Bill Mitchell — A 10 per cent unemployment rate is not a “tremendous achievement” – it is a sign of total policy failure

It’s Wednesday, and a quiet day for writing blog posts for me. But I want to comment briefly on the latest economic news that sees the IMF claiming the Australian economy will contract by 6.7 per cent in 2020 and the Treasury estimates that the unemployment rate will rise to 10 per cent (double) by June this year. While this all sounds shocking, the emerging narrative in the media and among politicians is that this is sort of inevitable given the health crisis and the Government’s Job Keeper wage subsidy, which the Treasury claims will constrain the unemployment rate rise to 10 per cent rather than 15 per cent without it is a jolly decent thing for the politicians to have done and keeping the unemployment rate down to 10 per cent is a “tremendous achievement”. Well, apart from the wage subsidy leaving a million workers outside of any benefit and cutting wages for thousands who will receive the support, I fail to see why the unemployment rate should rise at all. The government has options: (a) wax lyrical about achieving a disaster – 10 per cent unemployment; or (b) create jobs via a Job Guarantee and see the unemployment rate fall to 2 per cent or so. For the neoliberals who run the place and their media supporters, a 10 per cent as a “remarkable achievement” and that is the TINA narrative they are pumping out to assuage the population. For the likes of yours truly, a 10 per cent unemployment rate is not a “tremendous achievement” – it is a sign of total policy failure. The government can always intervene and create sufficient jobs that will be of benefit to the society, can be designed to be safe in the current health context, and maintain the connection for most of us with paid work? Even if some of them would require the workers stay at home while being paid. For me that is a no-brainer....

To play the devil's advocate here, while implementating a JG would achieve "full employment" defined as a job offer fitted to every applicant at a wage that would set a floor under other wages, ostensibly at a "living wage" including benefits, this doesn't address the depth and breadth of the current crisis.

In the current context, the real danger in the dismal employment numbers is debt deflation as millions of people cannot meet their obligations and loans become "non-performing," that is, in default. Being at the minimum wage, an MMT JG is not going to prevent this. Governments need to do more.

Governments could declare the situation force majeure and suspend the terms of debt repayment, or, do what would be more effective — step in to make the payments. Or even better, foot the wage bill sot the conditions remain stable across the economy.

Bill has already considered this issue:

If you recall, a few weeks ago I did some rough modelling of my own which I presented in these blog posts:
1. “We need the state to bail out the entire nation” (March 26, 2020).
2. The government should pay the workers 100 per cent, not rely on wage subsidies (March 30, 2020).

But, but,  …what about the deficit and debt? If numbers bother, use "creative accounting," or just change the rules. This is the government, after all, and government accounting follows different rules anyway.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

A 10 per cent unemployment rate is not a “tremendous achievement” – it is a sign of total policy failure
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Flattening the curve–the Phillips curve that is

I did an extended interview over the weekend and during that interchange it became obvious that when a newcomer encounters the concept of the – Job Guarantee – for the first time, they may only see it in a narrow way, as a job creation program and fail to see it the way that the concept was developed as an integral part of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). When I started talking about the era in which I had first started thinking about using buffer stocks to maintain full employment, it became obvious that the sort of considerations that went into the concept of the buffer stock employment model (the Job Guarantee) had not been fully appreciated by the interviewer. That is no criticism. It is just an observation and a reflection of how long we have been pushing this MMT barrow. At the moment, all the talk is of ‘flattening the curve’ and that is exactly the function that I saw for the Job Guarantee as I toyed as a young postgraduate student and nascent academic with new ways of thinking about macroeconomics that would fight the Monetarist scourge that was dominating in the late 1970s. It was a different era and the challenges from a economic theory perspective were different. I think it is important to understand this context because, as the interview demonstrated, new ‘light bulbs’ go off when the concept of a Job Guarantee is put within the historical exigencies that were dominating when I came up with the idea. So the Job Guarantee flattened the curve long ago – the Phillips curve and that was, in my view, a highly significant development in the context of macroeconomics and makes MMT very different (in addition to a lot of other aspects). Unfortunately, while we knew how to flatten the curve back then, the Monetarist viral infestation continued and we have suffered the shocking consequences ever since....

