Help Build The Economic Populist

Hi Folks,

I think we have dynamite authors, well thought out, cited posts plus a lot of good outrage going on EP.

Please help others find the site, read the posts and encourage participation.

When you see someone on another site who clearly has good input on economic policy, stats, issues, invite them over to join. Use the share buttons on posts you particularly like.

Link over to posts on EP in your other discussions when referencing something you read. List EP in your blog rolls and tell other sites who are covering economics or economic policy about EP so maybe we can get more cross over participation.

EP is a community site, anyone can write a post, the comments are user tracked so people can have individual conversations and we even have the Instapopulist, so one can write without the pressure of an article level of Journalism.

There is no other economics focused site out there with these kind of features. All of them are just a select few authors. We even have content promotion and demotion so users are the editors to determine what is on the front page!

This site is great, the people on it are great so let's grow the site!

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2 Cents at a Time...

The Economic Populist has become a regular read for me. The team here has a great grasp of our current dire reality.

The "New Economy" should be re-named, "101 Ways to Loot and Destroy the Middle-Class".

IMO the deflationary depression we find ourselves in is a result/symptom of the dismantling, destruction of this countries productive industrial/manufacturing base and the JOBS that it provided under the veil of Globalization and Free Trade over the past 30 years. When financial skimming morphs from gaming an economy to underpinning an economy, collapse cannot be far off. Just look at Iceland's situation.

Government Sachs is not going to rebuild this nations economic base, they will continue to loot this country of any remaining wealth and discard it's customers, taxpayer's and the middle-class whenever it becomes unprofitable.

Our current reality is not an "accident", it is the manifestation of ruthless greed, void of morals or social responsibility.

Thanks for all your posts and discussions during this financial unraveling. I've crossed posted on Mish's board several times, I hope a few posters have bookmarked your site. The format is nice to navigate with the "New Blog Posts" and the "Instapopulist" sections always handy.

2 Thumbs up...

thank you nailbender

I know there are a lot of readers out there because I see the web stats. But maybe people do not realize that anyone can create an account, logon and at least use the comment sections to have a real discussion.

I appreciate the references I think all here try hard to write about precisely this "structural malaise" of our economy.

Especially when

Any potential solution is shot down as Economic Fiction.

I think that censorship will always destroy debate, in any forum. I'd rather see the gold bug spammers back than see this forum die. And shoot- I've learned a lot from people on this board who disagree with me- that's the entire point, isn't it?
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

Robert, FYI, I tried to

Robert, FYI, I tried to create an account, but my email was determined "invalid" and the door was closed. I think there is a problem with email validation. The CAPCHA being case sensitive is very difficult also.

email me

through the contact form and I will manually create an account. I do have hotmail blocked due to the massive spam generated from there, but I can unblock individual cases. Go ahead and use whatever the email address was in the block so I can see if we have a bug.

Is there something that could be done to shorten the url?

or whatever you call it. Would a permalink work?

the domain URL or the post URL?

The domain URL only if I can grab another domain name and believe me, all of the short ones are gone. Post URL's, just use copy&paste in your browser address bar, that's what I do, I don't retype in anything, without copy & paste I think the blog world "productivity" would greatly decrease. ;) There are shorter URLs but that hurts SEO, which is how people find posts through search engines.

The post URL.

I use twitter and you only have 140 characters. The long URLs make it difficult to post something on twitter.

EPers read this

Firstly, reader drop off is severe this month. Now part of this can be a defocus from all things econ generally plus it's at the height of summer, but still it's not good for us building up participation, new people, readers, writers.

So, please invite others you find around on the blogs to post on EP and comment (although make sure they are logical, well cited, etc.)

Secondly, because while we have the infamous green shoot/brown weed argument going on, I think all can agree the Economic Armageddon, immediate demise motif as well as breaking stats has subsided. This is almost a problem because many people seem to believe it's "all good" then and just plain think there isn't underlying major structural, regulatory, market sector, work issues that must be addressed.

So, I don't know about you, but I'm looking at the statistics over 80 years, 30 years, 10 years and so forth and firmly believe, long term, for long term economic health the U.S. needs some major policy shifts, from income inequality to manufacturing to labor rights to education to health care.

So, may I suggest we start writing about some of the policies and legislation out there with these large macro economic statistics?

I mean, sure ok, let's debate the exact point of the housing bottom and is a recovery really a recovery when it's simply stopped cliff diving or can one have any such thing with an unemployment rate going to 11%?

But in the bigger picture, issues like trade, offshore outsourcing, manufacturing policy, predatory financial practices etc. seems to be getting really ignored.

To all EP lurkers and readers

We know you are reading EP and we're glad you're here!

But consider coming out the shadows, creating an account and joining in the discussion and critique. We learn from you as much as you're learning from us and I think all of us can use all the help we can get!

But don't forget

As I keep doing.

This is a progressive economics only site. ANY variation or suggestion that there might be another set of values for judging events will be at a minimum ridiculed.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

no, that's not quite right

It's a fact based site, with both feet in economic theory and analysis. That's the difference.

