[Steve_American]

Krystal's main point is on a different isssue, BUT

the general case may help some of you to grok that your view of economic reality is the result of a *lifetime* of being fed misinformation, fed to you by hacks & trolls who were working for the billionaires. That therefore, you need to open your eyes and see the evidence that points to a different economic reality.

.

[Puffer Fish]

Sorry. There's an experiment being carried out right before our eyes. The government decided to rapidly print a couple trillion dollars, and now we are seeing prices go up.

Some people are still in denial and claiming this is only "temporary".

[Steve_American]

@Puffer Fish,
Yes, there is the experiment you described be done now. The result is not in yet.

MMT professionals, are in the camp that the inflation seen so far is not going to last.

Some people point out that last year prices fell about 5%, and so far prices have retruned to about the level before they fell.
This is hardly evidence that inflation is going to take off and shoot up in the months ahead.

I have pointed out that, the pandemic and the shutdowns of parts of the economy, have caused shortages in some areas of the economy. I claim that all price increases can *not*, therefore, be demonstrated to have been caused by excess Gov. spending in an otherwise stable economy.

Also, the term 'printing money' should refer to the action by a gov. to simply create money and spend it into the economy.
This is not what the Gov. did over the last 15 months. Instead, it created money with defict spending, and then borrowed an equal amout back out of the economy.
In the modern world, govs. 'print money' when they either don't borrow it back out, or its central bank buys the bond. IIRC, in Japan, the BOJ now holds over 40% of Japan's outstanding bonds. This 40% can be seen as Japan printing that money.
The US doesn't buy stuff with cash. It always uses a check or direct deposit to some US bank. So, the old fassioned method of printing cash and spending it into the economy no longer is possible. The US must 1st issue a deficit check, then sell a bond, and then have the Feb buy an equal amount of bonds from soomeone.

When the US issues a deficit check and the sells a bond to cover the deficit spending, it is forcing someone to save the amount of the deficit. Savings can't be spent or the stop being savings. If bond holders sell their bonds in order to spend the money, they are just moving the savings to a different person. Therefore, the coupled practice of selling bonds to exactly equal the amount of deficit spending, is not a strong cause of inflation. This may be the reason the US has seen inflation over the last 30 years, in only a few areas of the economy.

Lurkers. PF has refused to debate me here and in other threads. He just makes assertions with little evidence. So far, in the current case, the experiment has not run long enough for us to know that inflation has "taken off". There are currently shortages of new and used cars, lumber, etc. which are causing the prices of them to increase. The over all increase has only returned prices to about the level they were at before the lockdowns. Therefore, it is too early to be sounding an alarm.
.

[Unthinking Majority]

A theory isn't worth a darn until it's been tested over and over again and we can observe the results. This is how science works, including social science.

If you show me dozens of countries using MMT for several decades and the results are consistent then that's evidence for (or against) MMT. Until then the proponents are making faith-based guesses. I'm not going to take a vaccine that's only been tested on a few people in the last week. Test the vaccine on tens of thousands over years and you will get statistically significant results that people should have high confidence in. MMT'ers are saying "here take this pill, it hasn't really been tested much but we think it will work!".

[Steve_American]

A theory isn't worth a darn until it's been tested over and over again and we can observe the results. This is how science works, including social science.

If you show me dozens of countries using MMT for several decades and the results are consistent then that's evidence for (or against) MMT. Until then the proponents are making faith-based guesses. I'm not going to take a vaccine that's only been tested on a few people in the last week. Test the vaccine on tens of thousands over years and you will get statistically significant results that people should have high confidence in. MMT'ers are saying "here take this pill, it hasn't really been tested much but we think it will work!".

You are entitled to think that way.
I, OTOH, think that the current econic theory that has been used for 30 or 40 years now is obviously not working the way that was promised.
It is like there is a pandemic and the disease is very infectious and it kills half of those who get it. {This is like the currnet economic theory not working.} In this situation many will be willing to try your untested vaccine.

During the Black Death, this is exactly how people reacted. They tried many crazy things. Have you not seen the images of the "bird masks" that people made to breath air that was filtered over garlic bulbs.

Many younger people [40 or younger] are fed up with Neo-liberal policies and they want to try something different.
.

[SueDeNîmes]

A theory isn't worth a darn until it's been tested over and over again and we can observe the results. This is how science works, including social science.

If you show me dozens of countries using MMT for several decades and the results are consistent then that's evidence for (or against) MMT. Until then the proponents are making faith-based guesses. I'm not going to take a vaccine that's only been tested on a few people in the last week. Test the vaccine on tens of thousands over years and you will get statistically significant results that people should have high confidence in. MMT'ers are saying "here take this pill, it hasn't really been tested much but we think it will work!".

That's eminently sensible, but MMT has pretty much passed the tests.

It is, first, an empirical description (not theory) of the monetary and banking system under fiat currency. That much isn't really disputed, except in that it contradicts the 'money multiplier' model still found in some economics textbooks. Many central banks have now published literature falsifying the money multiplier model (e.g https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media ... conomy.pdf)

MMT's assertion that monetary sovereigns which "borrow" in their own currency are not subject to the whims of the bond market (absent a gold standard) is pretty well confirmed.

So is the proposition that govts have more fiscal space than previously supposed. The post-GFC austerity programmes in most OECD countries provided a natural experiment. They all saw *increases* in debt to GDP ratio due the negative impact on output. Govt deficit spending does not "crowd out" private sector investment, but crowds it in while there is a significant output gap.

Even the IMF (which previously championed the opposite view) now estimates a >1 multiplier for govt spending and has since been urging govts to spend more : 'Spend as much as you can,' IMF head urges governments worldwide

[ckaihatsu]

When the US issues a deficit check and the sells a bond to cover the deficit spending, it is forcing someone to save the amount of the deficit. Savings can't be spent or the stop being savings. If bond holders sell their bonds in order to spend the money, they are just moving the savings to a different person.

SA, could this be considered to be the *incremental privatization* of the government's tax receipts?

Thanks in advance.

[JohnRawls]

SA, could this be considered to be the *incremental privatization* of the government's tax receipts?

Thanks in advance.

This is actually a very good question and the best answer I could figure out on this is probably no. The whole idea of excessive MMT spending is to accelerate growth so the same logic applies that inflation and faster growth will outpace the "incremental privatization" and make it irrelevant and probably even beneficial for both sides. The investers get some place to store their value in a safe asset while the government increases growth and relatively doesn't have to care about the annual payments.

The major flaw in this idea is some kind of recession or stagnation that lasts more than the bond maturity. Or at least pretty far or close to bond maturity. Which is unlikely, there hasn't really been a recession that lasted that long.

[ckaihatsu]

This is actually a very good question and the best answer I could figure out on this is probably no.

And is your name 'Steve' -- ? No, I didn't *think* so. (grin)

Yeah, I get that each bond is a temporary *loan* to the government, but, while active, we could say that any given 'snapshot' of total bond ownership is effectively a 'privatization' of government 'equity', so-to-speak. Is this *democratic*, or is it 'outsourcing' government 'equity' to the 'private sector' -- meaning 'privatization' of a sort.

The whole idea of excessive MMT spending is to accelerate growth so the same logic applies that inflation and faster growth will outpace the "incremental privatization" and make it irrelevant and probably even beneficial for both sides. The investers get some place to store their value in a safe asset while the government increases growth and relatively doesn't have to care about the annual payments.

The major flaw in this idea is some kind of recession or stagnation that lasts more than the bond maturity. Or at least pretty far or close to bond maturity. Which is unlikely, there hasn't really been a recession that lasted that long.

Yeah, so 'MMT' is the latest fad term for Keynesianism:

The Keynesian Revolution was a fundamental reworking of economic theory concerning the factors determining employment levels in the overall economy. The revolution was set against the then orthodox economic framework, namely neoclassical economics.

The early stage of the Keynesian Revolution took place in the years following the publication of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory in 1936. It saw the neoclassical understanding of employment replaced with Keynes' view that demand, and not supply, is the driving factor determining levels of employment. This provided Keynes and his supporters with a theoretical basis to argue that governments should intervene to alleviate severe unemployment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_Revolution

And:

