On sustainable cost accounting — Richard Murphy

Important if you are interested in the future of the planet and think that carbon is an issue.

Tax Research UK
On sustainable cost accounting
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Tcherneva on the Green New Deal and Job Guarantee in France — Michael Stevens

Pavlina Tcherneva recently participated in a hearing before a parliamentary group (La France insoumise) of France’s National Assembly on the subject of the Green New Deal and the job guarantee (the intro is in French; Tcherneva’s testimony is in English):

Multiplier Effect
Tcherneva on the Green New Deal and Job Guarantee in France

Michael Stevens

Let The Economists & Researchers Speak — How Do We Fund A Clean Energy Future? — Carolyn Fortuna

We at CleanTechnica have been looking at the various 2020 US Democratic candidates for president (here, here, and here) and their funding plans for a clean energy future. We (and they) have learned a lot about what it will take to not only usher in an energy future devoid of fossil fuels but also to pay for such a transition. Maybe it’s time, though, to put at least some of the politics aside and see what economists and researchers out there are saying about investing in clean energy, including the Green New Deal (GND)....

Clean Technica
Let The Economists & Researchers Speak — How Do We Fund A Clean Energy Future?

Carolyn Fortuna

Richard Murphy on the need for sustainable cost accounting

Sustainable cost accounting and the political necessity of addressing reality.

Tax Research UK
Business has to change its accounting for the climate crisis and Mark Carney needs to go further than he’s suggesting is necessary

Labour needs to drop the Green Industrial Revolution: we need a Green New Deal, and they’re nothing like the same thing
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Close Encounters of a Green New Deal Kind — Douglas Holtz-Eakin

In the end, MMT looks like an extreme version of conventional economics in which there is no independent monetary policy and there are a lot of unused resources. But when resources get tight, the reflex is command and control central planning.

This cuts to the quick of it. The question is how much market state (where free markets determine outcomes, in theory at least) and how much welfare state (where the economy is managed based on desired outcomes). This is an ongoing dialectic among Libertarians, conservatives, liberals and progressives in the US.

However, the GND is different in that it is a special case. The name indicates that it is being compared to the New Deal that addressed the effects of the Great Depression. Proponents also point to the American economic response in WWII, in which John Kenneth Galbraith played a major role. In the minds of the proponents of the GND, this is about government mobilizing resources and "taking charge" in order to meet an existential threat. Opponents view this as overreaction to a supposed threat that does not appear to exist, in their minds.

This is reminiscent of the lead up to WWII, where Americans in general preferred isolationism to preparation until events were forced on them at Pearl Harbor. Then the race to catch up.

American Action Forum

Close Encounters of a Green New Deal Kind

Douglas Holtz-Eakin | President

Zero Hedge — Hedge Fund CIO: "Generational Conflict Will Be The Top Theme Of The Coming Decades: Enter MMT"

And so, if the youth care more for the environment than they do about money, and if ageing parents care about their money more than they do about their children, then generational looms. However, one possible way to defer this clash involves the oldest trick in the book. And that is more money for everyone; for the GND, for Medicare, Medicaid, Soc Sec, tax cuts. Enter MMT....

Zero Hedge
Hedge Fund CIO: "Generational Conflict Will Be The Top Theme Of The Coming Decades: Enter MMT"
Tyler Durden

Can We Afford a Green New Deal? — JW Mason

The correct question is, Can we not afford a GND?

So when we look at the cost of the climate proposals out there against today’s macroeconomic background, the question should not be, are they too expensive? The question should be: Are they expensive enough?

The purpose of policy is meeting policy goals effectively and efficiently. This means getting as close as possible in the design solution to "just right — not too much and not too little."

But in the case of serious challenges overshooting is better than undershooting, even if it "costs" more on spreadsheets and uses more real resources that turn out to be necessary.

The way it is looking, climate change is an existential threat as great as war. No nation can afford to scrimp on defense spending since national security is the highest priority of a government.

J. W. Mason's Blog
Can We Afford a Green New Deal?
JW Mason | Assistant Professor of Economics, John Jay College, City University of New York

Bill Mitchell — An MMT-Green New Deal and the financial markets – Part 2

This is Part 2 of the series I started earlier this week in – An MMT-Green New Deal and the financial markets – Part 1 (September 2, 2019). In the first part, I discussed Chapter 12 in John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory, published in 1936, where he outlined how the growth of financial markets was distorting investment choices and biasing them towards speculative wealth-shuffling exercises, which had the potential to destabilise prosperity generated by the real economy (production, employment, etc). His insights were very prescient given what has transpired since he wrote. He was dealing with what we would now consider to be a tiny problem given the expansion of the financial markets over the last three decades. In this part, I am briefly outlining what I think an MMT-Green New Deal agenda would encompass in the field of financial market changes. The MMT association is that such an understanding opens us up to appreciate a plethora of policy options that a strict sound finance regime rejects or neglects to mention. That policy proposals and reform agenda I outline here reflects my MMT understanding but also, importantly, my value set – what I think are important parameters for a futuristic progressive society. So we always have to separate the understanding part from the values part (although that is sometimes difficult to do). The point is that a person with a different value set who shared the MMT understanding could come up with a totally different agenda to deal with climate issues and the need for societal restructuring. You can see all the elements of my thinking on this topic under the category – Green New Deal – which also contains a long history (now) of relevant commentary. Most of my writing on the topic are about the societal aspects of the GND transformation rather than the specific climate issues. That is obviously because I am not a climate scientist. But as I signalled in Part 1, I am about to announce a coalition (in the coming week I hope) which does include climate science expertise to broaden the capacity of the MMT-GND agenda....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
An MMT-Green New Deal and the financial markets – Part 2
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — An MMT-Green New Deal and the financial markets – Part 1

Next week, I am attending a meeting which I hope will finalise discussions I have been having with some key prospective partners in putting together a major MMT-Green New Deal initiative in Australia which will have global ramifications. It will bring together MMT with climate action and indigenous rights interests. We propose to begin a ‘roadshow’ in November to start our campaign. Our discussions to date have been very productive and we will issue a ‘White Paper’ in the coming months to articulate what we conceive as a jobs-first, equity-first MMT-Green New Deal might look like. This work will also form the basis of talks I am giving in the coming month throughout Europe and the UK. I have already started sketching elements of my thinking on this topic under the category – Green New Deal – which also contains a long history (now) of relevant commentary. Today, I am focusing on another element that I consider to be a core part of a progressive MMT-Green New Deal campaign – dealing with unproductive financial markets. I am not for one minute thinking any of the analysis today (or any of the GND stuff) is likely to be implemented without a massive and lengthy struggle. I think I understand vested interests. So a valid retort to the ideas is not to accuse me of being politically naive. My role, as an academic, is to work through things and lay out blueprints to guide directions of activity based on that thinking. It is not to assess the likelihood of success of the blueprints being implemented. I sort of see these blueprints as being benchmarks – to assess where we are at and how far it is to go. And as debating vehicles which define what opponents have to address. But, moreover, I do see them as being guides for campaigning strategies, which can then be implemented by those who know more about those things than I ever will. This is a two-part series....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
An MMT-Green New Deal and the financial markets – Part 1
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

Project Syndicate
Capitalism in the Last Chance Saloon

Adair Turner

Bernie making waves

Presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday released a plan to protect independent news outlets and journalists from the effects of widespread media consolidation.
Sanders, decrying the mega-mergers he says have led to a handful of large corporations acting as gatekeepers for the information most Americans receive, calls for concrete steps “to rebuild and protect a diverse and truly independent press so that real journalists can do the critical jobs that they love” in an editorial for the Columbia Journalism Review.

"Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read, and download," Sanders writes. "Given that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and 'benevolent' billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny."

Going for the throat. Who controls the narrative controls the world.

As an aside, "who controls the narrative controls the world," used to apply to American soft power. Over the past several decades the US has managed to shrink its formerly awesome soft power considerably through endless war and imperial arrogance.

