Lacking All Conviction: exploring the future from the center

My friend Charles is fond of a certain graph that shows a negative correlation between Economic Freedom, as defined by the Heritage Foundation, and Gini index scores, which measure inequality. The argument that accompanies the graph is that free market neoliberal policies, the effects of which are ostensibly measure by the freedom index, correlate positively with equality. I wonder if Charles is unconsciously choosing which correlations to see meaning in, while ignoring other stronger correlations that don't comport with his worldview. However, there is a correlation there that is relatively unlikely to be mere coincidence. Before I go further, I merely want to propose that in general, one correlation of Gini scores should be balanced against other correlations that are similar or greater in their explanatory power. Here is the graph that he cites: A modest but visible correlation. Ok, say I, there may be something going on with these two variables. I've reproduced his grap...

Today I'm going to take a look at some less conventional measures of economic power that have special importance for a robot-fueled, automatized future economy. One of the most common tools to measure the strength of an economy is per capita income, and although the United States is the richest country in the world in terms of GDP, there are a few other countries that eclipse it in terms of PPP income per capita. However, most or all of these are tiny countries like Luxembourg and/or large oil exporters like UAE or Norway, which makes them less useful as models for other economies to follow. Another complication in measuring per capita income is the difference between before and after tax income. Most developed countries have higher tax rates than the United States, so when looking at gross income, countries like Germany and the Netherlands are very close to the US, and Norway is actually a ways above it. The income per capita picture changes in favor of the US when you deduct ta...

Re:http://www.adividedworld.com/political-ideas/the-ideological-nature-of-authoritarian-government/#comment-422 Charles' analysis shows that Nazism was anti-capitalist, and that it shares certain characteristics with Marxist socialism. There is nothing in his writing demonstrating that a capitalist ideology inoculates a movement from helping an authoritarian to power, which is what really matters about whether a movement can be considered authoritarian or not. Trump is a trade protectionist/capitalist/flip flopper whose economic theory, in its peculiar flexibility, should remind one of Hitler's stated theory: "the basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all." But his theory doesn't really matter. Most politicians are unconcerned with theory, so one can forgive Trump for some of his apparent lack of integrity. What matters is whether Trump's supporters are capable of supporting a president in acting against the interests and struct...

Background: Mustache wearer, blogger and ostensible physics maven Charles Thorington has questioned the validity of economic progressivism on the grounds that it serves no useful function in a capitalism economy. I countered by suggesting that progressivism is the compromise which enabled western capitalism to survive the threat of socialist revolution, and that automation-led job losses would force us again to acknowledge its usefulness. He countered that the price mechanism is sufficient to allow automation to improve productivity and safeguard public welfare in the face of massive structural changes to the economy. Here is his response in full: http://www.adividedworld.com/economic-ideas/will-automation-require-progressive-unemployment-solutions/ Here is my response to him: I appreciate your invocation of price mechanism here, which, on the contrary, I often find repetitious in your writing. It does very well to explain how a rising tide lifts all ships, in an absolute sen...