Well 18% of French voters support a party that officially rejects the French Revolution.

I presume that system is dead and buried.

What classes or orders of society can make a credible claim for entitlement these days? (Besides swinging voters in marginal electorates, of course).

I still think you’re talking past yourself a little. The notion that a different set of global capital flows implies an end to this particular age of entitlement may follow. But there may be other ages (or configurations) of entitlement.

Your paraphrase of Varoufakis suggests that this kind of intervention is epiphenomenal.

And because historically the “Age of Entitlement” arose during the vogue of Keynesian ideas, unless there is some other justification for entitlements, then the Age of Entitlement is indeed over.

Interesting question. Are financial dangers qualitatively different from other dangers — military, controlling levels in dams, conducting an election campaign — in that the sunk costs of the dangerous policy are perceived to be too high to enable a speedy and effective change in practice?

On the contrary, Keynesians assert that a directive intelligence can impose beneficial modifications to fiscal policy, thereby making entire nation states immune from the peaks and troughs of “animal spirits”. Tell ‘em they’re dreaming?

That book is by Sheldon Garon and is called Beyond Our Means: why America spends while the world saves.

It’s all just different aspects of the same system: the capacity and prerogative for ongoing deficits = debt-financed growth = riskier and riskier lending = NINJAs

But there is a moment when a prerogative becomes a danger.

Those folks who are clever enough to establish the conditions under which they can enjoy a prerogative might be expected to have sufficient insight to recognise that the prerogative constitutes an existential danger.

Clearly, some of the important owners and operators of the US political economy failed this test.

It’s all just different aspects of the same system: the capacity and prerogative for ongoing deficits = debt-financed growth = riskier and riskier lending = NINJAs

PP@40:

I think Varoufakis belongs to an Marxian/institutionalist stream that is quite a departure from doctrinaire Marxism. I’d put Roubini in the same boat.

You could always supply your own data in support of your assertions. Once that is accomplished I will respond accordingly.

1. I have never mentioned any such data. I have never even heard of it.
2. It’s not even mentioned in any post above.
3. You assume I “accept” one year’s data from 7 years ago shows some relationship tooooo? something, something, ‘slightly more’ blah, ‘average’ nya nya
4. And then all that is supposed somehow to magically negate something I’ve posted?
5. You need to change your dealer.

If you accept commonly available data that in 2004/5 Australia spent, in $A, slightly more per student than the UK and less than the US it is not hard to see that the expenditure is at best only average.

It was one of the best uni courses I took – evidence of the type he sought nothwithstanding – and he was one of the best teachers. Actually, what initially seemed freakish – a Marxist teaching Micro and Nozick – was more that he was one of the very few economics/bidness/commerce/blah academics who was not autistic. He could write Math proofs, compare and contrast Rawls and Nozick, and show why both both were wrong using game theory, pontificate on global uneven development, and chew gum at the same time.

But if he is STILL a Marxist in 2012? Oh my. Duuuuuudddeeeeee!!! But then again, he is Greek, and I’ve come across lots of Greek Marxists in my time. What’s up with that? There you are, with humanity’s only life-time cultural halo award for inventing democracy, 2,500 years ago, yet you piss on it with all this Marxist airheadedness. I know there have been some significant population displacements over the past 2,500 years, but is it possible Greeks in 2012 have no DNA population matches with Pericles and his bros?

Note that the word is “failed”. We are talking about US failure.

However, this is issue is tangential to the means by which the NINJAs were allowed to unleash their fantasies to the detriment of the Global Minotaur.

Why was per student funding so low before 2000?

It wasn’t.

I dare say you are literally correct, but surely he could do a hell of a lot better. I see Steve Keen is a fan of The Global Minotaur, perhaps he read it on his long walk.

At a macro level, you could do worse than Yanis Varoufakis’ The Global Minotaur to see how the world economy had been (until 2008) structured to sustain US trade deficits indefinitely (things have obviously become more definite now).

Additionally, I saw in an email circular in my office a book has just come out on the more micro side of things – irrational exuberance at the levels of financiers down to householders. I’ll see if I can find the name and author of it when I’m back in the office but in the meantime, I am sure that many such books exist.

Governments can’t ensure that everyone gets the security and prosperity they think they deserve.

Especially when those expectations are based on an unrealistic self-assessment.

Ground zero of the present crisis contains millions of NINJAs (no income no job, assets) who believed they could afford a McMansion.

That form of mass blindness can be explained only by a deep-seated ignorance about the material conditions of life.

How do Americans develop their perceptions? For its own survival the rest of the world ought to know about this important topic.

I also don’t see why they won’t defund primary/high school as much as they can

Then why was per student funding of government school children increased by more between 2000-2007 than at any time in Australia’s history? We have saturated public schools with money. ROI? Not so much. Money ain’t the answer.

I thought the end of entitlement would mean that all private schools and other wife factories would be shut down, did I miss something?

Yeah, you did. “Closing down” private schools not only implies a huge amount of state violence, but a huge jack up in taxation. Pssssttttt…private schools SAVES the state coffers money. A lot.