Ideologia neoliberal e a ideologia anti-neoliberal

Não gosto que no meio de um argumento, onde eu seja uma das partes, surja o recurso ao "neoliberalismo" - como sou economista, isso assume, objetivamente, o caráter de um epíteto, de um insulto, de castigo por aquilo que eu penso de menos alinhado em relação à conventional wisdom da esquerda alinhada com a geringonça - é assim que me sinto; não dou parte do sentimento, mas ele aí está, como está a irritação com o que isso revela de estreiteza de visão e de falta de conhecimento. E estreiteza de visão e falta de conhecimento estão associadas a tomadas de posição ideológicas primárias. E na verdade, acontece, se existe uma ideologia neoliberal, existe, igualmente, uma ideologia anti-neoliberal. 

Um exemplo ilustra bem as duas linhas - o da denominada austeridade. Um economista inglês, de esquerda, anti-austeritário, há muito pouco tempo, lembrava que austeridade não é um programa de política económica, mas a consequência de uma política económica, corretamente, denominada de consolidação orçamental - essa política, em dados momentos e em dadas circunstâncias, tem de ser aplicada, embora com o resultado desagradável da austeridade. O que faz deste economista, de esquerda, um anti-austeritário, é que ele considera que a conjuntura económica mundial exigiria, neste momento, um programa de política económico, que vamos designar, para simplificar, de keynesiano, de estímulo orçamental, e que o esforço de consolidação orçamental, só deveria ocorrer, muito depois, noutra conjuntura, com a economia mundial a singrar, normalmente, fora do buraco. Na sua leitura (e de muitos economistas, incluindo, este vosso criado), os EUA, o Reino Unido, a Alemanha, etc., seguiram, e seguem, políticas de consolidação orçamental, a destempo e inapropriadas (no caso dos EUA, de modo mais específico, e menos direto). A razão para que isso tenha vindo a suceder, desdobra-se num conjunto alargado de causas, mas a ideologia neoliberal (e a sua variante alemão, o ordoliberalismo) fornece grande parte do acicate, da defesa teórica e da validação da linha seguida.

No entretanto, o mesmo economista, de esquerda, anti-austeritário (e todos os outros, incluindo, este vosso criado) excetua da sua reprovação da política económica seguida, generalizadamente, os países da periferia sul da Europa que terão de continuar o seu programa de consolidação orçamental pelo facto de pertencerem a uma união monetária, e só por essa via serem capazes de readquirem competitividade. É óbvio que esse esforço, com consequências austeritárias, seria atenuado se os países que o podem fazer, nomeadamente, a Alemanha, fizessem a tal política a contrário, uma política expansionista. Aqui haveria, numa análise mais fina, haveria lugar a muitas qualificações (por exemplo, eu não duvido que uma política de consolidação orçamental teria sido necessária, face à situação a que se chegou, mesmo que não estivéssemos na UEM - isto é a política de desvalorização nominal podendo dar uma ajuda, nunca seria só por si suficiente). Negar esta necessidade, é um exemplo da ideologia económica dominante em Portugal, nesta conjuntura política, a ideologia anti-neoliberal, que é restringida nos seus potenciais efeitos desastrosos pelos compromissos europeus.

O que se segue, é o exemplo da prevalência dessa ideologia, na ausência de quaisquer entraves: é o caso da Venezuela, mas poderiam ser chamados à colação muitos outros exemplos

Declaração de interesse: ... e para que não haja dúvidas, porque sou um economista assim-assim, sabendo com alguma precisão o muito que não sei sobre a área de conhecimento em causa , não sou, ideologicamente, nem neoliberal nem anti-neoliberal - não que não esteja em curso um projeto para saber os contornos e a designação da minha ideologia: o trabalho começou há muitas décadas, e não promete estar concluído nas próximas quarto décadas (desconfio que seria necessário mais tempo).

Uma nota biográfica sobre Dani Rodrik

Os meus conhecidos e amigos que são muito críticos (isso é uma descrição que peca por defeito) dos usos e costumes da economia atual, da globalização e da liberalização do movimento dos capitais, e do modo como a economia (aqui, na aceção do ramo de conhecimento) analisa e interpreta tudo isso, achariam interessante a leitura da nota biográfica (elogiosa), junta abaixo, do economista Dani Rodrik, feita, curiosamente, numa revista conceituada do FMI. Curiosamente, porque Dani Rodrik foi ao longo das últimas décadas, um dos críticos mais claros, consistentes e eficazes, da prática da organização e da "economics conventional wisdom" sobre os itens elencados acima. Estou a ler o livro dele referenciado no último parágrafo - já coloquei aqui algo desse livro, sobre modelos.

