Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us Paperback – May 6, 2012

"Trickle down," for instance, was never a serious economic theory to begin with, and it has been discredited by the facts -- over and over again. And yet you will find plenty of people, a good number of politicians, and yes perhaps even a few actual economists, who will insist that "it works."(Quoted from Massimo Pigliucci Amazon.com review of May 21, 2012)This is a dishonest attempt at contextualizing the author's objectives in writing the book. Substitute "Supply Side Economics" and illustrate it with the laughable Laffer Curve and broadcast it with Ted Koppel's approval on NIGHTLINE and nearly every other (admittedly rare) attempt by national broadcast media to analyze economic policies in a way that engages the disinterested populace and you get a sense of how an academically non-rigorous argument could nevertheless become such an accepted set of false premises as to shape a shrinking middle class into being politically loyal to policies that are proving themselves a threat to that very same anxious, if hopelessly distracted body politic. That outcome may not be academically 'serious,' however it sure did accomplish its purpose. Capital was unfettered.Capital predictably fled for the lowest labor costs at any given moment on the planet until deflation set in among the developed world's consumer economies at which point simply parking the non-taxed capital offshore hidden behind bank secrecy laws from Liechtenstein to Panama to the Cayman Islands or London became the way to pile up corporate feudal reserves in personal accounts. Was Adam Smith around to insist on equal broadcast time? Any economist doing so and wishing to point out to Bill Clinton and his economic guides Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Sandy Weil that Adam Smith predicated the right of capital to cross borders freely on the right of labor to cross borders freely was ejected from the corporate-broadcast networks' Golden Rolodexes. When President Clinton bailed out the Mexican Peso at Rubin's behest saving the Citi Bank bond market investors who then welcomed the Secretary of Treasury onto their corporate team and later when Clinton hoodwinked Big Labor into supporting NAFTA a community radio journalist, Amy Goodman, got to ask an unguarded and cocky Bill Clinton about the political likelihood that it would ever be safe for any elected official to propose policies freeing labor up to cross borders as easily as Clinton's team had helped capital cross borders. After being at first flustered by the temerity of the hardball question, Clinton brushed past Amy Goodman huffing something about there'd be time in coming years to take on that task. Still wanna do that, DNC? Is that Obama's Immigration Policy? The Great Deporter! Think the GOP is moving that way? Mittens Romney and ilk want the unwashed labor rabble to cross over into our U.S. of A. where we can grow our own THIRD WORLD desperation right here on da plantation? Will Adam Smith's Zombie or Golem return to wreak havoc?Another dishonest aspect to this review and perhaps to Quiggen's thesis and popularization in his book is the growing credibility gap between the 'serious academic curriculum' taught in Business Schools as opposed to those submitted for peer review in Economics programs. Hence the solid paper trail of Larry Summers, Obama's Chief Economic Advisor and Rubin's guru at Harvard & Goldman Sachs & as Clinton's Secretary of Treasury to the Bond Markets. So why would Summers academic paper trail advocating sensible regulation and enforcement powers by government be problematic? Because as the record shows, and nowhere better illustrated than in the Academy Award winning documentary of the first year of our current Greater Depression, INSIDE JOB once Mr Summers was appointed to policy positions his actions protecting his own conflicted interests steamrolled deregulation and spread the risk from the boldly risk-taking (with OPM; Other People's Money) investor class to the perpetually burdened by bail-out working class, or what was left of it after the jobs and capital were incentivized to make like a Tea Bag and leave...Search online for articles explaining FINRA and see how well the dictum supported by the wizards of Wall Street, Greenspan, Paulson, Geithner, Summers, Rubin, Weil, Blankfein, Fuld et al "Business works best when the markets regulate themselves" has worked out...By the bye, Rose Friedman writing an opinion piece after her husband and E-CON partner Milton Friedman's passing refuted the uses to which their work was put by all those politicians and corporate policymakers as well as the MBA faculty who had no time or inclination to explore the nuances of the so-called Chicago School of E-CON.Tune to the People's Airwaves (NPR and PBS were granted broadcast spectrum in the 1960's after Newton Minow's and Neil Postman's critiques of the cesspool of market-driven mass media and its effect on our nation's youth and future). Public Broadcasting was set up to be insulated from market pressures. So how have we gotten to a point where the salaries of NPR executives, staff and talent are competitive with the advertising industry compensation scale of the advertiser-driven broadcast corporations? Why is all NPR\PBS broadcasting underwritten by multi-national cartel capitalist ventures or by the think tanks that enable them politically? Why is there not one regular NPR\PBS program from the perspective of LABOR, while 24/7 their airwaves indoctrinate those starved for 'serious educational broadcasting' with a steady dose of MARKET PLACE, SMART MONEY, WALL STREET TODAY, etc? I am posting this comment on Amazon.com, owned by Jeff Bezos who happens to now personally own the WASHINGTON POST. We've come a long way from ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and other founder myths...One fact, Jack, left: Freedom of the Press Belongs to The Owner (not the owned)...

The zombies Dr. Quiggin describes and discusses are five economic theories that have proven to be false, but which keep being trotted out as if they were accepted fact by the intellectual courtesans of Laissez-Faire.yland.*Quiggin devotes a chapter to each of five zombie ideas:. . Chapter 1: The Great Moderation: the lie that business (mainly big business) can now be relied on to govern the economy optimally, or nearly enough so. It can't.By law, corporations MUST seek to maximize the wealth of their shareholders, generally regardless of all other considerations, including the public good.. . Chapter 2: The Efficient Markets Hypothesis: the lie that "the market" will always correctly determine and implement the optimum prices and quantities produced. It won't.As early a writer as Adam Smith recognized that where there were spillover costs, the market price would be lower and the quantity produced greater than optimal, and when there were spillover benefits the reverse would be true.. . Chapter 3: Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium: The mistaken belief that DSGE models can overcome the Kornbluth objection. They can't.To quote Kornbluth ( The Syndic , 1978) as best I can from memory: "No accurate history of the future has yet been written, a fact which I think disposes of History's claim to rank as a science. Astronomers quail at the three-body problem, and throw up their hands in despair at the four-body problem. And yet, every moment in history is a problem in at least three billion bodies. [in 1978; now seven billion] I can juggle mean rainfalls, car-loading curves, birth rates, and patent applications, but I cannot for the life of me fit the recurring facial carbuncles of Karl Marx into my equations, even though we know, well after the fact, that the agonizing staphylococcus infections under that famous beard helped shape the course of twentieth-century totalitarianism . . . ." And DSGE models actually reduce the number of variables taken into account by aggregating them under assumptions which are, to say the least, questionable. Thus, their version of future economic history is inaccurate, sometimes disastrously so.. . Chapter 4: Trickle-Down Economics: The lie that the best way to help the poor is to reduce the taxes paid by the rich. It isn't. If you believe the trickle-down theory, and you want to help your son or daughter in college or your aging parents, try making me rich by sending the money to me and see how much of what I spend trickles down to those you want to help!. . Chapter 5: Privatization: the lie that governments never do anything right, and private enterprise will always do it better. It doesn't. The Government put a man on the Moon and back, but just look at the sorry results of privately-run prisons.What Dr. Quiggin does not, in my opinion, adequately address is WHY these false ideas keep being resurrected. The answer is simple: they are ideas the super-rich want us to believe, because, if accepted, they facilitate the transfer of wealth from those who need it most to those who need it least (because they already have more than enough). So they have their tame economists trumpet these lies, cherry-picking or inventing data to support them. (Whoever said "Show me a supply-side economist and I'll show you an intellectual courtesan." sure hit the nail on the head!)But despite that omission, the book is well worth reading. Thank you, Dr. Quiggin!* Thanks to Jim Hightower's "Lowdown" for suggesting the term [email protected]

Painful to try and get in to in terms of flow but that may be me

good

Good read.

Great book, everyone should read it!

Embora não traga nada de muito novo, é um compilado interessantíssimo, abordando teorias econômicas "zumbis", continuam a andar por aí e levar crédito, sendo que nenhuma funciona, e isso é demonstrado no livro. Teorias neo-liberais, enxugamento do estado, "arrumar a casa", etc.