Re:Does QE Cause Wealth Inequality?
by Ericson2314 on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @01:47PM
(#29244746)
Krugman is the best-sounding stuff of the mainstream. Since that what you brought up, I would start with https://www.crisesnotes.com/paul-krugman-functional-finance-... . Arguable Krugman is so good about not saying terrible stupid shit, that it might come at at cost of not being internally consistent or acknowledging when his views in fact change.
Krugman at least was a "New Keynsian", which is a very complicated confused thing in the way the neoclassical parts and keynesian pieces are mashed together. I mostly subscribe to the Post-Keynesian stuff, which makes a lot more sense to me, and is more embracing of the weird/humanities side of Keynes. https://vebaccount.substack.com/p/the-post-keynesian-worldvi... is a good primer, and really that person's entire corpus is a gem of really good writing. For something that (at least in the last few years) is much more grounded, try http://jwmason.org/the-slack-wire/.
Now you might say that the opposition's views of the mainstream is an unfair place to begin. To that, I say just look at the shit Larry Summers says.
[citation needed]
"Mainstream economic theory" states, AFAICT, that once the monetary side of things has done what it can, you need to proceed to Step 4, fiscal stimulus:
> I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:
> 1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.
> 2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.
> 3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down.
> 4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses.
* http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/keynesianism-exp...
* https://archive.md/O67TO
Can you provide a link to the "mainstream economic theory" that you are referring to that says otherwise?