'All deficits are good for someone': Visiting economist shrugs off debt concerns — Andrew Taylor,

Positive article on MMT and Stephanie Kelton, who is in Australia now.

The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
'All deficits are good for someone': Visiting economist shrugs off debt concerns

Andrew Taylor, Senior Reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald

Bill Mitchell — Leopards do not change their spots

Only a short blog post today as it is Wednesday. My father, in fact, used to say that ‘leopards do not change their spots’, when referring to people who in one period behaved one way and then when sprung would pretend they were reformed. I was thinking about that when I noted that the queue to the magical reinvention door is getting longer by the day. This is the process, whereby a person, who previously advocated neoliberal macroeconomic policy interventions from the sidelines (as an academic economist or media commentator) and/or executed them from a position of power (say, as a Treasurer or Minister of Finance), starts attacking present day governments, who inherited their own fiscal surplus obsessions, and are, like they did themselves, driving their economies into the ground as a result of the same obsessions. Who is in the spotlight today? None other than the former Australian Treasurer, Paul Keating who was reported in the press this morning (October 30, 2019) – Paul Keating slams Liberal party ‘surplus virus’ (paywall) – as being critical of the current government for keeping the “Australian economy ‘idling at the lights'” as a result of “running Australia’s budget like a ‘corner shop'”. He urged the government to stimulate the economy with fiscal policy. Now before we get too excited, and this applies to all the goons who come out claiming they wanted fiscal stimulus all along, these characters typically blow their cover and reveal their true DNA when they reflect on their own track records on the subject. But it is an interesting, if not amusing, pastime watching these characters try to revise their CVs to look like they ‘knew it all along’ as they try desperately to retain relevance and get on the right side of history. We are not that stupid though.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Leopards do not change their spots
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Rosemary Bolger — A radical plan to give every Australian a job who wants one is gaining momentum

The unconventional plan would eliminate unemployment in Australia, says US economist Stephanie Kelton….

Stephanie Kelton will be one of three keynote speakers at Future to Fight For: Rethinking Our Economy in Sydney (17 November), Melbourne (20 November) and Brisbane (21 November).

SBS News

A radical plan to give every Australian a job who wants one is gaining momentum

Rosemary Bolger

Bill Mitchell — Amazing what politics does to people

A fiscal strategy that restrains net public spending to keep the economy below the inflation barrier does not, inevitably, mean a fiscal surplus is required. In fact, a fiscal surplus would only be indicated if the economy had a very strong external surplus, the private domestic sector was saving overall at its desired level, public infrastructure and services were first-class and the economy was at full employment. 

That conjunction of events is rare.….

… a counter-cyclical fiscal strategy does not mean that the government should achieve a surplus. To think otherwise is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of the main sectoral aggregates and why they interact at various levels of economic activity.

The concept of counter-cyclicality more correctly refers to the direction of change of the aggregate. The government should certainly not be expanding its deficit if the economy is already at full capacity and it is satisfied with the private spending mix. Such an expansion would be pro-cyclical. But holding a steady deficit where the external deficit is steady and the private domestic sector is saving overall and content with that outcome is not pro-cyclical.

Under those circumstances, growth would be steady, and, hopefully, sufficient to absorb all the available capacity....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Amazing what politics does to people
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Steven Hail — Private super: Paul Keating’s innocent fraud

What can we do?

Scrap tax concessions on retirement savings. End compulsory private superannuation. Meantime, require employers to start paying out the 9.5 per cent that is currently going into super as wages and salaries, and tax it as such.

Introduce a job guarantee scheme for those of working age and pay those of retirement age the job guarantee wage.

Conduct a national audit of the skills and the infrastructure that Australia will require in the decades to come to provide for its ageing population, and put in place the plans needed to ensure those skills and that infrastructure exists when it is needed.

Because the problem is not the money — it is the real goods and services, as it always was.

Independent Australia

Private super: Paul Keating’s innocent fraud

Steven Hail | Lecturer in Economics, University of Adelaide

Bill Mitchell — Australian national accounts – inexorably marching towards recession

Illustration of how to look at national accounts data from the MMT POV.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Australian national accounts – inexorably marching towards recession
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Australian national broadcaster gives ignorance the national stage

There’s no such thing as Government money. There’s your money and my money. And that’s where the money comes from – it comes out of our pockets…

This is on a news program, not from a comedy show. Beyond Moronism.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Australian national broadcaster gives ignorance the national stage
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia