Bill Mitchell – Invoking neoliberal framing and language is a failing progressive strategy (British Labour

Over the years it’s been clear to me that we live in a fictional world when it comes to economic matters. The mainstream has created this world that bears little relationship to reality and which serves the interests of a few at the expense of the majority. But the way in which this fiction is inculcated in the framing and language of our public debates leads the majority to think that the conduct of economic policy is somehow in their best interests, even if, at times, governments claim we have to swallow a bitter pill in order to get well again. The bitter pill always punishes the lower to middle-income groups, rarely the top-end-of-town. The fiction is so deeply ingrained that even progressive political campaigns are framed within it. I have railed against that all my career because I cannot align a belief that democratic choice requires accurate information with the reality that we make these choices in a fog of fiction. I have always considered the role of the progressive forces in politics, as a matter of priority, should be to be the agents of education, so that these democratic choices reflect our realities. I have never supported so-called ‘progressive’ parties that choose, for ‘political’ purposes, to lie to the electorates by adopting neoliberal framing and language as a way of minimising any difficulties that might arise, initially, from the dissonance that accompanies exposure to the truth, after years of believing in lies. It seems that the British Labour Party continues to promote a false narrative to support and otherwise stellar plan for national renewal. But, as history tells us, a plan built on false financial foundations, falters when circumstances change and the false foundations become the issue rather than the plan....

Digging the grave you have been consigned to deeper. How dumb is that!

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Invoking neoliberal framing and language is a failing progressive strategy (British Labour)
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems — Caitlin Johnstone

Bingo!

By "propaganda" Caitlin Johnstone means "narrative control."

Maintaining narrative control was relatively easy prior to the Internet and social media. Now, the process has turned to access and exclusion as the means of censorship through control of the media and social media in particular. Access and exclusion have always been a reality in the case of print media. Now this is being extended to digital platforms.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems
Caitlin Johnstone

Bill Mitchell — Seize the Means of Production of Currency – Part 1

Last week, Thomas Fazi and I had a response to a recent British attack on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) published in The Tribune magazine (June 5, 2019) – For MMT. The article were were responding to – Against MMT – written by a former British Labour Party advisor, was not really about MMT at all, as you will see. Instead, it appeared to be an attempt to defend the Labour Party’s Fiscal Credibility Rule, that has been criticised for being a neoliberal concoction. Whenever, progressives use neoliberal frames, language or concepts, it turns out badly for them. In effect, there were two quite separate topics that needed to be discussed: (a) the misrepresentation of MMT; and (b) the issues pertaining to British Labour Party policy proposals. And, the Tribune only allowed 3,000 words, which made it difficult to cover the two topics in any depth. In this three-part series, you can read a longer version of our reply to the ‘Against MMT’ article, and, criticisms from the elements on the Left, generally, who think it is a smart tactic to talk like neoliberals and express fear of global capital markets. I split the parts up into more or less (but not quite) three equal chunks and will publish the remaining parts over the rest of this week....

Give up the framing, cede the argument.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Seize the Means of Production of Currency – Part 1
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Brett Samuels — Buttigieg: The word 'socialism' has lost its meaning

Trump showing his age in denouncing progressive proposals as "socialist"?

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg (D) on Sunday dismissed President Trump's efforts to portray Democratic policy pitches as "socialism," arguing that the term no longer carries negative connotations.

“I think he's clinging to a rhetorical strategy that was very powerful when he was coming of age 50 years ago, but it's just a little bit different right now," Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who has launched an exploratory committee to run for president, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"Today, I think a word like that is the beginning of a debate, not the end of the debate," he added.…

Many on the right agree that socialism equates with collectivism as opposed to liberalism grounded in individualism. Hayek popularized this view in The Road to Sefdom.

But that was then, not now.

For many people now, "socialism" chiefly implies "not-capitalism," with capitalism being equated with neo-feudalism. "Socialism" is no longer characterized as state ownership in many people's minds but rather as public policy that is rights-oriented rather than market-determined.

Socialism is increasingly being viewed as real democracy — government of the people, for the people, and by the people, rather than an elite privileged with power through ownership of real and financial assets and the influence it involves.

As Pete Buttigieg observes, now it's the beginning of debate and no longer the summary end of it. The frame is shifting.

The Hill
Buttigieg: The word 'socialism' has lost its meaning

Brett Samuels

Jeffrey Frankel — “China’s Q3 GDP Reportedly Slowed to 6.5%. Or Is It 6.4%?”

One thing that interests me in the reports is a particular (very wonkish) detail. For the US and most other countries, the quarter’s GDP is routinely reported relative to the preceding quarter, not relative to four quarters ago. Why do the media and markets routinely focus on the 1-quarter growth rate for the US but focus on the 4-quarter growth rate for China?

It is not because China’s National Bureau of Statistics fails to make the 1-quarter change available. It’s there in footnote 2 of the NBS press release, as usual. The number for the 3rd quarter relative to the 2nd quarter is 1.6 per cent; to express that in terms comparable to US growth numbers, it is 6.4 % annualized. In other words it is slightly lower this time than the 6.5% number everyone is focusing on.

This puzzle is a case for behavioral finance. When the statistical agency has a practice of putting the 1-quarter or 4-quarter number at the top of the press release, that is the number to which the wire services, the rest of the media, and even the financial markets pay attention....

Framing.

Econbrowser
“China’s Q3 GDP Reportedly Slowed to 6.5%. Or Is It 6.4%?”
Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers

Stephen Williams — How mainstream economics has led to clueless governments

More framing.

This is a really good article. Concise, precise, and clearly formulated so that anyone can understand it. Disseminate widely.

Here is the lede:

Governments of all stripes base their policies on mainstream economics. Powerful challenges to the mainstream, especially from ecological economics and modern monetary theory, explain why we are in a hole and can’t seem to get out.

If this article is largely correct, we can conclude that the economics profession is a major cause – directly or indirectly – of most modern evils.

In saying that, I draw heavily on the work of Australian academic economists Professor Robert Costanza, Associate Professor Philip Lawn, Professor Bill Mitchell and Dr Steven Hail.

Taken together, their work – in conjunction with colleagues overseas – claims that mainstream economics is fundamentally wrong left, right and centre — although I don’t mean to imply that these four scholars agree on every point.

Mitchell – a co-originator of modern monetary theory (MMT) – shows that we could have full employment quickly with a job guarantee, that federal budget deficits are normal and desirable, that the federal government never needs to borrow money, and that federal taxes do not fund anything.

The Federal Government should focus on non-inflationary full employment and not budget outcomes, because we can run deficits forever without borrowing.
In short, the Federal Government does not have the budget constraints of a household, business, or state government, because it can create unlimited money — but should spend prudently to avoid inflation and ecological overshoot....

Independent Australia
How mainstream economics has led to clueless governments

Stephen Williams

See also

For many, Brexit is a right-wing project because the principal authors are an extreme element of the British Tory Party. However an Australian academic will be putting forward a very different view at a public meeting in Galway.

Bill Mitchell is professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, a widely published author, and a notable proponent of Modern Monetary Theory. He is also the co-author, with Italian political theorist Thomas Fazi, of Reclaiming the State – A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty in a Post-Neoliberal World.
That book will form the basis of his talk in Galway, entitled Reclaiming the State, which takes place on Wednesday October 3 at 8pm in the Harbour Hotel. Prof Mitchell argues that progressives and the political Left should not regard Brexit - and the current problems of the EU and monetary union generally - as a cause for despair, but as an opportunity to embrace a progressive, liberating, vision of national independence, to reject the EU’s austerity straitjacket and to implement a democratic socialist platform, “which is impossible within the EU, let alone the euro-zone”.

In Reclaiming the State, Mitchell and Fazi dispute that national independence has become irrelevant in a globalised world. They contend that it is only by reclaiming the state from supranational institutions, such as the EU, that people can break away from the neo-liberal economic dogma of the privatisation of resources and public services, deregulation of finance, the reduction of workers’ rights in collective bargaining, cuts to social programmes, and the lowering of taxes on wealth and capital at the expense of the middle and working classes.

The event is organised by The Desmond Greaves School, and will be chaired by Terry McDonough, Professor Emeritus of Economics at NUI Galway.

Galway Advertiser
Public meeting to ask ‘Is Brexit is an opportunity for Ireland?’

NPR — Planet Money — Episode 866: Modern Monetary Theory

Some ideas seem too good to be true. Like this one. It comes from a 13-year-old listener named Amy. She says she knows the government has trouble finding enough money to pay for stuff like schools and hospitals. And she wondered if it has considered just printing more money. She asked us: Can the government do that? Just make more money to pay for stuff?

