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FED CHAIR POWELL SAYS THE US ECONOMY IS STRENGTHENING. LET’S PUT HIM TO THE TEST.

To elaborate on the employee withholding taxes used in the article which are a good guide to employment trends. All things being equal, a rise in withholding taxes paid on behalf of employees is associated with a rise in employment and a fall in withholding taxes with a fall in employment. The Federal Budget Year runs from October to September. Table 2 in the CBO Report provides cumulative data for receipts and expenditures. Thus my February figure takes the cumulative data for withholding taxes and divides it by 5 months to obtain the moving average while my June figure divides it by 9 months.  Accordingly, it shows the moving average is in significant decline, which given the inflation in wages and therefore withholding taxes, does not correspond to the rise in payroll employment as reported by the BLS. Finally, with total Federal Receipts on all income down by over 5% in real terms in June, the economy is clearly in recession because taxes don’t lie (excluding for the super-rich who don’t pay taxes anyway, so need not be included).

ECONOMIC STRESSES LEAD TO POLITICAL INSTABILITIES as Johnson discovered.

I should have added in some data on the USA in terms of attitudes to socialism. Today a majority of the under 34 are favourably disposed to socialism, or more accurately, a left reformist interpretation of socialism. This is not surprising given the widespread financial insecurity that permeates that country. Here is an interesting link to graphs which plots the trends in support by party affiliation between 2010 and 2021 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1078448/support-socialism-party-affiliation-us/

TALK GIVEN ON CHAPTER 10 OF VOLUME 3 OF DAS KAPITAL.

UNDER A BAKING SUN PROFIT TEARS THE WORLD APART.

The markets had there worst half year for decades. In fact the markets fell faster than during the first 6 months of the Dotcom crash. The first half drop was primarily caused by the fear of higher interest rates provoked by inflation. The second half drop will be caused by the fall in profit margins. The earlier than expected tapering of interest rates will not alter this. The world economy has effectively entered into recession. The only question is how deep,?

BRITISH WORKERS RISE UP, THE ECONOMY FALLS DOWN,AND THE PRIME MINISTER LANDS ON HIS ARSE.

Piero Sraffa and ‘The Production of Commodities by Commodities’. (An anti-working class treatise.)

This is an updated critique previously published and submitted to the journal Historical Materialism for consideration.

HOW STUPID CAN THE FED GET? ITS THE WAR DOPEY!

THE WORLD ECONOMY. BLEEDING FROM HUNDREDS OF CUTS BUT NO AMPUTATIONS YET. (Part 1.)

CRITIQUE OF A RECENT PAPER PUBLISHED IN HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ON THE TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM

I sense that Marx’s Transformation Problem found in Chapter 9 of Volume 3 is going to get more of an airing as today’s growing storms pummel capitalism. The Transformation Problem or the understanding of how value is converted into price via the movement of capital is central to the law of value, and answering it, is central to defending the law of value. The transformation problem has been the graveyard for many theorists who have sought to assist Marx, by either re-interpreting him, or rendering him more profound or by seeking to bury the real problem by substituting a non-problem. Like helpful D.I.Y. bodgers they have ended up devaluing the house that Marx and Engels built. The paper being critiqued has once again misinterpreted Marx. What my Critique also does is to introduce what has not been considered before, something novel in the Marxist lexicon, the difference between complicated systems and complex systems, something which capitalist corporations have to grapple with every day. By showing that capitalism is a complicated and not a complex system, this critique establishes that the relation between value and price can be determined, something which the authors disallow.

DRAFT 21st CENTURY PROGRAMME

I have brought this programme to the head of the queue again in case new readers have missed it. I consider it to be the most important document on this site, and the most needed as capitalism increasingly succumbs to its own crisis. We need to start looking forward, to a world without capitalism, which this programme shows is possible.