Explanation of the Model

This model shows the COVID-19 outbreaks in Burnie and the Government intervention to alleviate the crisis and also how is the intervention affect the economy.

Model-SIM from chapter 3 of Wynn Godley and Marc Lavoie's Monetary Economics, but with household debt added into the model.

Microeconomic measures can produce counterintuitive 'emergent' effects at the macro or systemic level. The commendable act of saving money by individuals during uncertain economic times has the perverse macroeconomic effect of making a recession  worse: in aggregate there will be less money available for spending, suppressing demand for goods and services. Economists call this effect 'the paradox of thrift'. Similarly, logical efforts by companies in such conditions to reduce their wage bill or their postponement of investment decisions will reduce spending in the economy  and deepen the economic downturn.

What can be done to counteract this harmful dynamic? The missing spending can be replaced by government spending: governments have it within their power to effectively counter economic downturns!

Brief Summary of Albert O Hirschman's Book with 2026 update

An initial study of the economics of single use coffee pods.

The recent moratorium on deep-sea drilling will reduce the supply of oil. But the world-wide trend is an ever increasing demand for it. This simple CLD  tries to illustrate the dampening effect on demand and on economic activity of diminishing oil supplies and of rising prices: oil prices  affect virtually all products and especially agricultural production. As it becomes more and more difficult to extract oil, prices must rise. At the moment the global recession counteracts this effect, but the recession will not last forever. Is it too early to speak of Peak Oil?

This model shows the operation of a simple economy. It demonstrates the effect of changes in the fractional rate of consumption (or the converse the fractional rate of saving.)

In summary, lower rates of consumption (based on production) result in higher rates of production and consumption in the long-run.

The economy is a self-organizing system that needs continuous growth and a constant inflow of energy and materials in order to maintain itself.  Absence of growth will make the system fragile, and economic contraction could lead very quickly to its collapse. These are characteristics of dissipative systems that apply to the free market economy. Another characteristic is that economic activity will unavoidably lead to the generation of waste heat, greenhouse gases and waste materials that the system must expel into its environment, making the system unviable in the present context of global warming and increasing oil prices.

The simplified graphic representation of the economy shows how it is basically profits that generate the funds for the resources needed to guarantee that the system can continue to grow. Loans do not fulfil this function, since loans must be repaid from profit and credit institutions will be reluctant to extend loans if they fear their profits are endangered by the inability of creditors to generate enough income to meet interest payments. So the system depends on private companies and blind market forces. However, society can no longer rely on a system that is blindly guided by the profit motive and that is to a large degree responsible for much of the environmental problems that now afflict us. The system cannot continue in its present self-reinforcing growth mode. Governments can and must step in to fulfil their responsibility and fundamentally reform a system that has become harmful and that is driven exclusively by profit.

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Like Model 6 this model shows the operation of a simple economy. It demonstrates the effect of changes in the fractional rate of consumption (or the converse the fractional rate of saving.)

In summary, government "spending" tends to slow growth of production and consumption.

This model shows the structure and operation of a simple economy. It can represent economic systems at different levels of abstraction (e.g. a single good, a group of goods, multiple groups, & an "economy.")

This model has one significant difference from Model 4. The fractional consumption rate table serves the purpose of demonstrating the effects of changes in the fractional consumption rate (or the converse the fractional rate of saving) from 100% to less-than 100% to more-than 100%.

It demonstrates dramatically the effects of significant changes in consumption rates.

Based on System Zoo EZ412D, EZ411, EZ412A.

Unfolding story based on Bogdanov's original A Short Course of Economic Science text and Pilyugina's 2019 article

Figs 1 and 2 of David HArvey's Companion to Marx's Grundrisse illustrating the circulation of money and value in capitalism, dubbed as "value in motion" Also Waterstone and Chomsky Consequences of Capitalism Book

This is an interface to explore UK-SSP1.

Ocean/atmosphere/biosphere model tuned for interactive economics-based simulations from Y2k on.

Simple model of the global economy, the global carbon cycle, and planetary energy balance.