Is It Time for a New Economics Curriculum? “The Economy,” a new textbook, is designed for the post-neoliberal age. ......... “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can write its economics textbooks,” he wrote, in 1990. “The first lick is the privileged one, impinging on the beginner’s tabula rasa at its most impressionable state.” ......... initiative—called core, for Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics, and anchored by a free online introductory textbook titled
“The Economy”
—will “teach economics as if the last thirty years had happened.” ...........Queen Elizabeth II visited the London School of Economics in 2008, and asked the school’s professors why no one had seen the crisis coming.
.......... the limits of the Homo economicus view of people as farsighted and self-interested actors .......... Bowles and Carlin, in contrast, present market failure as far more pervasive, and not as a rare deviation from a generally efficient and desirable status quo. ........ lead students to “reasonably conclude that the economy is about interactions in competitive markets (a positive statement) that function pretty well (a normative one) and in which governments ought not to meddle.” core provides reasons and evidence to challenge all three positions. .......... Bowles told me about an informal rule among publishers that no more than fifteen per cent of the material in a new textbook should deviate from the dominant ones. He estimates that the figure for core is closer to seventy per cent. ......... After a summer of floods and fires, readers will not be shocked to learn that the economy depends on a functional ecology: “The economy is part of society, which is part of the biosphere,” the core textbook reads. ......... core still relies on G.D.P., but it acknowledges some of the limits and criticisms that pertain to long-dominant models in economics. ......... core also presents a view of psychology in which people are motivated by more than self-interest. .........None of the textbook’s contributors were paid, and all donated their rights over the material to core, which is a registered charity.
........One teacher from Arkansas State University calculated that using core will save his students a combined hundred thousand dollars annually.
............ “Teaching a version of economics where there is no such thing as economic power, where we’re in the best of all possible worlds . . . I could see how it would not necessarily be a very interesting field for people from more marginalized groups.” ........ He worried that so much emphasis on the ethical and political dimensions of economics might make the subject feel like a different discipline altogether. “The question is, do you want the students to feel like they’re coming out of, you know, to be blunt, a sociology class or an economics class?” Gruber said. ...........“Economics is a right-wing science,” he told me. “We teach students that the market is always right. And that’s just wrong.”
.............. In his book, “Economics: The User’s Guide,” from 2014, Chang delineates nine major schools of economic thought: Austrian, behaviorialist, classical, developmentalist, institutionalist, Keynesian, Marxist, neoclassical, and Schumpeterian. Adding feminist economics, evolutionary economics, and ecological economics brings the number to twelve. ............. He sees core as fundamentally neoclassical, and thus something of an intellectual monoculture. “All these different schools have been developed with different questions, different methodologies, different assumptions. So they are differently good at answering different kinds of questions,” he told me. “I’m not saying that neoclassical economics is particularly bad, but, in neoclassical economics, you don’t really question the underlying distribution of income, wealth, and power. People promoting that perspective have, frankly, more exposure, more research funding, more political support.” ........... “If one wishes to restructure society in order to achieve other values than maximizing output of material goods and services, Samuelson’s book is no help at all,” one professor wrote, in the early nineteen-seventies. .......... she doesn’t think core goes far enough in reimagining the discipline. .......... many assumptions in present-day economics—about gender, the moral status of future generations, or the natural world—may, one day, appear hopelessly flawed. ..........the astounding increases in inequality that have occurred in the United States since 1980
........... "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."How Will the Housing Bubble Burst? Monetary policy has caused this bubble, and only monetary policy will cure it. ..........
Home prices are increasing at the fastest rate that we’ve ever witnessed since we first began collecting data just over five decades ago.
........... mortgage rates may be suppressed by the Fed’s balance sheet for years to come. ........The housing bubble of the 2000s can offer helpful insight in assessing the current bubble.
......... Current home prices are nearing the 2000s housing-bubble level relative to income. ....... these rare heights have not corrected without recession in over 35 years. ....... As of this July, home prices were 13 percent above average long-term affordability. Should prices continue rising for another year, they will be around the ’05 level — 23 percent above average. Declines in home prices from this level would wipe out equity for the new generation of homebuyers. Home prices took a decade to recover from the 2000s bubble. .......... the beginning of a buyer’s strike with over two-thirds of consumers believing this to be a bad time to buy a house. ....... this statistic is at its worst level in about 40 years. Then, during the brutal early-1980s recession, homebuyers were concerned with double-digit mortgage rates. Now they are concerned with double-digit price increases. .......... Based upon past metrics, the January sales peak has the earmark of a cyclical peak, with prices likely to fall within about a year. ........ It did not take large mortgage-rate changes to tip the 2008 crisis. ......... Another financial crisis seems unlikely, although a crude measure of the surplus of bank assets over liabilities is at its lowest ratio to bank assets since 2009. ......... “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” History informs us that current home pricing cannot go on forever.
India made unreasonable demands, China says after border talks fail Chinese military calls on India to prove its sincerity after latest commander-level talks falter ........ The two sides have traded accusations about recent incidents on their shared frontier ......... India rejected the accusation, saying its suggestions to improve the situation were not accepted by China.
As US returns to the UN Human Rights Council, it confronts an increasingly forceful China A great deal has changed in the 3 years since the US withdrew from the council: ‘China is now the biggest player in town’, notes one diplomatic analyst ....... Checking Beijing’s efforts to reshape the UN will take more than just coming back, as China continues to leverage its growing influence .......... at a time when Beijing is working overtime to blunt criticism over its crackdown in Xinjiang and revamp the UN in line with its world view.
The United States surpassed 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public........ The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines. ....... the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people. ........ The deaths that have followed the wide availability of vaccines, he added, are “absolutely needless.” ........... Brandee Stripling, a bartender in Cottondale, Ala., told her boss that she felt as if she had been run over by a freight train........ had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus, and now she had tested positive. ......... her children clutched one another in grief .........
2,900 people who were vaccinated among the 100,000 who died of Covid since mid-June.
......... after Delta became the dominant variant, unvaccinated people were more than 10 times as likely to die of the virus as the vaccinated were .......... By late September, more than 2,000 people on average were dying from the virus each day, a level the country has not reached since February. .......... About 40 percent of the most recent 100,000 people to die of the virus were under 65, a share higher than at any other point in the pandemic ........ A 16-year-old girl in another family lost her mother, aunt and cousin to the virus, all in quick succession. ..........It’s so much worse now than it was when the pandemic first happened. The Delta variant is tremendously worse.
......... only 65 percent of the eligible U.S. population is fully vaccinated. The nation’s vaccination campaign has been slowed by people who say they are hesitant or unwilling to get shots, amid a polarized landscape that has included misinformation from conservative and anti-vaccine commentators casting doubt on the safety of vaccines. ......... More than 3,800 people in their 40s died of Covid-19 in August, compared with 2,800 in January. ......... The Delta variant is much more contagious than previous variants. ........ “The families are going through a lot of initial pain and shock and when we’re getting 20-, 30-, 40-year-old people who are passing away from it ...........a frequent refrain: family members who vow to be vaccinated after losing a relative to the disease.
............ The wave of Delta deaths has been particularly high in rural areas of the South, where vaccination rates trail those of nearby metropolitan areas. Even though the raw number of Covid-19 deaths is higher in metropolitan areas because their populations are larger, the share of people dying of the virus in rural areas has been much greater. ........... The woman who died of Covid-19 was a 64-year-old church member, talented baker and frequent volunteer during group dinners on Thanksgiving.Her adult children had advised her not to receive a shot.
......... the woman’s children were full of regret, despairing over their actions and searching for a rationale.Is the Coronavirus Getting Better at Airborne Transmission? The Alpha variant traveled more efficiently in small droplets, two new studies found. The Delta variant may have continued this evolution. ........ People infected with the Alpha variant exhaled 43 times more virus into aerosols than those infected with older variants .......... Newer variants of the coronavirus like Alpha and Delta are highly contagious, infecting far more people than the original virus. Two new studies offer a possible explanation:
The virus is evolving to spread more efficiently through air.
............. Most researchers now agree that the coronavirus is mostly transmitted through large droplets that quickly sink to the floor and through much smaller ones, called aerosols, that can float over longer distances indoors and settle directly into the lungs, where the virus is most harmful. ............. the virus is changing in ways that make it more formidable. ........ the results may also explainwhy the Delta variant is so contagious — and why it displaced all other versions of the virus
. ............ It may be that lower doses of the variants are required for infection, or that the variants replicate faster, or that more of the variant virus is exhaled into aerosols — or all three. ..............The Alpha variant proved to be twice as transmissible as the original virus, and the Delta variant has mutations that turbocharged its contagiousness even more. As the virus continues to change, newer variants may turn out to be even more transmissible
............ People infected with the Alpha variant had copious amounts of virus in their nose and throat ........... The results were posted on bioRxiv, a website that features papers before they have been published in a scientific journal. ........the new findings underscore the importance of masks for vaccinated people, especially in crowded spaces
......... With billions of people worldwide vaccinated, and billions still unvaccinated, the virus may still change in unexpected waysProgressives Flex Muscles on Biden Agenda, Adopting New Tactics Their persistence forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a planned vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. In the end, President Biden sided with their position. ........ Progressive Democrats in Congress ....... The nearly 100-member caucus refused to support a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that is a major piece of President Biden’s agenda, seeking leverage for a bigger fight. ......... signaled that the progressives enjoyed newfound influence ....... while the progressives scored a tactical victory, negotiations continued to whittle down the size of the social policy and climate bill, which was already much smaller than the initial $6 trillion to $10 trillion that many of them had envisioned. ........ Despite its growing ranks, the progressive caucus has struggled for years to enact its agenda of
providing more robust health care services, taxing the wealthy, reining in military spending and addressing climate change
. Activists have grown frustrated as they helped elect members to Congress, who then fell in line, voting for whatever Democratic leaders put on the floor. ............ progressives won the battle of ideas before the battle of tactics ........The social spending and climate change platform put forth by Mr. Biden stems in large part from the proposals of Senator Bernie Sanders
......... But bare-knuckled tactics were important too ............ many progressive activists were still upset about how Democrats allowed Republicans to weaken the Affordable Care Act with a slew of amendments when the party had control of both chambers of Congress. But he is now cheering the stance taken by the Progressive Caucus. ........ progressives were only responding to the political maneuvers of centrist Democrats ....... The liberals’ tactics were reminiscent of those employed by the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members routinely threatened to withhold their bloc of votes unless Republican leaders met their demands. .......... another group of activists paddled kayaks to confront Mr. Manchin in the waters next to his large houseboat docked at a Washington marina.
This Is Why We Need to Spend $4 Trillion what did I sense in my recent travels across five states? The same thing I sense in my social media feed and on the various media most-viewed lists. Indifference. ....... Have we given up on the idea that policy can change history? Have we lost faith in our ability to reverse, or even be alarmed by, national decline? More and more I hear people accepting the idea that America is not as energetic and youthful as it used to be. ....... a core faith that this would forever be the greatest nation on the planet,
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