Hi Dave,
I think you may have put more weight on my source than I intended to give it. When I linked to and quoted from the Bill Mitchell blog post, it was just to show (from a fairly cursory search) that MMT’ers like Bill Mitchell do not equate money with wealth and, furthermore, that they identify the level of resources available to a society as a key part of the equation.
I don’t know that the 3 principles you have quoted (from Lerner?) effectively sum up the MMT position - that’s why I would value Chris and Peak Prosperity providing a platform for a sensible discussion of MMT as both a theory or description of reality, and a prescription for policy (which may be SOME part of the GND).
On your point 4, why is the business cycle necessary to the reduction of ‘bad ideas’? Could market mechanisms operate without creating a cycle? I haven’t seen anything where MMT advocates propping up failing enterprises and ‘bad ideas’. Similarly on 3) I don’t recall seeing MMT advocating the emphasis on large enterprises versus small companies and the periphery. I think the idea is that, by maintaining demand in the economy, small companies and enterprise will be encouraged and can thrive.
What I have found most convincing in the MMT materials I have been exposed to is the clear demonstration that few economists - and no politicians - understand how money works in modern economies. The immediate impact of this in my locality (the UK) has been a decade of austerity (the same austerity that feeds Brexit and the yellow vests) based on the ideas that ‘we have run out of money’ and that austerity will fix in. Of course, we have had austerity, and continued running deficits every year, so have even ‘less money’ than before - a fact that is conveniently ignored.
Cheers,
Matt
But if we don't get money out of politics, her only contribution will - most likely - be to provide cover for the existing crop of corrupt weasels - in BOTH PARTIES - to adopt MMT and use it to give their donors a big, inflationary payday. Totally agree.I am sorely tempted to leave things just like this and celebrate our mutual agreement. But I won't. :)
I'll give you your oversimplification, but is it really necessary to reflexively exercise your Hillary hatred? She's no longer running for anything and its getting old.and then
ad ho·mi·nem That term gets thrown around a lot, but frequently without knowing its actual meaning:
I was criticizing Trump because of his positions and his regular behavior. I forgot to mention his compulsive lying, now at something over 9,000 since being elected. Its got nothing to do with political correctness. Its accurate description.It amuses me that you a) assume I don't know the definition, and b) appear incapable of looking in the mirror. You call what I do "Hillary Hatred" - but all I did is provide an "accurate description" of what she did. Her use of the phrase "the Deplorables" almost certainly cost her the election - which, if I were an HRC supporter, I would definitely call a colossal blunder. Or, summarized more colloquially, it was just stupid. Upon reflection, I remain comfortable with "stupid." So when I say "stupid", that's just factual, not any sort of hatred. It was factually stupid of her to reveal her sociopathic inner nature. Now she's a forever-wannabee instead of President Hillary as a direct result of that comment. If that wasn't stupid - you tell me what it was. The relevance to our discussion? I could have followed in HRC's footsteps by being "patronizing" of the GND supporters and calling them "Green Deplorables", as you imagined that I did, but I actually empathize with them too much. Being (what I consider) green, and given that I believe that a new sort of deal is something our society desperately needs, and not being sociopathic, I could not do that. Unlike Hillary, who apparently had no sympathy at all for those left behind in the flurry of globalization and wage debasement. I remain a registered Democrat. I like some of Trump, and some of AOC, some of Bernie, and some of Warren. I'm not sure what that makes me. The pendulum has swung way, way too far to the rapacious crony-capital-corporate interest. It needs to be dragged back, as only the pro-union trust-busting Democrats of old would have understood. I mean, unions aren't my favorite vehicle, but things are so unbalanced these days...we really need a countervailing force. And there just isn't one. I mean, Trump is the only person fighting for the low-wage worker. Dems sure as hell aren't. "Unlimited immigration" - all in the name of political correctness and new Dem voters. The 1970s Dems who were staunchly against illegal immigration are rolling over in their graves at this point. And of course nobody expects Republicans to support working people. They certainly never have before. So who is left to look out for the lower-to-middle class worker? Not Republicans, and not Democrats. Only the much-attacked President Trump. Of all people. Who would have guessed? I just wonder who is behind all those attacks. Cui bono?
cui bo·no1 : a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain
While I found the whole auditioning thing interesting, I couldn’t help but think of Ayn Rand during this presentation. Don’t get me wrong. I – like Ken Wilber – think that Ayn Rand was a key force in the Orange (see Spiral Dynamics) stage of development.
It is interesting to note that many think that Reagan wasn’t running the show either. There are those who think that Nancy Reagan was the brains in the family.
I’ll leave it with this… The producer/performer – yes, it’s a performance – of this video recently shared the following post on his facebook page: “hello vegans, if PIGS are so SMART why do 66% of them build houses with INEFFECTIVE, STUPID materials” [emphasis in original post]. Obviously, the performer and the original poster have never heard that a straw bale house is one of most efficient homes that one can build.
As a small government guy, I am unable to get excited by AOC. However, Mr. Reagan is not my cup of tea either.
No joke, when Carville attacked Paula Jones with
“If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find”
I decided then and there that I would rather be trailer park trash than vote Democrat.
What do you know, I’m a bridge engineer who lives in a trailer park. And I still haven’t gotten a desire to vote Democrat. And I don’t like Trump; so I wouldn’t vote him; and Hillary has seemed so corrupt that she never attracted my vote.
But for me, I’m a Carville anti-Dem.
THAT was a stupid statement.
But yes, Hillary had her moment in the sunburn.
If the market is comprised of lots of small actors, then it will have in aggregate a lot more information than 12 people in a room, and if each smallactor is acting in their own self interest, then they will effectively provide a relatively politically-neutral opinion on what the prices should be.
12 people in a room, however, will come up with an essentially political decision, depending entirely on the motives of the group and who their benefactors happen to be. Small groups in positions of power always have benefactors, or favored policies, or favored outcomes. I mean, we all do, but the smaller the group, and the more critical their decisions, the more effort that “big money” will spend to influence the critical group.
Here’s the thing. Its quite difficult for big money to bribe everyone to think a certain way. Its much, much easier for big money to bribe 12 people to think a certain way.
This really argues for small government - and small business. The second part of this sentence is what the libertarians miss, because they just focus on government. Large government + small business = state-dominated capitalism/Bernie Democratic Socialism. Small government + large business = Trust Capitalism, as we saw back in the 1900s. Large government + large business = Crony Capitalism, which is what we have today.
It is only small government + small business that ends up with a relatively happy outcome. Small government doesn’t have the power and reach to regulate everything, and small business doesn’t have the concentration of money and focus necessary to take over government.
If you get 3 CEOs in a room, they can come to an agreement and collude and “buy” some part of government using their combined resources. If it needs 20 of them - it won’t happen, and even if it does, it won’t last very long, because it just takes one of them to break ranks and blow things up.
We actually READ the GreenNewDeal. It’s NOT a draft bill – it’s 11 pages of a Google doc with shocking surprises. It assigns a vast “wartime footing” level amount of taxpayer money to private entities – VCs, the private Federal Reserve, “new banks” and any “financial instrument” the 15 members of the committee decide 'appropriate." It creates a national SMART GRID – which is terrible for human health and great for telecoms and surveillance. It gives the 15 committee members the right to not hold any public hearings about the “green new deal,” if they so choose. It creates loopholes that leave them free to not have normal term limits. It hands vast sums to air and ocean carbon capture, which is an experimental geoengineering tech for which silicon valley investors own IP. It states that the “green new deal” will be released on a website and a publication – not on govtrack, where public transparency is assured (and where we at DailyClout get our API). It transfers “unlimited” resources at the will of the 15 and their chosen partners in business, industry etc to groups defined by race, gender and rural-ness, thus violating the equal protections in our Constitution. It’s a shocking document.
Chris try this :
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accidentally released a document that supported paying Americans ‘unwilling to work,’ and conservatives attacked her for it
Matt-
Things I’ve read elsewhere - just bits and pieces rather than the overarching theory I saw in your source - all tie in to the general concept of the government acting, not as one actor of many in a larger economy, but as the decisive actor who concludes on its own how much of society’s resources to apportion to the goals it has set, using the channel of printed money to effect the decisions it arrives at.
Government wakes up one day, and says, “I think we need 50% of the nation’s resources for this goal.” They print sufficient money to acquire that 50%, and Bob is their Uncle. With this mechanism, there is no limitation at all on the government’s ability to act.
