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Thursday, May 11, 2023

William Mitchell — The climate emergency requires us to reset our understanding of fiscal capacity. It is already, probably, too late.

In Tuesday’s fiscal statement, the Australian government made a lot of noise about dealing with the climate emergency that the nation faces but in terms of hard fiscal outlays or initiatives it did very little, deferring action again, while ‘the place burns’. The Climate Council assessment was that the government “still seems to be on a warm-up lap when it comes to investing in climate action” (Source) and recommended the nation moves from a “slow job” to a “sprint”. I have previously written about the myopic nature of neoliberalism. There are countless examples of governments penny pinching and then having to outlay dollars to fix the problem they create by the austerity. The climate emergency is of another scale again though. And penny pinching now will cause immeasurable damage to humanity. Food security will be threatened. Urban environments will become unliveable. Pandemics will increase if we don’t stop clearing and if we release viruses stored in permafrost. And all the rest that awaits us. Now is the time to reset our understanding of fiscal capacity. It is already, probably, too late....
No problem financing war-making though. It's not like they don't get available fiscal space in a floating rate system. It's the political priorities.

William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory
The climate emergency requires us to reset our understanding of fiscal capacity. It is already, probably, too late.
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

6 comments:

  1. “ release viruses stored in permafrost.”

    Yo, the higher temperatures accelerate the rate of protein breakdown..

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2185639/

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  2. “ It is already, probably, too late...”

    Bill is suffering some sort of alienation… no bueno….

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  3. MMT is in nowhereland politically... not quite happy times for Bill.

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  4. “MMT is in nowhereland politically”

    I realize this too but I have a Science degree so i can’t be what one would call a “MMT person”…

    tbh my initial reaction to this is laughter … but not alienation…

    I have no apocalyptic views…

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  5. I'm not an activist, so I can't say the failure to obtain traction affects me personally.

    I don't regret learning about MMT, or following the 'movement' when it started.

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