Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Why Keynes would have voted Brexit

If the Master were here...


Just as Keynes condemned the interwar gold exchange standard in 1931, it is unlikely he would have had anything but contempt for the modern EU:

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22 comments:

  1. PrateekJune 22, 2016 at 2:40 AM

    I think Keynes would have opposed the EU to the extent that it prevents fiscal policy for recessions, but he was very cosmopolitan and pan-European as well.

    eg. Economic Consequences of Peace

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    1. disequilibriumJune 22, 2016 at 2:50 AM

      Still he was anglocentric and i believe that if he knew that EC is weakining english democracy he will reject such a project.

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    2. Lord KeynesJune 22, 2016 at 6:59 AM

      No, Prateek, Keynes was a liberal British nationalist before Pan-European idealism.

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  2. RamananJune 22, 2016 at 3:25 AM

    Check Kaldor's CW volume 7. Full of chapters opposing the EA. Even the intro has strong opposition to it.

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  3. DineroJune 22, 2016 at 3:45 AM

    its noteworthy that due to ,depending on source, two thirds of new job employments are accounted for by migrant workers or foreign nationals the unemployment and employment figures have a disjunct and that the unemployment figures don't tell you as much about the economy as before.

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  4. Ken BJune 22, 2016 at 6:05 AM

    Rothbard would have wanted out too, wouldn't he?

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    1. Lord KeynesJune 22, 2016 at 6:54 AM

      Irrelevant. However, your Austrian buddies like Jesús Huerta de Soto love the friggin' Eurozone precisely because it is de facto gold standard that imposes fiscal discipline on member states:

      https://mises.org/library/austrian-defense-euro

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    2. Ken BJune 22, 2016 at 6:58 AM

      The state is bad, but the super-state is good.

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  5. Ken BJune 22, 2016 at 6:23 AM

    So LK, we now know for certain, based on the Guccifer leaks, that the Democrat race was fixed -- just as Bernie claimed. I think the Remain campaign looks pretty sleazy from over here. Will the count be fiddled? Close votes are fiddle-able.
    (Over here the Democrats win nearly every very close vote, due to fiddling.)

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    1. Lord KeynesJune 22, 2016 at 6:58 AM

      The Brexit vote may well be close given the undecided voters. Polls are all over the place.

      However, even if vote remain wins or there were some kind of voting chicanery (do you have evidence of this? I've seen nothing convincing) the EU and Eurozone are doomed. The next recession and Italian banking problems (and wider banking issues), plus Greek insolvency, anger with the EU tyranny, and migrant crisis will bugger this rotten union.

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    2. KainJune 22, 2016 at 8:04 AM

      "(Over here the Democrats win nearly every very close vote, due to fiddling.)"

      Wait what?!

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    3. Ken BJune 22, 2016 at 9:02 AM

      Kain
      If you look at recent convictions for vote fraud in the USA it is incredibly lopsided. And if you look at elections decided by less than .5% the Democrats win lopsidedly there. John Fund had some good articles on this if you want to google.

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    4. KainJune 22, 2016 at 8:00 PM

      Seems kind of selective, particularly when you forget the whole host of problems in a state like Florida for example. 2000's voter purge, leading to Bush's victory, and 2006's FL-13 seem to stick out the most.

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    5. Ken BJune 23, 2016 at 6:25 AM

      Kain
      By citing one alleged example you ar the one cherry picking. Further numerous recounts were made after the election, and Bush won them.
      Since you raise the topic, in 2000 in Florida the democrats tried to have military voters purged.

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    6. KainJune 23, 2016 at 6:54 PM

      Ken B
      Nearly all of the examples John Fund cites lack evidence. Fund is and always has been a hardcore partisan.
      The recounts were stopped by the SCOTUS (on a partisan vote as well in majority), and it's very possible that if they had continued, Gore would have won the state. There was also the Volusia county discreptions as well.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount#Media_Recounts

      I'm sure that elections have been "stolen" by both sides. But clearly John Fund is and always has been full of crap. His main example was the Al Franken election. I don't think he ever got over this interview with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAJqcdg3CdM

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    7. KevinJune 23, 2016 at 8:12 PM

      Further numerous recounts were made after the election, and Bush won them

      Actually you're wrong:

      http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000

      "On the other hand, the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide. However, Gore never asked for such a recount. The Florida Supreme Court ordered only a recount of so-called "undervotes," about 62,000 ballots where voting machines didn’t detect any vote for a presidential candidate."

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Buchanan_presidential_campaign,_2000#Outcome

      "When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night... it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore." - Pat Buchanan

      It was actually Buchanan that "stole" votes from Gore, not Ralph Nader.

      Extensive analyses:

      http://www.stat.unc.edu/postscript/rs/pap4.pdf

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    8. R MinskyJune 24, 2016 at 7:46 AM

      Ken B--

      The fact is, that out of all eligible voters, (i.e., out of all the people who CAN vote, rather than out of all the people who DO vote or tend most to vote) there are more Democratic and Democratic-leaning ones than Republican voters. It's just that Republican voters often turn out in higher numbers. If the whole population of the country were forced to vote in elections, the Democrats would win 98% of the time by dint of their numbers alone.

      Furthermore, there is a far larger correlation between cases of voter fraud and population density than cases of voter fraud and party affiliation. So it is more likely you are mistaking an incidental characteristic of voter fraud (party affiliation) for an essential characteristic. (voter fraud is easier to commit in more dense, populous areas--these happen to be where the Democratic voting base is, but only after 1965) I could just as easily say "People in the city are far more filthy than people in the country" and point to the levels of air pollution in the city--but that totally ignores the essential causes of air pollution (large populations, industrial concentration) and pins it on incidental aspects of the population in areas of high air pollution.

      Regardless, your claim that the Democrats win close elections because of voter fraud is totally unsubtantiated; there has been no systematic study done (I doubt your friend Mr. Fund is applying rigorous empirical methods--I can find you hundreds of 'articles' babbling on about how 9/11 was an inside job, doesn't mean they aren't all tilting at windmills with conspiracy theories) and in any case any such discrepancy would be far more easily explained (absent further evidence to the contrary) by the greater number of eligible Democratic voters. Your avatar is a razor--perhaps you are forgetting the principle of Occam's Razor? Demographics would be a far more parsimonious explanation for the (unconfirmed) trends you cite than conspiracy theories.

      Or perhaps you just hold Democracy in contempt when you're outnumbered by the people you disagree with...?

      You would certainly align with Republicans in that vein, who have been attempting to erect barriers to voting for the constituencies they don't like for years now. You should read about the Alabama Republicans' attempt to institute a voter ID law that requires you to go a state DMV center to acquire one, and then shut down all the DMV's in the counties with the highest population of black voters. Or did you hear about it and decide not to mention it?

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    9. Ken BJune 24, 2016 at 8:01 AM

      http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/ cites more studies than the one you refer to. There are also some numbers on wikipedia for those who care.

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    10. KevinJune 24, 2016 at 9:33 AM

      Ken, that's the same Factcheck link I posted for you and it says all over the place that there are scenarios where Gore could have won.

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  6. Ken BJune 23, 2016 at 10:44 AM

    LK, off topic but this might interest you. My thoughts on Trump's appeal http://kenblogic.blogspot.com/2016/06/trumps-rude-rhetoric.html

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  7. AnonymousJune 23, 2016 at 11:29 AM

    http://andrewwatt.eu/2016/06/22/progressive-economists-support-remain-not-brexit-response-steve-keen/

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