Diamond, touted as "an economist's economist" — presumably meaning he exemplifies everything that's wrong with mainstream economics and reinforces the bad ideas that have managed to take over the science — is considered an expert on "search theory," for which he won the prize with two others, Dr. Dale T. Mortensen of Northwestern, and Dr. Christopher A Pissarides of the London School of Economics.
"Search theory" — as far as we can tell — involves studying the lag time between when an employer starts hunting up new employees and locates suitable candidates, and how long it takes someone who is unemployed to find a suitable job. Diamond is also considered an expert on public finance, taxation, Social Security, labor markets, and behavior economics — everything that goes into supporting the Keynesian wage-based approach to economic and social development, and supporting an increasing role for the State. As described in an MIT newsletter,
One paper Diamond wrote in the 1960s, "National Debt in a Neoclassical Growth Model," became a widely used model of public debt. In the early 1970s, Diamond published widely influential work on taxation, including a pair of 1971 papers on "Optimal Taxation and Public Production," co-written with economist James Mirrlees that outlined what kind of tax regime leads to the highest production efficiency available in an economy. The research is part of a body of work that led to Mirrlees being awarded a 1996 Nobel Prize in economics.Evidently Diamond believes everything is just peachy. What's wrong with ballooning national debt and increasing taxation? (The "public production" throws us, however — what, exactly, does the State produce in the way of marketable goods and services that couldn't be provided better and cheaper by the private sector?) The MIT newsletter goes on to comment, "In Diamond's analysis, Social Security is hardly rushing toward imminent insolvency, but will likely need some increased taxes and some reduced benefits to maintain stability a few decades down the road."
This is the place for some extremely sarcastic comments, but we can probably let the facts (and the quotes) speak for themselves. What we'll do instead is give the news items from this week that report our increasing momentum on the way to release the world from the slavery of past savings, epitomized by Keynesian economics and increasing State control, and establish the Just Third Way by implementing Capital Homesteading by 2012.
• After a number of connections and outreach to the United Kingdom and other countries, the Coalition for Capital Homesteading has been expanded internationally. This decision was reached after consultation with CESJ's National Field Secretaries and the representatives of a number of different groups that have become interested in the effort to enact a Capital Homestead Act by the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's original 1862 Homestead Act in 2012.Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.
• Early this afternoon we completed our editing suggestions and provided some attachments and links for Mr. Pollant Mpofu of London to send a letter to the Governor of the Bank of England. While not the most important link, "Part V" of this blog's (unfinished) series on Say's Law of Markets and the real bills doctrine is included in the package. Mr. Mpofu has been active in working to get the CESJ core group to meet with the British and Irish Prime Ministers, and the Anglican and Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster, respectively. Mr. Mpofu may be up for the (just invented) "Number 17 Award," named after the 17th item on the CESJ Code of Ethics: "There are three keys to gaining acceptance of revolutionary ideas: persistence, persistence, and persistence."
• As usual, there have been a great number of telephone conferences, including the meeting on Saturday, December 18 to discuss progress on the annual "Rally at the Fed" to demonstrate in favor of a people-centered monetary and fiscal reform instead of yet more warmed-over Keynesian economics. Other teleconferences have included extended discussions with Dave Kelly, who is spearheading the Harris Neck effort, and Michiel Bijkerk of the Netherlands Antilles, who has just been asked to lead a new political party that will work to implement the Just Third Way as far as possible within the existing legal framework of that small, locally autonomous region of the Netherlands.
• We have sent a fairly large number of PR-type e-mails in response to general queries from radio stations for potential guests to schedule in the coming year. Keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to suggest that a host interview a CESJ spokesman about the Just Third Way and the effort to implement Capital Homesteading by 2012.
• CESJ representatives and friends are planning to attend the reception given by the Catholic Radio Association at the Catholic University of America the night before the March for Life. Every effort will be made to introduce producers and station owners to the idea of Capital Homesteading as a Pro-Life economic agenda.
• A proposal is being bruited about that a Just Third Way team teach a seminar on Binary Economics at an(other) Ivy League school. Something of a follow-up to the brief introduction to the Just Third Way presented at the Harvard Divinity School a short while back, the idea is to counter the "usual thing" based on past savings and present a viable alternative to the unworkable mix of capitalism and socialism under which the global economy currently labors. Be on the alert for opportunities to have a local college or university sponsor a presentation, seminar, or class by a Just Third Way expert on Binary Economics.
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 50 different countries and 48 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, the UK, Brazil, and Ireland. People in Canada, Venezuela, Pakistan, Finland, and Israel spent the most average time on the blog. Yet again, and still possibly due to the growing perception that something is wrong with the basic assumptions of Keynesian economics (as well as other schools of economics based on the Currency School of finance), the most popular posting by far is one from a while back, "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," that briefly explains the similarities in the way Keynes and Hobbes abolish private property. This is followed by "Aristotle on Private Property," "Why Government Debt is Really Bad," "Games People Play," and Part I of "How to Save the Global Economy."
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