Author Archives: jpd

Pazite se razočaranih otrok akademikov, ki bi radi spreminjali svet

25 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

Kaj imajo skupnega Emmanuel Macron, Benjamin Netanyahu, Justin Trudeau, Pete Buttigieg, Yoon Suk-yeol, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried, Kanye West, Volodymyr Zelensky …? Vsi so otroci akademikov. Ob domači kuhinjski mizi so se nalezli idej staršev. Večinoma so liberalci, navajeni, da ne obstajajo absolutne resnice, ker se “resnica” skreše v težkih debatah. Razen nekaterih, ki so vrednostno zašli ali pa konsekventno implementirajo ideje svojih staršev, kot denimo Natanyahu.

Zanimivi sta še dve kruti resnici. Prva je, da so otroci akademikov nekako skeptični do učinkovitosti širjenja idej svojih staršev, ker je doseg teh idej izjemno majhen, saj akademski članek prebere nekaj deset ljudi, v zelo dobrem primeru nekaj sto, v najboljšem in zelo redkem primeru pa nekaj tisoč ljudi. (Jaz imam srečo, da je abstract mojega najbolj branega akademskega članka (registrirano) prebralo nekaj čez 4,700 ljudi, članek je downladalo nekaj čez 1,700 ljudi, citiralo pa ga je 535 ljudi. Kar je za akademske standarde dovolj, da prideš med top 10% najbolj citiranih. Toda članke na mojem blogu, in to v majhni Sloveniji, dnevno prebere več ljudi, kot se je akademskim kolegom globalno zdelo vredno downladati moj najbolj brani akademski članek. Pa sem med 10% najbolj citiranih ekonomistov na svetu). Zato se otroci akademskih staršev običajno raje odločijo za kakšen bolj praktičen poklic oziroma za širitev teh idej prek implementacije v praksi. Denimo v politiki.

Druga kruta resnica pa je, da je akademski poklic vedno manj cenjen in da so profesorji relativno bedno plačani glede na ostale poklice in glede na prejšnje čase. Zato se njihovi otroci spreminjajo v jezne potomce lumpen-intelektualcev, ki zares želijo spremeniti ta “krivični svet”. Zato se pazite otrok akademikov!

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Nobene plačno-cenovne spirale doslej

24 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

Vitor Constancio, nekdanji guverner portugalske centralne banke (2000-2010) in podpredsednik ECB (2010-2018), sedaj pa profesor na University of Navarra, ni samo zelo dober strokovnjak za monetarno politiko, pač pa ga krasi tudi izjemna doza zdrave pameti. Škoda, da danes ni več v ECB, saj bi bila današnja politka ECB najbrž malo drugačna. Spodaj je njegov kratek thread na temo plačno-cenovne spirale, ki jo kot izgovor za dvigovanje obrestne mere uporablja sedanje vodstvo ECB. V glavnem, doslej tovrstne spirale nikoli v zgodovini (v drugi polovici 20. stoletja) še ni bilo (kot je pokazala analiza IMF) in tudi zadnji podatki Eurostat ne kažejo ničesar takega. Več o tem ter vplivu povečanih dobičkov na inflacijo pa najdete v zapisu tukaj.

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Books of the year

22 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

Dobre sugestije za knjige tega leta. Zanimivo pa se mi zdi, da marksist Michael Roberts povsem ignorira lnjigo drugega ekonomista, ki prav tako uporablja marksistično metodologijo, in sicer knjigo Michaela Hudsona “The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism”, ki je zame odkritje leta.

michael roberts's avatarMichael Roberts Blog

Every year at this time, I look back at any books that I have reviewed.  I’ll start with Bradford DeLong’s book, Slouching towards Utopia, because this was considered the best economic history book of the year. 

DeLong is regarded as one of the world’s most prominent Keynesian economists.  I debated with him once way back in 2016 at the annual conference of the American Economics Association (ASSA 2016).  In that debate, DeLong criticised Marxists like me for ‘just waiting for Godot’, (following the play by Samuel Beckett ), namely that we were saying that nothing could be done under capitalism to improve the world and we just had to wait for it to collapse.  In contrast, he and other Keynesians won’t wait; we can solve the world’s problems with the right economic policies now.

Well, in his new book, DeLong seems a little less optimistic about that. DeLong claims that…

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Nemški energetsko-okoljski paradoks: Več kot vlaga v obnovljive vire, bolj odvisna je od fosilnih virov in bolj je energetsko umazana

21 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo 1 komentar

Danes ob 8:00, mesec in pol po začetku kurilne sezone ter po 500 milijardah evrov, vrženih v luknjo subvencij sončni in vetrni energiji ter energiji iz biomase, je Nemčija tretja energetsko najbolj umazana država v Evropi. Trenutno emitira 589 gCO2 na KWh proizvedene električne energije in je takoj za temno rjavo Poljsko in Latvijo. Le 47% proizvodnje elektrike je nizkoogljične.

Screenshot 2022-12-21 at 10.31.00

Vir: Electricity map

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Can global capitalism endure?

20 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

Itak. Bolj verjeten je konec sveta kot pa konce kapitalizma.

Ampak tale Robinsonova knjiga, ki jo navaja Roberts, bo vseeno zelo všeč zelenim marksistom. Ekosocializem!

Tole:

“survival of global capitalism beyond the present crisis requires a substantial restructuring involving a measure of transnational regulation of the global economy and a redistribution of wealth downward. Even at that, though, a new period of economic reactivation and prosperity will not bring to an end the threat to our survival. For that, we must do away with a system whose drive to accumulate capital puts it at war with the mass of humanity and with nature. Only an ecosocialism can ultimately lift us from the threat.”

michael roberts's avatarMichael Roberts Blog

Can global capitalism endure?  William Robinson tries to answer this question in his book entitled with the same question. Robinson is professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In a fast-moving account, Robinson covers a lot of ground in offering the reader a vision of the global capitalist crisis and the accompanying international conflagration.  

It flows like an essay rather than a stodgy full-length book. As Robinson says, “my aim is to present a “big picture” snapshot in a shorter work and from the vantage point of global capitalism theory that takes into account some elements of global capitalism that have come further into focus in recent years, especially the ever-deeper financialization and digitalization of the global economy and society.”

As such, the book offers no original research and relies on the work of others.  Fair enough, as Robinson’s objective is to convince the…

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Padajoča profitabilnost produktivnega kapitala in povečan presežek parazitskega kapitala

19 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

Podrobnosti, ki v zvezi s sekularnim padajočim trendom profitabilnosti ameriškega kapitala (glejte sosednji članek Michaela Robertsa) najbolj padeta v oči, sta najprej padajoča profitabilnost “produktivnega kapitala”, torej profitabilnost v nefinančnem sektorju. Ta se je v zadnjih 75 letih zmanjšala za tretjino (iz približno 20% na 14%). Največji padec profitabilnosti sovpada z obdobjem porasta cen surovin, predvsem energentov (v 1970-ih). Hkrati je zanimivo, da se profitabilnost ameriškega produktivnega sektorja ni stabilizirala ali povečala kljub intenzivni globalizaciji v zadnjih treh desetletjih, ko so ameriške korporacije proizvodnjo prenesle v tujino, doma pa obdržale najbolj dobičkonosne dele verige vrednosti (razvoj, distribucija, prodaja, finance).

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The US rate of profit in 2021

19 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

michael roberts's avatarMichael Roberts Blog

Every year, I analyse the US rate of profit on capital.  This is because the US data is the best and most comprehensive to use and because the US is the most important capitalist economy, often setting the scene for trends in global capitalism.  We now have the data for 2021 (that’s as far as the official national data go).

There are many ways to measure the rate of profit a la Marx – see http://pinguet.free.fr/basu2012.pdf).  I prefer to measure the rate of profit by looking at total surplus value in an economy against total private capital employed in production; to be as close as possible to Marx’s original formula of s/(C+v), where s = surplus value; C = constant capital – which should include both fixed assets (machinery etc) and circulating capital (raw materials and intermediate components); and v = wages or employee costs. My calculations can be…

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A Debate On Ukraine with Robert Wright & Anders Åslund

18 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo 2 komentarja

Izvrstna debata med Robertom Wrightom in švedskim ekonomistom Andersom Aslundom glede vojne v Ukrajini, ki se je začela na osnovi Wrightove kolumne v Washington Postu. Priporočam.

0:51 What Anders didn’t like about Bob’s Washington Post op-ed on Russia-Ukraine
11:19 Was Putin always bent on invading Russia’s neighbors?
19:13 Bob and Anders debate NATO expansion
29:37 Should the West encourage regime change in Russia?
36:55 Are the US and NATO “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian”?
46:09 The causes and consequences of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution
56:04 Is Putin committing genocide?
1:01:21 Possible endgames of the Ukraine war – and of Putin’s Russia
1:12:21 Could better US policy have averted the Ukraine war?