Suspect everything

[elfs]

Brad DeLong comments on the 9.5% growth reported in the third quarter, along with a 13.6% growth in productivity and a 7.1% drop in labor costs:

Back in the 1930s there was a Polish Marxist economist, Michel Kalecki, who argued that recessions were functional for the ruling class and for capitalism because they created excess supply of labor, forced workers to work harder to keep their jobs, and so produced a rise in the rate of relative surplus-value.

For thirty years, ever since I got into this business, I have been mocking Michel Kalecki. I have been pointing out that recessions see a much sharper fall in profits than in wages. I have been saying that the pace of work slows in recessions--that employers are more concerned with keeping valuable employees in their value chains than using a temporary high level of unemployment to squeeze greater work effort out of their workers.

I don't think that I can mock Michel Kalecki any more, ever again.

I feel like I'm living in Michel Kalecki's universe nowadays.

I note with amusement that DeLong, who also hosted Shrillblog, where those driven into unholy madness by the malevolence, mendacity, incompetence and disconnection from reality that has characterized the right wing of American politics for the past nine years can ululate in psychotic shrillness at the cold, uncaring stars, has chosen to rename his blog, "Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles."