“The Recent Economist”: Between Scientific Relativism and the Recourse to Ethics
In society’s evolution, ideas are the essential ferments of any change. There are no implacable laws of history and the future is not written in the stars or, to the “delight” of (macro) contemporary supporters of quantitative approaches, in the cyber-economic models that became the sterile fashion of economics journals – where exactly ‘economics’ is the endangered scientific
Consumption or Production? That Is the (Economic) Question
Happily, in economics one can’t have Hamletian dilemmas, as they are either inconsistent with respect to economic logic, or completely unproductive beyond it. When it comes to economic policies, in those rare cases where these policies are not redistributive, there exist two options, according to the way in which the government chooses to support economic recovery: by
Prices, Costs and Excise Duties: What’s What?
Inevitably, in any tax analysis, we would refer to prices and costs, salaries and production, prosperity etc. It is well known, although ultimately unjustified, the opinion that increasing indirect taxation, especially excise duties, will be reflected by prices and, further on, by inflationary escalations. This is the recent situation of the debate on the 7 eurocents that will be added to fuel excise
The Romanian economy is almost built around the state budget
Fiscal policy does not need to solve only the quantitative and, often, circumstantial problems of the budget, as it happened, unfortunately, until now, but rather to solve structural, profound problems of the economy. At the same time, in my opinion, structural reforms should mean more than professionalizing the management and cleaning the SOEs sector. Consolidating the
The crisis and the capitalism – from Marx to the “smart boys” on Wall Street
Before pretending to display economic realism, especially in the context of the recent economic crisis, left-wing politics should, first of all, understand the fundamental problem of the state, that is “to see” its natural, inherent limits. Because, as Ludwig Erhard, an artisan of Western Germany’s post-war revival, said, “the government is not a cow that is fed in Heaven and can be milked
