Top all-time · #5875
Michael Roberts
Personal blog · thenextrecession.wordpress.comeconomicspolitics
Michael Roberts's personal blog at thenextrecession.wordpress.com covers economics and politics. Since 2014, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “US economy: an exceptional boom or a bubble to burst?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Economics blog by Michael Roberts, linked in HN threads as Marx-based analysis of profitability, capitalism, China's economy, the US versus Europe, and Brexit.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Michael Roberts blog Blogging from a Marxist economist
Most-linked posts?
- /2022/01/22/a-world-rate-of-profit-important-new-evidence/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-12
- US economy: an exceptional boom or a bubble to burst?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-05
What Hacker News says?
Just to throw in another opinion, one that I think will be guaranteed to annoy the majority of commenters so far: This piece argues that the US isn't doing that well economically in absolute or historical terms, but only looks like that way because the popular point of comparison, Europe, is doing even worse: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/12/04/us-economy...
Comment linking /2024/12/04/us-economy-an-exceptional-boom-or-a-bubble-to-burst/
on “Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals”Submitted AI and the Profits Boom as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Isn’t this all just Late Stage Calitalsm? Yes, just as Marx predicted with his law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF): https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/a-world-ra...
Comment linking /2022/01/22/a-world-rate-of-profit-important-new-evidence/
on “The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality”Submitted AI: Just One Big Trade as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMaybe it's just profitability is dangerous for the economy. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/category/profitabilit...
Comment linking /category/profitability/
on “Stock buybacks are dangerous for the economy”Submitted US economy: an exceptional boom or a bubble to burst? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOne enterprise automating increases its competitive advantage for a while, thus temporarily increasing its profits. However, over time, all enterprises will either automate or fail. Since profits are a portion of the value generated by labour, as the proportion of costs attributed to labour drop, so do profits. There are secondary effects as well, as workers lose their jobs, their wages fall through competition and…
Comment linking /2020/07/25/a-world-rate-of-profit-a-new-approach/
on “Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic”Submitted The relative decline of US imperialism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you automate everything, how is profit made? Say every firm charges a 5% markup above costs of materials and machine upkeep. A given firm must pay other firms' 5% markups on the materials it needs, making it cheaper for the firm to produce those materials itself. This tends toward complete centralization. There are two ways to fix this. The first is to have an economy based on many monopolies trading resources. T…
Comment linking /2022/01/22/a-world-rate-of-profit-important-new-evidence/
on “Low economic growth is a slow-burning crisis for Britain”Submitted No vaccines for Covid-19 without public money as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMy reply was in the context of the parent comment. > China’s famously industrious workforce is shrinking, its property boom has ended and the system of free trade that helped it grow rich is disintegrating. Unsurprising, using capitalist interpretations of what's "good" and "bad" as reported by capitalist media, but those are increasingly ridiculous things to value in a human sense, particularly with the rise of com…
Comment linking /2024/03/08/chinas-next-decade/
on “China Tells Telecom Carriers to Phase Out Foreign Chips in Blow to Intel, AMD”Submitted Private Equity: Vampire Capital as a story · 1 points
HN discussionChina's economy seems to be doing just fine https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/04/10/chinas-unf...
Comment linking /2024/04/10/chinas-unfair-overcapacity/
on “China Tells Telecom Carriers to Phase Out Foreign Chips in Blow to Intel, AMD”Submitted Digital Work and Exploitation as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/bitcoin-24... > Back to Marx here. “The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, from enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling.” So the finance sector carries on just as before, engaging in speculation and re…
Comment linking /2024/04/01/bitcoin-24/
on “Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout”Submitted Lives or Livelihoods? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis comment suggests your views are heavily biased by capital owned/controlled western media. Here's a different take, with modern China as an example: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/24/chinas-thi...
Comment linking /2024/07/24/chinas-third-plenum/
on “UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift”Submitted Disease, Debt and Depression as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAll value comes from labour or nature, which is trivially provable by comparing an enterprise's inputs and outputs. The outputs are most obvious in terms of the prices of sold commodities. The inputs are either capital (materials, etc.) or labour. Since materials & machinery have to be paid for in full and there is still something left over as profit, that value can only come from paying workers less than the value…
Comment linking /2020/07/25/a-world-rate-of-profit-a-new-approach/
on “Democratic Domestic Product”Submitted The Value in GDP as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis post is 2 years old and pretty bleak: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/broken-bri...
Comment linking /2024/07/02/broken-britain/
on “New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds”Submitted Blockchains and the crypto craze as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted It was the bad winter [Analysis of 2008 crisis recovery] as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