I just put up a post on the Yuan peg to the dollar affecting the trade deficit. This is, in fact, a major "conservative" issue...it is the paleo-conservatives esp. who have jumped on the China peg to the dollar.....

I'm pointing to some facts, studies that show they are right...again, from some recent, very good analysis from those cats who are real economists and what their recent findings are.

Econ is a science. It's a soft science quite often but it is a science.

addthis button added

I decided to change the share buttons to the addthis.com service. So far so good with privacy from them (I tried it on another site) and it makes it all of the sharing options very compact and includes a lot of newer services.

Maybe people will links posts they like to the major social networking sites and so on with the new button!

We'll see.

I left the email forwarding system because it's much more complex and you can forward a post to over 10 email addresses at a time (yes, there is flood control you spammers who are lurking!).

Where is everyone? Come on, comment, write, participate!

Are you baffled at precisely how we can have everyone not only cheerleading a recovery but on top of it now claiming it will be this huge, massive V?

Wondering how the U.S. can dump in trillions into Zombie banks and still survive?

When the Stimulus supposedly hasn't created hardly any real jobs...why is it being declared it's actually working and by what real evidence, knowing what was in it? What exactly is working in that?

Wondering when the country will implode from massive debt?

Hey, some of this is surprising to me, although my guess is this "trough" was made by the financial implosion itself and since that's propped up, we're just returning to the same crappy outsourced economy we had before Sept. 2008...

But ya know, Let's chat about it, let's discuss, write, what the hell is going on here?

I feel like I just joined a dot con start-up in the 90's and everything is rosy regardless how infeasible it is.

I agree with that

However, I'm coming from a different set of potential causes, and discussion of those causes, while they have economic effect, is verboten on this site to the point of censorship, therefore I'm posting more rarely.

I'm also realizing, since coming here, that while I share *some* of the social justice ideals of progressives, I no longer believe that what passes for progress among our corporate overlords (breaking down barriers between communities, destroying the ability of the citizens of those communities to be self-sufficient, in an effort to gain new markets for international trade) works at all. I have a replacement solution I'd love to discuss here on the extreme macroeconomic level, but since it requires valuing human life, single family households, and genetic diversity above individual profit, I'm afraid to discuss it here.

It would be populist. But it would most certainly be anti-progressive. And it would close off so many markets that the current bubbles, while not being impossible, would be small and limited in their effects.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

well, yes it has to be based in economic/statistical reality

that's the main purpose of this site...

think of it this way, if you took an undergraduate economics course and wrote on the test some massive "economic replacement system" in answer to some questions, what grade do you think you would get? Try that as a litmus test and look at EP as the course companion blog.

Because in a lot of ways that's what EP is....we're reading and analyzing and commenting from an educated layman's view but we also did get an "A" in the course (literally) and are using that background to write about what is going on...

from a citizen perspective.

Your reality is not the same as my reality

Undergraduate economics courses in the United States are heavily *censored* to avoid talking about alternative systems to capitalism/regulated capitalism and avoid thinking about other ways to get to the same result.

Keep using the same system, and you're going to keep getting the same result- a boom/bust cycle of bubbles that splits society into a three class system with ever widening gaps between the lowest and highest, until it all falls down.

I state that you may get an "A" in the course, but I do not entirely believe the same theory set you do. In fact, there is only one theory your reality and mine share: that absent other values and influences, price is the intersection of supply and demand. Alternative systems change this by manipulating the values and influences, rather than by manipulating supply or demand directly.

And I strongly suspect it's the other theories, that I don't believe in, that makes this economic system unsustainable and focused heavily on short term gain at the expense of the long term sustainable status quo. Sometimes we get lucky and that leads to long term gain, but usually it just leads to bubble economies and the typical boom-bust business cycle, either muted by regulation or amplified by a lack of regulation.

The free market is based on chaos; and chaos is incapable of sustainable steady-state economics, no matter how you twist the regulations.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

look Seebert

and I've said many, many, many times....firstly a science is not relative, you don't get to say a math equation of 1+1=2 is not believable.

Second, this site is all about economics and it is about changing many structural problems, but those proposals ideas....are also based firmly in existing economic theory and statistics.

How many times do I have to say this? EP is an "all things econ" blog and Economics means.....Economics, straight out of those textbooks from undergraduate course work.

Economics isn't science.

The math can work 100% and the model still be wrong. That's true with every science. But the problem in economics is that the model itself is unsustainable.

Those undergraduate textbooks led directly to the crash of 2008. Their model is WRONG. It's perfectly mathematically valid, but it trims out too many variables, deletes too much data. Without that data, at a micro level the consumer is reduced to acting on a single data point (price) to get what they want, and the producer is reduced to acting on a single data point (cost) to gain profit (which is always price-cost, and may or may not be sufficient reward to those involved in the enterprise).

There's way more to ECONOMICS than those two data points- but by ignoring everything else, capitalism becomes a failure.

I'm not saying the MATH is bad, I'm saying the MODEL is insufficient to describe reality. But you're so addicted to the model and your undergraduate textbooks that you fail to see that there are other economic systems that lasted THOUSANDS of years without a single artificial bubble or change in prices. Oh, they had their problems too- famine and labor in short supply being two big universals- but they were at least able to go a hundred years without a speculative bubble induced crash. Which is more than I can say for the model in your undergraduate textbooks.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.

yet another warning

if you have been reading anything on this site, you would know that the crash and the methods used to do the crash could not only be predicted by economics and statistics but also has nothing to do with Macro economic theory as a science.

Look, go argue elsewhere trying to claim somehow all economic theory is wrong or whatever. This site and esp. my time is assuredly not devoted to someone raving on about how all economic theory is wrong...

Now look, I have warned you repeatedly, temporary suspended your account and for the life of me I cannot understand why you want to even be here for EP is am economics blog! It's not going to change...that's it's niche topic!

EP is a team contact sport! Folks read this comment

Folks, EP is a community blog a team blog. We need more people to comment, participate and don't forget to promote posts to the front page you believe are worthy of it.

Seems like the readers are still around but the group participation and contribution rate is way down.

Where is everybody??? Please contribute, comment, read this!

Come on folks, write comments and participate.

I realize that maybe I am the anal-retentive, mathematical police on the site and I'm going to try to loosen up.

My goal is to keep the site highly credible with accurate statistics, theory and analysis....

that's all we have since this is not a "name brand" site, so content must be well sourced and cited.

That said, I sure don't want to repress the Get your Outrage on, because frankly I am personally getting so disgusted as what is going on in D.C., esp. when I look at the daily economic indicators and statistics that imply all of middle class America is under attack and suffering....I would like to scream!

I do it with graphs but believe me, I am screaming bloody murder. Come join and shout out your own!

Honestly we need real change right now on economic policy. We have ZERO financial reform, no direct jobs program, no curtailing of offshoring, no stopping the banksters....

instead we're being sold the "new normal" is permanent unemployment!

I sure cannot cover all of the daily screw jobs and perhaps, esp. for election season is approaching, we should lighten up on political posts on the site.

I really do want people to start learning and paying attention to all things econ, but in terms of who is saying what as policy positions, that is very important!

I do promise to lighten up as the statistical and citation gestapo police. How I am, I have a research background, but I guess I'm coming across as the teacher with the backhand ruler slap.

Outrage against the Machine

Bob, as you know, it's a very big machine and -- just as in the industrial age -- they regard us ordinary folks as "straw dogs." They listen politely, shake our hands, and show us the door. I think it was the labor movement that saved our system once, but now everybody is "professional" or "management," and we seem to have a white collar illusion. The "real management" likes this arrangement. The Tea Party illusion makes noise, but has no program. The smart money bets on the two political parties, where you get your choice between Geithner and Paulson, and of course between Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs.
On the home front, my brother just got a job on a ship (after seeming to be permanetly unemployed for about a year) and we are grateful for his good fortune. Ask him whether he's ready to join a march on the Winter Palace, and he will tell you he can retire in five years. Things are tough all over.
Maybe if things get worse -- call me an optimist but we are not there yet. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, liberal intellectuals focused on mass society, powerlessness, and alienation, but then they became Neocons and signed on with the elites.
One thing Marx and today's financial elites agree on -- labor is a commodity. The LBO artists understood this too well, and why should net present value include pensions, insurance, and paid vacation? But for now, you won't find people marching in the streets -- they are tired, still trying to figure out how to keep their families afloat, and watching Oprah's fantasy TV. Or perhaps (the irony!) Rush Limbaugh telling them who to blame.
We do need some national leaders who will care about America's workers and their families. Elizabeth Warren comes to mind. And maybe Ralph Nader twenty years younger. But for now -- maybe someone in the Obama administration who remembers what it was like to be working class will get his ear. Then there will perhaps be hope.
Frank T.

Frank T.

I think some do care

I think there are a whole lot of people who care and are trying to do something, but ya know when an entire nation votes for change and instead gets Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Diana Farrell appointed and ....you can have one guy in the Senate stop a bill or just one guy, chairing a committee, stop any legislation...

well, these are the mechanisms on how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, et al are running the nation.

Great comment on the state of things.

Yes, some lightening up would be welcome...

from where I sit. And not only on the part of Mr. Oak, but also on the part of some others. I have been jumped on big time for saying things I did not actually say - certain key words seem to just set people off and they go apoplectic. Let me admit right away to being a little weak in Econ - I am here at this site to try to remedy that. But I am not weak in my precise use of language, and when I ask a genuine question seeking more information, and when that question is then twisted into a position of some sort, I know there must be a certain amount of baggage (or chip on the shoulder) at work. But I'm still here and I know I should beware of being too thin-skinned. This is not a site for the faint of heart!

Ray Joiner

to the new people + EP hit 1 million reads

We've had a lot of new people register on the site. Please don't be shy and leave your input in comments.

You might also check out the admin forum the user guide and the FAQ in the about section.

EP has been in existence, active for less than 2 years and we recently hit 1 million reads! Congrats to all for your hard work and efforts.