NewAmerica.net. Thomas Palley » Blog Archive » Plan B for Obama on the economy. TO: President ObamaFROM: Thomas I. PalleyRE: How to avoid stagnation and restore shared prosperityDATE: Labor Day, 2010 Mr. President, With hopes of a V- or U-shaped recovery fading, there is the increasing prospect of an L-shaped future of long stagnation, or even a W-shaped future in which W stands for something worse. The reason for this dismal outlook is economic policy is trapped by failed conventional thinking that can only deliver wage stagnation and prolonged mass unemployment. Your administration’s current economic recovery program has been marked by four major failings: 1. If your policy team remedies these four failings our economy will quickly begin robust recovery. Suggested remedies 1. The economy needs a further demand boost to establish recovery momentum. The Bush 10 per cent bracket and marriage provisions should be retained, while everything else should be allowed to expire with the savings used to fund new temporary fiscal stimulus. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Thomas Palley. Palley, T.I.: Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of the American Dream and the Case for Structural Keynesianism. Business papers today are in a triumphant mood, buoyed by a conviction that the economic stagnation of the last quarter century has vanished in favor of a new age of robust growth. But if we are doing so well, many ask, why does it feel like we are working harder for less? Why, despite economic growth, does inequality between rich and poor keep rising? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Thomas Palley pulls together many threads of "new liberal" economic thought to offer detailed answers to these pressing questions. And he proposes a new economic model--structural Keynesianism--that he argues would return America to sustainable, fairly shared prosperity.
The key, he writes, is to abandon the myth of a natural competitive economy, which has justified unleashing capital and attacking unions. This has resulted in an economy dominated by business. Plenty of Nothing offers a compelling alternative to conventional economic wisdom. Review: "This is a good and useful book. "Thomas I. Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of ... Business papers today are in a triumphant mood, buoyed by a conviction that the economic stagnation of the last quarter century has vanished in favor of a new age of robust growth. But if we are doing so well, many ask, why does it feel like we are working harder for less? Why, despite economic growth, does inequality between rich and poor keep rising? In this wide-ranging and provocative book, Thomas Palley pulls together many threads of "new liberal" economic thought to offer detailed answers to these pressing questions.
And he proposes a new economic model--structural Keynesianism--that he argues would return America to sustainable, fairly shared prosperity. Palley's book, which began as a cover article for The Atlantic Monthly in 1996, challenges the economic orthodoxies of the political right and center, popularized by such economists as Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman.
Plenty of Nothing offers a compelling alternative to conventional economic wisdom.