Today is the one year anniversary of Economics from the Top Down. To mark the occasion, I though I’d share with you the 5 most-viewed posts of the last year:
Top 5 Posts
- No, Productivity Does Not Explain Income
- Productivity Does Not Explain Wages
- Debunking the ‘Productivity-Pay Gap’
- An Evolutionary Theory of Resource Distribution (Part 1)
- Real GDP: The Flawed Metric at the Heart of Macroeconomics
You’ll notice that these posts have a common theme: they’re all about productivity. More specifically, they’re about why productivity has nothing to do with income (either for individuals or for whole nations).
It seems that readers of this blog are thirsty for alternatives to the neoclassical theory of income. And for good reason. The idea that income stems from productivity is one of the defining ideologies of our time. We worship at the altar of productivity, largely to the benefit of the wealthy and powerful.
The other thing I notice about these top 5 posts is that they’re primarily criticisms. They critique neoclassical theory, but don’t necessarily provide alternatives. (The exception is An Evolutionary Theory of Resource Distribution.) Criticism is important, of course. But going forward, I’m going to focus on developing alternatives to neoclassical theory. The reality is that old theories die only when better options comes along.
Thank you
Over the last year, the response to this blog has exceeded my expectations. I was used to writing scientific papers read by a few hundred people. Imagine my surprise when readership of this blog topped that value by several orders of magnitude.
More and more I see Economics from the Top Down as my primary research outlet. Of course I continue to publish scientific papers. But what I enjoy most is communicating my findings to a general audience.
Looking ahead, I have many projects on the docket. One that stands out is something that, in the blogging world, may seem heretical. I’m going to try to explain, in simple terms, a complex model that I developed in my PhD thesis.
The model is about how income relates to hierarchy. It took me years to develop, and it’s something that I struggle to explain even to other scientists. I’ve had many a peer reviewer misunderstand the model. So one of my goals, in the next year, is to explain this model to non-specialists. Time will tell if I’m successful.
If you’re a regular reader, thanks for being part of this adventure. (If you really enjoy my writing, consider becoming a patron.) If you’re a new reader, welcome. There’s lots more to come.
[Cover image: Phil Varney]
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[…] I’m going to revisit a topic that a month ago I committed to stop writing about — the productivity-income quagmire. Neoclassical economists argue that […]
[…] I’m going to revisit a topic that a month ago I committed to stop writing about — the productivity-income quagmire. Neoclassical economists argue that […]