Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Nathan Tankus - The Green New Deal will be tremendously expensive. Every penny should go on the government's tab.

Only the government can afford to fund the New Green Deal,  according to Nathan Tankus. He adds, forget about PPI, because it just wouldn't cut it. Some things are too important to be left to the market, where the competition between companies would hinder progress.


We contend that decarbonization technology is too important to humanity to hide it behind US patents and trade secrets. To confront the crisis equitably and efficiently, we should publicly fund  development and share the research with the world free. The GND should usher in a global ecological commons, not more profit-centric competitions over "scarce resources."

Bloomberg 

The Green New Deal will be tremendously expensive. Every penny should go on the government's tab.

4 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

All well and good EXCEPT the economy does not run on fiat but on private bank deposits and the banks create those too when they "lend" ("Bank loans create bank deposits") but not for the general welfare but for the private welfare of the banks themselves and for the rich, the most so-called "credit worthy".

To be sure, even 100% private banks with 100% voluntary depositors might safely create SOME deposits but vastly less than they can do now due to heavy government privilege such as deposit guarantees.

So the choice is the general welfare or continued welfare for the banks and the rich.

Moreover, de-privileging the banks is the RIGHTEOUS thing to do and can be expected to please God, at least as understood by the world's great religions; certainly it should please the God of the Bible.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

MMT/GND: Another case of bad people capturing a good cause
Comment on Nathan Tankus/Andrés Bernal/Raúl Carrillo on ‘The Green New Deal will be tremendously expensive. Every penny should go on the government’s tab.’*

It cannot be otherwise, bad people always and everywhere claim to promote the good cause. This is rather old stuff: “Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.” (Machiavelli) This is why corruption comes in the garb of philanthropy and ruin comes in the garb of salvation. As a rule of thumb, public opinion is upside down: “Fair is foul, foul is fair.” (Shakespeare)

A new version of political deception is MMT’s promotion of environmental protection. The communicative fact of the matter is that nobody can argue against environmental protection just as nobody can argue against peace, freedom, wealth, love, solidarity, motherhood, equity, and the welfare of humankind.

The economic fact of the matter is that MMT is a program for the permanent enrichment of the Oligarchy. This is impossible to sell to the general public, therefore, MMT has to be repackaged as a program for the benefit of WeThePeople. Luckily, this is not very hard: “The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

Accordingly, Nathan Tankus/Andrés Bernal/Raúl Carrillo argue: “The Green New Deal is a vital way to address the social threat of climate change. Some GND advocates want to make the idea more palatable by relying on indirect financing like public-private partnerships or loans to private companies. While the ideas are designed to make the Green New Deal more politically palatable, indirect financing will also blunt the changes made by the GND. … Accordingly, people who truly want to see a GND in our time should fully embrace the power of the public purse.”

Economically, the “power of the public purse” works via the macroeconomic Profit Law which says Q=Yd+(I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M) with Q as macroeconomic profit. The Law boils down to Public Deficit (G−T>0) = Private Profit Q which means that the Oligarchy’s financial wealth and public debt grow in lockstep. It is the very characteristic of the free-market economy that it is already for a long time on the life support of the State. Profit is produced by the government through deficit-spending/money-creation. The Oligarchy, in turn, uses the opulent free lunches to corrupt what remains of the State’s legislative, executive, judiciary institutions, including academia.

As a matter of principle, any GND measure can be realized with a balanced budget. NO MMTer will ever propose that. The message of the MMT do-gooders is deficit-spending/money-creation.

MMT is not only bad science and bad policy but MMTers are also bad people. How can we know this? Quite easy, Nathan Tankus/Andrés Bernal/Raúl Carrillo is an #EconBlocker.#1 Genuine scientists do NOT block their critics but try to refute them yet for stupid/corrupt agenda pushers it is second nature.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

* Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.de/green-new-deal-climate-change-government-spending-no-private-money-2019-9?r=US&IR=T

#1 Economists/MMTers: agenda pushers, distractors, blockers, muters, censors
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/02/economistsmmters-agenda-pushers.html

Andrew Anderson said...

As a matter of principle, any GND measure can be realized with a balanced budget AXEC / E.K-H

With or without increases in the money supply?

If "with" how do you propose to increase the money supply in an ethical manner?

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Andrew Anderson

With regard to the realization of environmental protection, you ask: “With or without increases in the money supply? If ‘with’ how do you propose to increase the money supply in an ethical manner?”

This is a secondary question. If you want to reduce CO2, for example, the first logical question to ask is who is the biggest polluter? The simple answer is the military. So, real Progressives would radically reduce the military and redirect its humongous budget to environmental-friendly measures. This budgetary/monetary neutrality, of course, is anathema to the deficit-spending/money-creating false Progressives of MMT.

MMT/GND deficit-spending/money-creation as environmental policy is fully in line with the ethics of Pentagon and Wall Street. It is NOT for the benefit of WeThePeople.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke