INTRODUCTION: WHY ANOTHER NEWSLETTER?
There are two primary reasons for the production of this economics
newsletter. The first is to bring to the readers the growing relevance of
what some like to call the New Paradigm in Economics. By the end of the Second World
War, the American economy had become burdened with a bias to both inflationary
and recessionary episodes. It appeared that episodes of both were
becoming more frequent and more severe in terms of both depth and duration.
These biases have seemed to weaken as the economy evolved to the present
time. ‘What has happened to the business cycle” and “where has the power
of firms to control prices gone”, and again, “are we entering a deflationary
period”?
The attempt to make economic sense of these changes constitutes the
body of economic analysis increasingly termed, The New Paradigm. The
century leading up to the Second World War saw pretty much, a continuous
decline in competition in product and resource markets, including labor
markets. As has been shown in the book, THE NEW PARADIGM, ECONOMIC
UNDERSTANDING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, (Donald R. Byrne, 2003), a
landscape change began to slowly evolve in the
Globalization, deregulation, privatization and commoditization of
goods and services and productive resource markets have changed economic
behavior. An increasing number of firms in an increasing number of
markets have had to seek relief from declining profits by cutting costs and not
by raising prices as was the old remedy. In labor markets, rising union
compensation for labor has resulted in growing structural unemployment.
As this occurs along with the diminishing frequency and diminishing
severity of recessions, structural unemployment has replaced cyclical
unemployment as a major concern. Many
economists and most policy makers have failed to understand these
changes. Recent monetary and fiscal policies have proved failures and
gave us the 2001 recession that should have never occurred. See the major
article, “WHAT RECESSION” in this first issue for a discussion of this policy
failure.
Many good things are coming from this economic evolution to more
competitive markets. The income distribution is becoming more equal as
market power disappears gradually. The efficiency of resources such as
labor increases more rapidly than before as a consequence of
restructuring. These changes have gradually been occurring and continue
to pervade the economy will help explain the various issues that will make up
this newsletter.
The second reason for this newsletter is to avoid as far as possible,
ideologically driven arguments. For this reason, only officially
published data will be used such as the National Income and Product Accounts from
the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Flow of Funds Accounts from the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Census Bureau data, etc.
Hyper links to that data will be an integral part of this newsletter.
This data will be readily accessible to the reader – only a mouse click away.
Feedback via e mail is encouraged and appreciated by us and will be
incorporated into the newsletter as space permits.
Updated (
Free Market
Capitalism:
Salvation
or Damnation?
The role of the
Invisible Hand
Much
confusion exists over the meaning of free market capitalism. As a Professor of Economics, I learned first
hand of this confusion. As I watch the
electronic and read the printed media, it is clear that confusion abounds over
its meaning. Even among the
Libertarians, the confusion continues.
The intention of this follow up to our introduction is to attempt to
clear up the confusion.
Much of
the problem revolves around the “good” things that come from free market
capitalism. The literature of
microeconomics of the classical-neoclassical tradition points out the limiting
case or the end game, as the modern expression goes. The good things that come from free market
capitalism are found in the achievement of the theoretical welfare conditions
of equity and efficiency. These
conditions can be achieved from market forces only if the markets approach what
is termed perfect competition. In the
terms of Adam Smith, the Invisible Hand
of competition is fully operative. That is
to say, no single firm or productive resource employed by firms in the
transformation process called production has any market power. They are pure price takers and have no price
making power. The demand facing them is
perfectly elastic.
To restate what we the editors of this
newsletter, as well as a growing number of other economists, have been arguing
for the past several years: we are embarked on a new era in this country; one
where a sea change has occurred – a New
Paradigm in Economics that has been evolving since the Second World
War. This is a result of increasingly
widespread and significant growth in competition. We argue that the growing importance of the
invisible hand of competition is bringing the
In effect, that is what Keynes and his macroeconomic revolution was all
about. Lord Keynes, himself, was a
neo-classical economist of the Marshallian mode. Not too long before he published his
momentous GENERAL THEORY, 1936 (background on Keynes http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Keynes.html
;the text is available in an electronic format http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/essays/keynes/general.htm)
, he was advising the British Government to return to a gold standard with
pre-WWI prices or parity as it was called; a policy of deflation was required
to achieve the pre-War parity for gold (the war had brought about significant
inflation). He despaired of this recommendation
as he saw the depression continue, deepen and spread. By the time Keynes wrote his GENERAL THEORY,
he was calling gold a barbarous relic (“In
truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.”). Why such a drastic change? As
“The primâ facie interest of the
owner of a monopoly is clearly to adjust the supply to the demand, not in such a
way that the price at which he can sell his commodity shall just cover its
expenses of production, but in such a way as to afford him the greatest
possible total net revenue.”
As Keynes
argued, any level of economic activity was possible and as a by-product,
recessionary and inflationary gaps could and usually did occur. Excesses or deficiencies in Aggregate Demand
were the rule and not the exception.
Government intervention was needed to eliminate recessionary and
inflationary gaps Laissez faire,
laissez passer policies of Say’s Law had to be replaced with an active
interventionist policy by the central government. Monetary and especially fiscal policies were
required, or disasters like the Great Depression that followed the First World
War would certainly reoccur.
As in the
case of many revolutions, the Keynesian Revolution proved no exception; the
passage of time changed the underlying conditions – where once the Keynesian
prescription for active government involvement in the economy was warranted, in
the past few decades the government intervention has become less desirable…and
some argue, less necessary. From zenith
of price power of cartelistic and oligopolistic markets prevalent at the onset
of WW II, we have experienced six decades of growing competition. The once oligopolistic market structures in
autos, lumber, telecommunications, etc. have become very competitive.
A number
of factors have resulted in an increasingly competitive economy. The resurgence of international trade due to
GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade http://www.wto.org/English/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/fact4_e.htm)
and over a decade of more or less fixed exchange rates is one of them. Many years of deregulation of markets,
especially in transportation and communications have added to the competitive
nature of the
So be careful when someone uses the
term, “it’s the market” and hopes to conjure up feelings that to get the good
side of the market, we have to tolerate the bad things like $3.00 for a gallon
of gas. Monopoly power as shared by the
far fewer firms in the American oil industry is not “the market”.
It is a
perversion of the market. It means that
the Policeman, the Invisible Hand of competition, has been expelled. It undermines the good things that come only
from competitive free market capitalism.
Remember what those god things are that only COMPETITIVE free market
capitalism brings us.
EQUITY
The
consumer surplus is at a maximum subject to the constraint that the productive
resources (labor, debt and equity capital, entrepreneurship, etc receive their
opportunity cost and no surplus or con economic rent.
EFFICIENCY
The per
capital standard of living is at a maximum given the current state of
technology, the current stock of all resources, etc.
ELIMINATION OF THE TWIN
BIASES TOWARD FREQUENT AND SEVERE BOUTS OF RECESSION AND INFLATION
In fact a
mild deflationary pressure as the productivity dividend is partially passed
forward in the form of lower costs and prices.
LESS INEQUALITY IN THE
INCOME DISTRIBUTION
Equity allows
inequality to occur but only based on the opportunity costs of the resources
and not through the market power of the firms employing the productive
resources.
These are
the good things that come to a market that is truly a competitive free market capitalistic
economic system.
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