Category Archives: Dan Kervick

Money, Taxes and What We Can Afford

Posted on May 14, 2013 by | 25 Comments

By Dan Kervick

People sometimes seem to suggest that the Western democracies are at the end of the road economically.  They claim that these governments are spent, broke, tapped out.  They insinuate that Western nations can no longer afford to carry out ambitious projects of the kind they organized in the past, and must downsize or dismantle many of the governance systems and public enterprises they currently operate.  They insist that these democracies must hand over yet more of their nations’ destinies to the financial and corporate baronies that dominate the private sector, and give the latter a free hand to arrange whatever kind of future they might deign to mash up for us as a by-product of  their voracious struggles for private gain and glory.

Continue reading →

→ 25 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged ,

Where We Are Now

Posted on April 9, 2013 by | 39 Comments

By Dan Kervick

Margaret Thatcher is dead.

Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were seminal conservative politicians who came to power in 1979 and 1980 at the end of a period of profound transformation in the Anglo-American world.   A postwar system forged in war, and built on a broad foundation of industrial labor, rising middle class prosperity, and an active government hand in economic development was transforming itself socially and economically into something quite different.

Continue reading →

→ 39 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Euro-da-Fé

Posted on April 3, 2013 by | 25 Comments

By Dan Kervick

(Brussels)  Nonplussed by this week’s unemployment report showing the Eurozone jobless rate rising to an unprecedented 12%, members of the European Parliament and Europe’s national governments pressed ahead on Wednesday with passage of a stringent new package of austerity measures.  Dubbed “hyperaustérité” or “Übersparpolitik” by its backers, the new program of ruthless cuts and social demolition promises to deliver even higher levels of joblessness, misery and hopelessness than has been achieved so far by earlier rounds of austerity.

Along with the new economic measures, the European Union (EU) also announced its intention to change its name to the “European Sadomasochistic Cult.”  The new ESC will take the leading role in the implementation of European hyperausterity.

Continue reading →

→ 25 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged , ,

Dan Kervick Interviews Bill Black and Marshall Auerback on The Attitude

Posted on March 29, 2013 by | 6 Comments

By Dan Kervick

I had the pleasure of sitting in today for Arnie Arnesen as a guest host for The Attitude on WNHN 94.7 FM in Concord, New Hampshire.   Arnie’s mother passed away over the weekend, and she has taken a one-week personal hiatus.

Continue reading →

→ 6 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

The Miracle Product That Cures Degenerative Entitlement Syndrome!

Posted on March 20, 2013 by | 44 Comments

By Dan Kervick

During last year’s presidential election, Dr. Willard M. Romney diagnosed a previously unrecognized epidemic illness that is eating away at the moral foundations of our country.  Romney was the first medical scientist to grasp that 47% of our citizens have been transformed into an army of zombie parasites now known to the experts as “moochers.”  The moochers have been infected with DES, Degenerative Entitlement Syndrome, a 21st century plague whose victims live lives solely devoted to sucking funds from the bank accounts of decent people.   Not one to sit idly by while an invasive undead horde saps and impurifies our precious bodily fluids, Dr. Romney attempted to sound the national alarm about the moocher scourge.  But alas, he was ahead of his time.  The country was not yet ready to hear his bracing but prescient DES warning.

Continue reading →

→ 44 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged

Blinder Leading the Blind

Posted on February 17, 2013 by | 43 Comments

By Dan Kervick

The establishment’s debt and deficit hawks have taken flight once again, this time to launch a counterassault against Paul Krugman’s sensible and increasingly successful campaign to get people to stop clutching their pearls over the federal budget situation, and to focus attention on more pressing matters of high unemployment and economic stagnation.  Joe Scarborough, Ezra Klein and the Washington Post editorial board are among those springing into action on behalf of deficit worry, and against the dangerous movement of calmness and sobriety breaking out all over.  One thing that becomes more apparent as this debate unfolds is that the budget warriors frequently confuse broader public policy challenges that happen to have a budgetary component with narrower problems related to size of the budget deficit itself.  A recent Atlantic piece by Alan Blinder unfortunately contributes to that confusion.

Continue reading →

→ 43 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged , , ,

The State of the Economic Union

Posted on February 11, 2013 by | 31 Comments

By Dan Kervick

On Tuesday night, President Obama will give the first State of the Union message of his second term.  Preliminary indications from Washington are that the President will attempt to shift some attention back to jobs and economic growth.  But similar White House moves to address jobs and the economy over the past four years have been half-hearted and politically feeble.  It is likely that the jobs message delivered by Obama will be overshadowed and weighed down by the endless and destructive partisan battles over our long-term budget position and Washington’s misguided plans for budget austerity and fiscal contraction.  Obama came into office extolling “the fierce urgency of now” – but Washington’s mystifying obsessions with the federal debt and impossible projections of future budget deficits have moved the beltway agenda from the fierce urgencies of 2013 to the unknowable contingencies of 2035.  The unemployed are trapped despairing and jobless here in 2013, choking on the spreadsheets of dueling beltway actuaries.

Continue reading →

→ 31 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged , , ,

Dan Kervick Talks with Arnie Arnesen about Austerity, Jobs and Public Enterprise

Posted on February 7, 2013 by | 5 Comments

By Dan Kervick

I appeared today on The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen.  The main topic of discussion was my recent NEP post “The Dangerous Collapse of Public Enterprise.”  We talked about the loss of jobs in the government sector, the role of government enterprise and employment in our economy, the ongoing Washington obsession with austerity, and the strategy of disaster capitalism.  My segment comes at about halfway through the first hour, following the Bachman Turner Overdrive “Taking Care of Business” introduction .  Have a listen!

The Attitude

The Attitude is broadcast from WHNH 94.7 in Concord, New Hampshire

→ 5 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged ,

The Dangerous Collapse of Public Enterprise

Posted on February 4, 2013 by | 42 Comments

By Dan Kervick

When economists talk about the role of government in economic recovery, they often focus on the question of whether or not we need more economic stimulus.  They ask whether the government should temporarily change its fiscal policies – its taxing and spending decisions – to add some additional publicly financed spending to the economy and help jolt the private sector back to life.  Continue reading →

→ 42 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick

Tagged ,

Only Public Enterprise Can Heal Our Sick Economy

Posted on January 30, 2013 by | 51 Comments

By Dan Kervick

For most Americans, the news that the US economy contracted by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2012, the first quarter of negative growth since the pit of the Great Recession 2009, has undoubtedly come as a disappointing shock.  For readers of this blog and the other MMT blogs, however, the emotion felt is probably closer to bitter frustration, since we have all been warning for a very long time about the danger of the utterly misguided austerity drive that has wrecked the European economy, and was officially imported last year to the United States.

Continue reading →

→ 51 Comments

Posted in Dan Kervick