Weekend Reading: Prakash Loungani on the Extremely Wise Dani Rodrik: Rebel with a Cause

Recados

Eu estou a ler "Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science" de Dani Rodrik. Um excerto, que contém lições para toda a gente, em particular, para os economistas e praticantes das outras ciências sociais - na verdade, se "the economists do it with models", não são só eles que o fazem:

"Rather than a single, specific model, economics encompasses a collection of models. The discipline advances by expanding its library of models and by improving the mapping between these models and the real world. The diversity of models in economics is the necessary counterpart to the flexibility of the social world. Different social settings require different models. Economists are unlikely ever to uncover universal, general-purpose models.

But, in part because economists take the natural sciences as their example, they have a tendency to misuse their models. They are prone to mistake a model for the model, relevant and applicable under all conditions. Economists must overcome this temptation. They have to select their models carefully as circumstances change, or as they turn their gaze from one setting to another. They need to learn how to shift among different models more fluidly."

Os riscos da 4ª revolução industrial não são do domínio da ficção científica

Os riscos desta revolução industrial, muito reais, têm de ter, mais do que tudo, uma ampla resposta política - não poderão contar com soluções que emerjam do mero funcionamento estrutural da economia (dos mercados); não que se possa arredar - o texto não fala disso - a possibilidade que daí venham, da economia, de modo endógeno, alterações importantes para uma nova solução de equilíbrio sócio-económica e política, que integre o impacto da quarta revolução industrial (riscos e benefícios) e a manutenção da progressiva melhoria sócio-económica do conjunto da população: por exemplo, não se percebe em que medida haverá um novo perfil de oferta de trabalho, diversificado, diferente e, quantitativamente relevante, que ajude a política na conformação do trajeto para aquele novo equilíbrio.

"While it would of course be nonsensical to advocate a halt to technological progress, there is a pressing need to flesh out the scenario of a radiant digital future with an analysis of its impact on society and the world of labour, in order to anticipate the effects. The digital revolution, left to its own devices, risks creating more top-of-the-scale jobs for some, and mini-jobs or unemployment for the rest; more freedom for the few, more servitude for the many; more prosperity for the privileged, more precarious conditions for the masses.

It is a scenario that can be avoided if the political and economic actors can agree to join forces and to invite academic, cultural, social and trade union stakeholders into the debate."

Here Are The New Social Risks Of The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Desigualdade versus um crescimento económico insatisfatório, insuficiente, para os pobres e classe média

Leitura fortemente recomendada.

"The question of whether high inequality today bodes well for future rates of income growth and poverty reduction has recently acquired added relevance because of the slowdown of growth in rich countries and simultaneously rising inequality. The relationship between inequality and future growth has been extensively researched but, unfortunately, the results have proved to be inconclusive. We argue that by looking at the growth of average incomes (or GDP per capita) important heterogeneities are being overlooked. The question we should be asking is: how do individuals at different rungs of the socio-economic ladder fare in societies with different levels of inequality? This is precisely what two of us have done in a recent study."

Inequality harms economic growth for the poor

Sobre Piketty

Brad DeLong descreteia sobre o livro de Piketty, Capital no Século XXI (2013), principais pontos, críticas (as boas e as menos boas). Interessante e uma boa súmula das questões que o livro levantou e levanta. Leitura recomendada.

The Melting-Away of North Atlantic Social Democracy

Curta e seca

Na linha de citar cartas de economistas, e agora de outro quadrante, esta de Joan Robinson para Ronald Meek é exemplar, a diversos títulos:

Joan Robinson's Letter to Ronald Meek: 

When I say I understand Marx better than you, I don’t mean to say that I know the text better than you do. If you start throwing quotations at me you will have me baffled in no time. In fact, I refuse to play before you begin.

What I mean is that I have Marx in my bones and you have him in your mouth. To take an example – the idea that constant capital is an embodiment of labour power expended in the past. To you this is something that has to be proved with a lot of Hegelian stuff and nonsense. Whereas I say (though I do not use such pompous terminology): ‘Naturally – what else did you think it could be?’

Ter em muita atenção - algumas qualificações, ou mais precisamente, muitas questões, mas explicitá-las daria muito trabalho

Tim Jackson's economic reality check | Video on TED.com

Tim Jackson currently serves as the economics commissioner on the UK government's Sustainable Development Commission and is director of RESOLVE -- the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment. After five years as Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, he bcame the Professor of Sustainable Development at University of Surrey, and was the first person to hold that title at a UK university. He founded RESOLVE in May 2006 as an nter-disciplinary collaborationacross four areas -- CES, psychology, sociology and economics -- aiming to develop an understanding of the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment.

