Thursday, January 31, 2019

Cullen Roche — MMT–The Good, the Bad and the Ugly


Cullen has said all this previously in blog posts, and he summarizes his take in this one. His views have been addressed previously at MNE.

Pragmatic Capitalism
MMT – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Cullen Roche

6 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

I'd put the best feature of MMT that it enables people to have discussions about the merits and productivity of allocating human labor to any task rather than financial constraints.
Of course having the banking and accounting right on the nose helps.

There is plenty ugly and overlooked but show me any economic ideology/theory that isn't blinded by its belief systems.

S400 said...

Yeah we know what Ryan means with ”plenty of ugly and overlooked”. It’s those things that in a democracy one can vote _for or against_ with the result that that _for or against_ might be implemented.

Much better to put a loudmouth with an engineering degree to run the country without the hassle of elections. Their knowledge about “systems” makes them extraordinarily good at it with no need for democracy.

Konrad said...

If by chance you are referring to Juan Guaidó, he is not an engineer. He has no technical training. At a private university in Venezuela he earned an “undergraduate degree” (whatever that means) in “industrial engineering” -- i.e. business administration. Then Guaidó went to George Washington University (GWU) in Washington DC to study “public administration.” There he was trained by the money powers to be their puppet in Venezuela should a coup be successful.

GWU is a “research university,” meaning its emphasis is not on teaching, but on enhancing social relations between elitists. GWU is tied directly to the US State Department, and its campus includes the headquarters of the IMF and World Bank.

The more we know about Guaidó, the more we see why the money powers selected him as their puppet for Venezuela.

S400 said...

”undergraduate degree” (whatever that means) in “industrial engineering” -- i.e. business administration. Then Guaidó”

I guess that’s good enough for Ryan as long as it’s a right wingnut.

Konrad said...

Perhaps Ryan Harris falsely equates economic leftists (e.g. those who want Universal Medicare and prosperity for all) with social leftists (e.g. Antifa, militant feminists, LGBTQ freaks, etc.).

Most right-wingers make this same error.

If that is the case, then perhaps Ryan Harris sees in Juan Guaidó a “white nationalist.”

Guaidó doesn’t care about race, gender, or anything else that the peasants bicker about. Guaidó is a neoliberal. Neoliberals only care about maintaining the vast and ever-widening gap between the rich and the rest. Guaidó himself is not a rich oligarch, but he longs to be the puppet of oligarchs.

Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is different. Bolsonaro has a highly romanticized view of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964 – 1985) in which (according to Bolsonaro’s fantasy) everything was calm and orderly, everyone was happy and prosperous, and everyone was heterosexual.

Homosexuality was indeed outlawed under the dictatorship, but the rest of Bolsonaro’s fantasy is a perverse distortion of reality. In the early 1960s, Brazil was one of the most culturally and economically happening places in the world. Brazil was alive. Brazil was optimistic. Brazil was the future. Brazilian cities looked like “Tomorrowland” in a Disneyland theme park. But since Brazil tended toward socialism-lite, the USA sponsored a military coup in 1964. The subsequent dictatorship crushed everything.

Brazil is now ruled by ultra-neoliberal Paulo Guedes, who lets Bolsonaro play in his little fantasy-crib as long as Bolsonaro stays out of the way.

Senexx said...

I haven't published it but here is a link to Cullen's original view on MMT

https://modernmoneyview.wordpress.com?p=96&shareadraft=59ad28952e198