Economics in a Nutshell

Joseph Stiglitz is one of my favorite economists.  He has that rare ability to put the results of theory, models, and empirical research into pithy common sense statements.  He has shown–with tons of peer-reviewed research–how frictions that exist in all markets distort results.  There is no real world example of a perfect market. In fact, he has a Nobel Prize for it.  Markets are not these efficient, well-oiled, rational deal makers that many Republicans, Libertarians, and Rich People would like you to believe simply because they really really want to believe in it.  They can click their red ruby Hayek slippers as much as they want but decades of study over the results of market have left us with lots of succinct lessons that a lot of  21st century policy makers appear to have unlearned.  In a recent speech and interview, Stiglitz manages to hit all the main ones in short order.  Here’s what the evidence has taught us.  First, it’s really not good for any economy to have income inequality.

Inequality is bad for growth, stability and efficiency. … Inequality peaked both before the Great Depression and before the Great Recession, and it’s not an accident. So basically, when we have a lot of inequality, demand goes down. … All this inequality was offset by creating a bubble. The bubble allowed people to consume more. Now we have the inequality but we don’t have a bubble, and that means that we will have persistent, weak demand, and therefore unless we create another bubble it’s going to be very difficult for us to get back to full employment.

A lot of the inequality that we have in the United States is created by distortions – excessive financial sector, monopolies like Microsoft … giving the oil companies, mining companies resources at a discount. … These things distort the economy, while they create wealth at the top. So it’s not wealth creation – it’s wealth redistribution, which makes the size of the pie smaller.

Second, a lot of government policy and just things inherent to some markets can create distortions that make markets very inefficient. Government actually creates a lot of distortions by trying to put businesses on steroids. Our recent tax policies that give special treatment to capital gains over income earned from labor are an example.  They have created horrible distortions that have drained resources away from useful things and into parasite markets and gambling activities.

And the loopholes, the distortions, the giveaways. … When you tax capital gains at half the rate of others, you encourage speculation. And so you divert resources to speculative activity, including the best brains at Columbia, into speculation rather than into creative activities.

Stiglitz also has his three top Economic Memes and Tropes that are absolutely killing this country’s economy because they have absolutely no basis in any evidence or reality.  He’s actually been tweeting them all morning as the top three Myths.  The first myth is the one about the confidence fairy.  The second and third are part and parcel of trickle down economics.  This is the horrible Republican kneejerk response that we have to appease “job creators” at all costs even when we have evidence they are more job destroyers than creators. Economists have been hypothesizing these things for decades and every bit of evidence from policies meant to achieve these results from Reagan to Bush have shown them to be seriously untrue.  However, they persist in the minds of many policy makers and they are killing our future.

The first is that reducing the budget deficit would stimulate the economy by restoring confidence, which you hear over and over again. No evidence that has ever worked. You might call it the austerity myth – that’s the most serious one.

The second one is that raising taxes on upper-income individuals will lead them to save less, invest less, will have adverse supply-side effects. Again, no evidence of that.

The third is that lowering [the] corporate income tax rate across the board will stimulate investment in the United States. No evidence of that. … If you want to encourage investment, what you do is lower taxes on firms that invest and you raise taxes on firms that don’t invest. You can restructure the taxes to provide incentives to invest.

I’m not certain what it will take to end the impact of these harmful myths.  However, given that harmful myths–notably the ones that come from any religion not based on evidence and reality–have kept us in Dark Ages before and are likely to continue to do so.  For many people, science fiction still holds a broader appeal than science fact.