here's @RichardJMurphy deconstructing the #BBC's 'story' on the national debt figures (which appeared on the BBC website this morning) - this is an excellent demonstration of the point @sjwrenlewis (& Murphy) have been making for some time;
the BBC's #economics coverage is misinformed & is guided by the normalisation of #austerty as a policy!
Its not a simplification to communicate to readers, its a skewed politicised narrative to serve specific political interest!
#Economics#nationalaccounts
Before the 1990s the System of National Accounts (SNA) did not distinguish between individual public services - education, healthcare etc. - and collective ones - defence, public administration etc. This fouled up international comparisons and led to some spectacularly erroneous policy decisions - most notably in Sweden - as a result.
These days this has been corrected but policymakers may not yet have caught with this.
Chamath Palihapitiya, who previously claimed bitcoin has replaced gold and would eventually get to $200,000, now hs said that “crypto is dead in America," per CNBC.
In the interview, he cited regulatory uncertainty and a lack of innovation as reasons for his pessimism about the future of cryptocurrency in the United States.
Some argue that inequality is fine because the wealthy will need goods and services and will therefore spend money and employ people.
But this is nonsensical. Sure, the ultra-wealthy may still want restaurants to eat in, but the math will never work out. 10,000 people who each have $100k net worth can all go out to eat, but one billionaire won't order 10,000 dinners.
As a person who spent his entire professional life in the tax business, i can attest to the below. The rich, not all, but a lot, think rules do not apply to them. And their money allows them to buy politicians who do their bidding. Like cutting the IRS budget and telling the poor and middle class it's for them!
Think the Panama Papers! All those off shore accounts!!
I believe you if you tell me a billionaire worked hard, but hard work is not how he got a billion dollars.
Hard work is how you can (maybe) become “successful dental practice” rich, not how you cross into billions. You can’t take the effort it takes to earn $100k a year and scale it up to “earn” billions.
The use of the term deficit when comparing planned & market economies is questionable.
In a planned economy, a scenario where 100 smartphones were produced & the price was set to $200, but 150 people were willing to pay that price is often considered a deficit.
In a market economy, the same scenario could play out with a company raising the price to $250, leading to only 100 smartphones being sold. Market economy fans would call this an equilibrium price & praise the market's efficiency.
1/2🧵
But in reality, in both cases only 100 people obtained a smartphone. Using price to decrease effective demand does not necessarily mean that the need in aggregated demand is satisfied.
That's why it's important to compare economic systems based on their efficiency in satisfying aggregated demand for goods, rather than focusing on deficits and surpluses.
I am a professor of #economics, esp. #publicfinance at the #KU Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in #Ingolstadt in Southern #Germany . Most of my research is about #taxes, esp. corporate taxation and tax evasion. I'll toot about tax policy and economic policy more generally, about academia, and being a mom in academia.
I'm part of the #twittermigration and curious to see where all of this heading.
First broadcast in 1980 in the BBC Omnibus strand, this TV adaptation of John Berger's essay, 'Parting Shots from Animals', had a significant impact on my thinking at the time. Grim as the situation it exposed was, how much worse things are now, looking back at its account of Esso's appropriation of the image of the power and grace of the Tiger to promote its continuing destruction of the possibility of any life on earth #ClimateChange#ClimateEmergency#Economicshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQoB3p8j3lM
Since 2016, I’ve discovered US has a strong #antidemocratic#authoritarian movement that seems intent on degrading quality of public policy convos, propagating #misinformation, & rigging election rules. So I'm trying to learn more.