If the government is not as broke as some say it is, then the inability to invest in things like public education is due to a lack of political will and not some natural law written into the fabric of economic reality.Sojourners
President Trump presented his infrastructure plan last week. If you’re keen on the idea of out-of-control privatized utilities gouging customers and manipulating energy markets, or consortia building overpriced, expensive toll roads (until they go bust), then you’ll love the president’s proposals. His mooted public-private partnerships are another variant of socialism for the rich and free market discipline for the rest of us. PPPs are like a religion that offers its adherents the promise of capitalist heaven via tax breaks, subsidized funding, and guaranteed returns, minus the discipline of private bank credit arrangements or potential bankruptcy, the costs of which are invariably borne by a public already experiencing the hell of significantly more restricted access (think toll roads and bridges), higher user fees or “slower lane” traffic (think the end of net neutrality), and the costs of bailouts if and when the venture goes bust....
No private market discipline is enforced on management because in most cases they are given control of what was once a public monopoly, which is simply converted into a private one. It’s rentier capitalism, plain and simple....
In essence, these public-private partnerships are one of the sick jokes that the neoliberal era visited on all of us in the name of economic efficiency and responsible government—a ‘joke’ because the beneficiaries of all this public largesse have been laughing all the way to the bank as stupid public officials continue to fall prey to their lobbying as they joyfully hand over the keys to the public purse. Trump is simply perpetuating the trend of allowing governments to continue to abrogate their true responsibilities to pursue and safeguard public purpose. Governments should never have become agents of private profit.…Neoliberalism can be viewed as government as agent of private profit based on "free market" ideology that prioritizes private ownership over public because "efficiency," along with public policy that favors capital formation as the basis for growth, under the assumption that "a rising tide lifts all boats" (trickle down).
Public non-market production makes up a quarter to a half or more of all economic activity among advanced democratic nation-states. Yet the public economy’s ability to function on behalf of the populace as a whole is seriously imperiled in many western democracies, and particularly jeopardized in the United States. The surging influence of mainstream economics has been a prime factor in the degradation of the public domain over the last several decades – a phenomenon that James Galbraith (2008) has called “the collapse of the public governing capacity.”
Market advocates, exploiting neoclassical economic theory, have foisted market axioms and precepts onto government, intent on transforming public goods production in imitation of an idealized and idolized market model.
The ravaging of government in the interests of ideology and private profit has proceeded largely unhampered because we have no adequate theory to explain the nature and dynamics of the non-market public economy, no intellectual infrastructure to explain how its purposes and processes differ crucially from those of the market, and no effective explanatory model that shows why such differences matter substantially for democratic governance and the well-being of the populace....The post is short and to the point.
So, while some have suggested that the solution is simply to stop using Uber (and, ostensibly, to use competitors like Lyft or Gett), this is no solution at all. The solution is making sure that these companies are subject to the same regulations as traditional taxis, as well as that they comply with labor and other laws, which was unsurprisingly absent from the Holder report. This is the innovative idea that is also a solution to many of Silicon Valley’s problems, regardless of the industry.
Uber might not be able to survive if it started caring about the safety of its passengers, the exploitation of its drivers, or the social costs it shifts onto the rest of us, but maybe it shouldn’t. As politicians plot with Silicon Valley to take over public infrastructure and to revamp the fundamental nature of work, maybe Silicon Valley shouldn’t either.
MMT is a description of the existing monetary system and its interaction with the production mechanisms. It takes a unique viewpoint that highlights opportunities that remain out of sight to traditional methods.
From this viewpoint comes a number of suggested policy proposals. So how do those proposals help keep things running smoothly?Modern Money Matters
If future growth is to take a different path, it will require more than the usual mantra about taking advantage of low interest rates to fund infrastructure. Instead, we need to rethink the fundamental precepts that govern our understanding of how and why capitalist economies grow—both in terms of the ‘rate’ and the ‘direction’ of change. Key to this is a better understanding of what drives business investment, and the effect that public investment can have—not just ‘crowding-in’ investments that businesses may already have been considering, but actively stimulating the desire to make new investments they hadn’t yet considered. It is this ability of bold, strategic public investments to rouse what Keynes called the ‘animal spirits’ of business investors that is key.…
It is time to refuse to speak in terms of numbers, and start talking only in terms of people and resources required to get things done.Medium — Neil Wilson
The debate about the relative roles of the state and the market in capitalist economies tends to swing from side to side in the hearts and minds of public opinion: periods when the state is defended for its role in economic development are always superseded by an attack on its intervention into ‘well functioning’ markets. It has been like this throughout the twentieth century. And it is what has happened since the most recent global financial crisis and economic recession: a brief period right after its outbreak, when there was consensus that the state had a key role to play in both saving the banks and using fiscal policy to promote growth, was quickly apprehended by those who feared rising levels of public debt. Indeed, this debt was mistakenly seen as the cause rather than the result of the crisis—due to lower tax receipts, rising bailouts, etc. So austerity became again the flavour of the day, while any sort of serious economic and industrial policy became anathema.
What is missing from the public perception is how through the history of modern capitalism, the state has done, and continues to do, what markets simply won’t. This is not about its role in simply fixing ‘market failures’, but its role in directly shaping and creating markets.…MARIANA MAZZUCATO — Economics - Innovation - Inclusive Growth
I don’t think these two premises, MMT and ideology, are mutually exclusive. What I propose is there are issues and contexts where a majority, perhaps even a supermajority of Americans, could agree on—where, how, and when—public spending can decouple from the restraints of taxing and borrowing.New Economic Perspectives
CEO pay still out of controlMinus reception of the appropriate feedback from the "controlling" interdependencies, any system metric is "out of control."
These are the best of times. These are the worst of times. The times we live in give us great hope. And, the times we live in crush what little hope we have.
We have hope, because we know what to do to solve the problems that now threaten our very existence. But we lose hope, because implementing these solutions seems politically impossible. Too few people with too much money would have their financial interests hurt or even destroyed by these solutions, so the media they own obscures the solutions behind false equivalencies, and the politicians they own dismiss the solutions as "too expensive." ...
Our great hope is based on the fact that we basically need to build an entirely new world economy, to replace the old economy that is so heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels. Considering that the entire world economy produces around $71 trillion in goods and services each year (of which the U.S. economy produces around $16 trillion), that means we could easily see double digit rates of economic growth each year, for many, many years. $100 trillion over 15 years is just under $7 trillion a year. That's just a ten percent increase in world output right now! We CAN do this - we have hundreds of millions of people worldwide who would welcome the opportunity of a new, well-paying job that moreover made a significant contribution, in whatever large or small way, to building a better future for their children and grandchildren....
We already have the science, and we already have the technology. What we do not have is a society that values scientists and engineers more than Wall Street speculators and usurers. That will change as the combined triple crises of climate change, resource depletion, and economic degradation under the burdens of usury and speculation, compel us to turn to science and technology to save our very lives. This will be similar to the process described by Thomas Piketty, in which the tragedies of World Wars One and Two destroyed the stranglehold oligarchs in various countries had achieved over their nations' economies. Even now, we are developing the new ideologies that will replace neo-liberalism and conservatism, and change our culture so that doing good is no longer a losing proposition.Real Economics
The level at which World War Two was actually won, was the level of science and technology, with the deployment of mass produced internal combustion engines, directed radio waves (radar and sonar), computers for code-breaking as well as effective combat fire control, and, finally, the splitting of atoms. The level at which humanity will win its struggle to survive global climate change will again be the level of science and technology, and woe betide the selfish oligarch and financier who stands in the way.
New Economic PerspectivesIn previous instalments we have established that “taxes drive money”. What we mean by that is that sovereign government chooses a money of account (Dollar in the USA), imposes obligations in that unit (taxes, fees, fines, tithes, tolls, or tribute), and issues the currency that can be used to “redeem” oneself in payments to the government. Currency is like the “Get Out of Jail Free” card in the game of Monopoly.Taxes create a demand for “that which is necessary to pay taxes” (and other obligations to the state), which allows the government to purchase resources to pursue the public purpose by spending the currency.Warren Mosler puts it this way: the purpose of the tax is to create unemployment. That might sound a bit strange, but if we define unemployment as a situation in which job seekers want to work for money wages, then government can hire them by offering its currency. The tax frees resources from private use so that government can employ them in public use.To greatly simplify, money is a measuring unit, originally created by rulers to value the fees, fines, and taxes owed.By putting the subjects or citizens into debt, real resources could be moved to serve the public purpose. Taxes drive money.So, money was created to give government command over socially created resources.
How Two Nations That Drove The Renaissance Eventually Joined At The Hip And Then Purposely Shot Both of Their Own Feet
Have A Steady Stream Of Changing ContextsAnd Won't Explore Them Without Prejudice?*
http://www.frbsf.org/education/publications/doctor-econ/2005/march/credit-unions-regulation-supervision
http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/pub_assets/pdf/re/2013/b/banks_creditunions.pdf
https://thefinancialbrand.com/29640/credit-unions-fight-banks-over-community-charters/
"The operation of our money world has failed to be our servant and instead is our tyrant and master."
"We must correct the causes of the depression rather than deal with the effects of it!"That was 82 years ago!!! Has the US electorate lost sight of Public Purpose? Have we lost sight of national goals?
streaming even far more data flows, in real-time,
RAPID pattern recognition within and across more data flows,
massively parallel testing of distributed tuning steps (local actions),
and most of all ... an ongoing ASSESSMENT model ("Public Purpose" as the agile, floating Desired Outcome).All inter-linked, through massively parallel feedback data flows, of course. No, corporate owned advertising & propaganda channels will NOT suffice. Don't even ask. It's already just in the way, and a significant paywall obstacle that is slowing the evolution of the USA.
We in America have gone all in on the economy. It has been our number one priority for years, a priority that President Obama enthusiastically put front and center in his recent State of the Union address.Econolosophy
But what is the philosophical justification for a faster-growing economy?
In the broadest sense philosophy is summarized in the colloquial question, “What’s your philosophy?” Philosophy in this sense it is reflection on one’s fundamental assumptions and those of society not only in particular but as a world view, that is, a conceptual system that models reality in symbols expressed as words rather than numbers.
Philosophy deals with quality as well as quantity and other uses of language than purely descriptive, as well as modality. The primary tool is logic and the method is reasoning. Just as mathematics is the language of science and accounting the language of business, logic is the language of philosophy.
Most people’s world view is acquired through socialization and education. Much of it remains implicit, and most people don’t endeavor to make it explicit or reflect on foundational matters much or even at all. Plato attributes to Socrates the observation that a life not reflected upon is not worth the living. This is generally taken to be the earliest and clearest definition of philosophy. Philosophy is reflection using reason in this broad view. What’s not to like about that?
Since there are many fields of life and knowledge, philosophy has many branches that attempt to make the implicit explicit and to subject it to a rigorous logical critique through debate. This is the Socratic dialectic. This post and comment thread is an example of it in action.
Moreover, philosophy isnt’ just shooting the bull over beers, although a lot of philosophizing is done that way. But philosophy is concerned with foundations rather than trivia. Philosophy of science can also be called “foundations of science,” for example. This involves the attempt to reflect on key fundamentals such as causality in order to clarify them, as well as to uncover inconsistencies in assumptions and presuppositions.
Philosophy in the broadest sense is the attempt to reflect on the foundations of a world view, making as much of it explicit as possible and then critiquing it rigorously using reason. This is pretty much the objective of Phil 101, which is about the basics of reasoning, logic and critical thinking, usually with reference to some of the “enduring questions” that continue to be debated since no resolution has been arrived at that compels assent since agreed upon criteria are lacking.
These questions used to be studied in terms of the great thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition and some professors still follow this course. Many others chose to seat the questions in current affairs and controversies such as medical ethics, liberal democracy, and other matters that are sure to result in spirited debate.