This week, I have been mostly reading:

• How I Got Fired From a D.C. Think Tank for Fighting Against the Power of Google — Zephyr Teachout in the Intercept: In June, when the European Union fined Google $2.7 billion for abusing its dominant position to serve itself and quash competition, the Open Markets team put out a press statement that was entirely consistent with its longstanding position. It praised the EU’s action, and argued that American antitrust authorities should also look at Google’s use of its search power to leverage its influence in other markets. New America’s leadership must have gotten an earful. Within 72 hours, New America’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, told Lynn that he — and all of us on the Open Markets team — had to leave. As the New York Times reported yesterday, Slaughter emailed Lynn to say that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” and the email accused Lynn of “imperiling the institution as a whole.” (After the Times story was published, Slaughter tweeted that the article was “false,” though she later added, “facts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.”) [Some additional context provided by the Intercept]
• Racism is real, race is not: a philosopher’s perspective — Adam Hochman in the Conversation: From a scientific perspective, the best candidate for a synonym for “race” is “subspecies” (the classification level below “species” in biology). When scientists apply the standard criteria to determine whether there are subspecies/races in humans, none are found. In chimpanzees yes, but in humans no. Racial classification is unscientific. However, humanities scholars have their own justifications for race-talk. Many argue that while there are no biological races, there are social races. Race, as philosophers put it, is a social kind. In my view, the redefinition of race as a social kind has been a major mistake. Most people still think of race as a biological category. By redefining it socially, we risk miscommunicating with each other on this fraught topic.
• Stylised Facts — Robert Skidelsky Wow. This is great. Lots in here, but this jumped out at me, given my current interests: Though Kaldor was concerned with long-run growth and Keynes with the short- run management of demand, there was no contradiction between the two, since post-war Keynesians like Kaldor assumed that Say’s Law was now guaranteed by Keynesian full employment policy. This re-established the long-run growth agenda of the classical economists. So the Keynesian economists of that day produced growth models – Harrod-Domar, Solow, Rostow, etc. – geared chiefly to the problems of the developing world. This growth orientation did mean though that Kaldor was as much concerned with the conditions of supply as demand, something evident in his 1966 inaugural lecture. Kaldor was heir to the German economist Friedrich List, in that he regarded premature free trade as an obstacle to growth for those countries in the business of catching up with the leaders. Countries should seek to develop their dynamic rather than simply exploit their static comparative advantages. This required policies of protection and import substitution. Kaldor was passionately opposed to static equilibrium analysis.
• After such unexpected success in 2017, what does Jeremy Corbyn have planned for 2018? — Richard Seymour in the Independent: The result didn’t come from nowhere. It was a vindication of the strategy outlined by Corbyn when he won the leadership in 2015. To rebuild its electoral base, Labour had to rebuild itself as a membership party. It had to recruit previous non-voters, above all the young and the poor, shamelessly written off by pollsters and most politicians. It had to move sharply to the left, and stop trying to appease the media and the Conservatives. Corbyn’s point has been proven, far more quickly than even his supporters expected. More importantly, the form of organised distrust of the members evinced by the old managerial guard, has been discredited. Labour’s members have shown more insight into contemporary Britain than the majority of MPs. And finally, after many years in which activists themselves distrusted the party form, it proved its worth: for all its limits, this scale of organisation can change the country.
• Australian national accounts – government spending drives growth — Bill Mitchell: The ABS released the – June-quarter 2017 National Accounts data – today (September 6, 2017), which showed that real GDP had risen by 0.8 per cent in the June-quarter 2017. Annual growth (last four quarters) was just 1.8 per cent around half the trend rate before the GFC. The striking result was that public spending (consumption and investment) contributed 0.8 percentage points to the growth rate – which means that without that contribution, real GDP growth would have been zero in the June-quarter 2017. Private consumption expenditure contributed 0.4 points, although the household saving ratio fell again indicating the tenuous nature of relying on this growth with flat wages. Private investment spending was negative. Net exports were stronger with export volumes strong in the face of the falling terms of trade. Overall, the growth is unbalanced – relying on lumpy public investment spending and credit-driven private consumption growth. The outlook is thus uncertain.