An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
"Actually an excessive govt deficit COULD raise interest rates. That would happen if govt borrowed and spent MORE THAN was needed to bring about full employment. That would tend to cause excess inflation, in which case the central bank would raise interest rates so as clamp down on the inflation."
I can't remember if Stephanie Kelton made the latter point in her book. I suspect she didn't. But I'm happy to be corrected there.
The power to change interest rates given to the central bank comes from the same place as the power to spend money given to the government.
It would make little sense giving one part of government the power to stimulate discretionarily and another part to depress discretionarily.
The concept of central banks having power over government is rejected by MMT, and the interest rate is generally locked off at zero and the central bank wonks made redundant. Plus, of course for it to be MMT, rather than just Keynesian pump priming, the "deficit" is nothing more than the spending necessary to operate the Job Guarantee. Everything else discretional is then straightforward tax and spend
MMT describes the way the system works and includes only one policy proposal -- the job guarantee. Individual MMT proponents have policy recommendations that derive from their understanding of the economy based on MMT. But those policy proposals are not integral to MMT and are open to debate by MMT adherents.
There is a difference between a theory and a description. MMT describes how the financial system works. It's hated because it simply summarizes what professional economists obfuscate and confuse. Read any Paul Krugman column where he invokes the IS-LM. He usually prefaces said column by saying it's for nerds, as if he's describing particle physics and not the everyday practices of businesses, governments, consumers, and workers.
AXEC's claim that if paying down the debt is needed, the burden is necessarily carried by ordinary people, not the Oligarchs is pure nonsense. Governments in the future will have just as much choice as they do now on whether to load tax increases on the rich or poor.
Perhaps so but the stubborn, fanatical defense of a Job Guarantee even in the face of MMT compatible alternatives has only recently become apparent.
There aren't any MMT compatible alternatives. The job guarantee is an integral part of a just economy, for which there is no replacement, as many have understood since forever. If people live in a society, they cooperate. If people want the fruits of that cooperation, they need to contribute to it. Preventing some from cooperating and sharing in its fruits when they freely want to is sheer lunacy - but that is what "not having a job guarantee" means.
But God is not mocked and I expect substitutes for justice shall end up on the ash heap of history.
An epitaph more suitable to what you propose putting in place of justice. I'm sorry, but your crusade is against justice. If you could bring yourself to think about the parts of the Christian bible you avert your eyes from, that might change.
I recommend the same for Marxists and their bible, Marx's works.
AA: You seem to want to have money in the economy, but not a job guarantee. That is always insane, unjust and evil as I explained (following Jesus, Shakespeare, Tolstoy etc etc.) All human societies have similar economic mechanisms. Human economies are all Gift / Credit economies. Nobody has ever conceived of a different plan. Whenever someone does some work for someone else, for society he has given them a Gift. This gives him Credit, merits a reciprocating Gift the other way. In gift economies, people work hard to be the gift-giver, not the reverse. The "Big Men" rather than the gift-receivers, the "rubbish men".
Refusing a gift is a deadly insult, a statement that you are not part of society, but an enemy. But that is all that a Job Guarantee worker is doing - giving society a gift, and deserving a return, a wage - as a matter of right, because he is subsidizing society, not the reverse, as crackpot economics has it.
So your proposals say that we should treat ordinary people like you or me as enemies of society by refusing their gifts. Thus putting them in impossible situations, making their survival difficult. It sabotages both society and their lives. The one thing it does do is keep the current aristocrats on top, gives them a stranglehold on the whole society, and that is what the defective, in effect pro-slavery ideas you push would do.
Don't you think your references to the bible would be more serious if you could ever discuss parts that contradict you? Rather than averting your eyes, ending discussion. Just even writing the words, "Matthew 20" could be a start toward ending the crusade against justice.
Matt:Liberal Arts education trains to only identify data supporting your Theory...
This is of course not true. It's pretty much the opposite of the ideal of education, liberal arts or not. There isn't any such division in thinking and education between liberal arts and sciences. This wacky crusade against Liberal Arts is just as silly and anti-scientific as AA's.
Of course there is a lot of crap in the Liberal Arts. There's a lot of crap in the sciences too. There's a lot of crap everywhere. As I have said often, basically all my formal training - both as a student or a teacher - is STEM.
You do the same thing all the time... Well then criticize me when I do. I plead not guilty.
Peter Pan: "Justice" is now an integral part of MMT...
Of course. MMT studies "money". And "money", being credit/debt/promise - and nothing else - is a purely moral, ethical concept. And morality and justice etc are not concepts which can be separated from each other.
And morality and justice etc are not concepts which can be separated from each other.
Like when people were drawn and quartered in public? So very moral, wasn't it?
Our conception of "justice" is irrational, changes over time, and is often situational.
Money is a transactional tool. "Justice" need not enter the picture.
As Marx observed, money can be modified to suit the needs of a socialist economy. Is anyone discussing the idea of changing the way money functions? Perhaps give it an expiry date?
When I write that justice is a part of MMT, I'm referring to the job guarantee. I'm referring to the notion of a JG as a mechanism to deliver justice. It's not enough that is provides full employment, it has to be virtuous.
Money is a transactional tool. "Justice" need not enter the picture. Justice, morality etc is always there. Don't blind yourself to the obvious. If I forged checks on your bank account or picked your pocket or cheated you in a transaction you wouldn't complain, ask for justice from a judge etc? I doubt it. This is like saying your eyes have nothing to do with your seeing, because you've never seen them. (only their reflections in a mirror). Money and finance etc is all about justice and morality. People twisting them to serve their own ends is beside the point.
Twentieth century philosophy is / was so bad, that it succeeded in educating ordinary people to not understand their own language. I don't think any child anywhere could balk at my statement that morality and justice are inseparable. Disagreeing is like the way people used to pretend they did "value-free" economics or social science or whatnot. Hardly anybody still talks like that. People have rediscovered what everybody in history except in the last century odd always knew - the values are always there in the work, whether stated or not. It's better to say what they are and how they underly what you say than make a ridiculous pretense.
It's not enough that is provides full employment, it has to be virtuous.
That sentence is like "it's not enough that MMTers write books and words, they have to write sentences." These things are inseparable. To speak of one is to speak of the others. Why on earth should full employment be provided, be a goal, if it weren't a felt moral necessity, a dictate of justice, something inherent in the concept of money and economics? A monetary economy without guaranteed jobs is a Charles Manson level crazy idea. Plenty of very famous people who are remarkably little quoted- on this said so. Not even quoted by the MMTers, who make baroquely overcomplicated arguments to say the same thing with 100 times as many words. I've gotta write a book on it. :-) I'd walk anyone through their logic, but one has to listen to understand. This crazy fantasy that "money" is NOT a purely moral, ethical concept, applying some idea of justice, seems to be one reason that keeps people from listening and understanding the obvious. As soon as you understand "Money is credit and nothing but credit", all the rest follows. Credit, debt, obligation are all synonyms, all one moral, ethical whatever concept. Then complete the syllogism.
Is anyone discussing the idea of changing the way money functions?
Yes. There are these people called MMTers, who have synthesized a dandy theory, plagiarizing all the good stuff discovered over the ages, and getting rid of the far larger quantity of accumulated crap. But beyond this point, asking to change the way "money" aka "negotiable credit", functions is like asking the concept of "goal" or the concept of "concept" to change its functioning. Huh! What the hell does that mean?
Perhaps give it an expiry date? Why would such a gimmick - intended to perpetuate today's capitalism - be a good thing? Money is a promise and by the nature of things, promises are sometimes broken but rarely kept to an excessive extent. The expiry date, the inflation is built in. All it would do is rob the poor suckers with the expiring money and subsidize the rich, who would have their own monies. That's how chronic inflation works in Latin America. The MMT, primitive tribal, Jesus Christ, J. G. Fichte, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Keynes answer to the trivial problem caused by saving is much better.
Marx himself wrote the same sort of stuff sometimes, infected by the growing positivism and amnesia of his age - which as I note above is clearly dying in ours, thank God and his two sons Jesus & Karl. When he or Engels wrote against cant and hypocrisy and bourgeois morality and moralizing, he sometimes used too wide a brush, writing as if against the very concepts of justice and morality - and thus veering into self-contradictory gibberish. But like you with drawing and quartering, when he wrote against the death penalty for picking up fallen pieces of wood, what could have been the concern besides - morality and justice?
If I forged checks on your bank account or picked your pocket or cheated you in a transaction you wouldn't complain, ask for justice from a judge etc?
If I had the money to hire a lawyer, I might pursue "justice" through the legal system. If I don't have money, or I'm the victim of a violent crime, my options are very limited. This is by design.
Twentieth century philosophy is / was so bad, that it succeeded in educating ordinary people to not understand their own language. I don't think any child anywhere could balk at my statement that morality and justice are inseparable.
Morality is culturally determined. Justice is supposed to be a higher, more universal ideal. As our species is rather childlike, it may never discover what justice is, or be capable of applying it.
Disagreeing is like the way people used to pretend they did "value-free" economics or social science or whatnot. Hardly anybody still talks like that.
Nobody does value-free economics. They always spin narratives, such as the claim that wealth inequality is the natural outcome of a meritocracy. It is BS when they do it, and it is BS when you do it.
People have rediscovered what everybody in history except in the last century odd always knew - the values are always there in the work, whether stated or not. It's better to say what they are and how they underly what you say than make a ridiculous pretense.
If you can read and understand the civil/criminal codes of your jurisdiction, then you can infer a code of conduct. Most people have to hire an expert, to decipher and interpret that "code". The underlying framework for morality/justice is not written into the law, it is assumed.
The Western concept of justice, as expressed by adversarial justice systems, is a farce. In terms of criminal law, I fail to see how it is an improvement over the old system of blood feuds. As an institution, the courts have shown themselves to be inconsistent (too lenient, too harsh) and corrupt.
Why on earth should full employment be provided, be a goal, if it weren't a felt moral necessity, a dictate of justice, something inherent in the concept of money and economics?
It would help some people materially. No need to wax poetic about it, the system we live in is based on people obtaining income. Life outcomes are tied to income.
A monetary economy without guaranteed jobs is a Charles Manson level crazy idea. Plenty of very famous people who are remarkably little quoted- on this said so. Not even quoted by the MMTers, who make baroquely overcomplicated arguments to say the same thing with 100 times as many words. I've gotta write a book on it. :-)
I agree, but many words have been spun into narratives that support the existence of unemployment. They are incompatible with our values, so they are crazy?
I'd walk anyone through their logic, but one has to listen to understand. This crazy fantasy that "money" is NOT a purely moral, ethical concept, applying some idea of justice, seems to be one reason that keeps people from listening and understanding the obvious. As soon as you understand "Money is credit and nothing but credit", all the rest follows. Credit, debt, obligation are all synonyms, all one moral, ethical whatever concept. Then complete the syllogism.
Money shouldn't be perceived as anything other than a tool, and a convenience. We don't have any issues with people believing that carpentry tools are manifestations of moral and ethical concepts.
Policy is another story. Policy infers an underlying set of values. I support a JG because I believe it would help me. It would help the unemployed. That doesn't mean I agree with its underlying values, or that it is virtuous. Those arguments are best left to idealists and philosophers.
Why would such a gimmick - intended to perpetuate today's capitalism - be a good thing?
Money with an expiry date might negate the need for savings. You work, you get income, you spend that income before it expires. Money becomes a perishable item, like food. Marx also tied these vouchers to the individual who earned them. They were not exchangeable.
The Technocracy movement in the 1930s proposed a similar concept under the guise of energy vouchers.
The implications for capitalism are too long to get into. Suffice to say that these ideas are intended to bring about a new system of production.
30 comments:
I left a comment saying:
"Actually an excessive govt deficit COULD raise interest rates. That would happen if govt borrowed and spent MORE THAN was needed to bring about full employment. That would tend to cause excess inflation, in which case the central bank would raise interest rates so as clamp down on the inflation."
I can't remember if Stephanie Kelton made the latter point in her book. I suspect she didn't. But I'm happy to be corrected there.
Sure, but what about debunking the myth of American children being sodomized in underground tunnels in blue states by left wing socialist pedophiles?
If only I were making this crazy stuff up :(
https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html
The power to change interest rates given to the central bank comes from the same place as the power to spend money given to the government.
It would make little sense giving one part of government the power to stimulate discretionarily and another part to depress discretionarily.
The concept of central banks having power over government is rejected by MMT, and the interest rate is generally locked off at zero and the central bank wonks made redundant. Plus, of course for it to be MMT, rather than just Keynesian pump priming, the "deficit" is nothing more than the spending necessary to operate the Job Guarantee. Everything else discretional is then straightforward tax and spend
Everything else discretional is then straightforward tax and spend NeilW
More accurately, spend and tax the non-rich should price inflation become excessive.
And btw, paying at least some people to waste their time could easily cause price inflation.
It would make little sense giving one part of government the power to stimulate discretionarily and another part to depress discretionarily. NeilW
Instead, the Central Bank MUST (per Warren Mosler):
1) provide unlimited, unsecured loans to banks at ZERO percent interest.
2) provide unlimited guarantees for bank deposits FOR FREE.
It seems the discretion is being transferred to private banks with the Central Bank as their supine servant.
Lerner’s Lie
“… if our children or grandchildren repay some of the national debt these payments will be made to our children or grandchildren and to nobody else.”
No, rather the grandchildren of WeThePeople will pay to the grandchildren of the Oligarchy.#1, #2
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump and exploding profit
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/12/keynes-lerner-mmt-trump-and-exploding.html
#2 Stephanie Kelton sells children into debt slavery
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/06/stephanie-kelton-sells-children-into.html
Egmont,
Amen and you should post your comment at Lar's site.
Someone said "Amen" to Egmont. That's gotta be a first.(c:
MMT has certainly stood the test of time in the 10 years I've been a follower/believer -- i.e. the "QE" era.
The "Amen" was to:
Lerner’s Lie
“… if our children or grandchildren repay some of the national debt these payments will be made to our children or grandchildren and to nobody else.”
No, rather the grandchildren of WeThePeople will pay to the grandchildren of the Oligarchy.
To the credit of the MMT School they would eliminate positive interest/yields on the inherently risk-free debt of monetary sovereigns.
Not to say the MMT School does not favor OTHER welfare for the banks, and by extension, for the rich, the most so-called "credit worthy."
MMT describes the way the system works and includes only one policy proposal -- the job guarantee. Individual MMT proponents have policy recommendations that derive from their understanding of the economy based on MMT. But those policy proposals are not integral to MMT and are open to debate by MMT adherents.
I watched a video of Yanis Varoufakis yesterday -- Something Remarkable Just Happened This August: How the Pandemic Has Sped Up the Passage to Postcapitalism in which he repeatedly describes MMT as a "theory". I think he should rather have said, "MMT is a description of how fiat currency works these days".
It wasn't until recently that even the job guarantee was mentioned as an essential of MMT.
I expect Mosler's proposals, being explicitly pro-bank in some regards, shall eventually follow.
It won't be the first time that Progressives have been gulled by bankers or wanna-bes.
Theory = good
Doctrine = bad
There is a difference between a theory and a description. MMT describes how the financial system works. It's hated because it simply summarizes what professional economists obfuscate and confuse. Read any Paul Krugman column where he invokes the IS-LM. He usually prefaces said column by saying it's for nerds, as if he's describing particle physics and not the everyday practices of businesses, governments, consumers, and workers.
AXEC's claim that if paying down the debt is needed, the burden is necessarily carried by ordinary people, not the Oligarchs is pure nonsense. Governments in the future will have just as much choice as they do now on whether to load tax increases on the rich or poor.
"It wasn't until recently that even the job guarantee was mentioned as an essential of MMT."
It's been core to MMT since day one. The initial discussions from 1997 predate MMT
Governments in the future will have just as much choice as they do now on whether to load tax increases on the rich or poor. Ralph Musgrave
In the event of unacceptable price inflation, it's the non-rich that MUST be taxed to quell it since the rich don't consume enough to matter.
It's been core to MMT since day one. NeilW
Perhaps so but the stubborn, fanatical defense of a Job Guarantee even in the face of MMT compatible alternatives has only recently become apparent.
And why not? A Job Guarantee is a plausible sounding substitute for justice - to go with increased privileges for the usury cartel.
But God is not mocked and I expect substitutes for justice shall end up on the ash heap of history.
Perhaps so but the stubborn, fanatical defense of a Job Guarantee even in the face of MMT compatible alternatives has only recently become apparent.
There aren't any MMT compatible alternatives. The job guarantee is an integral part of a just economy, for which there is no replacement, as many have understood since forever. If people live in a society, they cooperate. If people want the fruits of that cooperation, they need to contribute to it. Preventing some from cooperating and sharing in its fruits when they freely want to is sheer lunacy - but that is what "not having a job guarantee" means.
But God is not mocked and I expect substitutes for justice shall end up on the ash heap of history.
An epitaph more suitable to what you propose putting in place of justice. I'm sorry, but your crusade is against justice. If you could bring yourself to think about the parts of the Christian bible you avert your eyes from, that might change.
I recommend the same for Marxists and their bible, Marx's works.
There aren't any MMT compatible alternatives. The job guarantee is an integral part of a just economy,
Well-fed slavery was integral to the Egyptian economy.
However, God had better plans for the Hebrews, i.e. the Exodus.
But thanks for proving the fanaticism, Calgacus.
And also your ignorance of the Bible.
AA:
You seem to want to have money in the economy, but not a job guarantee. That is always insane, unjust and evil as I explained (following Jesus, Shakespeare, Tolstoy etc etc.) All human societies have similar economic mechanisms. Human economies are all Gift / Credit economies. Nobody has ever conceived of a different plan. Whenever someone does some work for someone else, for society he has given them a Gift. This gives him Credit, merits a reciprocating Gift the other way. In gift economies, people work hard to be the gift-giver, not the reverse. The "Big Men" rather than the gift-receivers, the "rubbish men".
Refusing a gift is a deadly insult, a statement that you are not part of society, but an enemy. But that is all that a Job Guarantee worker is doing - giving society a gift, and deserving a return, a wage - as a matter of right, because he is subsidizing society, not the reverse, as crackpot economics has it.
So your proposals say that we should treat ordinary people like you or me as enemies of society by refusing their gifts. Thus putting them in impossible situations, making their survival difficult. It sabotages both society and their lives. The one thing it does do is keep the current aristocrats on top, gives them a stranglehold on the whole society, and that is what the defective, in effect pro-slavery ideas you push would do.
Don't you think your references to the bible would be more serious if you could ever discuss parts that contradict you? Rather than averting your eyes, ending discussion. Just even writing the words, "Matthew 20" could be a start toward ending the crusade against justice.
“ Don't you think your references to the bible would be more serious if you could ever discuss parts that contradict you?”
Liberal Arts education trains to only identify data supporting your Theory...
You do the same thing all the time...
"Justice" is now an integral part of MMT...
Matt:Liberal Arts education trains to only identify data supporting your Theory...
This is of course not true. It's pretty much the opposite of the ideal of education, liberal arts or not. There isn't any such division in thinking and education between liberal arts and sciences. This wacky crusade against Liberal Arts is just as silly and anti-scientific as AA's.
Of course there is a lot of crap in the Liberal Arts. There's a lot of crap in the sciences too. There's a lot of crap everywhere. As I have said often, basically all my formal training - both as a student or a teacher - is STEM.
You do the same thing all the time...
Well then criticize me when I do. I plead not guilty.
Peter Pan: "Justice" is now an integral part of MMT...
Of course. MMT studies "money". And "money", being credit/debt/promise - and nothing else - is a purely moral, ethical concept. And morality and justice etc are not concepts which can be separated from each other.
And "money", being credit/debt/promise - and nothing else - is a purely moral, ethical concept. Calgacus
The MMT School would INCREASE government privileges for the usury cartel.
But your too busy arguing for wage slavery rather than justice to criticize that?
And you expect to be taken seriously wrt ethics?
And morality and justice etc are not concepts which can be separated from each other.
Like when people were drawn and quartered in public?
So very moral, wasn't it?
Our conception of "justice" is irrational, changes over time, and is often situational.
Money is a transactional tool. "Justice" need not enter the picture.
As Marx observed, money can be modified to suit the needs of a socialist economy.
Is anyone discussing the idea of changing the way money functions?
Perhaps give it an expiry date?
When I write that justice is a part of MMT, I'm referring to the job guarantee. I'm referring to the notion of a JG as a mechanism to deliver justice. It's not enough that is provides full employment, it has to be virtuous.
PP:
(1/2)
Money is a transactional tool. "Justice" need not enter the picture.
Justice, morality etc is always there. Don't blind yourself to the obvious. If I forged checks on your bank account or picked your pocket or cheated you in a transaction you wouldn't complain, ask for justice from a judge etc? I doubt it. This is like saying your eyes have nothing to do with your seeing, because you've never seen them. (only their reflections in a mirror). Money and finance etc is all about justice and morality. People twisting them to serve their own ends is beside the point.
Twentieth century philosophy is / was so bad, that it succeeded in educating ordinary people to not understand their own language. I don't think any child anywhere could balk at my statement that morality and justice are inseparable. Disagreeing is like the way people used to pretend they did "value-free" economics or social science or whatnot. Hardly anybody still talks like that. People have rediscovered what everybody in history except in the last century odd always knew - the values are always there in the work, whether stated or not. It's better to say what they are and how they underly what you say than make a ridiculous pretense.
It's not enough that is provides full employment, it has to be virtuous.
That sentence is like "it's not enough that MMTers write books and words, they have to write sentences." These things are inseparable. To speak of one is to speak of the others.
Why on earth should full employment be provided, be a goal, if it weren't a felt moral necessity, a dictate of justice, something inherent in the concept of money and economics? A monetary economy without guaranteed jobs is a Charles Manson level crazy idea. Plenty of very famous people who are remarkably little quoted- on this said so. Not even quoted by the MMTers, who make baroquely overcomplicated arguments to say the same thing with 100 times as many words. I've gotta write a book on it. :-) I'd walk anyone through their logic, but one has to listen to understand. This crazy fantasy that "money" is NOT a purely moral, ethical concept, applying some idea of justice, seems to be one reason that keeps people from listening and understanding the obvious. As soon as you understand "Money is credit and nothing but credit", all the rest follows. Credit, debt, obligation are all synonyms, all one moral, ethical whatever concept. Then complete the syllogism.
(2/2)
Is anyone discussing the idea of changing the way money functions?
Yes. There are these people called MMTers, who have synthesized a dandy theory, plagiarizing all the good stuff discovered over the ages, and getting rid of the far larger quantity of accumulated crap. But beyond this point, asking to change the way "money" aka "negotiable credit", functions is like asking the concept of "goal" or the concept of "concept" to change its functioning. Huh! What the hell does that mean?
Perhaps give it an expiry date?
Why would such a gimmick - intended to perpetuate today's capitalism - be a good thing? Money is a promise and by the nature of things, promises are sometimes broken but rarely kept to an excessive extent. The expiry date, the inflation is built in. All it would do is rob the poor suckers with the expiring money and subsidize the rich, who would have their own monies. That's how chronic inflation works in Latin America. The MMT, primitive tribal, Jesus Christ, J. G. Fichte, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Keynes answer to the trivial problem caused by saving is much better.
Marx himself wrote the same sort of stuff sometimes, infected by the growing positivism and amnesia of his age - which as I note above is clearly dying in ours, thank God and his two sons Jesus & Karl. When he or Engels wrote against cant and hypocrisy and bourgeois morality and moralizing, he sometimes used too wide a brush, writing as if against the very concepts of justice and morality - and thus veering into self-contradictory gibberish. But like you with drawing and quartering, when he wrote against the death penalty for picking up fallen pieces of wood, what could have been the concern besides - morality and justice?
If I forged checks on your bank account or picked your pocket or cheated you in a transaction you wouldn't complain, ask for justice from a judge etc?
If I had the money to hire a lawyer, I might pursue "justice" through the legal system. If I don't have money, or I'm the victim of a violent crime, my options are very limited. This is by design.
Twentieth century philosophy is / was so bad, that it succeeded in educating ordinary people to not understand their own language. I don't think any child anywhere could balk at my statement that morality and justice are inseparable.
Morality is culturally determined. Justice is supposed to be a higher, more universal ideal. As our species is rather childlike, it may never discover what justice is, or be capable of applying it.
Disagreeing is like the way people used to pretend they did "value-free" economics or social science or whatnot. Hardly anybody still talks like that.
Nobody does value-free economics. They always spin narratives, such as the claim that wealth inequality is the natural outcome of a meritocracy. It is BS when they do it, and it is BS when you do it.
People have rediscovered what everybody in history except in the last century odd always knew - the values are always there in the work, whether stated or not. It's better to say what they are and how they underly what you say than make a ridiculous pretense.
If you can read and understand the civil/criminal codes of your jurisdiction, then you can infer a code of conduct. Most people have to hire an expert, to decipher and interpret that "code". The underlying framework for morality/justice is not written into the law, it is assumed.
The Western concept of justice, as expressed by adversarial justice systems, is a farce. In terms of criminal law, I fail to see how it is an improvement over the old system of blood feuds. As an institution, the courts have shown themselves to be inconsistent (too lenient, too harsh) and corrupt.
Why on earth should full employment be provided, be a goal, if it weren't a felt moral necessity, a dictate of justice, something inherent in the concept of money and economics?
It would help some people materially. No need to wax poetic about it, the system we live in is based on people obtaining income. Life outcomes are tied to income.
A monetary economy without guaranteed jobs is a Charles Manson level crazy idea. Plenty of very famous people who are remarkably little quoted- on this said so. Not even quoted by the MMTers, who make baroquely overcomplicated arguments to say the same thing with 100 times as many words. I've gotta write a book on it. :-)
I agree, but many words have been spun into narratives that support the existence of unemployment. They are incompatible with our values, so they are crazy?
I'd walk anyone through their logic, but one has to listen to understand. This crazy fantasy that "money" is NOT a purely moral, ethical concept, applying some idea of justice, seems to be one reason that keeps people from listening and understanding the obvious. As soon as you understand "Money is credit and nothing but credit", all the rest follows. Credit, debt, obligation are all synonyms, all one moral, ethical whatever concept. Then complete the syllogism.
Money shouldn't be perceived as anything other than a tool, and a convenience. We don't have any issues with people believing that carpentry tools are manifestations of moral and ethical concepts.
Policy is another story.
Policy infers an underlying set of values.
I support a JG because I believe it would help me. It would help the unemployed.
That doesn't mean I agree with its underlying values, or that it is virtuous. Those arguments are best left to idealists and philosophers.
Why would such a gimmick - intended to perpetuate today's capitalism - be a good thing?
Money with an expiry date might negate the need for savings.
You work, you get income, you spend that income before it expires.
Money becomes a perishable item, like food.
Marx also tied these vouchers to the individual who earned them. They were not exchangeable.
The Technocracy movement in the 1930s proposed a similar concept under the guise of energy vouchers.
The implications for capitalism are too long to get into.
Suffice to say that these ideas are intended to bring about a new system of production.
Clarification: The energy credits proposed by the Technocracy movement were to be distributed equally to each citizen.
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