A slightly off-center perspective on monetary problems.
Lenin’s famous question sounds a bit pompous, but this post will actually be a plea for modesty. When I started this post I intended to produce a grand survey of morality, politics and economics, plus an in depth discussion of Switzerland. Fortunately for you guys I don’t have my Switzerland data here with me in China, so the post will be merely overly long, not absurdly long. I’ll do a follow-up post later on Switzerland.
Shanghai is universally regarded as “the New York of China.” So I had naturally assumed that its arts scene was more sophisticated than that of “the Washington DC of China.” Just the reverse.
Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…
[New readers sent here by the NYT, this is a wacky, offbeat post. If you want a serious look at my policy views please check out my FAQs. In addition, this link discusses what went wrong last year. And finally, I want to thank Tyler Cowen for his very kind review of this blog.]
When Bob Murphy sees this title he’ll probably think it is a dream come true. The evil inflationist finally sees reason. Well I’m afraid it’s more like his worst nightmare. I don’t propose to abolish the phenomenon of inflation, but rather the concept of inflation. And to be more precise, price inflation, which is what almost everyone means by the term. I want it stripped from our macroeconomic theories, removed from our textbooks, banished into the dustbin of discarded mental constructs.
This post was triggered by a recent Will Wilkinson essay on inequality. Earlier I linked to a Wilkinson essay where he cast a bemused, skeptical eye on happiness research. His inequality essay is more serious, as the issue is much more highly charged. BTW, it’s interesting to consider why “happiness,” the supposed goal of humanity (according to economists) is regarded by many as a fairly frivolous research topic, where as inequality is very serious. One answer is that we can’t measure happiness very well, but as Wilkinson shows there’s no evidence that our inequality measures are any better. Indeed I’ll add a few criticisms of my own.
Originally I had planned on a post arguing that the best way to understand liberalism in all its various permutations is by equating it with utilitarianism. But I thought it might be better to break it into two posts, to keep the length more manageable. I’ll do the liberalism part next Sunday. Keep in mind that today’s post is intended to be a defense of utilitarianism from the liberal perspective; it is not aimed at objections that non-liberals might have. Thus I don’t address dogmatic libertarian arguments against progressive taxation.
