{"id":460,"date":"2013-07-24T02:02:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T06:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/?p=460"},"modified":"2013-07-24T02:02:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T06:02:00","slug":"post-scarcity-economics-by-tom-streithorst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/2013\/07\/24\/personal-observations\/post-scarcity-economics-by-tom-streithorst\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Scarcity Economics by Tom Streithorst"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The LA Times Review of Books has an article by Tom Streithorst about his new book titled \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/lareviewofbooks.org\/print.php?id=1845\">Post-Scarcity Economics<\/a>. In a sense, he chalks out the parameters of the debate concerning the direction of this country and in general of the world, should a technocrat assume the reins of power.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>WE LIVE LIKE GODS, and we don\u2019t even know it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And so begins this auto-review of this book. There\u2019s lot of meat and potatoes in this review \u2013 in fact, it is more than a review:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Progressive economists, led by Paul Krugman, have argued persuasively that what the world economy needs now is government deficit spending to put money in workers\u2019 wallets, to stimulate consumption, to give the private sector a reason to invest and expand. This is the classic Keynesian solution, one proved by years of experience. Krugman tells us that the problem with the world economy now is lack of demand. Indeed, solving the problem of demand has been the essential capitalist dilemma of the past 80 years. As productivity rises, we can make more with the same level of inputs. Demand has to rise just as fast or the economy shrinks. For an economy to be at full employment, demand needs to equal the society\u2019s productive capacity. If it does not, then supply will shrink to meet demand and millions of workers will become redundant. To achieve full employment, we must find a way to instead push demand up to meet the economy\u2019s productive capacity. Since the Great Depression, we have solved this problem of demand three different ways: war, rising wages, and debt.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>What I\u2019d like to attempt is a simple minded critique of the same. That is to follow\u2026<\/p>\n<div id=\"scid:0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:d395aeec-7a3a-471a-b4a6-26158374bd2b\" class=\"wlWriterEditableSmartContent\" style=\"float: none; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\">Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/Post-Scarcity+Economics\" rel=\"tag\">Post-Scarcity Economics<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/Tom+Streithorst\" rel=\"tag\">Tom Streithorst<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/Progressive+Economists\" rel=\"tag\">Progressive Economists<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/Government+Action\" rel=\"tag\">Government Action<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/Economics\" rel=\"tag\">Economics<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/Captialist+Dilemma\" rel=\"tag\">Captialist Dilemma<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The LA Times Review of Books has an article by Tom Streithorst about his new book titled \u2013 Post-Scarcity Economics. In a sense, he chalks out the parameters of the debate concerning the direction of this country and in general of the world, should a technocrat assume the reins of power. WE LIVE LIKE GODS, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[485,484,483,486,487,480,482,481],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-personal-observations","tag-captialist-dilemma","tag-economics","tag-government-action","tag-la-times","tag-paul-krugman","tag-post-scarcity-economics","tag-progressive-economists","tag-tom-streithorst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/at-scm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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