It’s Halloween. So why not spend a little time reading the latest version of zombie economics?
It comes from Casey Mulligan. He’s so hell-bent on criticizing Keynesian economics and attacking government programs to help the poor and unemployed, he doesn’t even mention let alone analyze two of the key causes in creating the Second Great Depression: the rise in inequality and the crisis of the financial sector.
Instead, Mulligan focuses on the “expansion of food-stamp eligibility to enlargement of food-stamp benefits to payment of unemployment bonuses” and blames such programs for “sharply eroding (and, in some cases, fully eliminating) the incentives for workers to seek and retain jobs, and for employers to create jobs or avoid layoffs.”
That’s right: that’s the kind of zombie economics currently being peddled by neoclassical economists like Mulligan.