Certainlly the government could decide to use self-restraint. To me, that’s like suggesting a dog would refrain from eating the steak that accidentally falls from the kitchen counter to the floor. It runs clean against the lessons of history, and common sense. My observation: governments spend as much as possible in service to whomever supports said government, at least historically anyway, because giving goodies to their power base gets them re-elected. There are exceptions - in nations like Germany who have learned some tough lessons in the past - but they are the exception rather than the rule.
As for “why we need recessions” to clean out the underbrush of ponzi schemes and bad ideas - that’s “Creative Destruction” - explained by Schumpeter, who in turn got the original concept from Marx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction
I think the concept is valid strictly from my own observation. The 2000 bubble and subsequent crash managed to retain most of the “good ideas with lasting value”, and stamped out a bunch of really bad ideas that got funded, and then blew up.
You need the boom to get crazy things funded. You need the bust to help sort out which ones aren’t going to work out, which ends up being most of them. But coming out of that process, you get new, lasting innovations. If you think Cisco, google, and facebook are good. Our modern internet came out of the 2000 bubble. Most ideas failed, but the ones that survived ended up changing the world.
The bust has a critical role too. Talented employees are forced to stop working on the stupid ideas which have died, and they are then “reallocated” to the places that survive - presumably the better ideas that have long-term value.
I’ve seen this process in Silicon Valley a number of times. It even happened to me! I got reallocated, twice!
Anyhow, creative destruction is both real, and a good thing, in my opinion. For whatever reason, people don’t stop working on stupid ideas until they are forced to do so by economic reality.
As for why MMT props up bad ideas - the one line said it all. Lerner said that the government would act at all times to maintain demand at a reasonable level. That’s code for, “the government will print money every time it looks as though the economy is going into recession.” Recessions happen because demand falls. That’s what a recession is. Demand drops, production drops in response, people are laid off, which causes demand to drop further, and things spiral down. If the government acts as “the demand source of last resort”, that’s code for making sure there are no recessions.
And indeed, that’s what the Fed did from 2009-2015. It did exactly what Lerner suggested. And I suspect that every government that had the power to avoid recessions via money printing would use it. A recession virtually guarantees electoral defeat for whomever is in power at the time of the recession. They might pretend avoiding recession is about avoiding pain for people, but its really about just staying in power.
We see China doing this right now.
Last point. Why does avoiding recession help big companies? Big (and bad) companies don’t generally die during good times. They die mostly during bad times.
Most of the bad parts of MMT aren’t spelled out in the goals - the goals of MMT are fine. The bad parts are the unintended consequences of the use of MMT in practice as it would most likely be used by every government I’ve ever witnessed in action.
There needs to be a check on government’s ability to allocate society’s resources to its goals. Otherwise, they just allocate all of it - to benefit their base, or their donors, etc, all in the name of maintaining power.
That’s not spelled out in MMT, of course, and its definitely not the goal of the MMT proponents, who are probably all fine people with wonderful goals, but it is the reality that would emerge from handing government the ability to freely allocate society’s resources without any effective check.
Unions aren’t bad, but like every human creation they can be corrputed and become too powerful for their own good. Just like businesses and administrators and…
-S
"'Green New Deal' suggests welfare for those 'unwilling to work.' Is that a mistake?" The Daily Caller's headline read. Later on Thursday, the talking points were deleted off of Ocasio-Cortez's site. Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, called the document "bad copy," suggesting it was mistakenly put out by his office.In politics you either release something intentionally or you accidentally lean on the "send" key. There's no in between. In this case, the copy was prepared, presumably reviewed, and then intentionally posted to their website where I picked it up. Later, after it received some flak it was quietly deleted, but not retracted (there's a difference). Calling it "bad copy" and a "mistake" is not the same thing as calling it an accident...accidents happen, and they are unavoidable, and calling it such removes responsibility from the parties involved. These talking points weren't an accident. They were intentionally produced and released. Were they a mistake? I would say "yes" and I think it would behoove the AOC team to amend and re-release the FAQ talking points with an explanation for the differences. Who do they think should be participants in their proposed make-work programs? What criteria would apply? What should our societal response be to people who don't want to or are unwilling to work? What's the current thinking of the GND crowd on this subject? Making laws seems like hard, laborious work to me, and I'm glad I'm not in the business...I think it would be life-draining for me. But for those in the biz, the details matter. At any rate, I just wanted to defend the meaning of words and their correct use. I'll be happy to amend the AOC copy if/when new FAQ copy or clarifications are released. In the meantime I'll make note of the deletion.
