Must-must-read. Important as an articulation of MMT, political theory, and politics in Bill's view.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
There is still a meaningful left-right distinction
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
6 comments:
A good post by Bill on a subject that I think about nearly every day.
My personal criteria for judging policies is "who does it benefit or empower?" Does it empower the poor and working class, or does it empower the elites?
Example: who does free trade empower and benefit? Certainly not American manufacturing workers ! But corporations have done quite well by free trade.
The Political Compass is a useful concept but their questions are lame and I often disagree with the test results.
My personal criteria for judging policies is "who does it benefit or empower?"
Political scientists know that it is all about power. Economist know that it is all about money.
Does power give money, or does money give power? Or is it a reciprocal relationship?
Tom, I would say money gives power due to state coercion and tax policies that give it value. But power also let's you extract rents to get money.
Money is certainly power and perhaps the single most important type of power, but non-money things like information, organization (i.e. the right to form to a union and go on strike), and guns can be power, too.
Which is why I view citizen gun rights as a leftist position. Gun control strikes me as an authoritarian position that disempowers the 99%. I don't see gun control as liberal in any sense of the word.
I would support gun control if it is combined with legislation reducing police militarisation.
Historian Carroll Quigley concluded that the degree of democracy in a society is directly proportional to the balance of firepower between the citizenry and the government.
Draw your own conclusions.
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