Important in understanding the MMT JG. It's not actually as much a "job guarantee" as a price stability mechanism that operates based on a buffer stock to control price and quantity to guarantee full employment. Thus, it is really a full employment guarantee, where full employment is that everyone has a standing job offer backed by the currency sovereign. Most critics and many MMT advocates don't get this, but it is a key feature of MMT macro theory based on MMY institutional analysis. Bill gives the historical background. Is definitely not a policy option, and Bill describes how it was key right from the outset of MMT development. This is not new news, but Bill gives the historical record here. If you are interested in MMT, you should know this.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Flattening the curve – the Phillips curve that is

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — A response to Greg Mankiw – Part 3

On the MMT JG and the buffer stock approach to controlling inflation. Important. For some reason, most critics ignore this approach, which is central to the MMT approach to both macroeconomics and policy formulation and policy space.

Interestingly, both Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw, who come from different ideological perspectives (left and right respectively), but share much of the conventional paradigm (New Keynesianism), have difficulty coming to grips with what MMT economists are saying, apparently because they are trying to view it in terms of their own approach and conceptual frame instead of the very different MMT approach and framing.

This demonstrates the value of a pluralist and historical approach to the study of economics in learning to appreciate different perspectives and approaches on their own terms before critiquing them on the basis of one's own position. To do otherwise is an elementary mistake.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
A response to Greg Mankiw – Part 3
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Peter Cooper — Currency Value in Terms of Socially Necessary Labor

An economy’s minimum wage equates a unit of the currency to an amount of labor time. For instance, in marxist terms, a minimum wage of $15/hour sets a dollar equal to 4 minutes of simple labor power. At a macro level, this enables currency value to be defined in terms of simple labor. There are, however, at least two ways in which this connection between currency value and labor could be drawn. One way would be to adopt a labor command theory of currency value. In effect, modern monetary theory (MMT) takes this approach. A second way would be to link the value of the currency to the commodity labor power. Adopting the second approach leads to a definition of currency value that is distinct from the MMT definition but closely (and simply) related to it. So far as policy implications go, especially in relation to MMT’s proposed job guarantee and prescriptions for price stability, there appear to be no important differences between the two approaches.

To be clear, the purpose of the post is not to promote one approach over the other. So far as I can tell, on the question of currency value they are equally valid and fully compatible. The purpose is simply to consider, for readers who might be more inclined toward a commodity theory of money, how some form of commodity theory (though not a metalist one) might be reconcilable with MMT’s depiction of institutional realities and the opportunities open to monetarily sovereign societies, this understanding seeming, to me at least, both unassailable and fundamental to any worthwhile macroeconomics....

Important now that we are getting into the nitty gritty stage of public debate on MMT.

Peter Cooper is the preeminent authority on the relationship of Marx and MMT, and MMT JG opts for a labor theory of value by anchoring the value of the currency to an hour of unskilled labor. Peter explains this in terms of Marx's analysis. There is no comparable analysis in economics. Marx dug deep  while marginalism — "vulgar economics" is Marx's terminology — takes only the surface into account.

heteconomist
Currency Value in Terms of Socially Necessary Labor
Peter Cooper

Related

It is why class (in Marx’s terms) has to be at the forefront of the analysis. Nothing in MMT denies that status!

Another way of thinking about this is that Marx lifted the veil of free market ideology to expose what is actually going on in the capital-labour exchange.

We should always being aware that these veils are often used to disguise power relations or other things that the elites do not want to be made transparent....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Marxists getting all tied up on MMT
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Peter Cooper — Job Guarantee as Nominal Price Anchor

I’ve been thinking about the job guarantee as it is envisaged by proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My focus has been on various quantity effects of the policy that can be considered using the standard income-expenditure model as a base (for preliminary posts along these lines, see here and here.) Since the income-expenditure model takes the general price level as given, it does not directly shed light on the aspects of a job guarantee that would pertain to price stability. To provide some context for a possible future discussion of quantity effects, it is perhaps worth summarizing how the job guarantee would moderate price pressures. Clear statements of the MMT position on the topic can be found in a billy blog post (here) and closely related academic articles by Bill Mitchell (here) and Warren Mosler (here).…

heteconomist
Job Guarantee as Nominal Price Anchor
Peter Cooper

Thomas Palley — Job Guarantee Programs: Careful What You Wish For

The debate over the MMT JG is joined.

