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Showing posts with the label Engels

And the parting on the left is now the parting on the right

I appreciate Marx and Engels more and more over time (although I assure you I am not on the verge of becoming a Marxist!): while they weren't happy with the then current social system, they were scathing about utopians who had not even bothered to understand classical economics and yet were proposing fairy-tale fixes for what ailed the world. I would like to resurrect Engels in particular to unleash his sarcasm on Matthew Hutson of Slate , who seems to think market prices should be arrived at by measuring some objective fact about two things offered on the market, and then making sure their price ratio reflects that measured ratio: "But a quick look at the data shows the limitations of raw smarts and stick-to-itiveness as an explanation for inequality. The income distribution in the United States provides a good example. In 2012 the top 0.01 percent of households earned an average of $10.25 million, while the mean household income for the country overall was $51,000. Are...