Monday, November 26, 2018

Tim Worstall — The End Game Of Modern Monetary Theory


This passes for serious criticism now?

In addition, Tim Worstall doesn't seem to realize that MMT is not a policy proposal but rather based on how the existing monetary system operates currently. Understanding this and using this knowledge opens up policy space by correctly describing existing fiscal space. Nothing needs to change with respect to the actual potential of the existing monetary system. This misunderstood by most economists, politicians and the public, with the result that voters and their representatives remain unaware of the potential of a sovereign currency issuer and accept "expert" advice that is not based on reality, thereby limiting the range of options considered to be available.

The argument seems to be, Let's not use what we have because we might abuse it. "Venezuela!" "Zimbabwe!" Notice how Venezuela has replaced Weimar, as Weimar recedes further from memory and becomes less useful in persuasion.

Continental Telegraph
The End Game Of Modern Monetary Theory
Tim Worstall | Senior Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and founder of the Continental Telegraph

223 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 223 of 223
AXEC / E.K-H said...

Clint Ballinger and the rest of political agenda pushers

Clint Ballinger parrots Pasinetti’s paper: “It shows that it is impossible to axiomatize distribution and ‘demonstrated conclusively that there is no relationship between the productivity of various factors of production ― capital, labour, materials ― and the distribution of income in society’ as one comment summarizes it.”

Remember G. B. Shaw’s dictum: “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

I have derived the macroeconomic Profit Law Qm=Yd−Sm+Yd+I+(G−T)+(X−M) from consistent macrofoundations a.k.a. axioms. Note that the Law is testable with the precision of two decimal places. With regard to the government’s budget, the Profit Law boils down to Public Deficit = Private Profit. This piece of pure economic analysis translates into the scientific insight that the MMT sectoral balances equation is false and into the political insight that MMT’s policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is nothing but a free lunch for the Oligarchy. In other words, that “progressive” MMT policy is a political fraud.

Everyone is free to try to empirically refute the Profit Law, which is the scientifically correct way to settle the matter.

Needless to emphasize that MMTers cannot refute the proof of political fraud, so they desperately try to bury it under a sky-high heap of BS about capitalism/communism, the healthcare systems in Sweden, USA, Hong Kong and elsewhere, chemical processes in the brain, property taxation in the OECD, social democracy and democratic socialism, Sanders, Corbyn, Lenin, carbon tax, plastic pollution, and finally the CCC, which is long known to have been nothing but a laughable dancing-angels-on-a-pinpoint debate. What the CCC has made unmistakably clear to everyone is that economists are after 200+ years still confused about the foundational concepts of their subject matter, i.e. profit and capital.

Obviously, MMTers mission has never been to contribute to scientific knowledge but to produce false promises, disinformation, misinformation, never-ending filibuster, silly claims, vacuous assertions, and talk show entertainment in order that everything remains where it has been since Adam Smith, that is, in the bottomless proto-scientific swamp of inconclusive blather.#1, #2

MMT is provably false and that is the end of MMT ― except MMTers can empirically disprove the macroeconomic Profit Law. Everyone knows by now that this will never happen.

Political economists have never produced and will never produce anything of scientific value. So here is the final FLUSH for Clint Ballinger and the rest of proto-scientific dumbshits,#3 useful political idiots, agenda pushers, and fraudsters.

High time to drain the swamp.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 It is better to be precisely right than roughly wrong
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/11/it-is-better-to-be-precisely-right-than.html

#2 And the answer is NCND ― economics after 200+ years of Glomarization
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/and-answer-is-ncnd-economics-after-200.html

#3 MMT: How mathematical incompetence helps the Kelton-Fraud
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/mmt-how-mathematical-incompetence-helps.html

AXEC / E.K-H said...

The macroeconomic Profit Law reads Qm=Yd−Sm+I+(G−T)+(X−M)

Sorry for the typo.

For the compilation of versions of growing complexity see Wikimedia
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC143.png

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Greg said...

Tim

Not sure I buy your rewrite of my paragraph just changing money to resources either. This is very close to the ridiculous "money as neutral veil" type thinking of too many economists. But lets talk about scarcity, what's truly scarce and why certain things are scarce and how to address it.

Ill start by saying to me, housing, food, education and health care are areas where strong public support is necessary insure that market forces aren't denying people;e proper access to these needs, and I would even go as far to say rights. Anything outside of those spheres is generally not the source of much undue hardship for most families.

So food; not scarce at all.... in this country. We throw away 40% of what we produce. No American should not have access to food 24/7/365 period. And they shouldn't have to go walk and wait in a line for someone to serve it to them either. Globally, there are areas of scarcity but most of this is man made scarcity, not caused by the planet being incapable of producing enough.

Housing/land ... not scarce at all. Just too few owners of the land wanting to get too large a price for the land

Education. With the internet no one even has to step outside their house to take college level courses. The problem is what the controllers of the information charge to distribute it. We could educate every American as high as they desired/ were capable starting tomorrow. No scarcity there

Healthcare, this one is a little trickier. We truly dont have enough doctors to have everyone see a doctor as frequently as they should, especially the poorest and sickest but there are plenty of people turned away from Med School each year and more continue to desire that field. We've already talked about education but learning that skill requires in house residences etc so the shortage wouldn't be filled tomorrow but its mostly a fear that more doctors = less doctor income that is driving a lot of admission policies IOW the zero sum thinking we addressed before. And non physician practitioners like myself are capable of filling an extensive void and providing high quality care and I know lots of people turned away from PA and nursing too. Most of our scarcity is created by the false zero sum/micro econ view of supply demand in these areas that just shouldn't apply.


So I view these nods to scarcity as a shibboleth. Its not a lack of anything other than empathy, or lack of a willingness to drop your biases against collective thinking in most cases.

Clint Ballinger said...

Worstall's discussion of capitalism and government in Sweden (his blog posts also) ends up somehow reminding me of discussions in _The New Industrial State_ by John Kenneth Galbraith. Been a long time since I read Galbraith, and not sure Worstall will like the comparison, but there you are :)
https://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Madison-Library-American-Politics/dp/0691131414

Dean said...

Hi Greg,
Incidentally, the 4 basic human needs you listed are not only essential from a physical perspective, but also from a legal perspective; by this I mean, if one does not have access to housing or food, and if one had children and did not have access to education and healthcare, then it becomes almost impossible for these people to obey the laws of society. As someone who has a brother who spent years homeless in Melbourne, I know this to be the case, but there is also much literature on it also.

So it is quite strange that we as a society are trying to figure out a way to ensure everyone has access to basic needs through the perspective of 'economics' and hence politics, when in fact the real issue is legal and inequity, and in all likelihood, it is economics and politics that is perpetuating the problem. I do not know how a society at large can be innocent of negligence when it allows laws against vagrancy, public nuisance, loitering, trespass, begging, dumpster diving, etc to exist but at the same time demands that each member of society 'pay' for access to the very resources it requires to ensure it does not break these laws.

Tim Worstall said...

"ends up somehow reminding me of discussions in _The New Industrial State_ by John Kenneth Galbraith. Been a long time since I read Galbraith, and not sure Worstall will like the comparison, but there you are :) "

Well, John Kenneth, rather too grand for the likes of me. Read him of course, disagree often enough. The son, Jamie K Galbraith, I know online. He's kind enough to even agree with me at times. At times mind, we clearly have different world views

Clint Ballinger said...

Tim - I didn't mean so much in Galbraith's unique style, more the big overview feeling of the state and private sector working together. And on this, I do think you have valuable and interesting things to say.
Yes, James does great work I think, and is at my Alma Mater.
This is an interesting review by him of Skidelsky, and he gives a nice nod to his father's work here as well.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/the-past-and-future-of-political-economy/

Clint Ballinger said...

Tim, you wrote "Won't raise enough. Not a rule, more a rule of thumb. You might be able to raise 10 - 15% of GDP through LVT. Just not a large enough portion to run a modern state"

Still not sure how you are supporting this statement (?)
Remember, we are talking a population with no income taxed and with no IRS/HRMC. (of course, it is not revenue either, but demand management, but anyway…)

Where do you get this 15 percent figure? I saw briefly somewhere above, but it didn't seem like you justified your assumptions at all.

Clint Ballinger said...

Egmont

Egmont's entire tower of babble (his own) is built around his “pure consumption
economy”. This model is (extremely) simplified by making the same kinds of assumptions that all such models necessarily make, and that also render neoclassical economics useless.
Like neoclassical Econ, Egmont claims to shed light on Earth's tropical verdure, while all the while building a sterile Tron-like model of a world that sheds light on very little.

Egmont states (regarding banking) that “These practical details are not forgotten but can be reintroduced at any time”. And yet he of course never does this. Adding in meaningful real-world details would soon, like all models, overwhelm him. He could spend the rest of his career trying and still not turn out anything useful.
Good economics has gone about as far as is possible in that direction, E.g., (_Monetary Economics
An Integrated Approach to Credit, Money, Income, Production and Wealth_. Godley W., Lavoie, M. )

By far the most sophisticated and realistic effort in that direction is the ongoing Minsky Project by Steve Keen. http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2015/07/30/help-make-minsky-easier-to-use/
If Egmont wanted to do something useful he could study Keen's program, and might even have some useful input to it. But the key point is that Egmont writes “These practical details are not forgotten but can be reintroduced at any time” yet he never does so, and is unable to do so. While Keen and the Minsky project have been forging ahead in that approach for years, and using conceptually correct data and factors to do so (unlike any neoclassical attempts to do similar).

Clint Ballinger said...

[Egmont]
As I mentioned before, everything interesting but complicated about real world economics is assumed away by Egmont in his “pure consumption economy” _exactly_ in the same way as in the neoclassical economics he criticizes. This means that like neoclassical economics, the resulting simplified framework is void of any content of relevance to the real world. Egmont also says his work is about the “true theory of the actual monetary economy.” He is better than the neoclassicals here, but only succeeds in creating a simplistic view of the monetary system that does not begin to approach the accuracy of MMT and circuit theory in this regard. He doesn't seem to fully understand the role and importance of credit-money in the economy, and also believes there is a “fractional reserve system” (there is not) which further implies a belief in loanable funds (another fallacy). His theory of the monetary system is simplistic and ill-informed.

In other words, Egmont fails to achieve his own stated goals on the monetary system, and he additionally fails by falling into the same trap the neoclassicals fall into of assuming away all that is of interest.

-----------
When Egmont attempts to summarize the utility and scope of his work the assumptions that make it void of interesting content become apparent. Egmont concludes that in his model of the economy (“Major Defects of the Market Economy” his summary of his work):

“The distribution of real output and financial/real wealth has nothing at all to do with performance or productivity, it is in the main governed by the interaction of profit and distributed profit which constitutes a positive feedback loop that leads in the longer run qua self-reinforcement to a concentration of financial/real wealth.” (p. 38)

What “feedback loop”?
“Leads” how?
Concentration to whom and for what reasons?
Politics, history, and Law play no part in this concentration?
With what knock-on effects to the macroeconomy? You think the resulting concentration doesn't in turn change all the parameters of your model? ...

Clint Ballinger said...


“The boiling down of the banking industry to the central bank simplifies matters
considerably because there is no need to deal with the fractional reserve system and
the interactions within the banking industry. These practical details are not forgotten
but can be reintroduced at any time.” (p 28)

“simplifies matters considerably”= In other words, makes his simplistic axioms tractable. What Egmont doesn't understand is these also make his work devoid of content. Also, there is no fractional reserve system Egmont.

“For example, if the business sector decides to double employment at the going wage rate there is absolutely no argument against doubling the transaction balances. Quite the contrary, historically the quantitative fixity of the transaction medium has always stifled real growth. The creation of many variants of near money was the awkward solution to this problem. Under the condition that the transaction unit of the central bank adapts perfectly to the transactions needs there is no compensatory need for near moneys.”
p 28

“Under the condition that the transaction unit of the central bank adapts perfectly” Again, neoclassical type assumption that makes his axioms workable, but the result of no interest to the real world.


“Money transactions are a service of the transaction unit that fetches a price just
like any other good or service. Evidently, this has not necessarily anything to do
with credit and interest. Let us assume that both functions are organizationally
perfectly separated.” p 29

Another simplifying assumption that removes the model from the real world.

“There is no self-stabilizing mechanism in the market economy that ensures that overall profit remains safely above the structurally given minimum profit. It is the profit mechanism that is decisive for overall stability, and profit in turn is according to (49) linked to growth, deficit spending, and profit distribution.” p. 31

And what causes changes in growth? And what causes a “profit distribution”?
Again, assumptions and circular arguments that render the overall value of the entire “AXEC” project every bit as empty as Mainstream economics.

His entire argument comes down to the final statement “It is the profit mechanism that is decisive for overall stability, and profit in turn is according to (49) linked to growth, deficit spending, and profit distribution.”

His model internally does show that it is the “profit mechanism” in the model. Yet this in turn depends on growth and profit distribution, and his model says nothing about them (and never can). Anything of interest to the real economy has disappeared from his necessarily highly limiting initial assumptions.

He believes that because his model is internally consistent, it is a grand achievement and we are all blind to its amazing power. What he doesn't understand is that he has built an internally consistent model by assuming away all the interesting aspects of the real economy, and that his toy model is just that, something nice to look at (to him) but of no use for understanding the real world.

The only possible use would be to shed light on the monetary system (his stated goal) yet he gets even this bit wrong. Understanding government and bank-money creation is indeed crucial to real world economics. And it is done much better elsewhere. Egmont, look at Keen's Minsky model. Maybe you could have something interesting to say about it. But your desktop toy is of no use to anyone, and despite mesmerizing you, is a waste of time.

Tim Worstall said...

"Where do you get this 15 percent figure? "

We're taxing land rents. How much are land rents as a portion of the economy? 15%?

That's all. We obviously cannot gain more in tax from land rents than land rents actually are, can we?

Clint Ballinger said...

Tim, we would be taxing land value.
The value of land in the United States in 2009 was calculated, minus Hawaii and Alaska (I guess somehow hard to get the stats, so this is for the "lower 48")
at just shy of 23 Trillion US Dollars.

That is, 23 Trillion US$, minus $1.8 Billion owned by the Federal government, in 2009.

https://www.bea.gov/research/papers/2015/new-estimates-value-land-united-states

(U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), US Dept. of Commerce)

AXEC / E.K-H said...

MMT: Time to say goodbye
Comment on Clint Ballinger on ‘Tim Worstall ― The End Game Of Modern Monetary Theory’

The case against MMT is settled. MMT does NOT satisfy the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency. It is faulty macroeconomics and, as a consequence, bad politics.

The macroeconomic Profit Law reads Qm=Yd+(I−Sm)+(G−T)+(X−M) and has been derived from consistent macrofoundations a.k.a. axioms. The Law is testable with the precision of two decimal places. With regard to the government’s budget, the Profit Law boils down to Public Deficit = Private Profit. This piece of pure economic analysis translates into the scientific insight that the MMT sectoral balances equation is false and into the political insight that MMT’s policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is nothing but a free lunch for the Oligarchy. In other words, that “progressive” MMT policy is a political fraud.

Conclusion: Because MMT is provably false and its proponents are either stupid or corrupt or both, MMT has to be expelled from science/academia. Its proper habitat is the political swamp.

More is not to say about MMT, but Clint Ballinger cannot understand or accept this unassailable conclusion. So, he goes off-topic.

(i) “Egmont’s entire tower of babble (his own) is built around his ‘pure consumption economy’. This model is (extremely) simplified …”

In fact, the elementary production-consumption economy is the simplest possible macroeconomic configuration. ALL economic analysis has to start from the absolute analytical minimum and then to proceed with ever increasing complexity. This methodological procedure is standard since more than 2000 years: “When the premises are certain, true, and primary, and the conclusion formally follows from them, this is demonstration, and produces scientific knowledge of a thing.” (Aristotle)

The elementary production-consumption economy is SUFFICIENT to prove that the MMT sectoral balances equation is false.#1, #2 This means, that MMT is scientifically dead already at the most elementary level.

From methodology, everyone could know: “In fact, the history of every science, including that of economics, teaches us that the elementary is the hotbed of the errors that count most.” (Georgescu-Roegen)

Because MMT is axiomatically false, the whole analytical superstructure is false. So, there is NO NEED to refute every MMT argument individually. If the premises are false, the whole theory is dead. Simple.

(ii) “Egmont states (regarding banking) that “These practical details are not forgotten but can be reintroduced at any time”. And yet he of course never does this.”

This is provably false. Money and banking have been treated extensively in working papers and blog posts, e.g. #3, #4 Any kindergartner can google this.

(iii) “Good economics has gone about as far as is possible in that direction, E.g., (Monetary Economics An Integrated Approach to Credit, Money, Income, Production and Wealth. Godley W., Lavoie, M. ) By far the most sophisticated and realistic effort in that direction is the ongoing Minsky Project by Steve Keen.”

Godley/Lavoie and Keen have been treated elsewhere and refuted.#5, #6 Any kindergartner can google this.

(iv) “He is better than the neoclassicals here, but only succeeds in creating a simplistic view of the monetary system that does not begin to approach the accuracy of MMT and circuit theory in this regard. He doesn’t seem to fully understand the role and importance of credit-money in the economy, and also believes there is a ‘fractional reserve system’ (there is not) which further implies a belief in loanable funds (another fallacy).

This is provably false. I “believe” neither in the fractional reserve system nor the loanable funds theory.#7, #8 Any kindergartner can google this.

See part 2

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Part 2

In this style, it goes on. In the main, Clint Ballinger plays the silly rhetorical game of abstraction vs realism. This does not work.#9, #10 With their description of operational details, which MMT’s chief realist Warren Mosler trumpets as MMT’s chief merit, MMTers never got above the level of an information brochure of the FED’s PR-department. Monetary Theory, though, deals with the function and effects of money in the economy as a whole. Monetary theory presupposes macroeconomics. And the fact of the matter is that MMT gets the foundational macroeconomic relations wrong. The lengthy description of the organizational details of Treasury/Central Bank operations cannot make up for the theoretical blunders. MMT blindly repeats the Fallacy of Insufficient Abstraction.#11

When Clint Ballinger’s smokescreen of irrelevant arguments is taken away, the whole issue reduces to the all-decisive question which of the two macroeconomic relations is true/false:
(i) (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)=0 (MMT)
(ii) (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)−(Qm−Yd)=0 (AXEC).

This question can be empirically decided. So, why does the MMT community, which certainly does not lack academics with free access to macroeconomic data and generous support/funding from the ultimate beneficiaries of MMT policy, not carry out this econometric study?

The obvious answer is that the MMT community’s real business is NOT science but quite ordinary political agenda pushing. THIS is the point at issue but Clint Ballinger tries to filibuster away the fact that the “End Game Of Modern Monetary Theory” has already been lost.

So, there is nothing left for MMTers in general and Clint Ballinger, in particular, than to say goodbye.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Macro for dummies
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/macro-for-dummies.html

#2 Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/wikipedia-and-promotion-of-economists.html

#3 Essentials of Constructive Heterodoxy: Money, Credit, Interest
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2569663

#4 Reconstructing the Quantity Theory (I)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1895268

#5 The Emergence of Profit and Interest in the Monetary Circuit
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1973952

#6 Where advanced Heterodoxy — represented by Steve Keen — took the wrong turn
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/04/where-advanced-heterodoxy-represented.html

#7 Basics of monetary theory: the two monies
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/10/basics-of-monetary-theory-two-monies.html

#8 Fixing the loanable funds blunder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/fixing-loanable-funds-blunder.html

#9 Richard Murphy: the MMT fraudster dressed up as realist
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/06/richard-murphy-mmt-fraudster-dressed-up.html

#10 Bagehot’s wisdom and the silliness of modern economists
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2016/01/bagehots-wisdom-and-silliness-of-modern.html

#11 Economics and the Fallacy of Insufficient Abstraction
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/06/economics-and-fallacy-of-insufficient.html

AXEC / E.K-H said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clint Ballinger said...

Egmont - what is the role of taxes in your model?

