Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Antony P. Mueller — Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology?


Most of the posts are Mises Daily  are looney (in my opinion), but this one takes the cake. Huge claims, zero references.

Why am I posting this for reference? Because "cultural Marxism" is a very influential meme on the right that is used to attack "social justice warriors," "political correctness" and "identity politics" as "Communists."

Propaganda and persuasion (think marketing and advertising, for example) operates largely by creating memes that dominate the narrative and capture it. "Everyone does it" because it is effective. No matter than much of it is either misleading, unsubstantiated, or outright lying.

How does this affect economic policy and MMT?
The demand for social justice creates an endless stream of expenditures deemed essential — for health, education, old age, and for all those people who are "needy," "persecuted" and "oppressed," be it real or imaginary. The flood of never-ending spending in these areas corrupts the state finances and produces fiscal crises. This helps the Neo-Marxists accuse "capitalism" of all evils when, in fact, it is the regulatory state that provokes the systemic failures and when it is the excess of public debt that causes the financial fragility.
Mises Daily
Is Cultural Marxism America's New Mainline Ideology?
Antony P. Mueller, German professor of economics who currently teaches in Brazil

See also
What is clear is that the same hatred in Mein Kampf is being openly discussed in the advocation of violence from the left.
Armstrong Economics
Are we Rewriting Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Hillary Advocates Violence Unless Democrats WinMartin Armstrong

14 comments:

Bob Roddis said...

Libertarians and Austrians consider MMT to be the inevitable end-game of off-the-chart lunacy, based as MMT is upon the supposition that because a government can create unlimited amounts of fiat funny money and has a strong police force that it can abolish scarcity simply, easily and cost-free.

Kaivey said...

Antony P. Mueller article is a load of nonsense. Maybe in a democracy people would like to have extra spending on social services?

The elite talk about freedom and small government because they want to be able to do as they please, so they dress up democracy as a dictatorship because it can impose regulations on their businesses while workers may demand fairer treatment.

Antony P. Mueller's article is really a smoke screen covering his fear of the collective having a greeter say in how they want their society to be run. To him, democracy equals a dictatorship. This is propaganda.

Konrad said...

.
@ Kaivey:

The Mises Institute is fanatically neoliberal, meaning it campaigns for feudalism, in which cruel oligarchs own everything and everyone.

It cheers for “free markets,” meaning markets that are free to be owned and enslaved by the rich and by monopolies.

It cheers for inequality, debt bondage, and mass privatization.

It cheers for ever-increasing federal spending on corporate subsidies, wars, weapons makers, and the military.

It loves Big Government in the form of a police and surveillance state, while it attacks social programs as “Big Government.”

It wants no regulation for rich oligarchs, and brutal regulation for the lower classes.

It attacks social programs by whining about the (non-existent) “national debt crisis,” but it says nothing about this fake “crisis” when calling for more tax cuts for the rich.

It condemns anything other than extreme neoliberalism as “Communism.”

Konrad said...

Are we rewriting Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf?

The article above calls leftists “Nazis.”

Leftists call right-wingers “Nazis.”

The peasants call each other “Nazis.”

As the caged monkeys throw excrement at each other, oligarchs stand outside the cage and laugh at the show.

Kaivey said...

It's not cost free, Rob, the government may create the money out of nothing, but then people work and produce products and services for that money this gives its value. With the money these people can then buy products and services from other people and companies, which drives further sales. These companies then increase their staff and the new staff then buy products and services, and so on. The GDP increases.

The government money can revive the economy, but when inflating starts the government must tax to keep it under control. When people are taxed they give up some of the work they have done. This is how they pay for the government fiat money that was invented out of thin air.

Money equals work done and stored. With money you can buy work, or purchase something someone made. You do work and get paid money, then you can buy work from someone else with it, or buy something they have made.

So you can see how the government money can create a lot of work as the same dollar may get used thousands, or millions, of times over.

The government created the fiat money out of nothing, but it was an investment and society expanded and grew richer. The GDP increases and then the government collects more tax. It's at that point the government created money becomes real money, because money equals work. Initially, the government created fiat money was made without work being done, but when the taxes get collected the 'work done' then takes place. Therefore, government created money is real money, or it becomes real money.

The great thing is that the government need only tax when the economy has reached full potential where inflation may start. Before that point people are working for the fiat money by giving the government goods and services, but the government passes on these goods and services to the public. It's circular, and is paying for itself. The fiat can expend the economy because it is an investment, and the tax burden will then become low because lots of people will now be paying tax.

The government may issue bonds that the pension companies buy to grow the pensions. The tax pays the interest. When people collect their pensions they will be getting some of the tax they paid back. It's not a bad system.

Kaivey said...

Bob, not Rob. Sorry!

jgress said...

"Money equals work done and stored. With money you can buy work, or purchase something someone made."

That's only true under a sound money system, where the quantity of money is roughly constant. When the government is creating it out of thin air, it cannot possibly represent "work done and stored," since no work was performed in exchange for it. Creating new money is simply a form of wealth redistribution from those who receive it last to those who receive it first. It is a form of theft by the government of future labor, i.e. the work you are talking about that is eventually performed for the money is performed for free, since the money has lots its value by the time those workers get paid.

You seem to think the creation of money "creates" wealth. Wealth is not created by money. It is created by land, labor and capital investment. The money is only given in exchange at the end of this process. The function of money is to smooth the allocation of resources to where they are most needed; it itself has no value as wealth except in exchange for real goods.

Kaivey said...

You read my post too quickly, jgress, I addressed that issue, although it was difficult for me to explain, I think.

I said the fiat money was created without doing work, and this can be spent into the economy. The economy will grow with the new money but eventually the economy reaches maximum potential and then inflation might set in. At that point the government needs to tax just enough to stop the inflation.

The tax takes away stored work, i.e., money, that people have done. The fiat money now becomes real money because it is backed by work. So, the fiat money is created out of thin air, but then becomes real money backed by work later on. Therefore, fiat money is real money, or becomes real money.

The good news is, the government doesn't need to tax until inflation starts. The fiat money can be used to get the economy going.

Bob Roddis said...

I said the fiat money was created without doing work, and this can be spent into the economy. The economy will grow with the new money

That’s what causes global warming and climate change, the government artificially inducing unsustainable economic activity all to solve problems that do not exist. Suburban sprawl is induced by fiat funny money loans. That's always good for "the climate", isn't it?

but eventually the economy reaches maximum potential and then inflation might set in. At that point the government needs to tax just enough to stop the inflation

Of course, voters will ALWAYS vote for tax increases to make themselves much much poorer so they can’t buy stuff so that prices won’t rise. Voters always support that kind of thing. And, of course, politicians know precisely when "the economy reaches maximum potential" and at that point they can also easily convince voters to vote for more taxes to make themselves much poorer so they can't buy anything so prices don't rise. This sounds like a brilliant plan. Who could possibly object?

Kaivey said...

But the tax cuts stop inflation, Bob, and so protect the spending power of people's money and their savings. In other words, it's neutral.

Kaivey said...

I do agree with you on one point, Bob, do we want all the economies in the world going at maximum destroying the planet?
No! Let's hope we can find clean energy and cost affective recycling systems.

Ralph Musgrave said...

I'm delighted to see Bob Roddis contradicting his own point, made a hundred times on this blog, that what he calls "funny money" cannot lead to real economic growth: he claims (his 2nd comment above) that funny money leads to real growth and environmental degradation.

Well it certainly does, unless we have stringent controls on carbon dioxide emissions etc. But as climate scientists explained in the warning they issued over the last few days, economic growth is still possible, given those stringent controls, though obviously growth will take a significant hit.

jgress said...

Tax cuts can't be neutral because the wealth redistribution has already occurred. As soon as some people starting receiving new money, they receive disproportionately higher spending power which they exercise at the expense of those who have not yet received the new money. If the money is destroyed after the first receivers have spent it, the first receivers have still reaped an advantage. Indeed, all that the destruction would achieve is to put the non-receivers at an even worse disadvantage than if they had at least been allowed to receive it at a lower purchasing power than the first receivers. The only way to really neutralize the effects of inflation is to destroy the money *before* it can be spent, i.e. not to create the new money in the first place.

I'll say it again: money is not wealth. Wealth consists of capital and consumer goods. Money is just there to facilitate exchange so that land, labor, and capital are directed to where they are most demanded by consumers as efficiently as possible. Growth is not carried out by investing money; it is carried out by investing land, labor and capital in the actual production of consumer goods. The money is just there to facilitate and expedite production.

When real growth occurs, it occurs because real capital is invested in production of more consumer goods than previously. When inflationary "growth" occurs, what happens is the first receivers STEAL the wealth of the last receivers in order to produce. If I stole money from you to produce things, you wouldn't say there was "real" growth. You would say that my increased production came at the expense of your savings. It is effectively the same as if I had stolen the real capital goods or land you owned or if I had enslaved you and thereby stolen your labor.

The effect of inflation (by which I mean increase in money supply, not just increase in consumer good prices) is twofold: to enrich the first receivers at the expense of the last receivers AND to set up the boom-bust cycle. We've already gone over the first effect. The second effect is what makes you think real growth has occurred, because you only look at the boom part of the cycle. Inflation doesn't just enable theft of wealth from last to first receivers; it also tricks first receivers into thinking there is a demand for goods that isn't in fact there. So production increases, which under a free market, sound money system would only be evidence of increased real capacity for production, i.e. increased savings. Since there are no real savings, though, the new goods being produced will end up not being sold, because consumers have not saved up for them. Then you get the bust, which wipes out all the "growth" that was artificially stimulated by the new money.

If after the bust there is still a net increase in amount of goods, i.e. if some real growth occurred, that is only because there was a real savings rate in addition to the artificial "savings" created by the funny money. Some of the money that is invested is created out of thin air but some does represent real value in the form of invested labor and capital. So you can't point to a secular growth trend running through the boom-bust cycle as evidence that creating new money causes real growth. Real growth occurs DESPITE the creation of new money.

Bob Roddis said...

Ralph Musgrave: All I have ever said is that government induced "growth" is unsustainable without further government intervention. The houses built during a fiat funny money-induced housing bubble are really there. The trees used to build them and the wilderness area they were built on are really gone. However, if someone buys what should be a $100,000 house for $300,000 anticipating a resale at $350,000, that $350,000 will only be in the hands of a buyer due to additional emissions of fiat money. If new loans are cut off or interest rates rise, the price structure will be unsustainable. People who borrowed fiat money to buy the house at $300,000 anticipating a lucrative and profitable resale will probably default on their loan and the price of the house will collapse to a more realistic level.

The idea that the government-induced sprawl can be intelligently guided with "carbon taxes" is preposterous.