Supply and demand regulate nothing but the temporary fluctuations of market prices. They will explain to you why the market price of a commodity rises above or sinks below its value, but they can never account for the value itself. Source: "Value, Price and Profit" Karl Marx

“Woah, this blood libel propaganda from the 80s agrees with me? Heckin’ awesome……”

MV=Py is a truism; arguments that contradict it are ipso-facto false. That doesn’t mean that it explains causal mechanisms connecting changes in any of its component variables to changes in others. It says, “if P doubles M will double, other things equal.” It doesn’t say why. 1/

Susan Rice absolutely schools Bill Maher on Iran.

This explains everything 🤣.

Then came the verdict from inside Marxism itself. Piero Sraffa, a Cambridge economist sympathetic to Marx, published "Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities" in 1960. He proved labor values are redundant by demonstrating that if you know the physical inputs of production and the real wage rate, you can mathematically calculate all relative prices and the rate of profit. You do not need to calculate "labor value" at any point. All prices and profit rates can be determined without it.

A classic conflation of a sequential production process with a simultaneous equilibrium model.🤦

Shaikh’s Criticism of Sraffa’s Redundancy Arguments

NEW: My introduction to our special issue on Post-Progressivism: the future of the social sciences, just published in @Theory_Society Special issue is here: link.springer.com/collection…

just when I think I’m out…

Marx is more important to scholars because he gives them a basis to advocate social interventions they desire. Hayek fundamentally challenges the role that many social scientists want their fields to occupy in society. It is tough to win them over that way.

My friend even commented, "The mainstream economists in Chinese universities, upon seeing us studying ‘heterodox’ left-wing economics, ‘would just pinch their noses and walk away’（捏着鼻子走）."

I graduated from Columbia knowing every single detail about Marx but never having heard the name Hayek.

Says “yes but actually no.” Genius, hey, why are you a pedophile?

Keynesian stimulus doesn't magically create prosperity from thin air. It redistributes existing wealth from productive citizens to those with the best lobbyists and campaign contributions. When Congress passes a trillion-dollar "infrastructure" bill, you don't see bulldozers materializing from the ether. The government pulls capital from entrepreneurs who would have built factories, funded startups, or expanded payrolls. Instead, that money flows to Halliburton, Bechtel, and whatever construction firm hired the right former senator as a "consultant." The politically connected get guaranteed profits while you get higher taxes and inflation. The process works like a sophisticated laundering operation. Politicians promise jobs and growth while funneling taxpayer dollars to their cronies. Boeing gets defense contracts. Goldman Sachs underwrites the debt. Big Tech companies score "green energy" subsidies. Meanwhile, small business owners struggle with regulatory compliance costs and compete for the remaining scraps of capital. Free market economists identified this wealth transfer mechanism decades ago. Keynesian mythology persists because it serves powerful interests. Politicians love spending other people's money. Corporations love guaranteed returns. Wall Street loves bond issuance fees. The only losers are productive citizens who fund the whole charade. You can spot this corruption every time politicians claim stimulus will "create jobs." Jobs doing what? Building bridges to nowhere? Manufacturing solar panels that cost more than the energy they'll ever produce? Productive jobs emerge from genuine consumer demand, not political theater. Everything else just moves money from your pocket to theirs.