Phil Magness

Working on an update where we look at Karl Marx's citation patterns after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in multiple language groups. Our original paper focused on English. Here are the results, updated with the new 2024 Google Books corpus.

@HotFudgePandae Marx-slop accounts such as yours would not accept that excuse if made in defense of a non-Marxist who benefitted from slavery, so...

@PhilWMagness Doesn't that just mean he was familiar with the exploitation & suffering of workers in capitalism? It's like if someone living under communism criticizes communism, pointing to the communist labor and system that educated them and gave them resources to write a critique is dumb.

Reminder: Karl Marx's lifestyle was directly subsidized by the proceeds of American slavery, which made Engels rich from his family's cotton textile mill.

@HotFudgePandae Nah, you just didn't read. Most Marx-slop accounts have the same problem, which is why I block them.

@PhilWMagness You're not proving how they're communists just like how you didn't prove Mamdani is a commie. It's great that you wrote a book, but plenty of people who strongly disagree on key points about someone can all write books about the same person. They aren't all right, are they?

1. I literally study the way Marx has influenced socialist movements over the last two centuries. 2. You're a group of communist idealogues who do not have the slightest clue what you are talking about.

@PortlandDSA Just gonna leave this here...

“I’m an ‘economic historian’ who has trouble understanding that Karl Marx has been broadly influential on the left and that different tendencies have interpreted/used his ideas in different ways.” These folks might accidentally learn something with a few more clicks.

@OliveDrabGreen This is why Vance also hates GDP as a measure.

@PhilWMagness Low unemployment rate and US GDP per capita growth relative to Europe would suggest that JD is wrong. Always structural losers but US growth, power, and innovation appear to have benefited from the Friedman perspective.

For those claiming that JD Vance's recent comments were not a smear against Milton Friedman, here's a reminder that he's had an adversarial fixation with Friedman for many years. Here's Vance in a deranged 2020 op-ed for the Claremont Institute:

The polls on Vance-o-nomic policies such as tariffs show that his agenda is deeply unpopular with the general public. He is trailing by double digits on that issue. Granted, there is a die-hard MAGA base that will back him on any stupid idea. And there are a tiny number of hyperonline groypers, postliberals, and outright neonazis who think he is onto something. But in cumulative, that is maybe a quarter of the electorate.

@PhilWMagness If you look at the polls it isn’t just slop accounts, unfortunately. A lot of younger folks believe this nonsense (although I doubt most have actually read Marx).

Marx-slop accounts actually believe this pile of nonsense:

@david4liberty67 @GalenSsa @BWJohnson721

@GalenSsa @PhilWMagness @BWJohnson721 Odd he wrote a whole book refuting it.

DSA: "We're democratic socialists. That's different from communists." Also DSA website: "Marx Marx Marx Marx Marx Engels Marxism Marx Marx!!!!"

@evanwch Nah.

@PhilWMagness He’s right

@HalfMortal_ Because they have no basis in reality or in an accurate assessment of what Friedman said.

@PhilWMagness Why are they deranged? Explain

Why do you think toaster-building is the pinnacle measure of industrial capacity?

@JamesBroughel I am fine with that. But it is not the claim that Vance made or developed.

@PhilWMagness A lot of good stuff accompanies efficiency. But perhaps not quite as much good stuff as Friedman would have liked to have believed. Seems like an uncontroversial view.

@hereforthe61512 @_nickmessenger No, you did not.

@PhilWMagness @_nickmessenger I’m no economic historian, but I found empirical evidence of this w a two minute search.

@JamesBroughel Perhaps. But that's not the counterargument Vance made. Or at least Vance did not meaningfully develop the claim.

@PhilWMagness As someone who is a huge fan of Friedman, I think it is fair to say his argument that economic freedom will lead to political freedom turned out to be wrong in many cases.

@IMoshagen29464 The link directly debunks your claim that Marx was some sort of devoted Lincoln fan. Blocking your Marx-slop account for wasting my time.

@PhilWMagness No, you don't know what you are talking about and this article is beside the point. Put up an actual argument instead of whatever this is.

@DailyStuck That is empirically false.

@PhilWMagness Friedman was wrong — comparative advantage hasn’t protected domestic industries, it’s wiped them out.

@IMoshagen29464 You do not have the slightest clue what you are talking about. thedailyeconomy.org/article/was-li…

@PhilWMagness No, obviously right. Lot of articles where he accused the british left of not being pro union enough or explained that the Civil War was caused by slavery, not tariffs. What's next, you want to deny he was anti-russian?

@Gone1492 Hey @grok. Does the post above accurately represent Phil Magness's position on the Phillips Curve?

• Monetary policy: Friedman/@PhilWMagness — rules-based central banking, steady money supply growth. Mises — abolish central banks, free banking/gold standard. • Government role: Friedman/@PhilWMagness — limited intervention (e.g., negative income tax). Mises — minimal state, laissez-faire. • Inflation/unemployment: Friedman/@PhilWMagness — short-run Phillips curve trade-off. Mises — inflation as monetary distortion causing cycles.

@JoshBrown57607 @JonahDispatch That Marx's lifestyle was directly subsidized by the proceeds of American slavery, which made Engels rich from his family's cotton textile mill.

@PhilWMagness @JonahDispatch And what does this prove?

@hereforthe61512 @_nickmessenger It's a claim with no basis in empirical reality.

@_nickmessenger @PhilWMagness He’s saying that exporting job opportunities to China for cheap labor resulted in a purposeless and downwardly mobile midwestern middle class, and that competing globally w countries that have entirely different values and rules has major tradeoffs…this isn’t irrational.

@_nickmessenger And also concludes, somehow, that communist China is the most hypercapitalist regime in the world.

@PhilWMagness The best part is where he tries to connect the opioid crisis and absent fathers to Chinese trade policy in the same paragraph lmao.