Monday money

The ignorance among many North Carolinians about corporate influence in politics is surpassed only by the ignorance about economics, with Republican policy makers among the most deluded. Blinded by fantasies of American exceptionalism, GOTP lawmakers craft policies to cure problems that don't exist, while ignorance the elephants in our collective living room.

One of their most destructive fantasies is the level playing field.

Americans are much more likely than citizens of other nations to believe that they live in a meritocracy. But this self-image is a fantasy: as a report in The Times last week pointed out, America actually stands out as the advanced country in which it matters most who your parents were, the country in which those born on one of society’s lower rungs have the least chance of climbing to the top or even to the middle.

Are you neo-chartalist, market monetarist, or good old-fashioned Austrian, when it comes to economic inclinations? Get the low-down on heterodox economics and choose your poison.

These three schools of macroeconomic thought differ in their pedigree, in their beliefs, in their persuasiveness and in their prospects. Yet they also have a lot in common. They have thrived on the back of massive disillusion with mainstream economics, which held that the economy would grow steadily if central banks kept inflation low and stable, and that there were no great gains in the offing from fiscal expansion, nor any great cause for concern over financial instability. And they have benefited hugely from blogging.