Fiscal hawks say, 'no way!' We'd have crazy inflation! But there's a group of economists that says, 'yes, we can create way more money, without disaster. And pay for lots of stuff we want.' They are the proponents of what's called Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT. Their ideas are getting out there, they have the memes to prove it.

Today, we try to understand a school of thought that is flipping economic theory on its head. If you buy it, the whole idea of government spending, taxes, the nature of money changes, and, according to the theory, all we have to do is just open our eyes. It's a bit like staring at those optical illusions: First you see the faces, then, suddenly it's the goblet.

Shifting the frame.

NPR — Planet Money
Episode 866: Modern Monetary Theory

Sandy Helm and Alex Goldmark

Chris Dillow — The neoliberal constraint

About framing and cultural mindset. Important now that MMT is gaining traction and neoliberalism is being challenged by social democracy. This is an issue that Bill Mitchell among MMT economists has been particularly devoted to, although they are all concerned with it as a matter of strategy now that MMT is ascendent.

My point here is a disquieting one. It is the case that many neoliberal ideas are plain wrong; neoliberalism, for example, might well have retarded productivity growth. It is not, however, sufficient to point this out. Neoliberal ideology – whether right or wrong – can create its own reality. Insofar as this is the case, it is a constraint upon what social democratic governments can achieve.

The point is far broader than neoliberalism or economics. A cultural mindset is determinative. Cultures with clashing cultural mindset, such as liberalism and traditionalism, exhibit social and political divisiveness. Neoliberalism is a particular interpretation of liberalism.

Who controls the narrative controls the culture's perception of reality.

Stumbling and Mumbling
The neoliberal constraint
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Bill Mitchell — Exploring the effectiveness of social media – Part 3

This is the third addition in the ‘Exploring the effectiveness of social media’ series, which is reporting current research I am doing with Dr Louisa Connors, which seeks to understand how best to use social media to advance an awareness and understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We will be discussing some of this work at the The Second International Conference of Modern Monetary Theory (New York, September 28-30), that is, later this week. There is no doubt that social media (among other things) has played a major role in building a non-academic audience for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But it is not yet clear to me that social media users who seek to advocate for MMT have fully understood the media they are using. I see counterproductive exercises regularly on Twitter, for example. There is a clear literature on effective use of social media and there is also a long literature on how to frame arguments to be persuasive. Calling someone on Twitter who disagrees with you a ‘fxxkwit’ or telling them they haven’t read the literature is probably not the best way to exploit what is a power tool for advancing our cause. This blog post extends the discussion about the strategic use of social media....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Exploring the effectiveness of social media – Part 3
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell — Exploring the effectiveness of social media – Part 2

Strategy and tactics. Important for MMT activists.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Exploring the effectiveness of social media – 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 — The conservative polity is fracturing – an opportunity for the Left

Regular readers will know that I have spent a lot of time writing about the demise of the Left political parties as they became subsumed with neoliberal economic ideology, which blurred the political landscape as the ‘centre’ moved to the Right. That topic was the focus of our current book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, September 2017). The neoliberal infestation has left these parties with declining electoral support, fractured internal organisations and cultures, and a seeming inability to abandon their flawed economic narratives. But there is a mirror image to this demise and that is playing out on the conservative side of politics. In Australia in the last week (but building for years) the far right conservative elements from within the government have brought down their own leader and our Prime Minister in a spiteful clash of ideologies between the more moderate elements in their party and the extremes out on the right. The internal tensions that drove this suicidal mission is being played out around the world. Think about the way that Trump is compromising the Republican party. Think about how Brexit is splitting Tory ranks in Britain. And so on. The problem for the conservatives is that citizens are realising that the neoliberal economic approach has failed to deliver on its promises. And that economic model is ‘owned’ by the conservatives. The adoption of neoliberal economics by social democratic parties is not part of their DNA. It is largely because their ranks have been infested by careerists who have come from the ‘elites’ and have little resonance with workers. The gaps in the policy space that these fractures have created is being occupied by extremist groups. It will be much easier for progressive parties to reclaim that space than it will be for the conservatives who are in the process of a death spiral. But to do that, the social democratic movements has to abandon every vestige of neoliberal economics – the concepts, policies and language and framing. That is the challenge.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The conservative polity is fracturing – an opportunity for the Left
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

J. D. Alt — Framing a Job Guarantee

Now that progressive leaders (Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand and Corey Booker) have placed a proposed “Job Guarantee” program onto the mainstream political stage, it is essential they begin explaining the proposal’s underpinning macro-economic logic. Otherwise they lay themselves, and the proposal itself, wide open to scathing public ridicule—as exemplified by a recent Megan McArdle op-ed in the Washington Post (“A federal job for everyone?” April 25, 2018). But what should they be saying by way of explaining?…

There are basically two strategies to address this question: The first is to frame the Job Guarantee program as an “investment” that will ultimately pay dividends for the American economy and the American people. A skilled economist could surely do this, and it is the kind of argument that has been made before and accepted, apparently, by the public as legitimate— “trickle-down economics” comes to mind.

The second strategy is more difficult, but will pay bigger dividends, by far, if it can be successfully implemented: Teach the American public how modern, sovereign fiat-money actually works....

New Economic Perspectives
Framing a Job Guarantee

J. D. Alt

Bill Mitchell – Critics of the Job Guarantee miss the mark badly … again

My blog post last week – On the path to MMT becoming mainstream (April 17, 2018) – discussed the way in which the language and concepts that have been developed by the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) authors are now permeating mainstream narratives and the media. While this has increased the pushback and hostility from both the Right and Left opposition to MMT, it is also a sign that the public understanding of the way in which the monetary system works and the policy options available to currency-issuing governments, is improving. Most recently, there is been a flurry in the US media discussing employment guarantees, which is a welcome relief from the previous saturation coverage of impoverished UBI ideas. It is fabulous, that at the policy level, the idea that the state can eliminate mass (involuntary) unemployment if it so chooses is becoming more acceptable. That’s down, in part, to the great work being done there by my MMT colleagues. There are also derivative public sector job creation proposals getting ‘airplay’ which I do not consider to be MMT-inspired nor are what I would call Job Guarantee initiatives, but which are still, to their credit, raising awareness of the need for the state to ensure there are sufficient jobs for all rather than dispatch citizens who are unable to find work to the unemployment queue. The push back is increasing and that is a sign that dissonance is being felt by the neoliberals who oppose the state taking responsibility for mass unemployment and using its fiscal capacity to render it a thing of the past. Many of the critics from the Left do not have the courage to come out and say they prefer the alternative to a Job Guarantee, which is entrenched unemployment. That leaves them carping away with no legs to stand on. The Right objections are venal as they always are – they want mass unemployment to persist to dampen wages growth and allow more real income to be captured by the top-end-of-town....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

Critics of the Job Guarantee miss the mark badly … again
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

T Sabri Öncü — Miscommunicated Monetary Theory

The Modern Monetary Theory is described as an integration of endogenous money, state money, credit money, and functional finance theories. Despite departing from a faithful narration of what actually happens in the real world, the MMT arrives at a new world in which the government can spend as it pleases. Not only this and several other difficult-to-swallow claims, but also academic concepts such as vertical and horizontal components of money supply introduced along the way are what make MMT difficult to communicate to the general public and also difficult to fully appreciate.

Economic & Political Weekly
Miscommunicated Monetary Theory
T Sabri Öncü, economist based in Istanbul, Turkey

Bill Mitchell — The role of literary fiction in perpetuating neo-liberal economic myths – Part 2

In The role of literary fiction in perpetuating neo-liberal economic myths – Part 1, I noted introduced the idea that fictional literature plays a significant role in framing false economic concepts and, thus, can promotes neo-liberal biases among the readership, even when the plot of the narrative is ostensibly about something other than economics. In other words, what parades as fiction becomes a powerful tool for spreading ideological propaganda, often in a very subliminal or subtle way. In Part 2, I demonstrate that further and provide correct Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) interpretations of popularised economic statements that the characters in the book in focus (The Mandibles) weave into their conversation as if they are accepted facts. The lesson is clear. To further advance Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) ideas, novelists who are sympathetic to the cause should construct their narratives consistent with the MMT principles, where economic matters are touched upon in their work. This will help to counter the misconceptions that arise in literary fiction when authors engage with flawed neo-liberal arguments about the monetary system. It might also help educate book reviewers who often, knowingly or unknowingly, reinforce the myths in the main text.…

How about a novel or film in which understanding of MMT saves the world? It doesn't seem difficult to construct a highly plausible scenario, e.g., along the lines of Being There, where someone very unlikely schools "the experts" in the obvious, or along the lines of The Matrix or The Wizard of Oz, where the illusory consensus view is created by perpetration of financial and economic myths by those behind the veil. Or maybe a sequel to The Grapes of Wrath.

BTW, Thomas Piketty weaves literature skillfully into his narrative in Capital, in a way that is much more powerful than he use of neoclassical economics.

There is precedent for this on the left in addition to the right, where Ayn Rand's novels stand out. The enduring popularity The Wizard of Oz may be based on the fascinating story, but it was originally conceived as Populist persuasion.

Then there is the still hugely popular board game, Monopoly, the idea for which was originally conceived to bolster the message of Henry George.

The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903,[1][4] when American anti-monopolist Elizabeth Magie created a game through which she hoped to be able to explain the single tax theory of Henry George. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. Magie took out a patent in 1904. Her game, The Landlord's Game, was self-published, beginning in 1906.[5]

A series of variant board games based on her concept was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. Cardboard houses were added and rents were increased as they were added. Magie again patented the game in 1923.[6]

According to an advertisement placed in The Christian Science Monitor, Charles Todd of Philadelphia recalled the day in 1932 when his childhood friend, Esther Jones and her husband Charles Darrow, came to their house for dinner. After the meal, the Darrows played The Landlord's Game several times with them, a game that was entirely new to the Darrows, and before he left, Darrow asked for a written set of the rules. After Darrow distributed the game himself as Monopoly, the Todds never spoke to the Darrows again.[7]
After Darrow had excellent sales during the Christmas season of 1934, the Parker Brothers bought the game's copyrights from Darrow.[8] After finding Darrow was not the sole inventor of the game, Parker bought the rights to Magie's patent.[9] — Wikipedia

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The role of literary fiction in perpetuating neo-liberal economic myths – 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 — World Bankspeak – how to hide the failure of a mission!

As the title of my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – indicates, I am interested in both economics and patterned behaviour within groups and the way groups erect edifices (such as, denial) to defend positions. 

I am also interested in the way groups use language. In an upcoming edition of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, I have an article written with Dr Louisa Connors entitled – Framing Modern Monetary Theory, which discusses this topic. Framing and language is a tool that reinforces Groupthink and allows group (organisations) to engage in denial even though the facts convey a different message. A 2015 analysis of World Bank Annual Reports from 1946 to 2012 is illustrative of the way in which framing, grammar and word usage can be used to clothe reality. The analysis published by the Stanford Literary Lab – Bankspeak: The Language of World Bank Reports, 1946–2012 – documents the shift in language by the World Bank between the first two decades of Annual Reports to the second two decades. They show how the Bank shifts from a language that is readily understood and considers a concrete world and offers very little prescriptive input to a narrative that becomes so opaque and filled with financial buzz words that comprehension is lost. They document the emergence of what they refer to as “Bankspeak”. Groupthink requires a certain language to reinforce the increasingly unsustainable reality that the group lives within. That is the role of the World Bankspeak! The Literary Lab analysis is worth reading because it provides a coherent analysis of the way words and sentence structures (grammar) are manipulated to shift focus, allay concern and basically, undermine accountability mechanisms that were established….

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
World Bankspeak – how to hide the failure of a mission!
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

George Lakoff — Success!

Regulations reframed as protections.

George Lakoff
Success!
George Lakoff | Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society and retired Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley

George Lakoff — The Public’s Viewpoint: Regulations are Protections

The term “regulation” is framed from the viewpoint of corporations and other businesses. From their viewpoint, “regulations” are limitations on their freedom to do whatever they want no matter who it harms. But from the public’s viewpoint, a regulation is a protection against harm done by unscrupulous corporations seeking to maximize profit at the cost of harm to the public....

It's all in the framing. Don't let them frame you.

George Lakoff
The Public’s Viewpoint: Regulations are Protections
George Lakoff | Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society and retired Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley

George Lakoff — How to Help Trump

Whenever a frame is repeated it is strengthened. regardless of whether the reference is good or bad. "There is no such thing as bad publicity." DJT gets that. The opposition does not.

George Lakoff Blog
How to Help Trump
George Lakoff | Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley

Bill Mitchell — Rejecting the TINA mantra and the second ‘Gilded Age’

Cuts to the core of it. Confronting neoliberalism.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Rejecting the TINA mantra and the second ‘Gilded Age’
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia