Category: Pollin

Robert Pollin, UMass Amherst economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, says controlling health care costs is at the heart of the nation’s long-term debt problem. Pollin suggests that it is possible to adopt a universal health care plan that could reduce per person expenditures, citing other advanced economies as examples. “What we really want is universal health care…for everybody, and to do it in a way where the costs are at least more or less in line with other advanced economies. Right now, the United States spends, on average, about twice as much per person as do other advanced economies, like Canada, like France, like the United Kingdom. And that’s not due to Medicare. In fact, Medicare is actually a relatively cheap way to deliver decent health care. The problem is the private insurance companies and the private pharmaceutical companies. And that’s what needs to be controlled to get long-term health care costs down. (Real News Network, 6/16/11)

Robert Pollin, UMass Amherst economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, was featured in the story, Is Obama’s Bet On Green Jobs Risky? on 90.9 wbur, Boston’s NPR news station. The story notes that clean energy projects as a whole have received approximately $95 billion in funding and questions whether this is a risky investment. While there is uncertainty as to what the next big economic growth sector will be, there is reason to be optimistic about investing in clean energy. According to Pollin, who was hired by the Commerce Department to run the numbers, the government’s stimulus program on green activities yields approximately 17 jobs per $1 million of expenditure. This compares favorably to military spending which creates about 11 jobs per $1 million and to the oil and gas industry which produces about 5 jobs per $1 million of expenditure. Pollin notes that the payoff is higher because kick-starting a new industry requires more manpower. “There’s way more jobs in clean energy because essentially there’s a lot more construction jobs, there’s a lot more manufacturing jobs, there’s a lot more transportation jobs,” he said. “So it’s really the process of building the new industry that makes it a good generator of jobs.” (NPR, June 13, 2011)

A recent proposal by Robert Pollin, economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, calls for having the federal government create strong incentives for both lending by banks to small business and for businesses to seek loans. He says currently the private credit markets are locked up, especially for small businesses. Pollin’s proposal uses federal loan guarantees to boost bank lending and a tax on excess reserves held by banks. (Washington Post, 9/28/10)

Robert Pollin, economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, is interviewed about why federal stimulus funding and deficit spending are not creating inflation. He also says austerity now would weaken the already fragile economic recovery. (The Real News Network, 9/24/10)

Robert Pollin, economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute is among a group of prominent national economists asked about what will work to stimulate the U.S. economy. Pollin says the government needs to help make credit easier and more affordable for small business. (MSNBC.com, 9/8/10)

Robert Pollin, economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, writes a column about the collapse of Wall Street and what he calls the return of reality-based economics. He says history shows that unregulated free markets undergo periodic booms and busts that can be moderated by government intervention of various types. (Monthly Review, September 2010)

The Wall Street Collapse and Return of Reality-Based Economics
Robert Pollin

As with Minsky, Sweezy and Magdoff also did not develop a fully adequate framework for understanding financial bubbles and crises. There are significant holes and deficiencies in both approaches that need to be worked through by other researchers, as is true with all meaningful research programs. But this brings up a larger question: why, over the past thirty years, were something on the order of 90 percent of professional macroeconomics economists working on aspects of the Friedman/Lucas framework, while less than 1 percent was developing the Minsky/Sweezy approach? Cassidy, unfortunately, ignores this question, perhaps because the answer is obvious. Whatever its failings in terms of intellectual coherence or relevance, the Friedman/Lucas model—and neoliberalism more generally—does an outstanding job serving interests of big business and the rich, while the Minsky/Sweezy approach challenges the legitimacy of free market capitalism and its beneficiaries. This is especially true when you make the one small adjustment to the Friedman/Lucas model, which is the key innovation of neoliberalism, as opposed to classical liberalism. That is, neoliberalism is all for allowing the free market to rip, including especially on Wall Street, but also will not hesitate to embrace government bailouts when the inevitable financial crises emerge. Seen in this way, Wall Street bailouts are not only absolutely needed for keeping capitalism afloat; they are also central for maintaining the legitimacy of mainstream, pro-business economic theory.

Cassidy ends How Markets Failwith a call to arms: “Before the political will for reform dissipates, it is essential to put Wall Street in its place and to confront utopian economics with reality-based economics.” However, throughout his long, careful study, he never focuses seriously on how we might translate the insights of reality-based economics into a workable set of policies and institutions that can both rebuild stable financial systems and, more fundamentally, begin again to advance the historic project of creating sustainable democratic, egalitarian economies. This is a gap that will obviously need to be filled by a wide range of reality-based economists, alongside citizens unwilling to serve as patsies for either the grand schemes of Wall Street or the outlandish propositions of utopian economics.