Trump isn’t very imaginitive. He is basically taking the playbook of the 1970s Democrat Party.
Here are the two primary tactics that come to mind:
- strong stance on illegal immigration - keep the third world low wage workers from inundating our US low-wage worker population. This will help keep wages higher. Sure, the 1% will have to pay more for their nannies, gardeners and cooks, but - sucks to be them. [Trump calls it “crime and drugs”, but its all about not pressuring the wages of the lower-middle class. The corporates scream through their proxies at CNN et al and call him RACIST!! but really they’re pissed because their labor costs will go up. And that’s their real beef. But of course they can’t say that, because that would look bad.]
- bringing back/keeping manufacturing jobs in country - NAFTA, China trade, etc. The corporates and elites absolutely hate this policy of his too. Ever heard the Chamber of Commerce attack a Republican President before? That’s when you know who his policy will benefit. Yes, it means higher consumer prices for the top 10%, but it means better wages for the bottom 50%.
He won’t get richer with either one of these goals. His hotels hire lower wage workers. Why on earth would he be against illegals if he was just feathering his own nest? Illegals help lower costs for his business.
Sure, he’s a used car salesman too. He likes to engage in “puffery” - others call it lying, but, in this startup I did, the head guy was just like Trump, so I guess I’m used to seeing a little exaggeration as a part of the sales technique. I actually find it amusing because of my experience, but I know it really pisses other people off. At that startup I actually realized how necessary sales was, and how utterly incapable I am of doing it.
…you certainly need a sense of humor. Like Gimli (Return of the King) said before the last battle at the black gate, “certainty of death, small chance of sucess, what are we waiting for?”.
Of course we don’t have Frodo about to toss the Ring into mount doom, which will suddenly make evil run away in disarry. Our best hope is that Mother nature beats some sense into us before she finishes us off, gives a bit of time to straighten out hopefully. Anything short of that, and we will continue to do what we are doing now, ego centric, fear based insanity. Death camps set up by environmentalist for climate deniers, hard to top that one.
Frodo, what did you really do with that ring?
The anti-trust legislation was put in place to do exactly that. And for decades, the Democrats were the watchdogs on guard against business getting “too big”. Also, Glass-Stegall, which we all know about, was another form of anti-trust legislation.
But once the Dems went full bankster under Clinton, nobody cared about anti-trust laws anymore. The Democrats were just too busy filling their pockets with Corporate Cash. (I guess they saw what the Republicans were doing and got jealous).
Right. So we write and enforce anti-trust legislation that says a company cannot have more than 20% of the revenues in a given market segment, in the same way that no one bank could have more than 5% of US total deposits.
So Google gets broken up. Facebook gets broken up. Twitter: broken up. All the banks get their mergers unwound. Airlines: broken up. Defense industry: broken up. Pharma: broken up. Sickcare insurance: broken up. Agro pesticides: broken up. Microsoft, Intel: broken up.
Either that, or they get turned into utilities.
Google: the search utility. Hmm. That has promise.
It is all back to front.
Start by assessing what the Carrying Capacity and the Net energy of the Nation will be by the turn of the Century. Then plan a reduction in population size and consumption accordingly.
Does the GND do this ?
Because this means they will be able to sit at home all day watching TV or Netflix and not burn a lot of resources.There are tens of millions of people who do this already. Indirectly their resource use is off the charts due to lousy health such as being obese. We have to create institutions that provide an alternative to the mindless status quo. My idea is creating a series of hands-on universities that teach students who are there because they have the right attitude and are willing to live without television and willing to live without clutching cell phones every minute of the day and night. Scholarship students (lifelong?) will build and operate campuses that are green. Eventually things like healthcare training can be introduced. Approximately one-half of the accomodations on campuses -- likely retrofits of office buildings and other obsolete facilities -- will serve as high end retreats for the those guests who want to detox from the nutty culture. (Hopefully the campuses can exist without being exposed to 5G radiation, but this is unlikely as apparently 5G will soon be coming from satellites.) I have often wondered why investment colleagues from 20+ years ago are still in the same old jobs. Other than the money, it dawned on me that they don't know how to do anything but sit in front of a computer. They grew up not working with their hands. Once you work with your hands -- and I started at about the age of nine -- it is almost impossible to find self-worth at a desk. Anything of merit in the future has to include being physically active. UBI doesn't fit the bill.
