Thursday, April 17, 2014

support the world economics association

   
Three years ago the World Economics Association (WEA) was launched to create an inclusive professional association for the global community of economists.  Already it is second in size only to the American Economic Association, from which it differs in two fundamental dimensions. 

One is the self-evident geo-political difference; the other is that the WEA is not committed to maintaining the hegemony of the neoclassical school.  Instead, in the tradition of the natural sciences and physics especially, it supports investigation of real-world economies from multiple perspectives.

I should also emphasize that the WEA is not the tool or creation of the world’s financial oligarchy; instead it is financially independent.

The WEA’s strength is the breadth and size of its membership.  Real communities consist of individuals.  And that is why I am inviting you, a RWER subscriber, to join.  The WEA membership is free, and I have two incentives to motivate you to give the two or three minutes that it takes to join.

Firstly, you will receive WEA periodicals free of charge.  The WEA already publishes three journals (with print copies soon to be available).  It also publishes a substantial bi-monthly newsletter, holds online conferences, and has a rapidly growing network of national chapters.  Membership will give you immediate access to all this, including email notifications.  The covers of the current issues of WEA periodicals are pictured below.

Secondly, you will be helping a good and important cause.  It is now commonly recognized that humanity is ill-served by the economics profession as currently constituted, and that the primacy of the one nation over a global professional focus is both absurd and unjust. The WEA exists to overcome these deficiencies.  By joining the WEA and donating your two or three minutes you will be helping it achieve these goals.
You may join here 

Hopefully,

Edward Fullbrook

Executive Director of the World Economics Association
Editor of the Real-World Economics Review
University of the West of England

19 comments:

Constructive_Feedback said...

Clearly you are speaking of national political power.

Who has the power over the local "Human Resource Development and Community Governance Institutions"?

CNu said...

Clearly you would have to imagine that there are discontinuities in the fabric of space-time to imagine that political and economic realities at the levels above do not also apply, EVEN MORE STRONGLY at the levels below.

Sorry that throws a monkey wrench in the gospel of Constructive Feedback, but it is what it is....,

ken said...

There seems to be a lot of talk about democracy and desired rule by the majority in this article, the article mentioned democracy 45 times. You would think with all those mentions the article might have delved a little deeper into a discussion about why a republic was chosen instead of a democracy for our country. To be fair the article did give it one call out when talking about majoritarian pluralism.


The study evaluates 1779 issues or implemented policies between 1981 and 2002 which would be 84 issues a year, or a little over 1.5 a week. I would have a hard time believing average citizen has educated him or herself on all the issues to to give our republic a well informed decision for each policy direction.

Vic78 said...

It's a little tricky when they bring interest groups into the discussion. I'll say they're as effective as the membership demands. There's a difference between AARP and NAACP. The old folks wouldn't stand for the things NAACP is on. You'll never see a politician disrespect the AARP. I consider both interest groups mass based with divergent outcomes. The marijuana lobbying groups have been successful as well. Immigration groups have been a pain in the ass for DC. So I'm guessing the success or failure of a group is in how it pursues its mission. I wonder if unions qualify as interest groups in the study. It's difficult to statistical analysis when any given group is an outlier.

Constructive_Feedback said...

You need to let the Korean and Pakistani merchants that dominate the sole proprietor retail space that they are an anomaly like a bumble bee and should not be able to fly, economically without more national political or corporate power

Tom said...

AARP is an excellent example of the kind of pit-bull organization that carries some real weight in politics.


I'm an outsider, but if it were me I'd adopt the AARP as a model in a heartbeat. MLK's tactics were effective, but that was fifty years ago.

Vic78 said...

A player once told me all advice is good advice. Do you need air? Do you have to eat and shit? You're not an outsider.

CNu said...

The one thing has nothing whatsoever to do with the other. The Korean and Pakistani merchants pool capital and cooperate and collaborate in order to obtain and maintain their modest little retail footprints. That's a hardscrabble hustle - god bless them.

What national or local political or economic power do they wield outside of these modest ghetto franchise concessions that nobody else seems to want?

John Kurman said...

Keeping that thumb down at every level: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-koch-brothers-are-trying-to-ban-an-entire-transit-technology?trk_source=homepage-lede

Constructive_Feedback said...

Brother CNu:


You want me to lock into the supposition of "NATIONAL Political and Economy POWER" that you and Talibbi (sp?) has latched upon.


Yet when I tell you about my observations and analysis of "Black Political Opportunism" by which the forces that SELL the masses on the notion that LOCAL POLITICAL GAINS will translate into ECONOMIC and ACADEMIC benefit for them. Yet when they ACTUALLY OBTAIN POLITICAL POWER and are on the hook to now DELIVER - they ALWAYS practice "Establishment Power Repudiation", making the case that the NATIONAL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC POWER FORCES that you speak of MUST BE DEFEATED before they can be held accountable for the LOCAL results.


Tell me CNu, why shouldn't you extend to the Mexican or Guatemalan political operatives the benefit of their ESTABLISHMENT POWER REPUDIATION because AMERICA and GREAT BRITAIN have "GLOBAL POLITICAL" [ie; the United Nations] and "GLOBAL ECONOMIC" [ie the World Bank, WTO and IMF] POWER - that is precluding them from developing in the same way that those with LOCAL contextual power get to do in your world view?


