Month: June 2016
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Noahpinion: What Causes Recessions? Debt Runups or Wealth Declines?
Noah Smith asks what seems to be an interesting question in a recent post: “what leads to big recessions: wealth or debt”? But I’d like to suggest that it’s actually a confused question. Like: is it the heat or the (relative) humidity that makes you feel so hot? Is it the voltage or the amperage…
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How Perfect Markets Concentrate Wealth and Strangle Growth and Prosperity
Capitalism concentrates wealth. Ridicule Marx and his latter-day disciples all you like (I’ll help); he definitely got that right. But capitalism is a big word with lots of meanings, and enough ideological baggage to fill a Lear Jet. Let’s talk about something more precise: perfect markets, with ownership, in which individuals compete with others to produce stuff,…