Category Archives: gospodarstvo

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?

Mirovna pogajanja kot najboljša opcija za Ukrajino

18 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo

Robert Wright, ki je moj najljubši non-fiction pisec (je pisec treh brilijantnih knjig The Moral Animal, Nonzero, The Evolution of God, urednik številnih uglednih revij, avtor Nonzero Newsletter), je s svojo kolumno v Washington Postu izpred dveh tednov sprožil precejšen vihar v intelektualnih krogih, ko je na podlagi analize treh možnih scenarijev nadaljevanja sedanje vojne v Ukrajini napisal, da bi ameriški predsednik Joseph Biden naredil največjo uslugo Ukrajini, če bi njenega predsednika Zelenskega spodbudil k mirovnim pogajanjem.

Opcije glede nadaljevanja vojne v Ukrajini so namreč tri. Prvič, pat pozicija, v kateri vsaka izmed obeh strani sicer malce napreduje na eni in izgubi na drugi strani, vendar v osnovi ostanejo pozicije podobne sedanjim. Rusija se je namreč umaknila iz Hersona, ki bi ga težko branila, na drugo stran Dnjepra ter sile preusmerila v Donbas, kjer bo stopnjevala napade, da v celoti zasede ozemlja s prorusko večino. Drugič, rusko napredovanje, kjer Rusija zasede celoten Donbas. In tretjič, ukrajinsko napredovanje, kjer ukrajinske sile morda povrnejo nazaj stanje izpred 24. februarja letos, ali celo izpred leta 2014.

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Katera mera temeljne inflacije je prava in ali smo že na koncu dezinflacijske poti?

17 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo 1 komentar

Za vse, ki želite razumeti, kje smo (kje so ZDA) na področju inflacije in ali lahko upamo na skorajšnji zaton zadnjega inflacijskega šoka, je Paul Krugman naredil izvrstno poljudno razlago. Zelo dobro je razložil 6 različnih mer temeljne inflacije in kaj te pomenijo glede dinamike tega inflacijskega šoka. Boljše poljudne razlage ne boste našli nikjer.

Tuesday’s inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was incredibly good — that is, it was too good to be credible. On their face, the numbers seemed to show that inflation has stopped dead in its tracks, or more accurately that it is back down to more or less the Federal Reserve’s long-run target of 2 percent. However, few analysts believe that the fight against inflation has already been won; hey, even I don’t believe that.

But how do we come to that conclusion? How do we extract the signal from the noise? Part of the answer is to smooth out the data by looking at changes over several months. Much reporting in the media focuses on changes over the past year, but that seems like too long a window in a rapidly changing economy. Like many other economists, I’ve been focusing mainly on three-month changes.

Even that, however, isn’t enough to correct for wild price swings that clearly shouldn’t be driving economic policy. Back in 1975, Robert Gordon of Northwestern University suggested focusing on inflation excluding volatile food and energy prices; this so-called core measure has become a standard way to assess “underlying” inflation. Since then, other measures have also been proposed, and until recently, they all tended to tell more or less similar stories.

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Ana Stanič: Cenovna kapica na plin ne naslavlja morebitne eksistenčne grožnje

17 decembra, 2022 By in gospodarstvo 1 komentar

Ana Stanič

A worst-case scenario of the implications of the proposed legislation could be tensions that test the bloc’s very unity

One of the more frustrating aspects of the current EU plan to put a cap on the continent’s gas price is that, while working to accelerated timescales, its politicians and policy wonks have had months to come up with a workable solution. That they have come up with such a flawed scheme cannot be blamed solely on lack of time.

Capping the price of gas was first discussed at European Council level as long ago as May this year. Then, in early September, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, floated the idea of capping the price of Russian gas.

Key reasons

Her proposal was quickly abandoned for two key reasons: firstly, amounting to a sanction, its adoption required unanimity that was not achievable given the objection of Hungary; secondly, because it was clear Russia’s Gazprom would refuse to sell gas at capped prices. Since EU gas buyers have take-or-pay contracts with Gazprom, their refusal to pay for gas at prices above the cap would expose them to damages claims for undelivered contracted volumes. And, left without gas to sell on to their customers, they would in turn be exposed to further damages claims.

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