IT IS FAR MORE RATIONAL for a "People" who are SERIOUS about development within their ranks to CLOSE CIRCLE and do the "Cooperative Economics" that you attribute to the Koreans/Pakistanis - than it is to practice the "BOIL THE OCEAN" scheme.


And then to top it off - when they get A FAVORABLE PERSON IN POWER (see Obama) they are able to LOOK PAST THEIR FRIEND IN POWER and instead "Occupy Wall Street" - as the President drops bombs on "Nations Of Color" - an act that USED TO produce PROTESTS by these very "Least of These" people that we speak of.




WHAT IS REALLY YOUR BASIS, brother?

ken said...

This article mentioned democracy 45 times, and although it seemed to be calling foul because the polls weren't the deciding factor for policy decisions, it never once delved into the advantages of running a country by polls rather than how a republic like ours makes decisions. The author never once noted this is a republic. Republic was mentioned once, but it wasn't to say the USA is a republic.


1779 policy issues from 1981 to 2002 were studied, which works out to about 85 policy decisions a year or a little over 1.5 a week. I have a hard time believing average information citizen is going to make the best and most educated choices for these 85 policy directions each year.

Vic78 said...

It was about policy preferences. This country polls liberal on most issues, but policy makers don't seem to care. They didn't pass a background check bill when 90% of Americans were in favor. Americans favor tax increases on themselves for improved services, but it's a fight to raise four percentage points on those making over half a million.

ken said...

"Americans favor tax increases on themselves for improved services, but it's a fight to raise four percentage points on those making over half a million."


I would rate the close to 50% of the people who won't pay taxes a special interest. The people you cited like all the other interest groups expect they will be the financial beneficiaries of taking money out of people making over a half million. That's a special interest. And by the way the rate was raise 4 percentage points.


My general point is however, just like even with the issue you imagined, the majority is not educated enough to be versed in over 3 policy directions every 2 weeks. Even the authors of the article have enough care or curiosity to wonder how many of the 1779 decisions were correct. A more interesting study would be to take a couple hundred average citizens and educate them on the issues that had to be considered before a decision was made and then see if average citizen would agree with what his representative government decided. Of course this would take a tremendous amount of time, which again is my point why we have a representative government.

Vic78 said...

The 50% is not organized. Special interest groups are coordinated. The people that don't make enough to pay taxes are too concerned about their day to day lives. Many of them don't even vote. Politicians don't cater to them when running for office. The country has a baseline of not letting them starve in the streets and a giving them a basic education.

A polling sample is not an interest group. They are just people that answered polls. There was general agreement with policy preferences. Our citizens are tree huggers, Exxon and the Koch Bros would rather keep pumping oil. As for taxes, there was no problem with higher rates as long as there were services.

The study has to do with what citizens were listened to and who were ignored. Elected officials seem to care more what idiot billionaires(Koch Bros. Sheldon Anderson) than they do what lower income scale thinks. What makes you think the super rich knows anything outside of their own specialty? They don't know shit about policy but have little trouble getting what they want.

CNu said...

OK Feed, get with Ed, find your African supply chain collaborators the same way the Koreans are sourcing that long straight black hair they sell so well in the hood, and do your thing. Air and opportunity bruv.

As for me, I'll do what I do, and that necessarily entails pointing out oligarchic concentrations of both economic and political power and calling foul in the context of a system which purports to be other than an oligarchy. Thanks...,

CNu said...

lol, mebbe the Rev. been sitting in a prosperity church and is convinced that the rich are in fact the "spiritually" elect - in which case their divinely qualified to be calling the shots rather than the unwashed peasant tares whom they trod underfoot?

Nakajima Kikka said...

The problem with your analysis, ken, is that the politicians themselves don't understand the issues any better than the average citizen. This isn't the 18th century. Each policy document, bill and supporting documentation is now hundreds, even thousands of pages now, written in dense legal and technical English. Politicians have no time to read and study them (and frankly, they have better things to do with their time, anyway). They have someone else, someone they trust, do that for them, tell them what it all means (most commonly in a 1-3 page summary), and then go with that.
Modern American politicians, at any level, rarely have any real idea what is actually in any of the bills they vote on, and what its broader implications and consequences are. Under the circumstances, running the country by poll is not likely to produce a worse outcome than what we get now under the present system.

Constructive_Feedback said...

[quote]OK Feed, get with Ed, find your African supply chain collaborators the
same way the Koreans are sourcing that long straight black hair they
sell so well in the hood, and do your thing. Air and opportunity bruv.
[/quote]

If a writer like Dewayne Wickham or Mary Mitchell did a story that noted the line between Black consumerism and those who supply the fix (who are Korean) and then detailed the damage to the Black community - would YOUR rebuttal to these two writers to go start their own alternative supply chain (or shut up - basically)?

The "table stakes" issues like Black unemployment and declining local tax base are indeed related to this issue at hand. YET those who advocate for "Nationalized Social Justice" go unscathed, never forced to see this connection with failed local development.

I am not interested in owning an alternative supply chain as I am in showing how those Embedded Confidence Men who are always on "The Right Side Of Black History" also control the printing presses that publish the history.

CNu said...

Well then you're obviously not interested in changing any of the conditions on the ground for which you purport such concern. "Talk" activism is played out Feed. It's time for "Do" activism. He who has the gold rules, everything else is merely conversation....,

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