Top all-time · #4054
Mainlymacro
Personal blog · mainlymacro.blogspot.comeconomicspolitics
Mainlymacro is a personal blog at mainlymacro.blogspot.com about economics and politics. Since 2014, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 61 times, most often “Productivity and monetary policy”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this macroeconomics blog by Simon Wren-Lewis as a source on austerity, Greek debt, Brexit, inequality and macro models. Its posts are mostly cited in debates rather than discussed on their merits.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Comment on macroeconomic issues
Most-linked posts?
- Productivity and monetary policy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-09-21
What Hacker News says?
It seems that you are not disagreeing with the concept of false consciousness. You just believe that a different group of people suffer from it. I hope you don't consider it too much of a caricature of your position for me to say that you think the elite labour under a lot of false beliefs but the working classes are able to see through all of this based on their own experience and clear insight. I think at the core…
Comment linking /2019/10/brexit-is-denial-of-economics-as.html
on “The Real Class War”Submitted Does Brexit end not with a bang but a whimper? as a story · 78 points
HN discussionI think it's the distinction between intrinsic beliefs and beliefs based on knowledge of the world. Maybe I didn't make the distinction clear enough. The former, though we may want to change them, can't usefully be called "wrong" but the latter can. False consciousness is then wrong beliefs deliberately propagated to achieve some end. What is missing from your caricature is whether the beliefs expressed make interna…
Comment linking /2015/05/on-mediamacro.html
on “The Real Class War”Submitted A Euro Tragedy as a story · 62 points
HN discussion"Its deficit is still like 9-10% of GDP." This is very wrong. Greece has run primary surpluses in recent years. They will probably miss that goal this year, but not by 9-10% of GDP. Forgiving Greek debts would solve the problem. http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2015/02/greece-and-primary-s...
Comment linking /2015/02/greece-and-primary-surpluses.html
on “Greeks Reject Bailout Terms”Submitted A fatal inconsistency within neoliberalism as a story · 52 points
HN discussionA recent post on this topic: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2017/09/productivity-and-mo...
Comment linking /2017/09/productivity-and-monetary-policy.html
on “Why Wages Aren’t Growing”Submitted Populism and economic prosperity as a story · 48 points
HN discussionSimon Wren-Lewis argues that increasing supply won't help so long as there exists an arbitrage between rental yields and interest rates. Wealthy people will just outbid everyone else for the increased supply: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/02/house-prices-and-re... Richard Werner points out that the mortgage lending, with associated house price inflation, caught fire in the UK after Thatcher eliminated "corse…
Comment linking /2018/02/house-prices-and-rents-in-uk.html
on “We Wanted Safer Banks, We Got More Inequality”Submitted Why are we governed by incompetents? as a story · 41 points
HN discussionAnother good article about the German situation is this post from Simon Wren-Lewis: http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-real-problem-wit...
Comment linking /2013/11/the-real-problem-with-german.html
on “Greece’s Proposals to End the Crisis”Submitted When journalism becomes propaganda as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThere are many different types of models used for different purposes. https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/ne... https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2013/12/microfoundations-il... the models people use to explain/illustrate are more toy models, micro-founded DSGE models, for forecasting typically people tend to use empirical models. One approach would be to do a college intro to macro textbook or M…
Comment linking /2013/12/microfoundations-illusion-of-necessary.html
on “Ask HN: How can I learn macroeconomics properly?”Submitted If we treat plutocracy as democracy, democracy dies as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Keynes worked until stagflation happened. That's the issue that made other models come forward Keynes worked after stagflation as well: > I just do not think that is right. Stagflation is very easily explained: you just need an ‘accelerationist’ Phillips curve (i.e. where the coefficient on expected inflation is one), plus a period in which monetary policymakers systematically underestimate the natural rate of une…
Comment linking /2014/06/understanding-new-classical-revolution.html
on “2020 had some significant silver linings”Submitted The media cannot reform itself until it acknowledges its power as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWell, to turn that around, what makes you sure that capitalism is working correctly here? With respect, you appear very reluctant to commit to any economic observation, yet also seem confident that basic Economics 101 applies to executive remuneration without allowing for other economic considerations (capture etc). For example, see [0] for a brief discussion of how executive pay may not be an efficient market. My o…
Comment linking /2014/01/understanding-ever-increasing-executive.html
on “Sears to pay $25.3M in bonuses to top execs after filing for bankruptcy”Submitted A short guide to why we should not raise UK interest rates as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe UK conservative government and labour opposition sure seem to agree they are doing it. Do you have a definition of austerity which disagrees? The WP definition and press also seem to agree. See eg http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/08/news/economy/uk-endless-aust... The budget effects are just evidence that austerity by spending cuts is not a very good way of saving the government money in the current situation. Cutti…
Comment linking /2015/06/the-academic-consensus-on-impact-of.html
on “Austerity and mental health in the U.K.”Submitted Brexiteers versus Economists one year on as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHaha. But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2]. Edit: here's a longer-form version of this argument: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-h... [1] https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-eco... [2] Waking up to the Today programme for years (yes, a better sour…
Comment linking /2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-how-our-media-fails.html
on “What influence has the BBC had on history?”Submitted Why Has the US Resisted Trump but the UK Acquiesced to Brexit? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPlus a largely broken press which can't or won't tackle most of what's really going on. See Simon Wren Lewis's war against "media macro": https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2023/02/fiscal-reporting-at...
Comment linking /2023/02/fiscal-reporting-at-bbc.html
on “Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?”Submitted Why are the UK and US more vulnerable to right wing populism? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted GE2017: Why economic facts will be ignored once again as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Brexit makes the economics of Scottish independence much more attractive as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted If minimum wages, why not maximum wages? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Inflation and potential recession in 4 major economies: US, UK, France, Germany as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why did the UK become a failed state? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Do Trump’s deficits matter? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
