Category: Economics

Socialism is the idea that capital (the means of production) should be owned collectively. There are divergent ideas about how to achieve this in reality. One approach is to have the government hold it collectively in social wealth funds. This is (more or less) the socialism of Yanis Varoufakis, Rudolf Meidner, and John E. Roemer.… Continue reading Nickel-and-dime socialism

The universal basic income — a cash payment made to every individual in the country — has been critiqued recently by some commentators. Among other things, these writers dislike the fact that a UBI would deliver individuals income in a way that is divorced from working. Such an income arrangement would, it is argued, lead to meaninglessness, social dysfunction,… Continue reading The UBI already exists for the 1%

In his 1864 book “Capital and Labor,” Ferdinand Lassalle wrote on the description of capital income as “wages of abstinence,” i.e. payment for abstaining from consumption. What he had to say is one of the funniest things ever written on the topic: The profit of capital is the ‘wage of abstinence.’ Happy, even priceless expression!… Continue reading Ferdinand Lassalle on the Wages of Abstinence

Rudolf Meidner was the Swedish economist most responsible for Sweden’s economic model in the 1950s to 1970s. Near the end of his reign and the golden era of Swedish social democracy, he put forward a proposal that became known as the Meidner Plan. If followed, the Meidner Plan would have gradually transferred ownership of Swedish… Continue reading The Meidner Plan for Socialism

Robert Solow once remarked: Every discussion among economists of the relatively slow growth of the British economy compared with the Continental economies ends up in a blaze of amateur sociology. This is the final move of right-wing economists whenever the assumptions of their ideologically-infused policy prescriptions end up contradicted by observed reality. After a few… Continue reading Institutions Matter Except When They Are Socialist