World's Most Famous Economist Says Bernie Sanders Could "Change the Face of the Country"

[4bucksagallon]

http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-most-famous-economist-says-224500690.html

Thomas Piketty, perhaps the most influential economic thinker of the left in the Western world, is impressed by the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

In a post for Le Monde republished on Tuesday by the Guardian, the French economist outlined why he felt the populist senator's ascent spells "the end of the politico-ideological cycle opened by the victory of Ronald Reagan at the 1980 elections." Piketty argues that regardless of Sanders' fate in this particular contest, he has created an opening for similar candidates in the future —"possibly younger and less white" — who could successfully make it into the White House and "change the face of the country."
What's most interesting about Piketty's analysis is that he doesn't see Sanders as following in the footsteps of Europe's social democratic models, but rather leading the United States toward a possible return to the nation's pioneering 20th century experiments with extremely progressive taxation and social spending.

[vaberella]

1. Thanks for this. n/t

[SoLeftIAmRight]

2. The Clinton economic philosophy is rooted completely and blindly ...

in the failed trickle down Chicago school of thought.

Nothing she says or does indicates that she has any understanding or even knowledge of any other options. Two generations of economist and business men/women are infused with these destructive ideas. They heap scorn on dissenters like the church did when it was faced with the idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Forty years of declining prospects for the American people has done nothing to shake the unfailing worship of Chicago school philosophy.

One of the more insidious pillars of this philosophy is that unemployment is necessary. Let that sink in. Unemployment is necessary.

For me, supporting a system or supporting the advocates of a system that ensures many millions of people must scramble and struggle to survive is abhorrent.

Full employment, a high minimum wage and income security changes everything.

Everything.

And that is what this fight is about. Far too many of the comfortable among us fear change and they will blindly fight against the ideas that they do not understand or care about.

[olddots]

3. I wonder what economist Hyman Minsky would have thought of Bernie

[4bucksagallon]

5. Maybe this....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_Minsky
Influenced Laurence Meyer
Paul McCulley
Steve Keen
Stephany Griffith-Jones
Paul Krugman
Daniele Archibugi
Lars Pålsson Syll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman#Free_trade
Krugman has at times advocated free markets in contexts where they are often viewed as controversial. He has written against rent control and land-use restrictions in favor of market supply and demand,[170][171] likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against evolution via natural selection (1996),[165] opposed farm subsidies,[172] argued that sweatshops are preferable to unemployment,[42] dismissed the case for living wages (1998),[173] argued against mandates, subsidies, and tax breaks for ethanol,[174] and questioned NASA's manned space flights.[175] Krugman has also criticized U.S. zoning laws[176] and European labor market regulation.[177][178] He calls current Israeli policy "narrow-minded" and "basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide", saying that it's "bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world".[179]

But who knows I am not a bean counter. Before I retired 7 years ago all the people I worked with hated and dreaded the days the bean counters would show up and tell us it was our "duty" to help the corporation to ship American jobs overseas. God Bless American bean counters if you like the work they do.

[Quixote1818]

4. K and R