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Clint Ballinger

The point at issue is the proof that MMT is materially and formally inconsistent. Instead of accepting a clear-cut falsification, as a scientist is supposed to do, you desperately try to change the issue. This, basically, is the corrupt methodology of economics since the founding fathers: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (Morgenstern, 1941)

MMT stands firmly in this bad tradition with Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism as precursors. This is why economics is still stuck at the proto-scientific level and merely recycles the same old topics without definitive conclusion and consequence. Economics is not a science but a heap of falsified theories.

There can be no progress when falsified theories are not discarded and replaced by superior theories and there effectively has been no progress as everyone can see when the fake science economics is compared to the genuine sciences. Supply-demand-equilibrium, what an idiocy for 200+ years!

Needless to emphasize that the traditional anti-scientific corruption of economists gained a new life in the econoblogosphere. MMT academics are no exception with regard to censorship/suppression/disinformation/manipulation.#1, #2

After being back on track, the answer to your distracting question about taxation is: Any kindergartner can google it.#3

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/cryptoeconomics-best-of-bill-mitchells.html

#2 “We have sunk very low”
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/11/we-have-sunk-very-low.html

#3 The Third Way: Towards the happy zero-tax economy
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-third-way-towards-happy-zero-tax.html

AXEC / E.K-H said...

#DrainTheScientificSwamp

Photographic evidence of the glorious self-debunking of MMT
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yi8h09zhpnxcd0b/MMT%20proudly%20presents%20The%20false%20sectoral%20balances%20equation%2C%20Source%20Google%20Images.jpg?dl=0

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Clint Ballinger said...

Egmont writes: “This piece of pure economic analysis translates...into the political insight that MMT’s policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is nothing but a free lunch for the Oligarchy."

Egmont - I thought politics was not your realm of study (?) So how do you know that "the Oligarchy" is not the “Legitimate Sovereign”??

Clint Ballinger said...

Tim - The whole AXEC diversion has probably driven everyone off..sorry. But any thoughts or numbers (UK is fine also) on the LVT?

Clint Ballinger said...

I thought there might be a grain of something interesting in Egmont's work. But then I read his "link" reply to my tax question. Far more simple-minded than I could have possibly imagined. But at least it definitively makes clear there is no substance at all there (I know, I know, I should have known...but I am always on the lookout for original ideas, no matter the source).

His blog post “answer” is titled “The Third Way: Towards the Happy Zero-Tax Economy” (https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-third-way-towards-happy-zero-tax.html)

“Because the greatest misfortune in the life of most people is that they feel to be unjustly forced to pay taxes, it can be safely assumed that human happiness increases enormously with the abolition of taxes..”

but of course “money that has been created out of nothing has to be destroyed eventually.”

“All that has to be done is to distribute the full amount of monetary profit” to his “legitimate sovereign” (whatever that is). "Because the Legitimate Sovereign owns all corporations of the business sector, this is an easy task." (I am not worried about some public ownership, only the simple-mindedness here).

And this is easy because “All that is needed to make things happen is a well-informed Legitimate Sovereign”

Well, of course.

Anyway, can quit wasting my time now at least. Glad I asked the tax question

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Clint Ballinger

You ask: “So how do you know that ‘the Oligarchy’ is not the ‘Legitimate Sovereign’??”

This is NOT a question for economists to clarify but for Political Science in a scientific way and for the people in a practical way.

You say: “Glad I asked the tax question.” Not really.

The Zero-Tax economy is the logical endpoint of MMT agenda pushing. Behind the social smokescreen and the operational nitty-gritty, MMT policy guidance boils down to deficit-spending/money-creation. Zero-Tax means maximum deficit-spending. Because Public Deficit = Private Profit, Zero-Tax means maximum profit for the economy as a whole. If the economy is in the hands of the Oligarchy, then Zero-Tax means maximum profit for the Oligarchy, which is perfectly in order if the Oligarchy is the Legitimate Sovereign.

My guess is that up to this point you are enthusiastic about the idea of a Zero-Tax economy. I understand that you are not at all enthusiastic about full profit distribution to the owner of the firms if the legitimate owner is not private but public. This would be a bit too “progressive” for an MMTer. After all, MMT’s fight for the cause of WeThePeople was never meant to be taken literally.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

«Oldest ‹Older   201 – 223 of 223   Newer› Newest»