Marxian economics

See also: Marxian economics

Some Marxist economists criticized Keynesian economics.[108] For example, in his 1946 appraisal[109] Paul Sweezy—while admitting that there was much in the General Theory's analysis of effective demand that Marxists could draw on—described Keynes as a prisoner of his neoclassical upbringing. Sweezy argued that Keynes had never been able to view the capitalist system as a totality. He argued that Keynes regarded the class struggle carelessly, and overlooked the class role of the capitalist state, which he treated as a deus ex machina, and some other points. While Michał Kalecki was generally enthusiastic about the Keynesian revolution, he predicted that it would not endure, in his article "Political Aspects of Full Employment". In the article Kalecki predicted that the full employment delivered by Keynesian policy would eventually lead to a more assertive working class and weakening of the social position of business leaders, causing the elite to use their political power to force the displacement of the Keynesian policy even though profits would be higher than under a laissez faire system: The erosion of social prestige and political power would be unacceptable to the elites despite higher profits.[110]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian ... _economics

Also:


One dose of psilocybin improved neural connections lost in depression, study says | TheHill

https://thehill.com/changing-america/we ... ved-neural

[Unthinking Majority]

You are entitled to think that way.
I, OTOH, think that the current econic theory that has been used for 30 or 40 years now is obviously not working the way that was promised.
It is like there is a pandemic and the disease is very infectious and it kills half of those who get it. {This is like the currnet economic theory not working.} In this situation many will be willing to try your untested vaccine.

During the Black Death, this is exactly how people reacted. They tried many crazy things. Have you not seen the images of the "bird masks" that people made to breath air that was filtered over garlic bulbs.

Many younger people [40 or younger] are fed up with Neo-liberal policies and they want to try something different.
.

Neoliberal is trash. Neoliberalism started exactly like MMT. 40 years ago some economists wrote a bunch of books with their economic theories on free markets and de-regulation that we never tested and politicians bought in, and oops! Sorry we were wrong! Decades later we've seen the actual evidence after it has been implemented by many countries, turns out the economists didn't know what they were talking about.

Same with Marxism: Marx and Lenin etc had all these untested theories and a lot of it never came to pass, or blew up in their faces causing suffering and death.

Turn out neoliberalism was all rightwing ideological bullshit that rightwing politicians and their corporate paymasters were attracted to. Now the left is pushing MMT, more leftwing ideological bullshit that attracts the naive and idealistic.

Economists are terrible at predicting the future, they're only good at analyzing things that have happened in the past or present. They can't predict market crashes, they can't get rich on the stock market. The few that do predict things, well, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

Economies are too complex to predict, there's FAR too many working variables interacting with each other to be able to know how MMT would work out. And how it works on one country will often be different than another, because the variables are different in different countries.

The answer to neoliberalism isn't another ambitious utopian theory that's going to save the world and give everyone free cash. Neoliberalism, MMT, Marxism etc were all born in arrogance. Any economist so sure of their prescriptions is a dangerous fool. The answer to neoliberalism is to simply roll it back. We need more regulation, less free trade, more protections, more taxes on the uber-wealthy, more robust social programs etc. Many countries outside the US have done very well over the decades doing this. The US did better when it did this between 1945-1980.

[ckaihatsu]

Neoliberal is trash. Neoliberalism started exactly like MMT. 40 years ago some economists wrote a bunch of books with their economic theories on free markets and de-regulation that we never tested and politicians bought in, and oops! Sorry we were wrong! Decades later we've seen the actual evidence after it has been implemented by many countries, turns out the economists didn't know what they were talking about.

Same with Marxism: Marx and Lenin etc had all these untested theories and a lot of it never came to pass, or blew up in their faces causing suffering and death.

Turn out neoliberalism was all rightwing ideological bullshit that rightwing politicians and their corporate paymasters were attracted to. Now the left is pushing MMT, more leftwing ideological bullshit that attracts the naive and idealistic.

Economists are terrible at predicting the future, they're only good at analyzing things that have happened in the past or present. They can't predict market crashes, they can't get rich on the stock market. The few that do predict things, well, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

Economies are too complex to predict, there's FAR too many working variables interacting with each other to be able to know how MMT would work out. And how it works on one country will often be different than another, because the variables are different in different countries.

The answer to neoliberalism isn't another ambitious utopian theory that's going to save the world and give everyone free cash. Neoliberalism, MMT, Marxism etc were all born in arrogance. Any economist so sure of their prescriptions is a dangerous fool. The answer to neoliberalism is to simply roll it back. We need more regulation, less free trade, more protections, more taxes on the uber-wealthy, more robust social programs etc. Many countries outside the US have done very well over the decades doing this. The US did better when it did this between 1945-1980.

