in economics. How do you account for the fact that the historical/anthropological record reveals that there are cultures with conventions governing ownership and exchange that are incompatible with the laws and customs of other cultures?