Doug Henwood, Modern Monetary Theory Isn't Helping
Click-et-vous. There's been an upsurge in belief that deficits never matter. That's just false. (For background, read up on MMT at Wikipedia. Henwood is a Marxian economist who knows his shit, so worth paying attention to, but here's a rejoinder to Henwood's critique from an MMTer.)
Convincing. If “MMT” really means “anti-austerity/lunacy,” great. I think it means, “We don’t have to have any kind of conflict to fund our programs.”
One, that won’t happen. If everyone went full MMT, the second there’s inflation, it’ll be blamed on the programs. In general, there will be a near-endless fight forever. That’s human politics; these MMT guys are in la-la land. The right never gives up. Neither do we. Haves vs have-nots; just read Mommsen on Rome. Same shit, different system.
Two, if you really do cause an inflationary spiral out of fanatical rejection of reality, well, you’ve screwed yourself. Tempting to leap at it, politically, in the short term but that should be resisted.
That said, a saner form of MMT-ishness might be, “Yeah, we’re lucky in the US. We can get away with this shit, if not forever, then certainly to fund a green new deal. Let’s get that going and we’ll deal with the fallout later, as it’ll be less, by definition, than doing nothing about AGW.”
But that’s just sane investment. No need for these theoretical bells and whistles. And the provenance of MMT is worrying—anti-tax hysteria/propaganda.
I find the MMT-inflation blinder ironic, as it mirrors perfectly the blinder on population on the left. With very good reasons, people are wary of population-control types, Malthusians, and all that. But we’re a biological species with a carrying capacity, so even if we have a few billion more we could fit into a decent global socialist system, and ignoring the fact that we don’t have one and won’t for some time (as population continues to rise), at some point there’s a carrying capacity for that, too. Utopia has a carrying capacity. Can we have 2tn humans here? 10tn? As with inflation and the MMTers, there will be a number where you pass carrying capacity.
Getting lefties to see this point is near-impossible in my anecdotal experience. Malthusian! Progress-hinderer! Etc.
Just trying not to be “religious” about shit is apparently beyond us as a species. And the most religious-irrational types are often the keystroke-stroking libertarian air-heads who think themselves gritty realists. What else is new?
But this article of Henwood's was a good dose of reality. The key thing for me is that the left should simply tell the truth, unite the many against the few, and all that. In a world of lies and PR, the truth is the best PR there is…is my naive view.
Convincing. If “MMT” really means “anti-austerity/lunacy,” great. I think it means, “We don’t have to have any kind of conflict to fund our programs.”
One, that won’t happen. If everyone went full MMT, the second there’s inflation, it’ll be blamed on the programs. In general, there will be a near-endless fight forever. That’s human politics; these MMT guys are in la-la land. The right never gives up. Neither do we. Haves vs have-nots; just read Mommsen on Rome. Same shit, different system.
Two, if you really do cause an inflationary spiral out of fanatical rejection of reality, well, you’ve screwed yourself. Tempting to leap at it, politically, in the short term but that should be resisted.
That said, a saner form of MMT-ishness might be, “Yeah, we’re lucky in the US. We can get away with this shit, if not forever, then certainly to fund a green new deal. Let’s get that going and we’ll deal with the fallout later, as it’ll be less, by definition, than doing nothing about AGW.”
But that’s just sane investment. No need for these theoretical bells and whistles. And the provenance of MMT is worrying—anti-tax hysteria/propaganda.
I find the MMT-inflation blinder ironic, as it mirrors perfectly the blinder on population on the left. With very good reasons, people are wary of population-control types, Malthusians, and all that. But we’re a biological species with a carrying capacity, so even if we have a few billion more we could fit into a decent global socialist system, and ignoring the fact that we don’t have one and won’t for some time (as population continues to rise), at some point there’s a carrying capacity for that, too. Utopia has a carrying capacity. Can we have 2tn humans here? 10tn? As with inflation and the MMTers, there will be a number where you pass carrying capacity.
Getting lefties to see this point is near-impossible in my anecdotal experience. Malthusian! Progress-hinderer! Etc.
Just trying not to be “religious” about shit is apparently beyond us as a species. And the most religious-irrational types are often the keystroke-stroking libertarian air-heads who think themselves gritty realists. What else is new?
But this article of Henwood's was a good dose of reality. The key thing for me is that the left should simply tell the truth, unite the many against the few, and all that. In a world of lies and PR, the truth is the best PR there is…is my naive view.