Here's a teaser:
With a sovereign currency, what this nation chooses to spend money on should be removed from any discussion of how a program should be paid for. Congress can authorize such spending at any time. Inflation is never a concern, so long as sufficient goods and services are available to purchase with the money spent into the economy.Recommended reading. Pass it on.
In fact, government spending that invests in new infrastructure, more efficient buildings and transportation, and in better health care for all, has a multiplier effect that spending on war does not. The benefits of such spending are concrete and tangible to all of us, because they ripple through the economy in ways that spending on wars cannot.
Much of this spending is on things that the private sector will not or cannot do, because it’s on things that aren’t profitable – like roads and mass transit, or retrofitting buildings for greater energy efficiency. The return on investment may be too risky, or too many years away.
And thanks to “shareholder value theory” popularized by Milton Friedman, U.S. corporations have become risk-averse – more interested in stock market manipulations than in long-term investment.
Contrary to critics, government spending doesn’t drive out private spending. Instead, such spending creates opportunities for new investment by the private sector.
Concord Monitor
How can America pay for things the people want? With ease.
Bruce Currie
27 comments:
Inflation is never a concern, so long as sufficient goods and services are available to purchase with the money spent into the economy. Bruce Currie
But:
1) The economy runs off deposits at the government privileged usury cartel, "the banks", and not on fiat itself except for grubby "cash", physical fiat.
2) The banks themselves may create deposits and in vast amounts due to government privilege.
3) Thus the banks and the so-called "credit worthy" compete for goods and services with the monetary sovereign - but not for the common welfare but for their own private welfare.
4) Thus the monetary sovereign is limited in what it may spend for the common welfare by what banks and the so-called "credit worthy" spend for private interests for a given amount of price inflation.
5) MMT thus has a relatively unknown pro-bank agenda.
[addendum]
5) follows from 4.5) which I now include:
4.5) Warren Mosler, one of the co-founders of MMT and a banker, would greatly increase privileges for the banks.
“When Dick Cheney famously said that Ronald Reagan proved that ‘deficits don’t matter,’ he was right – though for the wrong reason.”
Cheney was correct on this, period. There was no “wrong reason.”
Historical trivia . . .
The US government ran budget surpluses for the last four years of Clinton’s presidency, causing a severe recession. When W. Bush took office, Bush wanted to dramatically increase federal spending for his War Of Terror, but his Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill objected, saying that deficit spending would destroy America.
Cheney told O’Neill, “You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.”
Still O’Neill objected. He lasted 11 months in office until W. Bush fired him in Dec 2002. Three months later the USA invaded Iraq.
Federal spending on war, weapons makers, and support for Israel has been increasing ever since. And no one screams, "Zimbabwe!" or "How will you pay for it?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Incidentally the Concord Monitor is owned by Newspapers of New England, Inc. which publishes only nine daily and weekly newspapers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Concord NH is itself a small town of about 42,600 people. It is unlikely that we would see an editorial like this in the LA Times or New York Times, or Washington Post, all of which are dedicated to lying about economics.
@AA. Yeah bank privileges are bad. Duh. That is a matter of policy that you should advocate for. Bashing MMT for bank privileges is moronic because:
1) current policies have not set with any understanding of MMT (or conversely, have been set with a full understanding of MMT AND the intention of hiding it for the purpose of manipulation)
and
2) MMT is not a set of polices but rather the structural framework of economics.
As such you cannot logically attribute any policies to MMT. So stop associating the fundamental description of economic processes (MMT) with polices (legislation) that ignores it.
Then why do MMT advocates fight tooth and nail for a JG? And insist on its necessity?
Likewise with bank privileges, since the major MMT advocates also intend to control price inflation by limiting bank loans to things that lower prices such as automating jobs away with what is, in essence, the workers' own stolen purchasing power.
And that's what the JG is for - for the workers they intend to dis-employ with automation.
”JG? And insist on its necessity?”
If you don’t know that by now then you have some reading to do instead of trolling every thread and ascribe things to “MMT” and your twisted version of “JG”.
Something tells me though that you will continue to do the same things over and over again and not ever listen to any counter arguments.
How counterfeiters save America with an extra profit and make WeThePeople pay for it
Comment on Bruce Currie on ‘How can America pay for things the people want? With ease.’
