There was an article in the International Politics and Society journal (August 27, 2017) – Robin Hood had the right idea – which continues to demonstrate, how in my view the Left has gone down a deadend path with respect to financial market reform and re-establishing a credible progressive agenda. The sub-title of the article ‘Why the left needs to deliver on the financial transaction tax’ indicates that the author, Stephany Griffith-Jones, who has long advocated positions I am sympathetic too (particularly wirht respect to development economics), thinks a financial tax is a viable strategy for the Left to push. The problem is that none of these ‘Robin Hood solutions’ are viable and are based on faulty understandings of the way monetary systems operate....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Progressives should move on from a reliance on ‘Robin Hood’ taxes
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
As (economic) progressives we're a tiny minority. As we push on the soft currency idea you know what happens, hard currencies come into fashion one way or another.
ReplyDeleteThe currency is a public monopoly which in a democracy means the tyrannical majority rules and the majority hates taxation by currency because they save in the currency and believe our fiscal objectives are funded with their savings.
Even though it isn't strictly true, because controlling taxes and inflation control the value, I can sympathize with their fears after seeing how bizarre and crazy the Democratic party went following the election of Trump.
Half the population went delusional and into a mass hysteria. When MMT fully happens, presumably it will be treated with wild abandon and abused by ideologues in a delusional fantasy until the system is rocked and it forces people to wake up from their dreams of wealth through currency expansion rather than fixing underlying problems in distribution and graft.
Hideously inefficient systems like Healthcare where doctors decry their median wages as barely livable despite being 20x the level of their patients will use up all our fiscal space and then some on that one system alone. You can see already our progressive brethren call for single payer with barely any acknowledgement of deeper problems. There remains an naive assumption that efficient market forces will work out problems by itself. We all know better than that. It takes leaders who understand how to design systems. None of that can be done with economics. It has to happen at university but... our university systems remain mired in the past and fully dedicated to preserving their old power structure and fighting innovation every step of the way.
"Single payer!" = "we're too stupid to figure it out" = blank check to providers
ReplyDeleteNo, Matt. Blank checks to providers happen in systems where government tries to compensate for market failures while maintaining the market structure.
DeleteAnd so the effort for less government leads to more government waste.
"market structures" is a libertarian paradigm... we don't have "market structures" under a numismatic system, govt has to provide settlement balances and all prices are a function of what govt pays for things or what the govt allows the fiscal agents to appraise things for...
Delete"Single payer!" = "we're too stupid to figure it out" = blank check to providers
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't it happen in countries with single payer now, all of which have lower per capita costs than the US and enjoy better outcomes?
Because in the US the employer plans subsidize the Medicaid recipients and the illegals who don't even get Medicaid...
ReplyDeleteYou want to see a chaos disaster then go over to single payer where the payer thinks they are out of munnie... these idiots will end up allowing $25 for an MRI... $1000 for a heart surgery... "it's all we can afford!"
Matt, its partly a cultural thing. In the first place, doctors are not on the pedestal they are in the US. They don't get outsized pay. Look at the difference between doctors and dentists in the US. That difference doesn't exist in anywhere near the same way elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, admin is way overpaid in the US too.
Thirdly, suppliers are way over paid, especially Big Pharma. The difference in drug prices between the US and the ROW is obscene.
This difference is not because they have a free market system and the US doesn't. It's the opposite. The single payer systems else where are viewed in the US as "socialism," which form many, especially on the right, is equated with communism.
Bill said make all financial transactions that cannot be shown to facilitate trade in real good and services illegal. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteFor once Bill and I agree. Too bad you have to read all the way to the end of his lengthy article to get to the point. :-)
Now, is a capitalist society going to effectively regulate capitalism? Of course not. That is the problem with all "social democracy" proposals to tame capitalism.
"That is the problem with all "social democracy" proposals to tame capitalism."
ReplyDeleteThe problem with any other solution is that you will never get the power to enact it, and even if you did it will degenerate into totalitarianism.
There is always a big man. The question is whether you have notional control over the big man, or no control over them. No other choice is available in a human society.
Whatever the Tech Lords and crypto-currency nuts might believe otherwise.
The problem with any other solution is that you will never get the power to enact it, and even if you did it will degenerate into totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with you on that point, though I would like to be proven wrong.