…and who’s paying for it, and why?
https://www.aier.org/article/fake-poll-green-new-deal
Over 80 percent of American voters support the Green New Deal (GND), or so claim its backers citing a recent survey by a group of academic pollsters. Furthermore, this public endorsement is supposedly bipartisan, with 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans indicating that they either strongly or somewhat support the Far Left package to reshape the entire American economy around “green energy” in the course of the next decade. A very different story lurks beneath the surface of these impressive-looking statistics. Although the survey was conducted by a team of professors at George Mason University in Virginia and Yale University in Connecticut, it was essentially a “push poll” designed to bias respondents in favor of the proposition. The trick behind the outcome may be seen in the question’s wording. Rather than asking voters directly about the GND, the pollsters first presented them with a glowing paragraph-length synopsis that touted the proposition’s fantastical claims: Some members of Congress are proposing a “Green New Deal” for the U.S. They say that a Green New Deal will produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The Deal would generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years; upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings, and transportation infrastructure; increase energy efficiency; invest in green technology research and development; and provide training for jobs in the new green economy. Note that this paragraph intentionally leads the respondents toward a favorable view of the program. It extols the GND promises of a “green energy” conversion on a scientifically impossible 10-year timeline as if it is a given. It promises an abundance of jobs and economic growth without revealing that these features depend upon the simultaneous adoption of an unprecedented federal jobs-guarantee program that would effectively place large swaths of the economy under direct federal government management. It offers no indication that the same jobs-guarantee program would likely culminate in an unwieldy bureaucratic disaster of centralized economic planning. It makes no mention of the proposal’s extremist calls to phase out air travel in favor of trains, or to subject every building in America to costly renovation and reconstruction in order to meet new energy-efficiency rules. And it says not a word about the extreme price tag of the entire package, which certainly breaks into the tens of trillions of dollars and may reach as high as $93 trillion when all is said and done. Instead, all of the pitfalls of the GND are conveniently brushed aside while all of its promised benefits, no matter how unrealistic or expensive, are presented to the survey’s respondents as if they were neutral and factual truths... Loaded opinion polling of this type is a commonly encountered dirty trick in partisan political campaigns, where marketing firms associated with a certain candidate or policy try to build the illusion of public support (or hostility to the opposing party’s candidate) by asking intentionally loaded survey questions and then reporting the results as if they contained an accurate measure of public opinion. Long controversial, these tactics violate standard practices in survey design and question construction. Unfortunately, the pollsters in this case are not political campaign consultants — they’re university professors at research institutes specializing in “climate change communication.” Given the way that they skewed their poll results toward the GND with biased and loaded questioning, it’s reasonable to ask whether their research output crossed the ethical line separating scholarship from politically motivated advocacy.
Disturbing as it is creative, gamification is the darker side how major corporate information monopolies are taking advantage of basic human proclivities to track and manipulate them for profit. History is replete with examples of the first efforts of people such as Frederick W. Taylor, to measure the efficiency of workers in order to achieve increased productivity. As large companies turn increasing to monitor and measure behaviors, they will, accordingly, realize the potential of using these proclivities to enhance profits. We all have the potential of being swept up in this net, unawares. Even Chris Martenson’s observations of the number of hits on his Youtube offering are just one of the many examples of harnessing our competitive inclinations to out-do each other. Meanwhile the data collecting specialists are analyzing the behavioral components and devising algorithims to be applied for maximum returns on those behaviors. As the famous surgeon, William J. Mayo, commented about specialists, “We’re learning more and more about less and less”. As our science oriented, reductionist culture drills ever deeper into our psyches, society will pay the cost of the benefits to the privileged one percenters. Or, again, am i just being an alarmist?
https://aeon.co/essays/how-employers-have-gamified-work-for-maximum-profit