Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Ben Judah — The Right’s Straw Left


The Right discovers it is up against MMT. Is Stephanie Kelton Superwoman?

The American Interest
The Right’s Straw Left
Ben Judah

3 comments:

Detroit Dan said...

Great article!

Come to think of it, I've never seen Stephanie Kelton and Superwoman in the same room at the same time.

Konrad said...

“The Left has no ideas. All they have to offer is identity politics.”

True. There are progressive ideas such as Universal Medicare, but establishment Democrats use identity politics to drown out such ideas.

“The shock win of 28 year old socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be a wake-up call.”

I don’t know if she’s a socialist, but I do knew that she has recently purged her web site and Facebook page of all questioning of war and Israeli atrocities. She also purged them of her support for Net neutrality. I could be wrong, but I suspect that Ocasio-Cortez is a product of establishment Democrat rebranding, the way Obama was. Same neoliberalism, but now with a brown face. Hopey-changey. She markets herself as a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx, when in fact she’s from the eighth richest county in the USA. She attended an elite high school in an affluent suburb, and then graduated from an Ivy League college, and had a job waiting for her on Capitol Hill. Now she’s doing the talk show circuit. “Morning Joe,” “Young Turks,” “VICE,” “Joy Reid.” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” etc. She’s also being celebrated in all the corporate media outlets. This doesn’t happen to true radicals. True radicals are shunned, silenced, and ignored. In an interview with The Intercept, Ocasio-Cortez talked about global “Russian aggression." She also repeated the nonsense that Russia “hacked” the U.S. and French elections.

Look… it is one thing to remain silent about a topic (e.g. Israeli atrocities) but it is another thing to knowingly repeat lies.

When we call for Universal Medicare (like every other industrialized country has), the establishment Democrats tell us to give up such “magical thinking.” They tell us to “grow up” and support Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Obama, Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, and Ocasio-Cortez.

Hopefully I am wrong about her, but I suspect that she is a desperate move by establishment Democrats to stave off their crushing defeats coming in November.

Regarding the “Federal Jobs Guarantee,” this is one of those ideas that Democrats only support as long as it has no chance of passing.

Democrats call for many things (e.g. Universal Medicare) but they go silent about those things when they actually win a majority in Congress.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

The Kelton-Fraud
Comment on Tom Hickey/Ben Judah on ‘The Right’s Straw Left’

Tom Hickey headlines: “The Right discovers it is up against MMT. Is Stephanie Kelton Superwoman?” This framing tells everyone that economics, too, has finally degenerated to a reality show.#1

To recall, economics claims since Adam Smith/Karl Marx to be a science. The criterion of science is true/false. So, the real question is NOT whether Stephanie Kelton is Superwoman but whether MMT, the economic approach she stands for, is true or false.

The short answer is: MMT is a scientific failure and a political fraud. Stephanie Kelton is just another clown in the political Circus Maximus.

In more detail #2, #3, #4, #5
• MMT’s social policy proposals ― the Job Guarantee in particular ― are political door-openers and friend-of-the-people signaling.
• MMT policy guidance ultimately boils down to deficit-spending/money-creation.
• It is a macroeconomic fact that Public Deficit = Private Profit, so MMT is money-making for the one-percenters.
• MMT is stealth taxation for the ninety-nine percenters.
• MMT is ALWAYS a bad deal for the ninety-nine-percenters.
• The MMT policy of ever-increasing public deficits amounts to the permanent self-financing of the oligarchy.

If Stephanie Kelton, Professor at Stony Brook University, does not understand macroeconomics she is an incompetent scientist if she understands it she is a political fraud.#6

In any case, she has to be thrown out of science.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Hedges, Empire of Illusion

#2 Wrapping up the MMT narrative
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/06/wrapping-up-mmt-narrative.html

#3 How MMT enlightens Washington
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/05/how-mmt-enlightens-washington.html

#4 MMT: Just another political fraud
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/04/mmt-just-another-political-fraud.html

#5 For details of the big picture see cross-references MMT http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html

#6 Down with idiocy!
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/12/down-with-idiocy.html