As usual, UM, you want to balance yourself perfectly in the center, looking sane while everyone else around you gets whipped around by the force of the hurricane.

What you're proposing, though, at the end here, is basically back to *Keynesianism*, or 'MMT' (as it's called today). Sure, *any* robust social programs (Keynesianism) would be welcome compared to what we've *been* experiencing, which is *austerity*, yet you still want that valuable pedestal real estate so that you can stand above the rest, to pontificate.

Here's that diagram again -- ultimately there *is no* 'center'. One has to *choose* between the binary options of 'hierarchy' (right-wing), or 'equality' (left-wing). You continue to think that you can opt for some kind of a 'non-partisan', fuck-the-lot-of-you, perfectly-neutral, immaculately fair-and-just administrative state.


3-Dimensional Axes of Social Reality

Spoiler: show

Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

Spoiler: show

The U.S. did better after the war because it *benefitted* from the war, most notably selling armaments to *both sides*:

German subsidiaries in the Nazi period

On August 3, 1933, Hitler received,[clarification needed] in one of the first meetings with US businessmen, Sosthenes Behn, then the CEO of ITT, and his German representative, Henry Mann.[12][14][15]

In his book Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Antony C. Sutton claims that ITT subsidiaries made cash payments to SS leader Heinrich Himmler. ITT, through its subsidiary C. Lorenz AG, owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft manufacturer, builder of some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. In the 1960s, ITT Corporation won $27 million in compensation for damage inflicted on its share of the Focke-Wulf plant by Allied bombing during World War II.[12] In addition, Sutton's book uncovers that ITT owned shares of Signalbau AG, Dr. Erich F. Huth (Signalbau Huth), which produced for the German Wehrmacht radar equipment and transceivers in Berlin, Hanover (later Telefunken factory) and other places. While ITT - Focke-Wulf planes were bombing Allied ships, and ITT lines were passing information to German submarines, ITT direction finders were saving other ships from torpedoes.[16]

In 1943 ITT became the largest shareholder of Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH for the remainder of the war with 29%. This was due to Kaffee HAG's share falling to 27% after the death in May of Kaffee HAG chief, Dr Ludwig Roselius. OMGUS documents reveal that the role of the HAG conglomerate could not be determined during WWII.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Inc.# ... azi_period

https://www.quora.com/Did-America-sell- ... rld-War-II

---

[T]he mood both of US capitalism and the mass of people was one of desperation at the end of 1932. It was expressed in a feeling that something, however unorthodox, had to be done to get the economy moving. Congress even gave serious consideration to a bill to reduce the working week to 30 hours in a desperate attempt to create more jobs. In the end Roosevelt pushed through emergency powers which involved state controls on the operations of capitalism. These included guarantees of the funds of banks through the Federal Reserve system, use of government money to buy up and destroy crops in order to raise their price, a civil construction corps to provide work camps for 2.3 million unemployed young men, a limited form of self regulation of industry through cartels to control price and production levels, limited amounts of direct state production through the Tennessee Valley Authority, and even measures which made it easier for workers to form unions and raise wages, so increasing consumer demand. The speed and audacity with which these measures were implemented caught the enthusiasm of those suffering from the recession, and of political liberals who wanted an alternative to fascism or socialist revolution. They seemed to stand in sharp contrast to the previous administration. Its response to mass unemployment had been to send in 25,000 troops with bayonets fixed, led by General MacArthur on a white charger, to disperse a protest by unemployed war veterans. At least Roosevelt seemed to be providing some jobs, even if at rock bottom wage rates and under appalling conditions.

However, Roosevelt’s measures were neither as innovative nor as effective as many people thought. Roosevelt remained highly orthodox in one respect—he did not use government spending to break out of the crisis. In fact he cut veterans’ pensions and public employment. As Kindelberger writes, ‘Fiscal means to expand employment remained limited, since the Democratic administration under Roosevelt remained committed to a balanced budget’.224 He also suggests investment was bound to start rising at some point from the incredibly low level to which it had fallen (from $16 billion in 1929 to $1 billion in 1932), and it began to do so once the level of bank failures had peaked. In any case, Roosevelt got the credit for a rise in production from 59 percent of the level of the mid-1920s in March 1933 to 100 percent in July, and a fall in unemployment from 13.7 million in 1933 to 12.4 million in 1934 and 12 million in 1935. Many people believed his ‘New Deal’ had worked miracles—a myth that remains prevalent today. Yet one person in seven was still jobless in 1937 when output finally reached the level of eight years earlier.

Then in August 1937 there was ‘the steepest economic decline in the history of the US’, which lost ‘half the ground gained by many indexes since 1932’.225 Steel output fell by more than two thirds in four months, cotton textile output by about 40 percent, and farm prices by a quarter.

The economic recovery had been short-lived. But, combined with a mild improvement in union rights, it had one very important side-effect. It created a new feeling of confidence among sections of workers in their ability to fight. There was an upturn in recruitment to the unions, although workers who struck still faced vicious attacks from employers and the police. In the first six months of Roosevelt’s New Deal more than 15 strikers were killed, 200 injured and hundreds arrested.226 But three strikes in 1934 showed how such confidence could fuse with the sense of bitterness created by the slump to explode into a level of militancy not known since the defeat of the steel strike in 1919. Autolite car component workers at Toledo, teamsters in Minneapolis and waterfront workers in San Francisco struck in a militant fashion, defied court injunctions, defended themselves physically against scabs and cops, and won resounding victories. Furthermore, it was militant socialists who took the lead in each of these struggles—Trotskyists in Minneapolis, Communists in San Francisco, and followers of radical ex-preacher A J Muste in Toledo. In the aftermath of the disputes, trade unionists in the increasingly important auto industry began to recruit widely and demanded a union based on the industry as whole to replace the existing craft unions organised along skill lines

[The organizing committee] ‘told workers that all the “New Deal” public officials were “labour’s friends”, and that the strikers should “welcome” the National Guards, state troopers and police sent to “keep order”.’ 232 The workers were thoroughly demoralised when these ‘friends’ attacked them with clubs and bullets. In Pennsylvania the first Democratic governor for 44 years declared martial law in the steel town of Johnstown. State troopers reopened the factory, restricting the number of pickets to six, and herded ever-greater numbers of scabs into the plant. In Youngstown, Ohio, where there was also a Democratic governor, deputies shot two pickets dead. In Chicago police sent in by the Democratic mayor killed ten strikers. When CIO leaders looked to Roosevelt for help he declared, ‘A plague on both your houses’.233 The biggest organising drive was broken just as the economy began to plunge downwards into renewed slump.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 513-514, 516

viewtopic.php?p=15178845#p15178845

---

and perhaps there was a drop in GDP in 1937. But even so enough to say Keynesianism works and people voted for FDR for four terms after all. Are you suggesting Keynesianism doesn't work btw?

So Keynesianism worked from 1933 to 1937.

viewtopic.php?p=15178881#p15178881

[Unthinking Majority]

As usual, UM, you want to balance yourself perfectly in the center, looking sane while everyone else around you gets whipped around by the force of the hurricane.

What you're proposing, though, at the end here, is basically back to *Keynesianism*, or 'MMT' (as it's called today). Sure, *any* robust social programs (Keynesianism) would be welcome compared to what we've *been* experiencing, which is *austerity*, yet you still want that valuable pedestal real estate so that you can stand above the rest, to pontificate.

It's not my fault neoliberalism and communism sucked in practice. I don't care so much about being "centrist" or "pontificating", I care about the policies that have worked the best statistically, and the assumptions that have informed bad ideas. A lot of economic inequality means the rich get richer while letting the poor rot, meanwhile equality of outcome for everyone is against most fundamental laws of nature.

Here's that diagram again -- ultimately there *is no* 'center'. One has to *choose* between the binary options of 'hierarchy' (right-wing), or 'equality' (left-wing). You continue to think that you can opt for some kind of a 'non-partisan', fuck-the-lot-of-you, perfectly-neutral, immaculately fair-and-just administrative state.

I believe in roughly a balance between hierarchy and equality, though i'm probably a touch left of center economically. I'm around -4, -4 on the Political Compass test. Telling me I can only choose one or the other is just black and white thinking forcing me to be on some extreme or some false binary, when really ideology is a broad spectrum of beliefs based on fundamental philosophical assumptions of life and human nature. I don't try to be centrist, that's just what my beliefs make me.

Doesn't mean somebody can't try out MMT, you will never discover better ways of doing things without trying out new ideas, but we also need to accept that there's a lot of risk involved due to unknowns of dramatic fundamental changes to an economy of tens of millions of livelihoods that have hardly ever been tried before. So I would say start small and gradual, and be careful. Same with any new Marxist system, find people willing to test the theories, start small and then expand. Some countries have done pilot tests of universal basic income in one city to see if/how it works, that's the right way to do it.

I have no idea if MMT will work or not, that's the whole point. I doubt it will but this again is just a theory of mine backed by little to no evidence.

[JohnRawls]

And is your name 'Steve' -- ? No, I didn't *think* so. (grin)

Yeah, I get that each bond is a temporary *loan* to the government, but, while active, we could say that any given 'snapshot' of total bond ownership is effectively a 'privatization' of government 'equity', so-to-speak. Is this *democratic*, or is it 'outsourcing' government 'equity' to the 'private sector' -- meaning 'privatization' of a sort.





Yeah, so 'MMT' is the latest fad term for Keynesianism:







And:







Also:


One dose of psilocybin improved neural connections lost in depression, study says | TheHill

https://thehill.com/changing-america/we ... ved-neural

Calling MMT keynesianism is valid a point but it is more complicated. MMT explains why running a constant debt is a net positive for the economy if certain conditions are met. It can be interpreted as privitisation of tex receipts but only in a very loose sense that yes, some of the tax reciepts will go to private individuals. There is a problem with this view since it kinda ignores that the initial "loan" went to whatever the government needed in the first place and it produced growth already in one form or the other that theoretically produced more tax receipts.

[ckaihatsu]

It's not my fault neoliberalism and communism sucked in practice. I don't care so much about being "centrist" or "pontificating", I care about the policies that have worked the best statistically, and the assumptions that have informed bad ideas. A lot of economic inequality means the rich get richer while letting the poor rot, meanwhile equality of outcome for everyone is against most fundamental laws of nature.

'Equality of outcomes' is an insidious *misnomer* -- fucking *no one* is calling for 'equality of outcomes', as though that's really *anyone's* professed political ideology and agenda.

By conflating political economy with *individual self-determination*, this bullshit 'equality of outcomes' formulation just serves *counterproductive* purposes, if one is genuine / serious about the issue of economic inequality.

I'll ask the reader to put these concepts side-by-side -- go ahead and *juxtapose* [1] economic equality, and [2] individual self-determination. Does the premise of societal economic equality really imply 'conformity to outcomes', as is denoted by 'equality of outcomes' -- ?

No, obviously social economic equality means that everyone gets *access* to the basics of humane modern life and living, so that they can then *self-determine* what to do, without the existence of pre-existing barriers of economic *inequality*.

Your usage of the 'outcomes' concept is a propagandistic strawman of *your own*, and is irrelevant to the *real* politics of 'economic equality', meaning the *material* world.

I believe in roughly a balance between hierarchy and equality, though i'm probably a touch left of center economically. I'm around -4, -4 on the Political Compass test. Telling me I can only choose one or the other is just black and white thinking forcing me to be on some extreme or some false binary, when really ideology is a broad spectrum of beliefs based on fundamental philosophical assumptions of life and human nature. I don't try to be centrist, that's just what my beliefs make me.

*Or*, instead of artificially *separating* the economic from the political, many would say that the political *implies* the economic -- meaning that the two *correlate* and *don't* intrinsically vary from each other.

So if one is generally for 'equality', then that stance implies that one would be for fairness in the *economic* realm as well, and *not* for a hierarchy of income levels according to finance, or ownership, or profitability, etc.

Doesn't mean somebody can't try out MMT, you will never discover better ways of doing things without trying out new ideas, but we also need to accept that there's a lot of risk involved due to unknowns of dramatic fundamental changes to an economy of tens of millions of livelihoods that have hardly ever been tried before. So I would say start small and gradual, and be careful. Same with any new Marxist system, find people willing to test the theories, start small and then expand. Some countries have done pilot tests of universal basic income in one city to see if/how it works, that's the right way to do it.

I have no idea if MMT will work or not, that's the whole point. I doubt it will but this again is just a theory of mine backed by little to no evidence.

'Try out' MMT -- ?