Thomas Palley — Economics for Democratic and Open Societies
Job Guarantee Programs: Careful What You Wish For
Thomas Palley | Schwartz Economic Growth Fellow at the New America Foundation

Also

FMM Working Paper
Government Spending and the Income-Expenditure Model: The Multiplier, Spending Composition, and Job Guarantee Programs

Thomas Palley

July 2018

Pavlina Tcherneva — The Job Guarantee and the Economics of Fear: A Response to Robert Samuelson

The Job Guarantee is finally getting the public debate it deserves and criticism is expected. Building on several decades of research, the Levy Institute’s latest proposal analyzes the program’s economic impact and advances a blueprint for its implementation. Critics have taken note and are (thus far) restating the usual concerns, but with a notably alarmist tone....

The usual shills for capital contra labor.

Multiplier Effect
The Job Guarantee and the Economics of Fear: A Response to Robert Samuelson

Pavlina Tcherneva | Assistant Professor of Economics at Bard College, Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute, and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability

Chris Dillow — Job Guarantee: Marxist or Keynesian?

Must-read.

What we have there, then, are two different conceptions of a JG. On the one hand, it might be a policy which helps capitalism function better (Keynes). But on the other, it might be a form of transitional demand – a policy which whilst fulfilling human needs is one that cannot actually be sustainably adopted by capitalism and is instead a stepping stone towards socialism (Marx).

I’m honestly not sure which it is.

I would not put it in terms of capitalism and socialism but rather forms of capitalism and socialism and their interaction.

A JG is incompatible with capitalism as private control of the means of production, that is, both classical liberalism as laissez-faire and neoliberalism as government policy favoring capital (and rent-seeking), unless the JG is transformed into workfare (as CD observes).

On the other hand, a JG is compatible with social democracy as a modification of capitalism (Keynes), democratic socialism as as form of combined public and private control that eliminates economic rents, and socialism as public control of the means of production. A JG is irrelevant in the case of pure communism, where all able to worker contribute their work and its output to the society and are compensated according to needs.

Capitalism should not be confused with markets. Markets are compatible with socialism that is not purely communistic, where "from each according to one's abilities and to each according to one's needs" is the foundational socio-economic principle (Marx and Engels).

The trend was from classical liberalism, to social democracy, to neoliberalism. The next stage in the dialectic is to be determined. China is proposing socialism with Chinese characteristics and recommending socialism with the local characteristics to the rest of the world in a new multipolar world order that replaces current Western liberal hegemony.

There are essentially five major forms of political organization on the table, excepting traditionalism, which I discuss separately. Starting from the right side of the political spectrum and moving left:

• Fascism. Or corporate statism. See Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism. 
• Capitalism as neoliberalism (Hayek) and classical liberalism (Rothbard) and ordoliberalism (Freiburg School). 
• Mixed Economy (Keynes, European social democracy, and ordoliberalism). 
• Socialism (See Wikipedia, Types of Socialism)
• Communism (Marx & Engles, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Xi)

This is not a linear progression, since fascism and communism meet in state control under the supposedly temporary dictatorship of the proletariat that never progressed beyond dictatorship.

While Traditionalism is generally not considered as a major influence on political theory now, it is coming to the fore again:

• Islamic law and its concept of social justice is spreading 
• Catholic social teaching is being revived by Pope Francis
• Traditional Russian Byzantine (Orthodox) culture is being promoted under Vladimir Putin
• Traditional Chinese culture, especially Confucianism, is being rehabilitated after Mao by Xi Jinping
• PROUT or Progressive Utilization Theory is based on Indian Vedic tradition. 

So making the choice between Keynes and Marx may be somewhat simplistic and fall into the logical fallacy of the false dilemma, arguing in terms of black or white when there are many shades of grey.

