Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Bill Mitchell — Tax the rich to counter carbon emissions not to get their money

Tax the rich! That has become a misguided progressive Left mantra. The intention is to maintain public services including health, education and income support which are core issues for progressives. But then the neoliberal indoctrination that has infested this group intervenes. They seem to think the government needs the money of those with lots of it before it can provide essential and progressive public services and fight the climate emergency. They support political parties that set as their primary macroeconomic target the achievement of a bigger fiscal surplus than the conservatives at a time when there are more than 13.5 per cent of available and willing labour resources not working (either unemployed or underemployed) and households are carrying record levels of (unsustainable) debt. And these parties keep losing elections – it is a global phenomena, most recently observed in Britain. One of the reasons we need to tax the rich is to deal with their (grossly) disproportionate impact on carbon emissions. That is one of many reasons. But you should never include among those reasons a need by government for their cash in order to facilitate spending. Any progressive who articulates that argument is just reiterating neoliberal frames....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Tax the rich to counter carbon emissions not to get their money
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

2 comments:

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Get it: Progressives don’t tax the rich
Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘Tax the rich to counter carbon emissions not to get their money’#1

Economics is NOT a science but agenda-pushing for the Oligarchy. Academic economists are NOT scientists but useful idiots. This is obvious for orthodox/mainstream folks like Paul Krugman who is on the payroll of The New York Times.#2 But it holds also for the heterodox/pluralistic folks who present themselves all over the social media as anti-oligarchic fighters for WeThePeople.

In order to verify this for MMT, in particular, it is sufficient to look at the recent speaking tours of Bill Mitchell and Stephanie Kelton.#3 MMTers do NOT what scientists are supposed to do but what propaganda agents are supposed to do.

MMTers push the Oligarchy’s agenda but can, of course, not say so openly. They present themselves as the good guys, as Progressives who hate and fight the evil of neoliberalism wherever it raises its head and they are among the front-runners of every social movement for the betterment and salvation of humanity.#4

It is pretty obvious that among MMT’s political duties is to try to capture and derail genuine grassroots movements.#5

Where MMT’s true colors become clearly visible is the question of taxation. All MMT’s policy guidance boils ultimately down to deficit-spending/money-creation. Proper economic analysis shows that deficit-spending/money-creation is ultimately to the advantage of the Oligarchy and to the disadvantage of WeThePeople.

The public deficit is in the elementary case defined as D≡G−T and it is equal to macroeconomic profit Q. Because of this, MMTers fight fiercely against budget balancers like Corbyn’s British Labour or the Swabian Housewife.

MMTers always argue that taxes are not a necessary prerequisite for spending because the government is the currency issuer. That is technically correct but does NOT economically justify deficit-spending/money-creation.#6 However small, there must be taxation because this is what gives the currency value in the MMT world. So T is always greater than zero.

Now, one would expect that, if taxation is necessary, a progressive MMTer would argue to tax the rich. This is NOT the case. MMTers argue consistently AGAINST taxing the rich’s income.#7 You cannot be more explicit than the MMT loudspeaker Bill Mitchell.

• “Tax the rich! That has become a misguided progressive Left mantra.”
• “That is one of many reasons [to tax the rich]. But you should never include among those reasons a need by government for their cash in order to facilitate spending. Any progressive who articulates that argument is just reiterating neoliberal frames.”
• “The answer is that we need to tax the rich more not because we want the government to get their money in order to spend more, but, rather, to stop the rich using it.”
• “To illustrate the confusion these groups elicit, this same group has signed up to another so-called progressive group and they advocate increasing taxes on higher income groups to pay for the services we deserve. Meanwhile, in another guise, they hold themselves out as promoting MMT.”

Taxing the rich has always been the instinctive central political plank of genuine anti-Oligarchic movements. Needless to emphasize that fake Progressives are strictly against it: “Any progressive who articulates that argument is just reiterating neoliberal frames.” This is the actual Orwellian newspeak of stupid/corrupt academic economists.#8

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

References
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/get-it-progressives-dont-tax-rich.html

S400 said...

“Get it: Progressives don’t tax the rich
Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘Tax the rich to counter carbon emissions not to get their money’#1“

Egghead don’t get it...