Zombie Economics How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us (Audible Audio Edition) John Quiggin Gideon Emery Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : Zombie Economics How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us (Audible Audio Edition) John Quiggin Gideon Emery Audible Studios Books
In the graveyard of economic ideology, dead ideas still stalk the land. The recent financial crisis laid bare many of the assumptions behind market liberalism--the theory that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem. For decades, their advocates dominated mainstream economics, and their influence created a system where an unthinking faith in markets led many to view speculative investments as fundamentally safe. The crisis seemed to have killed off these ideas, but they still live on in the minds of many--members of the public, commentators, politicians, economists, and even those charged with cleaning up the mess. In Zombie Economics, John Quiggin explains how these dead ideas still walk among us--and why we must find a way to kill them once and for all if we are to avoid an even bigger financial crisis in the future. Zombie Economics takes the reader through the origins, consequences, and implosion of a system of ideas whose time has come and gone. These beliefs--that deregulation had conquered the financial cycle, that markets were always the best judge of value, that policies designed to benefit the rich made everyone better off--brought us to the brink of disaster once before, and their persistent hold on many threatens to do so again. Because these ideas will never die unless there is an alternative, Zombie Economics also looks ahead at what could replace market liberalism, arguing that a simple return to traditional Keynesian economics and the politics of the welfare state will not be enough--either to kill dead ideas, or prevent future crises.
Zombie Economics How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us (Audible Audio Edition) John Quiggin Gideon Emery Audible Studios Books
Zombie Economics is the best book I’ve seen, yet, for educated laity who want to understand the macroeconomic issues at the core of our current political debates. (That’s a category in which I include myself, being a political scientist with a specialty in international relations, and a former lawyer, who tries to stay current on thinking in the nearby field of economics.) In only 211 pages of text, and without any calculus, Quiggin explains the confused history as well as the confused logic behind the issues, each organized in a succinct chapter, dealing with hot issues such as “trickle-down economics” and “privatization.”Unfortunately, Quiggin does not take on the debate about free trade or globalization in this book, presumably because he does not consider the prevailing doctrine on free trade to be a “zombie” idea to be debunked. I know that this will be a disappointment to some of my liberal friends who have been swayed by the populist rhetoric on trade. On that subject I would recommend Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations (1994).
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Zombie Economics How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us (Audible Audio Edition) John Quiggin Gideon Emery Audible Studios Books Reviews
If you are a libertarian, you will likely hate this book (which explains the very bimodal distribution of rating scores). But if you are a progressive liberal you won't love it either. Then again, why should your ideological bent be relevant in understanding or discussing ideas and empirical data from economics? Because economics is a strange mix of science and ideology, as this book superbly demonstrates. "Trickle down," for instance, was never a serious economic theory to begin with, and it has been discredited by the facts -- over and over again. And yet you will find plenty of people, a good number of politicians, and yes perhaps even a few actual economists, who will insist that "it works." John Quiggin's narrative at times becomes a bit technical, but he is always lucid and capable of catalyzing understanding of complex issues in his readers. He takes on five big ideas in economics that, he maintains, have been refuted by the behavior of the real world, and yet keep coming back like never dying zombies in a B-rated movie the Great Moderation (the suggestion that the markets had finally been tamed and there wouldn't be any more cycles of bubble and burst -- take that, 2008!); the efficient markets hypothesis (yes, markets are efficient -- at certain things, and only under certain idealized conditions); the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (this one is related to the bogus idea that president Obama caused the '08 crisis); the already mentioned trickle down doctrine; and the contention that privatization is always best (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, as it turns out). The author cogently explains why the best way forward for our society is to embrace a reasonable and creative third way between the two totalizing ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries (socialism/communism and market libertarianism), mixing and matching what is best in both and discarding the rest. Quiggin's volume will also make you substantially more skeptical of politicians and economists. As well as you should be.
If you are a truth-seeker, and not married to ideology, this will be a good book. It explains how right-wing doctrine always seems to screw things up, even as it is marketed as a fool-proof system for prosperity. This book provides the intellectual basis to explain what we've been experiencing over the last 35 years.