In my view, the MMT JG is step away from neoliberalism in the direction of social democracy and a mixed economy. But it has further implications if implemented with other aspects of MMT socio-economic policy based on SFC modeling and functional finance, where makes room for a much more active use of fiscal space while providing a rationale for understanding the potential of it. So while a JG is "Keynesian," there is more to than that, as Chris Dillow senses. But it is not necessarily "Marxist" either.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Job Guarantee: Marxist or Keynesian?
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Stephanie Kelton, Randy Wray and Fadhel Kaboub links

Stephanie Kelton is a leading American economist and a professor of public policy and Economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton was chief economist on the US Senate Budget Committee and economic adviser to the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. She's most known for being a pioneer of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

In this episode, Professor Kelton debunks budget deficit and government spending myths, and explains why understanding how our monetary system works is crucial to making the political and economic case for important programs like universal health care, free public higher education, infrastructure investment, and more.
We also explore some current economic issues, including how we might be able to cancel all public and private student debt in the US, and lastly the role and challenges of women in economics.

Audio only.

Truthout

Economic Adviser to the Sanders 2016 Campaign Debunks Budget Deficit Myths
Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri and Dante Dallavalle, Left Out | Audio Segment
 See also

Economics professor L. Randall Wray, one of the plan’s principal authors, and Evercore ISI analyst Ernie Tedeschi discuss the issue with Scott Lanman of Bloomberg News and Daniel Moss of Bloomberg Opinion.

Audio only.

Bloomberg
Everybody Gets a Job!

See also

Dr Fadhel Kaboub, an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and President of the Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, has given a talk at City, University of London.

The title of his presentation was "The Case for a Job Guarantee in the UK: The Economics of Care, Dignity, and Prosperity".

Audio only.

City, University of London

Fadhel Kaboub speaks at City, University of London

L. Randall Wray et al — Public Service Employment: A Path to Full Employment

Despite reports of a healthy US labor market, millions of Americans remain unemployed and underemployed, or have simply given up looking for work. It is a problem that plagues our economy in good times and in bad—there are never enough jobs available for all who want to work. L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, and Stephanie A. Kelton examine the impact of a new “job guarantee” proposal that would seek to eliminate involuntary unemployment by directly creating jobs in the communities where they are needed.

The authors propose the creation of a Public Service Employment (PSE) program that would offer a job at a living wage to all who are ready and willing to work. Federally funded but with a decentralized administration, the PSE program would pay $15 per hour and offer a basic package of benefits. This report simulates the economic impact over a ten-year period of implementing the PSE program beginning in 2018Q1.

Unemployment, hidden and official, with all of its attendant social harms, is a policy choice. The results in this report lend more weight to the argument that it is a policy choice we need no longer tolerate. True full employment is both achievable and sustainable....

Levy Institute
Public Service Employment: A Path to Full Employment
L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Stephanie A. Kelton

Bill Mitchell — There is more to the Job Guarantee literature than a few blog posts

I have noticed a new phenomenon – a sort of new myopia – has emerged as the blogoshphere has expanded. The knowledge set that people think they are empowering themselves with becomes rather constricted – sometimes to a selection of blogs they may have read, sometimes even to the last blog they read on a topic. So we get a range of views and prognostications emerging – held out as expert commentary in many cases – upon the basis of perhaps just a few blogs having been read. As a long-term blogger, I also see this syndrome in the comments section of blogs. Someone new turns up it seems having read the latest offering from someone and launches into an array of criticisms which have been previously addressed but the commentator hasn’t bothered to read. 

The point is that research is a lengthy process and opinions should only be formed with conviction when one is convinced they have read all the major offerings in the area of interest and considered the evidence base. 

Which brings me to the real point. 

Before I wrote blogs I had generated 25 or so years of academic research material – in journal articles, books, book chapters, commissioned reports – hundreds of items of work. That is standard fare for an active researcher chasing competitive grants. That is where one’s contribution to ‘knowledge’ (as far as it is) is to be found. I only started writing blogs as a way of promoting Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to a broader audience that would never read my academic work. I think that has been a successful strategy. But it has also created this ‘new myopia’. 

People think that the knowledge set available lies exclusively in blogs. It doesn’t. My blogs cut corners in writing style, referencing, and leave things unsaid that a more formal treatment would cover. The aim of the blog is accessibility and to provide an introduction to ideas which will encourage readers to delve further and arm themselves with deeper knowledge so as to promote informedprogressive activism. A case in point is recent deliberations about one of my pet topics – the Job Guarantee.

A week or so ago (May 16, 2017), the Washington-based Centre for American Progress published an Op Ed – Toward a Marshall Plan for America.... [paragraphing introduced for readability in this format.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
There is more to the Job Guarantee literature than a few blog posts
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Roger Malcolm Mitchell — More proof that MMT’s JG is a bad idea

I think Roger misses the point that the MMT JG is to mop up the residual unemployment, which mostly affects unskilled workers, after automatic stabilization. It is key piece of MMT policy formulation but it plays a minor part over since it addresses a residual. A good policy would ensure that this residual is generally limited and the other matters that Roger mentions are addressed effectively and efficiently.

The key point is that there is always some unemployment in a capitalist economy and it is addressed either through a buffer stock of unemployed (ten dogs and only nine bones) or a buffer stock of employed (ten dogs and ten bones).

Monetary Sovereignty
More proof that MMT’s JG is a bad idea

Roger Malcolm Mitchell

Bill Mitchell — Latest news on European Youth Guarantee hardly inspiring

The European Commission released a new report yesterday (October 4, 2016) – The Youth Guarantee and Youth Employment Initiative three years on – which provides an updated evaluation of the progress of the policy framework designed to reduce youth unemployment. The results are as one would expect after taking into account the design limitations of the Youth Guarantee – pretty disappointing. We learn that for the 20 countries for which there is available data – “Of the 2.5 million young people that left YG schemes … during 2015, less than 0.9 million (35.5%) were known to be in employment, education or training 6 months after exit”. That is an appalling result really and signifies that the design of the program should be reappraised and changed to accord with characteristics of an ideal Job Guarantee program. These results are unsurprising, dismal though they are.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Latest news on European Youth Guarantee hardly inspiring
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Time to expand public service employment

High and persistent unemployment has pervaded almost every OECD country since the mid-1970s. The rising unemployment began with the rapid inflation of the mid- 1970s. The inflation left an indelible impression on policy-makers who became captives of the resurgent new labour economics and its macroeconomic counterpart, Monetarism.

The goal of low inflation led to excessively restrictive fiscal and monetary policy stances by most OECD governments driven by the now-entrenched ‘budget deficit fetishism’.
The combined effects of tight monetary policy and restricted fiscal policy led to GDP growth in most OECD countries being generally below that necessary to absorb the growth in the labor force in combination with rising labor productivity. 

In the fifty years since the end of World War II, most OECD economies have gone from a situation where the respective governments ensured there were enough jobs to maintain full employment to a state where the same governments use unemployment to control inflation.

A major aspect of the abandonment of full employment in these economies has been the changes that have occurred in public sector employment. Many economies have undergone substantial restructuring of their public sectors with significant employment losses being endured.

The adoption of monetarism was in large part due to the political persuasiveness of Milton Friedman, who was also an advocate of economic liberalism. The result was the shift away from the dominance of Keynesianism in economics, political economy and public policy toward neoliberalism.The world is still suffering from Friedman's legacy transmitted through the Chicago School and allies as full employment was abandoned for inflation targeting, using a buffer stock of unemployed as a tool.

Clearly, if we had left the GFC to the Chicago school (or the Harvard school) line – which means government would have sat back and left it to the private market to sort the mess out, then we would have been facing a repeat of the Great Depression such was the damage to the financial system and the plunge in real output in the major economies.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Time to expand public service employment
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — The Job Guarantee would enhance the private sector

Since Bill is the originator of the MMT Job Guarantee and its chief spokesperson through The Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), you probably want to read this if you are at all interested in MMT.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Job Guarantee would enhance the private sector
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Randy Wray — Spain’s Proposal for a Job Guarantee

Yesterday I participated in a press conference and gave the first of a series of lectures in Madrid on MMT and the Job Guarantee. At the press conference, Alberto Garzón announced his party’s plan to create a million jobs in a targeted JG:
IU plantea un plan de 9.600 millones para crear un millón de empleos en un año 

Alberto and his brother, Eduardo, are well-versed in MMT. He emphasized that the barrier to full employment is not technical but political. If the political will exists, full employment can be achieved and sustained. MMT shows the way to understanding the policy options that are available to sovereign government. 

The newspaper article summarized some of the points I made, arguing that we should no longer see the finances of a government as similar to those of a household....

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
Spain’s Proposal for a Job Guarantee
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City

Bill Mitchell — Why we should close the ‘unemployment industry’

Answer: Useless and destructive the way it is configured.

I take no umbrage with individuals who work in the ‘industry’ but its productivity is close to zero (you cannot search for jobs that are not there) and they have become co-opted servants of the pernicious government policy regime. The facts are clear – we have erected a massive corporate sector funded by government to manage the fiscal failure. The problem is that all these job service providers are not just shunting inanimate widgets around into so-called training schemes etc but are dealing with very disadvantaged people, which the capitalist system is excluding from the opportunity to engage in paid and productive work. The ‘unemployment sector’ is the Government’s front-line attack dog on the victims of the policy failure.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Why we should close the ‘unemployment industry’Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

Pavlina at Truthout

Pavlina's post contra Matt Yglesias on the MMT JG is reposted at Truthout.

Sixteen Reasons Matt Yglesias Is Wrong About the Job Guarantee vs. Basic Income by Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Ph.D., New Economic Perspectives | Op-Ed

Randy Wray — Bop A Mole #1: Does Modern Money Theory Need A Job Guarantee?

OK for the next few weeks we are going to play a game called Bop a Mole.

Here’s the deal. For more than two decades a small group of scholars hashed out what became Modern Money Theory. We’ve written many books, a hundred chapters for edited volumes, hundreds of published articles, and thousands of blogs presenting the theory and defending it against critics.

Yet practically every day a Mole pops up to ask: “Why doesn’t MMT ever talk about XXX?” You’ve seen the claims:

Mole 1: MMT never deals with inflation.

Mole 2: MMT never talks about exchange rate effects.

Mole 3: MMT cannot relax the consolidation assumption.

Mole 4: MMT ignores the private banks.

Mole 5: MMT is just like slavery; it forces people to work for welfare.

Mole 6: MMT promotes unbridled growth, ignoring environmental sustainability.

We Bop one Mole and another jumps up. In fact, every possible critique of MMT has been addressed in at least a dozen different academic papers and probably a hundred blogs.

The problem is that the Mole Bopping is sometimes buried deep in the paper, perhaps in an argument that is too academic. Or it is too hard to find the exact blogs where we’ve dealt with the issue. Heck, I cannot remember 95% of the stuff I’ve written, much less find it.

So I thought we’d play a game, Bopping Moles, and try to keep these Mole Boppings organized for future reference. When Mole 1 Pops up again, we can just pull out Mole Bopping #1. No reason to re-Bop if you’ve Bopped ‘em once.

We’ll Bop a Mole today. I’ll open up the comments section to your suggestions for the next Mole Bopping.

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward

Bop A Mole #1: Does Modern Money Theory Need A Job Guarantee?

L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, University of Missouri at Kansas City

John Carney — A Modest Job Guarantee Proposal: Domestic Servant Subsidies

Oldie but goodie. Satirical post from John Carney — the title refers to Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal — about the MMT JG. After explaining what a good idea it is, John then gives the (bogus) reasons why it would be unworkable as offered. He then offers the modest proposal of using the JG to provide domestic servants to the well-off. Pretty funny way to introduce the idea. I think, too, that a lot of CNBC readers may get punked by the satire and take it for real.

CNBC NetNet
A Modest Job Guarantee Proposal: Domestic Servant Subsidies
John Carney | Senior Editor

See also Philip Pilkington,  John Carney’s Jobs Proposal: Cutting Satire or Accidental Self-Parody?