The Hill
Sanders releases media plan: Press shouldn't be controlled by corporations, 'benevolent' billionaires
Zack Budryk

Bernie Sanders recently released his plan for implementing the Green New Deal. These include such comprehensive goals as transitioning to 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030 and decarbonizing the entire economy by 2050 (full details here).

To get there, Sanders plans a number of ambitious projects, including massive and job-creating infrastucture spending and "declaring climate change a national emergency." The implications of the latter are not entirely spelled out. A number of candidates have proposals that "declare a national emergency" regarding climate change, but not in the same sense that George W. Bush, for example, may have meant had he declared the 9/11 attacks a national emergency (he didn't, but he could have).

That kind of national emergency, a Bush-Cheney kind, implies an exercise of presidential power that approaches martial law, something that most pro-climate Democrats don't contemplate. Does the Sanders plan contemplate a stronger-than-rhetorical response to climate change? It's not clear yet from Sanders camp messaging.

We aren't there yet, but when climate change becomes front page news we will be and people will be demanding that a national emergency be declared, as coastal cities are threatened by rising sea level, for example.

Down with Tyranny

Bernie Sanders' GND Plan Will Nationalize Power Generation in the U.S.

See also

The continued inability of America’s liberal democratic establishment to address the ills besetting the country—climate change, unregulated global capitalism, mounting social inequality, a bloated military, endless foreign wars, out-of-control deficits and gun violence—means the inevitable snuffing out of our anemic democracy. Overwhelmed by the multiple crises, the liberal elites have jettisoned genuine political life and retreated into self-defeating moral crusades in a vain and futile attempt to deflect attention away from the looming social, political, economic and environmental catastrophes.

These faux moral crusades, now the language of the left and the right, have bifurcated the country into warring factions. Opponents are demonized as evil. Adherents to the cause are on the side of the angels. Nuance and ambiguity are banished. Facts are manipulated or discarded. Truth is replaced by slogans. Conspiracy theories, however bizarre, are incredulously embraced to expose the perfidiousness of the enemy. Politics is defined by antagonistic political personalities spewing vitriol. The intellectual and moral sterility, along with the inability to halt the forces of societal destruction, provides fertile soil for extremists, neofascists and demagogues who thrive in periods of paralysis and cultural degeneracy.

Liberals and the left have wasted the last two years attacking Donald Trump as a Russian asset and look set to waste the next two years attacking him as a racist. They desperately seek scapegoats to explain the election of Trump as president, no different from a right wing that tars its Democratic Party enemies as America-hating socialists and that blames Muslims, immigrants and poor people of color for our national debacle. These are competing cartoon visions of the world. They foster a self-created universe of villains and superheroes that exacerbates the mounting polarization and rage.

“Bourgeois society seems everywhere to have used up its store of constructive ideas,” Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979 in “The Culture of Narcissism.” “It has lost both the capacity and the will to confront the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm it. The political crisis of capitalism reflects a general crisis of western culture, which reveals itself in a pervasive despair of understanding the course of modern history or of subjecting it to rational direction. Liberalism, the political theory of the ascendant bourgeoisie, long ago lost the capacity to explain events in the world of the welfare state and the multinational corporation; nothing has taken its place. Politically bankrupt, liberalism is intellectually bankrupt as well.”...

Truthdig
The Curse of Moral Purity
Chris Hedges

The Modern Money Movement with Andrés Bernal —William Saas, Scott Ferguson, Maxximilian Seijo interview Andrés Bernal, GND and MMT proponent

We are joined by Andrés Bernal, policy advisor to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and doctoral student at the New School for Public Engagement, Division of Policy Management and Environment. We speak with Bernal about his history with political organizing and the critical role he has come to play in the Modern Money movement, including the struggle for a Green New Deal. He also sketches out his dissertation project, which focuses on the Green New Deal as a site of collective action, political communication, and policy analysis. 

Additionally, Bernal is a research fellow with the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and lecturer Urban Studies at CUNY Queens College. For more from Bernal, check out the article “We Can Pay for a Green New Deal,” which he coauthored with Stephanie Kelton and Greg Carlock.

Transcript of Interview provided.

Monthly Review is a preeminent American Marxist-socialist journal. 

Albert Einstein's “Why Socialism?”  was the lead article in the first issue.

MR (Monthly Review) Online

The Modern Money Movement with Andrés Bernal
William Saas, Scott Ferguson, Maxximilian Seijo interview Andrés Bernal, GND and MMT proponent

Scotland can have a job guarantee or the Fiscal Commission plan, but not both Richard Murphy

First, of course I welcome this.

Second, a job guarantee is a logical part of a Green New Deal, which offers work in every constituency by ensuring jobs are available everywhere to transform our green infrastructure, and most especially our housing.

Third, it has to then be noted that this policy is linked to modern monetary theory, which is the only current school of economic thought that makes full employment for those who want work its core objective.

And fourth, and inevitably, this policy is in opposition to the SNP’s commitment to Andrew Wilson’s Growth Commission plan for Scotland....

Tax Research UK
Scotland can have a job guarantee or the Fiscal Commission plan, but not both
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Nicola Sturgeon indicates a Job Guarantee would be part of a Scottish Green New Deal — Sean Bell

The GND proposed in the US already includes a JG. Now it looks like Scotland is in play, too.

• Asked if a Job Guarantee would be part of her vision for a Scottish Green New Deal, [First Minister] Nicola Sturgeon says: “‘Yes’ is the short answer.”

• A Job Guarantee would involve the state acting as an ‘employer of last resort’ to the unemployed, and was last year proposed in the United States by Senator Bernie Sanders

• Finance Secretary Derek Mackay warns that more powers over employment law would need to be devolved

Common Space ((Scotland)
Nicola Sturgeon indicates a Job Guarantee would be part of a Scottish Green New Deal

Sean Bell

Bill Mitchell — The Green New Deal must wipe out precarious work and underemployment

In mapping out what I think are the essential aspects of a social transformation that we might call a Green New Deal, eliminating precarious work is one of the priorities – it is intrinsic to creating a more equitable society in harmony with nature. This aspect also calls in question the role of a Job Guarantee. Note the capitals – there is only one Job Guarantee but many jobs guarantees. I will explain today why the Job Guarantee will be an intrinsic part of the Green New Deal but by far a minor player in terms of the job opportunities that will be created by the socio-economic shift. Many commentators seem to think the Job Guarantee is sufficient for a Green New Deal. It is not and we need to understand its role in a monetary system to understand why....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Green New Deal must wipe out precarious work and underemployment
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Modest (insipid) Green New Deal proposals miss the point – Part 2

This is the second and final part of my recent discussion on the what a Green New Deal requires. All manner of proposals seem to have become part of the GND. The problem is that many of these proposals sell the idea short and will fail to achieve what is really required – a massive transformation of society and the role the government plays within it. The imprecision is exacerbated by progressives who are afraid to go too far outside the neoliberal mould for fear of being shut out of the debate. So we get ‘modest’ proposals, hunkered down in neoliberal framing as if to step up to the plate confidently is a step too far. In Part 1, I argued that the progressive side of the climate debate became entrapped, early on, by ‘free market’ framing, in the sense that the political response to climate action has typically emphasised using the ‘price system’ to create disincentives for polluting activities. In Part 2, I argue that we have to abandon our notion that the role of government in meeting the climate challenge is to make capitalism work better via price incentives. Rather, we have to accept and promote the imperative that governments take a central role in infrastructure provision, rules-based regulation (telling carbon producers to cease operation) and introducing new technologies....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Modest (insipid) Green New Deal proposals miss the point – Part 2
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Modest (insipid) Green New Deal proposals miss the point