He is also the author of the influential book Propserity Without Growth. He serves as chair to the 'New Energy Solutions' Advisory Board for Danish investment company BankInvest and is associate researcher on a Templeton Foundation project on 'The Pursuit of Happiness.' Tim is also an award-winning playwright, and his environmental drama The Cry of the Bittern won a Public Awareness of Science Drama Award in 1998. His most recent play, Variations, won the 2007 Grand Prix Marulic and is longlisted for the 2008 Sony Drama award.

PS: Acedendo ao You Tube pode-se ver este vídeo legendado em Português

Simples, pedagógico e pertinente; tem a ver com a situação política e económica norte-americana; aplica-se, também, a Portugal, embora com qualificações ...

Annie Leonard: America Isn't Broke, the System is Broken | ThinkProgress

A tese é inabitual, mas o seu contributo explicativo para o sarilho em que estamos mergulhados, não é despiciendo.

A leitura de todo o artigo é obrigatória. O curioso é ter visto, ontem ou anteontem, na TV (em que canal não me recordo), um documentário sobre psicopatia que cruza com aquilo que aqui é dito. Abaixo, alguns trechos mais sumarentos:

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. [....]

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. [....]

[....] "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture." [....]

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders. [....]

Keynes face à conjuntura

A primeira transcrição abaixo é uma citação famosa de Keynes. Poderia acrescentar-se que os ditos homens práticos não só são escravos das ideias dos outros, como acabam por as distorcer por ignorância. Marx num dado momento, face às interpretações que lhe estavam a ser feitas em França por "soi-disant" marxistas, retorquiu, de modo acerbo, se uma coisa não era, era marxista. Keynes tem sofrido da mesma sina -a leitura do artigo abaixo relembra-o: ver a segunda transcrição, que deve ser complementada pela leitura de todo o artigo. 

What Would John Maynard Keynes Tell Us to Do Now? : The New Yorker

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Yet Keynes was anything but a spendthrift. When deficits and debts reached historically high levels, he believed, it was necessary to spell out how they would be reduced in the long term. As Backhouse and Bateman observe in their timely and provocative reappraisal, Keynes never said that deficits don’t matter (the lesson that Dick Cheney reportedly drew from President Reagan). He believed not only that large-scale deficit spending should be confined to recessions, when business investment was unusually curtailed, but that it should be directed mainly toward long-term capital projects that eventually would pay for themselves. When some of his followers, by way of postwar planning, advocated using tax cuts and deficit spending to “fine-tune” the economy on an ongoing basis, Keynes struck a note of caution. “If serious unemployment does develop, deficit financing is absolutely certain to happen, and I should like to keep free to object hereafter to the more objectionable forms of it,” he wrote

Variações sobre o "soi-disant" economicismo

Deve-se ler o artigo na totalidade:

The Philosopher's Beard: Economics for ethics

1. Economics is about ethics

Understood properly economics is an ethical science, an important branch of moral philosophy. For it concerns how to understand, manage and fulfil the heterogeneous and often conflicting values, interests, and capacities of large numbers of individuals operating within the constraints of limited resources. That system-level attention to the key aspects of heterogeneity, conflict, and scarcity should be a central concern of moral philosophy, but all too many moral philosophers are content to focus on the micro-level: identifying objects of intrinsic moral status e.g. friendship; or exploring particular kinds of relationships e.g. the nature of exploitation. Moral philosophy combines a high-minded concern for finding and testing the right abstract moral theory with an individualistic understanding of the phenomenology of morality as something akin to self-exploration and discovery. Society is surprisingly absent. This lacuna frequently leads moral philosophers to wish away or parenthesise (idealise) those aspects of heterogeneity, conflict and scarcity unavoidable in a moral community. Economists as social scientists have been thinking about this subject for a very long time, and have much of importance to say about it.

For example, economists have addressed the centrality of scarcity by developing the concept of opportunity cost. Given scarce means you will not be able to do everything you want. For example, you may not be able to give $500 to the Somalia famine appeal and also take your long planned trip to visit your ailing grandmother. The cost of choosing one rather than the other is not the money. Money is not important: it merely represents your purchasing power constraints and only an idiot would try to acquire money for its own sake. Rather, the cost of choosing charity over filial piety is the full value (including the full ethical value) of the alternative you thereby give up. Moral philosophy rarely considers the full costs of actions in this broad sense and is the poorer for that.

Uma das melhores coisas que li sobre a Grande Recessão ou, se quiserem, a Pequena Depressão

Daniel Carpenter for Democracy Journal: System Failure

[...] Whereas subprime loans provided the disease, securitization created the network of risk whereby the virus could infect a much larger system. Among large banks, securitization rendered global finance ever more dependent upon the vast pool of mortgage-backed capital. Because this capital was premised upon expectations about future mortgage values, securitization permitted lenders to think that bad risks could be leavened by bundling them with other mortgages, and then passed on to the balance sheets of other financial institutions. Lending standards based upon fiduciary duty and sober forecasts gave way to imperatives for high turnover and eroded standards, and few if any bothered to question the fundamentals of the boom. “With no one caring about the harm to borrowers, to society, or even to themselves,” Engel and McCoy write, “subprime lending and subprime securitization descended into a Hobbesian nightmare.”

Where was government in all this? Regulators such as the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) might, in theory, have restrained the animal spirits. Yet they were infected by the same combination of dependence on fees and efficient market assumptions that stupefied mortgage lenders and large banks. The OTS and OCC are funded by fees charged to the banks they regulate; the more banks under their umbrella, the larger their budget. The OTS in particular depended heavily upon fees from WaMu—the bank’s assessments accounted for about one in eight of the agency’s operating budget dollars. More generally, the Bush-era appointees to these agencies starkly limited the reach of regulations and discouraged robust monitoring of banks and lenders. [....]

No entretanto, se tivesse sido diferente...

Ler a nota referenciada na totalidade:

Energy: That's oil she wrote | The Economist

I'VE been meaning to draw attention to this analysis from Stuart Staniford (brought to my attention by Kevin Drum). In it, Mr Staniford asks what the world might have looked like had oil demand continued to grow from 2009 on at its 2000-2008 rate of increase:

In the counterfactual world, 2009 gross world product would have been 6.4 percent larger than in the actual world. We can estimate the implications for oil supply because we know that the global income elasticity of oil demand is about 2/3. Thus the counterfactual world would have required an additional 4.5 percent more oil than the real world.

…2009 oil production was around 85 [million barrels per day] (depending on what source you like) so in the counterfactual world we would have needed it to be around 88-89mbd. Now, in 2008, oil production got up to around 86mbd (on an average basis) but doing so triggered (or required) an oil shock in which prices briefly reached $135/barrel on a monthly basis and almost $150 on a daily basis. What would the likely price path have been had the world then needed an additional 2-3mbd the following year?

To give an indication of the scale of 2-3mbd, note that the loss of 1.6mbd of oil this year (Libya) triggered something like a $30 increase in the price of oil (before it became clear that the global economy was slowing again causing prices to fall). That, along with other commodity price increases, was enough to cause a little bump in inflation that significantly reduced the Federal Reserve's latitude for action. [....]

Um capitalista explica o sarilho em que estamos metidos no que respeita à sustentabilidade e ao aquecimento global, ou, talvez, já agora, a ter de se escolher entre tipos de intervenções malucas, da desejabilidade dos EUA ocuparem, militarmente, Morrocos - acreditem, seria muito mais racional do que terem invadido o Iraque

Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem? - NYTimes.com

Sitting in a Panera in Boston’s financial district in early July with Jeremy Grantham, I suddenly found myself considering how I might safeguard my children’s and notional grandchildren’s future by somehow engineering the U.S. annexation of Morocco. Grantham, the founder and chief strategist of the asset-management firm GMO, was reading aloud from a rough draft of his next quarterly letter to investors, in which he ranks some long-term crises of resource limitation along a scale from “merely serious” to “dangerous.”

Energy “will give us serious and sustained problems” over the next 50 years as we make the transition from hydrocarbons — oil, coal, gas — to solar, wind, nuclear and other sources, but we’ll muddle through to a solution to Peak Oil and related challenges. Peak Everything Else will prove more intractable for humanity. Metals, for instance, “are entropy at work . . . from wonderful metal ores to scattered waste,” and scarcity and higher prices “will slowly increase forever,” but if we scrimp and recycle, we can make do for another century before tight constraint kicks in. 

Agriculture is more worrisome. Local water shortages will cause “persistent irritation” — wars, famines. Of the three essential macro nutrient fertilizers, nitrogen is relatively plentiful and recoverable, but we’re running out of potassium and phosphorus, finite mined resources that are “necessary for all life.” Canada has large reserves of potash (the source of potassium), which is good news for Americans, but 50 to 75 percent of the known reserves of phosphate (the source of phosphorus) are located in Morocco and the western Sahara. Assuming a 2 percent annual increase in phosphorus consumption, Grantham believes the rest of the world’s reserves won’t last more than 50 years, so he expects “gamesmanship” from the phosphate-rich. And he rates soil erosion as the biggest threat of all. The world’s population could reach 10 billion within half a century — perhaps twice as many human beings as the planet’s overtaxed resources can sustainably support, perhaps six times too many. 

