Monday, July 29, 2013

Bill Mitchell on Marriner Eccles

[Economic liberals] deliberately create unemployment and poverty and try to spin a narrative that this is labour market reform or essential fiscal consolidation. Marriner Eccles clearly saw through all of those arguments when they were used in his time.
This narrative is usually based on the false analogy between a government as the currency issuer and households and firms, which are currency users.
Neoliberals claim that governments, like households, have to live within their means. They say budget deficits have to be repaid and this requires onerous future tax burdens, which force our children and their children to pay for our profligacy.
The false neoliberal analogy between national budgets and household budgets resonates strongly with voters because it attempts to relate the more amorphous finances of a government with our daily household finances.
"Labor market reform" amounts to reducing the economic position of workers enough to induce "wage flexibility," that is, undermining labor bargain power so that employers can offer less, even less than a living wage, driving workers into debt — as is presently the case with major employers in the US such as Walmart, in a return to Dickensian times. For further development see Michal Kalecki in Political Aspects of Full Employment

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

There is nothing new under the sun
Bill Mitchell

6 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"Neoliberals claim that governments, like households, have to live within their means."

Wouldn't that be more correctly "libertarians claim...."????

rsp,

Matt Franko said...

Here is the wiki on Libertarianism....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

"Libertarians advocate a society with minimized government or no government at all...."

I dont know how better it could get for a libertarian when you have the office of the President and all Congressional leadership thinking "we're out of money!"

Seriously, can this get any better at all for a libertarian?

Can they imagine a better outcome???

If I try to put myself in their place, I cannot think of how it could get even the tiniest bit better for them...

How could it be better??

I'm coming up blank...

rsp,

Matt Franko said...

Here's Eccles from Bill's:

"Isn’t it up to us to keep our eyes on the important things?"

Who is "us"????

Libertarians acknowledge no "us"...

Libertarians seek to wipe out any concept of "us"...

rsp,

Matt Franko said...

I could perhaps see how libertarians would get pissed off at authority if for almost a couple of thousand of years, all those who occupied positions of authority did was to enforce human subjection to the "precious metals" so-called in our human economic affairs...

I could see how perhaps libertarianism could arise out of that chaos/stupidity....

But that said we are no longer under these metals and we need to start to act like it especially in our leadership like Eccles points out here...

Eccles "us" could very easily mean our human leadership...

Libertarians need the grace to get to the point where they see the significance of these changes in our monetary systems fomented largely by advances in IT, and back off and lets give these rediscovered arrangements a try again for a while... at least try this approach and see what happens for a few decades...

rsp,



James said...

I recently watched this clip of Noam Chomsky talking about libertarianism, quite a good take on how the American libertarian is something completely different from the original meaning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxbeyn2xMQE

Ryan Harris said...

How did society forget all the wisdom learned in less than a century. This paper is filled with so many quotes that could be right out of a Wray or Mosler book.

Wonderful speech by Eccles and an absolute gold mine of quotations.

"In other words, we must have a certain minimum level of employment and national income to keep our people from open rebellion against our system. They cannot be expected to endure a system, no matter how much we cherish it, which does not produce material and economic well-being for far more than a majority"

"Somebody has to borrow and spend money to put people to
work. If private business is unable to do It adequately, then the
Government has no choice but to step in and do what it can to provide at least a subsistence until such time as private business
can make adequate provision"

"I do not for a moment think that the Government can or should be a substitute for private capital investment and activity. I have felt all along, and the basis of my own thinking about governmental function is that the Government can be a compensatory and offsetting and stabilising influence and that its broader policy should be governed with a view to moderating booms and depressions insofar as it can."

A Pity it is all forgotten by almost every single politician in every legislative body the world over.