All over the globe now there are cries for a Green New Deal. What constitutes the GND is another matter. Like the concept of the Job Guarantee, there are now countless versions springing out of various groups, some that only seem to offer a short-term, short-week job or other arrangements that fall short of the way Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) constructs the concept. There is only one Job Guarantee in the modern parlance and that is the MMT concept. Other job creation programs are fine but they should stop using the term Job Guarantee, which is a comprehensive macroeconomic stability framework rather than a job creation program per se. In the same vein, all manner of proposals seem to have become part of the GND. The problem is that many of these proposals sell the idea short and will fail to achieve what is really required – a massive transformation of society and the role the government plays within it. The imprecision is exacerbated by progressives who are afraid to go too far outside the neoliberal mould for fear of being shut out of the debate. So we get ‘modest’ proposals, hunkered down in neoliberal framing as if to step up to the plate confidently is a step too far. This is Part 1 of a two-part blog post series on my thoughts on the failure of the environmental Left and climate action activists to frame their ambitions adequately....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Modest (insipid) Green New Deal proposals miss the point
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

Bond Economics
Some Comments On Economic Climate Change Models
Brian Romanchuk

Bill Mitchell — ‘Sound finance’ prevents available climate solution with massive jobs potential

When the governments in the advanced nations abandoned full employment as an overarching macroeconomic objective, and instead, starting pursuing what I have called full employability, they stopped seeing unemployment as a policy target (to be minimised) and began using it as a policy tool to suppress inflation. As mass unemployment rose, the politics were massaged by the mainstream of my profession who claimed that the level of unemployment that constituted full employment had risen (this was the NAIRU era) and so there was really no problem. Governments adopted the neoliberal line that they ‘didn’t create jobs’ and had to target fiscal surpluses to ensure their position was ‘sustainable’. The costs in lost income and human suffering have been enormous – most people would not have any idea of the massive scale of these losses that accumulate day after day. Now, it seems, the ‘sound finance’ school is going a step further. We are probably facing an environmental emergency in the coming period (years, decades) but the question commentators keep asking is not what we can do about it but ‘how can we pay for it’? So ‘sound finance’ has already destroyed the lives of millions of people around the world as a result of mass unemployment and poverty, now it is turning its focus on the rest of us. Madness. Paradigm change has to come sooner rather than later.

No lack of funds for military, tax cuts for wealthy, corporate bailouts and donor pork.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
‘Sound finance’ prevents available climate solution with massive jobs potential
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Edward Lane — GND and Modern Monetary Policy

Finally, a positive article on the GND and MMT among a barrage of negative ones.

The Berkshire Eagle
Edward Lane: GND and Modern Monetary Policy

Edward Lane, ASA, CFP, is an adjunct professor of Finance and Economics, University at Albany (SUNY)

Randy Wray — How to Pay for the Green New Deal

How to Pay for the Green New DealWORKING PAPER NO. 931 | May 2019 

This paper follows the methodology developed by J. M. Keynes in his How to Pay for the War pamphlet to estimate the “costs” of the Green New Deal (GND) in terms of resource requirements. Instead of simply adding up estimates of the government spending that would be required, we assess resource availability that can be devoted to implementing GND projects. This includes mobilizing unutilized and underutilized resources, as well as shifting resources from current destructive and inefficient uses to GND projects. We argue that financial affordability cannot be an issue for the sovereign US government. Rather, the problem will be inflation if sufficient resources cannot be diverted to the GND. And if inflation is likely, we need to put in place anti-inflationary measures, such as well-targeted taxes, wage and price controls, rationing, and voluntary saving. Following Keynes, we recommend deferred consumption as our first choice should inflation pressures arise. We conclude that it is likely that the GND can be phased in without inflation, but if price pressures do appear, deferring a small amount of consumption will be sufficient to attenuate them.

New Economic Perspectives
How to Pay for the Green New Deal – Levy Institute
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, Bard College

Rajrishi Singhal — Opinion | India's ailing economy needs a green pill for revival

GND and MMT make it to India.

LiveMint (India)
Opinion | India's ailing economy needs a green pill for revival

Rajrishi Singhal | consulting editor of Mint

Critical article on MMT but well-researched and worth reading.

Modern monetary theory has provided hope that the current economic problems can be solved if we look at things in a "new" light. Blinded by this hope, the fact that this theory is not "new" and has failed in the past has remained hidden.

Business Today (India)
Ravi Saraogi, CFA | Member, CPD Committee, CFA Society India