Showing posts with label deficit phobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deficit phobia. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Bill Mitchell – These worn out debt narratives – Stop It! It’s ridiculous!

Today is Wednesday and I have been tied up a lot with various meetings – all on-line these days. I don’t enjoy them as much as face-to-face, given that I spent a considerable part of each day in front of my computer or with my head in books and so the human contact is a welcome variation. But needs must, as they say. Anyway, just a few snippets today, being Wednesday. I can say that in between all this Zooming and writing, I have now nearly put together a complete on-line learning system which I am now trialling. This will be the support platform for – MMTed – which I hope to make operational sometime in the coming months. One of the issues that I touched on yesterday, which is now starting to crawl out of the slime, is the “what will happen to all the debt when the crisis is over” story. And, it is not just a narrative being promoted by the Right or the conservatives. The Federal Labour Party spokespersons and those hanging around the edges have started to push the narrative. As the Prime Minister told us the other day in relation to the people who are panic buying “Stop it! It’s Ridiculous!” I think he was actually talking about those (morons) who are starting the deficit hysteria before the deficits have even actually risen much. For their own health, I urge them to “stop it”. Imagine how apoplectic they are all going to be once the deficit goes to 10 per cent or more and the RBA is buying up all the debt. My god....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
These worn out debt narratives – Stop It! It’s ridiculous!
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Josh Bivens — The bad economics of PAYGO swamp any strategic gain from adopting it

Even more fundamentally, it is terrible economics to view federal budget deficits as always and everywhere bad. Making good policy in the future will require that voters be educated on this front. Why not start now? After all, our failure as a society to understand the economics of deficits and debt greatly contributed to the destructive impact of the Great Recession of 2008–09. The stakes of allowing history to repeat itself are high enough that we should take the time to quickly recap the history of how costly irrational deficit-phobia has been....
The conclusion can only be that the Democratic leadership intends to hobble their social proposals so as not to displease the donors. Or maybe they really are that stupid. In any case, they need to be turned out.

Economic Policy Institute
The bad economics of PAYGO swamp any strategic gain from adopting it
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute