I am in London today (Monday) and have two events. First, I am doing a ‘Train the Trainers’ workshop for – The Gower Initiative for Modern Monetary Studies – where we will work through some techniques and concepts to help activists educate others about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Second, I am meeting with some Labour Party Members of Parliament who are keen to learn more about MMT and incorporate its insights into their political work. Get the drift? People wanting to learn and setting up pathways where that learning can occur. Which means they take advantage of access to one of the founders of MMT to find out what it is about, rather than adopt a superficial version of our work, which they might have heard about when Joe told Aalia, who had picked it up from Eddie, who had been having a conversation with Robyn about something that Abdul had told Amelia, who had read it in some Tweet that was reporting an article written by Kenneth ‘Mr False Spreadsheet’ Rogoff criticising MMT. That is the way to learn.
Many of the outspoken MMT critics on the so-called Left (although their self-selection in that side of the spectrum is debatable) keep hammering away with misnomers and outright lies but none of them attended any of the many events that we have been speaking at in the last week in Britain.
It is also a pity that journalists who have jumped on the ‘we hate the MMT’ train don’t spend at least a few seconds conducting research to see if the MMT experts might have said or have written something about the topic they were inferring MMT was related to....Concept assassination.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Inflation hysteria as central bankers discuss yield curve control
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Bill Mitchell at the end of his first para refers to "Kenneth ‘Mr False Spreadsheet’ Rogoff".
ReplyDeleteBill does have a way with words....:-)
Economics debate ― just another variant of hardcore wrestling
ReplyDeleteComment on Bill Mitchell on ‘Inflation hysteria as central bankers discuss yield curve control’
“Hardcore wrestling (also known as Garbage Wrestling) is a form of professional wrestling that eschews traditional concepts of match rules in favor of matches that take place in unusual environments, using foreign objects that are not normally permitted. … The term garbage wrestling is attributed to Japanese wrestler Giant Baba who used it originally to describe a style of wrestling which required little wrestling athletic ability and often involved no wrestling at all, which is rather common in much of hardcore wrestling.”#1
This is an accurate description of the degenerate state of economics.
Economics defines itself as science and, by consequence, economics debates are supposed to have scientific content and form. It is well-known what this entails: “And a critical discussion is well-conducted if it is entirely devoted to one aim: to find a flaw in the claim that a certain theory presents a solution to a certain problem.” and “Thus critical discussion is essentially a comparison of the merits and demerits of two or more theories (usually more than two). . . . The chief demerit is inconsistency, including inconsistency with the results of experiments that a competing theory can explain.” (Popper)
The most striking feature of economics is schizophrenia: there is political economics and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed. Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/formally inconsistent.
As a consequence, economics debates are not much more than political hardcore wrestling.#3, #4
Bill Mitchell complains: “It is also a pity that journalists who have jumped on the ‘we hate the MMT’ train don’t spend at least a few seconds conducting research to see if the MMT experts might have said or have written something about the topic they were inferring MMT was related to.” and “I did this search in Google: Zimbabwe+MMT.” and “Surrounding those entries are the hysterical criticisms of MMT, none of which … goes anywhere near to understanding what actually happpening as historical fact in Zimbabwe that set up the conditions for the hyperinflationary episode. They all just repeat the lie that the hyperinflation was caused by out-of-control fiscal defcits and wrongly associate MMT with the policies that Robert Mugable followed.”
All this is accurate, of course. What is false is the unspoken message that economics debates are about establishing the scientific truth of the point at issue. They are NOT for the simple reason that economics is not science but political agenda pushing.#5, #6
See part 2
Part 2
ReplyDeleteAcademic MMTers, like their mainstream colleagues, are not legitimate members of the scientific community because they are not really committed to scientific standards and ethics. MMT is provably false.#7 MMT policy guidance has NO sound scientific foundations. MMTers deceive the general public by claiming that MMT policy is for the benefit of WeThePeople. Like mainstreamers, MMTers ignore refutation and use all features of social media to suppress substantive critique. What they are debating instead with great enthusiasm is easy to refute slogans like ‘Zimbabwe’ which are thrown in by journalists who bear the sign of idiocy on their foreheads.
There is no such thing as a scientific debate in economics because economics is fake science. MMTers, clearly, are not scientists but agenda pushers for the Oligarchy.#7
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Fandom Hardcore wrestling
https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Hardcore_wrestling
#2 Economics a science? Surely you are joking, Mr. Cochrane
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/05/economics-science-surely-you-are-joking.html
#3 MMT vs Mainstream: examining proto-scientific garbage in detail
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/04/mmt-vs-mainstream-examining-proto.html
#4 Economics ― nothing but claptrap, twaddle, drivel, slip-slop, wish-wash, waffle, and proto-scientific garbage
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/05/economics-nothing-but-claptrap-twaddle.html
#5 Economics: The greatest scientific hoax in modern times
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/05/economics-greatest-scientific-hoax-in.html
#6 Economists: “a bevy of camp-following whores”
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/03/economists-bevy-of-camp-following-whores.html
#7 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT
http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html