It is a bit silly to ask a counterfeiter How are you going to pay for stuff? ― he will simply point to his brand-new xD-printer. As MMTers are wont to say, governments are not households, i.e. the sovereign money issuer is different from the money user. This, of course, is true but does not go very far. The economic fact of the matter is this.
1. The macroeconomic Profit Law entails Public Deficit = Private Profit.
2. Therefore, the MMT policy of permanent deficit-spending/money-creation is a permanent free lunch for the Oligarchy.
3. The lethal effect of MMT policy is NOT on inflation but on distribution.
4. Fabulous financial wealth is the mirror image of fabulous public debt ($22 trillion).
5. Deficit-spending/money-creation causes a tiny price hike (NO inflation) and thereby current output is redistributed between wage-earners and deficit-spenders. The real wage is reduced depending on the volume of deficit-spending relative to total wage income.
6. In real terms, the wage-earners pay for the stuff the counterfeiters buy. Deficit-spending/money-creation merely substitutes stealth-taxation via the price-mechanism for open taxation via the IRS.
7. Deficit-spending/money-creation reduces the real wage income of the household sector and increases the overall profit of the business sector.
8. Deficit-spending induces interest payments on the public debt. This amounts to income redistribution from WeThePeople to the Oligarchy as long as the debt is rolled over.
9. The MMT policy of permanent deficit-spending/money-creation is ultimately NOT for the benefit of WeThePeople.
10. MMT is political agenda pushing for the Oligarchy in a scientific/social bluff package.#1
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 For the full-spectrum refutation see cross-references MMT
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html
Something tells me though that you will continue to do the same things over and over again and not ever listen to any counter arguments. S400
Actually I'd be happy to hear any counter arguments from you.
Exactly where does MMT state that its goal is to preserve bank privileges? Where does MMT state that JG is its goal?
Time to get with it it, the discussions are 1) does MMT accurately define the structural framework of economics (answer: yes), and 2) what kind of polices should we have with the understanding that MMT is the structural framework.
Eliminate bank privileges? Yes. Got anything else? Apparently not. So you make up MMT "policy" where none exists. Go fly a kite.
Here ya go:
Warren Mosler himself: http://moslereconomics.com/2009/09/16/proposals-for-the-banking-system-treasury-fed-and-fdic-draft/
“Actually I'd be happy to hear any counter arguments from you.“
No you won’t. You never listen to anybody’s argument unless it rubs your spine. That’s why you are able to live with yourself saying the same things over and over again, year after year.
If you can refute me in public here then, whether I listen or not, others can be persuaded.
Otherwise, quit complaining or you are the troll.
Andrew Anderson:Then why do MMT advocates fight tooth and nail for a JG? And insist on its necessity?
And that's what the JG is for - for the workers they intend to dis-employ with automation.
MMTers insist on the necessity of a JG in any society that uses money. Money causes unemployment. Unemployment is unjust, cruel and insane. The JG eliminates this insanely cruel injustice and nothing else can. It has nothing to do with automation.
You claim to be a Christian, but do you listen to MMT advocate Jesus fighting tooth and nail for a JG and insisting on its necessity?
How much do you abhor the justice of the JG? Suppose you could get all your reforms with a snap of the fingers. But only if there was a JG, too.
Would you go for that?
Unemployment is unjust, cruel and insane. The JG eliminates this insanely cruel injustice and nothing else can. Calgacus [bold added]
Self employment can, including farming. And that and worker-owned co-opts would be the norm except for government privileges for private credit creation which preclude any need to share equity with workers.
And that employment is a lot more satisfying than either wage slavery to the private sector or wage slavery to government.
No, these things cannot. Those things are saying the society is not using money. You are ignoring the hypothesis, that we are in a society that uses money. Listen to Jesus on what should be done then.
And I would be pleased to get an answer to my last question.
In addition, Jesus was familiar with "self-employment" (carpentry), self-sufficient agriculture and worker-coops (religious communities like the Essenes). But he knew they weren't enough.
The point is that a society is among other things- one big "workers' co-op". What would one call a workers' co-op that forcibly prevented its ready, willing and able members from doing necessary, useful work and then punished them for being idle? And worked others without mercy for hardly more reward. All because of what is happening in a dice game played by the co-op's Big Shots, or because the Big Shots forgot to post a work schedule. Bonkers, Cuckoo, Nuts etc is what you would call it. That's what a monetary society / a worker's co-op without a Job Guarantee should be called.
All that a JG is, is NOT preventing people from working to their own and communal benefit. The hard part is making people understand how insane, unnatural and counterintuitive the idea of not having a JG is. Peoples in "primitive" societies, gift economies always have a JG. Takes a lot of "development" and "education" to make people act in as illogical way as we do. Takes work to see that deep down, we are still living in a gift economy, but don't understand it as well as "primitive" peoples understood theirs.
Those things are saying the society is not using money. Calgacus
No they are not saying that! Farmers sell their crops for money and buy supplies with money.
And while co-opts might use their common stock as private money, they'd still need good ole fiat to pay taxes.
Are you saying we can't have money without government privileged banks? But that ignores fiat and common stock, a for-private-use-only money form that shares wealth and power rather than consolidate them.
@AA, that's Mosler's policy proposal, not the foundation of MMT. For that I refer you to Stephanie Kelton.
You need to learn the difference between policy (legislation) and the structural framework (economic theory) on which policy is based. In the meantime go debate Mosler, with my blessing. But stop assuming that he is the definition of MMT, or that his policy proposals are endorsed by anyone other than banksters and their cohorts.
not the foundation of MMT. For that I refer you to Stephanie Kelton. Noah Way
A specific link, please.
But even if Ms Kelton would not specifically grant new privileges to the banks, using taxation to control price inflation is to do so on the backs of workers since the rich won't be taxed enough to make a dent in their consumption while workers will have to cope with both a higher cost of living AND higher taxes.
And since Federal taxation removes reserves from the banking system, the Supplemental Leverage Ratio of banks will improve meaning they can create even more new deposits via "lending" to the rich, the so-called "credit worthy", than were taxed away from workers.
So yeah, let's tax workers so the banks and the rich can automate their jobs away without compensation even quicker. /sarc
Then how is price inflation to be controlled if not by taxation?
By de-privileging the banks is how since then they won't find it nearly so safe to create new deposits that compete with sovereign spending for goods and services.
Not only that, but the net destruction of deposits created by bank lending as existing bank loans are repaid without new loans to replace them all would create a huge deflationary hole that massive sovereign spending for the general welfare could fill without price inflation.
Calgacus
You say: “Money causes unemployment. Unemployment is unjust, cruel and insane. The JG eliminates this insanely cruel injustice and nothing else can.” and “You claim to be a Christian, but do you listen to MMT advocate Jesus fighting tooth and nail for a JG and insisting on its necessity?”
You are clearly out of economics (understood as science) and in the preacher business. The First Commandment of Science is: Do not moralize!#1, #2
Your assertion: “Money causes unemployment” is provably false. Your Money Theory is just as crappy as your Employment Theory.#3
To invoke Jesus in an economic argument is the unassailable proof that you are either stupid or corrupt or both.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 The moralizing economist is not a good guy but a fake scientist
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-moralizing-economist-is-not-good.html
#2 Economics for believers
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/01/economics-for-believers.html
#3 Full employment through the price mechanism
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/11/full-employment-through-price-mechanism.html
AA: Are you saying we can't have money without government privileged banks?
Of course not. Ignore the damn banks. Abolish them. This is more basic than banking.
To the extent a society is doing those other things above, it is not using money. I'm only looking at the actual money usage, state fiat money usage. Treat each farm family or co-op as one unit. In earliest ancient Egypt, the whole village was one such unit. The point is something incredibly simple and basic, far more simple and basic than stocks and bonds and banks.
But that ignores fiat and common stock, a for-private-use-only money form that shares wealth and power rather than consolidate them.
Common stock isn't used and can't really be used as money. But forget it; like bank money, it is irrelevant.
But you do mention fiat money and taxes. That is what I am talking about.
If there is fiat money and taxes then there will be unemployment = people seeking money to pay their taxes with. It is insane to demand tax payments without giving people a way to earn money to pay taxes with, and in a highly monetized economy, buy practically anything needed.
It is fascistic to not allow them to earn money when they want it, not when some fascist want to dole it out to them. NOT having a JG is the control freak option. Having a JG is necessary for freedom in a money economy. And it is awfully stupid to just give people "money" and then demand the same money right back. Why bother?
So without further state action, there is always going to be some unemployment, and as Jesus says, the last should be first. The last employed people are the ones most important to employ - their jobs should be guaranteed.
@Calgacus,
What you would guarantee is wage-slavery to government, except for the rich, and this will be increasingly preposterous as automation and AI continue to eliminate jobs.
Why not advocate for asset redistribution instead? After all, theft requires restitution and the general population has been systematically stolen from.
Then there is no dependence on government and a JG is just as much dependence on government as a Citizen's Dividend and arguably more so since ALL fiat creation beyond that created by deficit spending for the general welfare should be via equal fiat distributions to all citizens to avoid violating equal protection under the law.
But if you're not for justice then it's coming anyway so why advocate for anything else?
What you would guarantee is wage-slavery to government, except for the rich, and this will be increasingly preposterous as automation and AI continue to eliminate jobs.
The effect of automation would ideally be to shrink the monetary economy. What we are talking about is when there still is a fiat-money based economy as now. When the government makes demands of the people. Making impossible to satisfy demands (your proposals without JG) is much more slavery than giving people a way to satisfy the demands (the JG).
You are talking here as the neoclassicals do. As if there were some magical economy and "natural" "jobs" floating in air, independent of, outside of the human decisions of the government and others. There isn't, never was, never could be. All jobs are government jobs. Depriving "the last" of them is monstrous injustice. What is "the government" but ourselves? Jesus & I are advocating slavery - to our better natures.
Why not advocate for asset redistribution instead? After all, theft requires restitution and the general population has been systematically stolen from.
Fine. What happens after? That's what I'm talking about. Your system would perpetuate theft. For the umpteenth time, what I am advocating, what Jesus advocated is the restitution needed for a major defect in many proposals, including yours. I have been waiting for years for you to answer.
ALL fiat creation beyond that created by deficit spending for the general welfare should be via equal fiat distributions to all citizens to avoid violating equal protection under the law.
A JG is (deficit usually) spending for the general welfare. The most logically and morally necessary spending of all. Does this mean you accept it?
But if you're not for justice then it's coming anyway so why advocate for anything else?
Your proposals without a Job Guarantee are not "justice". They are unjust. Again, if you could get everything else you wanted, even your citizen's dividend and equal fiat distributions, except that there would have to be a job guarantee, would you go for that? I mean, how could it hurt? Why oppose it? Do your other proposals mean so little to you?
All jobs are government jobs. Calgacus
I should catalog all the ludicrous things you say, Calgacus.
But as a matter of fact, the Hebrews lived for 400 or so years without a king with only judges to settle disputes between roughly equal landowners. And yes, there were still jobs, largely for non-Hebrews as wage labor.
So get your facts straight. And seriously consider your sanity, I suggest.
As for a JG, people with the means to work for themselves such as land and their fair share of what the public has, in actuality, financed via government privileged banks, i.e. a Citizen's Dividend and/or asset distribution, can still voluntarily work for others so what's the need for a JG?
As for a JG, people with the means to work for themselves such as land and their fair share of what the public has, in actuality, financed via government privileged banks, i.e. a Citizen's Dividend and/or asset distribution, can still voluntarily work for others so what's the need for a JG?
The last is false - They can't voluntarily work for others if the others aren't hiring! The others don't have an infinite supply of base money. Only the government does. The government ultimately controls the money that is needed to employ people - that is one reason all jobs are government jobs.
That there will always be people - might be you or me - waiting in the marketplace for work - is universal experience in every monetary economy.
I really would appreciate if you would answer the question
Which is more important?
(a) Everything you say you want>
(b) NOT having the JG.
It seems you want the banks to keep ripping people off, if you oppose them less than you oppose the JG.
They can't voluntarily work for others if the others aren't hiring! Calgacus
Do you not know that volunteer work is done FOR FREE? Without wages?
That's what people of independent means can do; they can GIVE their labor away if they so desire.
But what if the men in the marketplace want to be paid for their work? Why not you go along with Jesus and just give them jobs? Jesus understood that this was necessary - your plan or anybody else's plan to make everyone "people of independent means" cannot work and never has.
Again, I would be pleased if you answered my question, which I have asked many times in this thread. I mean, the natural conclusion from not answering is that you think the most important thing of all is to not have a JG, that it is better for the banks to rip off people than for the state to provide employment through a Job Guarantee.
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