Bill Mitchell — IMF now claiming continued inequality risks opening a “social and political seismic crack”

I don’t have time today for a full review of the Fiscal Monitor publication.

But suffice to say, the tone coming out of the IMF has shifted significantly from when it was leading the charge in destroying nations and increasing income and wealth inequalities.

Don’t think for one minute, however, that the institution has abandoned mainstream macroeconomic thinking.

It hasn’t.

But it has opened a sort of schizoid image – talking about, on the one hand, a global innoculation program “paying for itself” (that is, still framing things in terms of making fiscal cuts), while, on the other hand, imploring governments to maintain fiscal support and target policies that “aim at giving everyone a fair shot at lifetime opportunities by reducing gaps in access to quality public services.”...

The failure is that of neoliberal capitalism to deliver distributed prosperity as it promises. It is just not credible that the conventional economic doctrine of "trickle down" and all receiving "just deserts" based on individual productivity, which the theory doesn't actual prove formally let alone in practice, has impoverished so many, reduced many in the "middle class" to the precariat, and rewarded monopolist on the order of former monarchs and despots. It doesn't fly, especially in light of the rise of China and its record of reducing poverty and eliminating absolute poverty through a mixed system.

Also

MMTed Update

Following the development of our edX MOOC = Modern Monetary Theory: Economics for the 21st Century – we are now working on the next MMTed project, which will be run within our own auspices....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

IMF now claiming continued inequality risks opening a “social and political seismic crack”
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia