Email to Paul Krugman

My name is Chris Heinz. I was born June, 1951, Louisville, KY. Grew up in Jeffersonville, IN. MIT BS Physics 1972. I was a staff scientist astronomer at the MIT Center for Space Research 72-74. Married (still) 1975. We had 2 children born in Louisville & 2 born in Lexington KY where we moved for a job in 1981. My kids are now aged 44-37. 4 grandkids aged 9-1. I retired Sep 2012, after 40 years as a software developer/manager/executive.

In my retirement, I decided to study economics.

I had earlier done a lot of reading in evolutionary psychology & cognitive science and gave it up when I concluded that all of human civilization - mind, language, big brains - came about primarily from sexual selection. Yes, mind, language, ... have some species selection value. But they were primarily sexually selected - the traits thrived because chick's dug 'em. We grew big brains, mind, language so that guys could say "Oh baby, baby, you so fine." & women could reply "Daddy, you so full of shit." Pecking order in 7th grade was indeed what it was all about. This crushed my spirit & led me to quit reading cognitive science books.

I tried the MIT Economics 101 class, downloaded the PDF of the free curriculum reference book. I didn't get much traction with it. [Why are textbooks such a rip off? Do the authors see much in the way of royalties, or is The Man hoovering the $$$ up?]

So I decided to start reading random economics books. Since 2012 I have read/reviewed/summarized 27 economics books.

Link: http://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/2016/08/summary-of-economics-reading.html

You were #4:

June 12, 2013, 1K words, "End This Depression Now", Paul Krugman, 2012.

Link: http://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/2013/06/end-this-depression-now.html

Only 1K words, my worst was the recent review/summary (May 1) of Wray's "Modern Money Theory", 24k words.

In my conclusion on that book, I proposed that MMT should broken into 2 pieces: descriptive MMT and prescriptive MMT.

Descriptive MMT talks about how all money is created by the Fed when congress tells it to, and how taxes destroy wealth. Governments with sovereign currencies do not have to collect taxes to spend money - they create money.

Descriptive MMT I proposed calling MMT.

Prescriptive MMT consists mostly of JG/ELR. The best feature of JG/ELR is that it is counter-cyclic with the economy. But Wray kept describing JG/ELR as an "anchor". I was like, what does that mean?

My conclusions on Wray MMT - you wind up being mentioned in there on 2x different topics. 3 minutes to read total: http://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/2020/05/modern-money-theory.html#myconclusion

After failing to think of a metaphor that encompassed safety nets and anchors,

My subconscious came through at 4:33 this morning (2020-04-30). The metaphor that encompasses anchors and safety nets is a sailing ship.

I realized that the best metaphor for JG/ELR is ballast. If you don't have enough cargo (non-JG jobs), then JG jobs make up the difference. They are counter-cyclic with the economy.

But "ballast" == "dead weight". So, "Ballast Economics".

Foundational Economics sounded good. But, "Foundational Economy" already taken by a Manchester UK group. The latest economics book I read/reviewed was:

July 21, 2020, 6.5k words, "Foundational Economy", the Foundational Economy Collective, 2018.

Link: https://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/2020/07/foundational-economy.html

I read/reviewed that book June/July 2020. OMG, the pandemic totally defined the Foundational Economy: anything that wasn't closed. They also defined the "overlooked economy", which were all the businesses that it totally ticked people off when the pandemic closed them: beauty parlors, barber shops, gyms, pedicure/manicure spas. Their insight totally confirmed by the pandemic is astonishing. IMO, anytime someone predicts the future that accurately, pay attention to them.

I settled on Stability Economics for that to call Prescriptive MMT. I propose it should include, as the things that it studies:

• The Foundational and Overlooked Economies, as a starter.
• JG/ELR (Job Guarantee, US government as Employer of Last Resort).
• Informal caregiving as a JG job.
• Universal Basic Income.
• Permanent stimulus programs, as proposed by Paul Krugman.

With all of these, you are trying to stabilize the amount of demand in the economy. Then maybe Wall Street's swings (if those ever happen again) or a pandemic won't mess things up so much.

I was corporate for 40 yrs. It is totally bad manners to attempt to write into someone else's todo list. But, whatever, here's 3 for you:

1. If you have not already, read "Foundational Economy". It is a quick read.
2. Think about your permanent stimulus program in the context of Stability Economics. In some ways your idea seems to me to be a cousin to UBI. I know you are not a UBI fan.
3. Open your mind to MMT. I was so excited when on Oct 13, Piketty proposed just setting some of the Fed/ECB balance sheet entries to 0. Debt? What debt?
   Link: http://portraitofthedumbass.blogspot.com/2020/10/show-me-national-debt.html

Done with econ. 2 more things:

1. Thank you so much for your music recommendations, particularly Lucius & Lake Street Dive, I have all their stuff. I curate 22,000 tracks of music in my iTunes collection. Lately, all the big players who formerly would send me emails of new releases of artists I had purchased from them no longer do so. Instead, they want me to buy into their subscription streaming service, in which I have no interest. I'm lately getting most new music from Bandcamp. Any ideas? I blog new music as Music In. I would bet you can find some interesting new music there. Lately tho, Music In is suffering from the overhead of #SongOfTheDay in Music Out.

2. In my retirement, I am a semi-professional musician. I've played guitar 55 yrs, sung 62 or so. March-September in pandemic hunker-down, I averaged adding 9 new songs/week to my book. (OnSong app on my iPad, currently at 1048 songs). Towards the end, 2/3 of those were standards. My Standards book is currently at 81. Playing a gig, you do 10-15 songs/hour, depending on availability of solo instruments.
   Sep 10 I came north to Lexington from Naples FL. Time to let things settle in & not ingest new music so vigorously. So I started doing #SongOfTheDay Sep 27.
   6 days/week, #standards here, Jaz Dumoz channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC-8G0QzZxDOB8cRk1-5n7lA
   Saturday, something newer, Jim Dumas channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCs7QrCGIS2G_pgRvzKeqlSw
   My vocal intonation started out horrible, maybe from not singing into a mic for 6 months, or not using my voice in lockdown, or recording the songs mid-afternoon pre-bourbon. It may be getting better, maybe not. Still, I make sure my guitar is always in great tune, & these jazz standards have such beautiful chords. So, check out a few. "Easy Street" I got ~85% of most excellent jazz guitarist Barney Kessel's licks. Next up "Cry Me A River" off of the same album, "Julie is her name", 1955, Julie London's premier album, Barney on guitar, Ray Leatherwood on upright bass. Fabulous album.

Best regards, stay healthy.