5 livros - escolha de Robert Shiller

5 livros - escolha de Robert ShillerRobert Shiller on Human Traits Essential to Capitalism | FiveBooks | The Browser

Robert J Shiller is a professor of economics and finance at Yale, and a leading authority on speculative bubbles. He is the creator, along with Karl Case, of the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. Widely credited with correctly predicting the housing bust, Shiller has also written a number of popular books, including Irrational Exuberance and Animal Spirits, co-authored with Nobel economics laureate George A Akerlof.

Yale economist Robert Shiller argues that rising inequality in the US was a major cause of the recent crisis, and little is being done to address it. He chooses books that give insight into human nature

You’ve chosen a fascinating topic, but quite a tough one to get one’s head around.

It’s been the subject of discourse for centuries – or even millennia – so it’s very hard to summarise.

If you did try to summarise it, what would you say you’re trying to get at with these book choices?

I think that our economic system reflects our understanding of humankind, and that understanding has been developing, with especial rapidity lately. You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them. And I think our understanding of people has been accelerating over the last century, or even half-century.

5 livros - escolha de Dan Ariely

The Browser é um site que faz jus à definição do que é um browser: A program that accesses and displays files and other data available on the Internet and other networks. Ele recolhe e referencia o que de mais interessante (na opinião dos seus autores) vai sendo feito, dito e visionado na internet, e isso em relação a diversas áreas. Um dos segmentos é uma entrevista onde se questiona o convidado sobre as razões da sua escolha de 5 livros. É um daqueles a ter como favorito.

Abaixo transcrevo a informação sobre o convidado; o início da entrevista e uma opinião no quadro do comentário a um desses livros. 

Dan Ariely is an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books, Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, and a popular blog

I have just read some of the books you’ve chosen, and I found them almost impossible to put down. It’s fascinating how people behave in these experimental situations – whether they’re eating huge quantities of soup without realizing it, or failing to see a gorilla. I was wondering, more broadly, what you are trying to get at with this choice of books?

For me, it’s very interesting to try to figure out where we go wrong. In my general approach to life, I think of myself as a social hacker. Life has been designed around us in a way that is not necessarily the best way to maximize our health, our well-being or our prosperity. If we understand where things are going wrong, we can also figure out how we can fix them. That’s my first concern.

Social science is incredibly interesting because it’s the science of everything we do. We used to think that the big mysteries in the universe are the stars, or maybe molecular biology – things that are outside our reach. But the more we get into it, the more we realize how little we know about the things around us, which can include eating a bowl of soup or what’s happening to us at work. So there is an element of self-improvement in these books, but there’s also a fascination for its own sake about what’s going on around us. Each of us can become more of a social scientist by being a bit more aware and a bit more thoughtful.

[....]

"What struck me about these books is that they’re describing weaknesses in us that companies and individuals selling insurance, popcorn or used cars have been exploiting for a long time. The whole market is acting against us in a way, so who is going to help us make the right decisions?

You can think about the market economy in this way – almost nobody wants you to do something that is good for you in the long term. The incentive of everybody else is to do something that is good for them in the short term. It’s important that we as individuals understand this, and that we as individuals demand something better. I also think it’s important that we have regulators that understand these problems, and can help us."

A economia e a necessidade política

"There is no politician who will ignore the laws of physics when building a bridge. But there is a tendency in politics in every country to suppose that the laws of economics are flexible and can be adjusted to political necessity. At some point this belief has led to a lack of focus on economic realities in Europe." 

"The art of economic policy making is reconciling the political and the technical or arithmetic imperatives. You cannot move forward in democratic nations without sufficient political support, and all the political support in the world will not repeal the laws of economic arithmetic. But we ask our political leaders not simply to take the preferences of their citizenry as a given, but to help guide those preferences in response to necessity."

Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Summers on the Euro Crisis: 'It Was Always Understood the European System Would Evolve' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

O complexo de Deus ou uma boa lição de economia e do resto; ou de como o que é óbvio para uns, não o é para outros; ou, da importância de cometer bons erros...

Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex | Video on TED.com

Boa lição de economia; boa lição sobre sustentabilidade; boa lição de política ...

William Rees - The Dangerous Disconnect Between Economics and Ecology | Institute for New Economic Thinking