Zombie Economics How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us Review
Zombie Economics How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us is a critique of many of the free market ideas that have defined government policy in the last 30 years. The author John Quiggin a professor of economics at the University of Queensland is a well known Keynesian. The fact Professor Quiggin advocates a return to regulation of financial services and a returned to the mixed economy is not surprising. Taking this into account readers should not expect a balanced account of the pros and cons of the neo-liberal policies that replaced Keynesian policy that had existed since the end of the second world war. The book however, provides a thoughtful critique of some of the ideas that have been used to justify many of the polices carried out in the last 30 years.
The zombies Quiggin slay include, the great moderation, the efficient markets hypothesis, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, trickle-down economics and privatisation. Despite my free market bias I found myself agreeing with his arguments against the folly that was the great moderation and absurdity that is the efficient markets hypothesis when applied to financial markets.
If history has proven anything, claims that the business cycle has been tamed tend to end in tears. Keynesians made similar claims which ended in the stagflation of the 1970s. Likewise, claims by the advocates of deregulation and the efficient markets hypothesis have ended in the great recession. What seems clear is that at present there exists no economic philosophy capable of taming the business cycle indefinitely.
I first encountered the efficient market hypothesis when studying accounting theory. The argument went, that players in the market have access to perfect information and the financial markets are in the best position to provide valuations of companies. This extended to notion that the marketplace had access to information not publicly available. This was used to justify why accounting standards were unnecessary and that there would a be a market for lemons. Clearly, the collapse of Enron in the mid 2000s and the incorrect valuation of financial assets prior to the 2008 recession should have killed this idea once and for all. Unfortunately, this flawed idea of financial markets being highly efficient is still being peddled to resist regulation of the financial system.
Equally, I found myself agreeing with Professor Quiggin on the trickle down effect, this idea has been used to justify massive tax cuts to the rich. Unlike, Quiggin I believe that reducing taxes on income (the benefit of a person's work) is desirable. He makes the point that at present income rate rates once loopholes in tax law are taken into account the tax system is actually regressive. I would argue that it is better to close the loopholes rather than return the top marginal tax rate to 70%-90%. On the broader point of the trickledown effect, many studies into this area have shown that tax cuts do not pay for themselves through increased growth. Many studies have shown that changes to the marginal rate of taxation has a little impact on the willingness of males to work (Who are usually the major income earner in a family). They do partly pay for themselves but ultimately the costs to a government budget exceed any benefits. Equally, there is little evidence that the poor actually benefit from the rich getting tax cuts. This probably suggests that tax cuts are probably better targeted at the bottom reducing the dis-incentive for people switching from welfare to work.
The greatest area of disagreement I had with this book was the chapter on privatisation. The book paints a picture of well run profitable government owned corporations being sold off at bargain basement prices and consumers losing out in the process. Quiggin does provide some interesting arguments against privatisation and makes a good case that government often leaves monopolies in place when privatising making it unlikely that efficiencies promised will be realised.
Overall I would recommend this book for anyone interested in economic policy. Even those of us who are friends of the free market have to accept that financial deregulation has contributed to the 2008 recession. I do worry that this book in the wrong hands will encourage ill-informed people to rally behind the idea of the mixed economy with out a serious consideration of its many downsides. A good counter to this book would be Milton Friedman's series and book Free To Choose which highlights the many problems of the mixed economy.
Zombie Economics is the best book I’ve seen, yet, for educated laity who want to understand the macroeconomic issues at the core of our current political debates. (That’s a category in which I include myself, being a political scientist with a specialty in international relations, and a former lawyer, who tries to stay current on thinking in the nearby field of economics.) In only 211 pages of text, and without any calculus, Quiggin explains the confused history as well as the confused logic behind the issues, each organized in a succinct chapter, dealing with hot issues such as “trickle-down economics” and “privatization.”
Unfortunately, Quiggin does not take on the debate about free trade or globalization in this book, presumably because he does not consider the prevailing doctrine on free trade to be a “zombie” idea to be debunked. I know that this will be a disappointment to some of my liberal friends who have been swayed by the populist rhetoric on trade. On that subject I would recommend Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations (1994).
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