You keep reverting back to this 'clinical scientist' mindset of yours, thinking that every next step in political consciousness is some kind of fresh, creative 'newness' on the scene, that's never been thought of before, or seen, for people to "individually" try-out like some new consumer toy.

Society isn't some giant petri dish to experiment-on -- people's lives are uncomfortable and perilous *right now*, while you play-politics and light-mindedly suggest that people 'try it out'.

Yesterday I included a rundown of how Keynesianism failed to rejuvenate the capitalist economy in the U.S. in the '30s, and only *war profiteering* actually brought the U.S. empire out of its prolonged doldrums, at the expense of organized labor. Keynesianism = MMT, so why should we 'try it out' when it didn't work during the Great Depression, and hasn't worked since the times of Carter and Reagan?

[ckaihatsu]

Calling MMT keynesianism is valid a point but it is more complicated. MMT explains why running a constant debt is a net positive for the economy if certain conditions are met. It can be interpreted as privitisation of tex receipts but only in a very loose sense that yes, some of the tax reciepts will go to private individuals. There is a problem with this view since it kinda ignores that the initial "loan" went to whatever the government needed in the first place and it produced growth already in one form or the other that theoretically produced more tax receipts.

Well obviously *any* kind of borrowing, from *anyone* / any entity, is a sign of economic *weakness*, because of the cost of *financing* that debt.

If you, or anyone, could point to a single instance from history to show where Keynesianism / MMT actually *worked*, then it would be encouraging, for consideration, but I've provided *counterexamples*, from the Great Depression, and since deindustrialization, to say that deficit spending hasn't been providing any kind of 'jumpstart', the way it purports to provide.

[Unthinking Majority]

So if one is generally for 'equality', then that stance implies that one would be for fairness in the *economic* realm as well, and *not* for a hierarchy of income levels according to finance, or ownership, or profitability, etc.

"Equality" and "fairness" are vague terms that mean nothing. It depends on what you mean by "equality" and "fairness".

'Try out' MMT -- ?

You keep reverting back to this 'clinical scientist' mindset of yours, thinking that every next step in political consciousness is some kind of fresh, creative 'newness' on the scene, that's never been thought of before, or seen, for people to "individually" try-out like some new consumer toy.

How do you know which economic policies will work without implementing them and looking at the results? Implementing MMT would be "trying it out".

Society isn't some giant petri dish to experiment-on -- people's lives are uncomfortable and perilous *right now*, while you play-politics and light-mindedly suggest that people 'try it out'.

You fail to understand that people's lives and livelihoods could be much, much worse than they are now. If you're just willing to risk that by implementing any idea that suits your fancy then you are dangerous. MMT could cause high inflation and create market bubbles and crashes, do you not care? Does this not worry you at all?

I think it's you and others that are using society as a giant petri dish to experiment-on. That's exactly what communism was: a failed experiment. I'm telling people to BEWARE with these experiments. MMT would be an experiment because the results are very much unknown.

If you were the US President what would your economic policy be? Immediately eliminate private property, or make the means of production owned by an organization's workers? Do you have any idea what the results of that would be? No economist in the world could ever know.

[Unthinking Majority]

Well obviously *any* kind of borrowing, from *anyone* / any entity, is a sign of economic *weakness*, because of the cost of *financing* that debt.

If you, or anyone, could point to a single instance from history to show where Keynesianism / MMT actually *worked*, then it would be encouraging, for consideration, but I've provided *counterexamples*, from the Great Depression, and since deindustrialization, to say that deficit spending hasn't been providing any kind of 'jumpstart', the way it purports to provide.

WWII was the ultimate Keynesianism wasn't it? It was all deficit spending, and it jump-started the economy.

You don't need to fund wars to have deficit spending. You can build infrastructure, or just give money to every worker for them to spend on whatever goods/services they want. Had the US government simply injected cash into the US economy in 1933 to the level they spent on WWII I'm sure their economy would have turned around a lot faster.

I'm sure deficit spending during COVID has saved a lot of countries and workers from economic ruin.

[Unthinking Majority]

Keynesianism isn't MMT. Keynesianism says borrow and spend and lower interest rates during rough economic times, and do the opposite while paying down the debt when the economy is good MMT says borrow and spend and don't worry about paying back that debt.

[ckaihatsu]

"Equality" and "fairness" are vague terms that mean nothing. It depends on what you mean by "equality" and "fairness".

Okay, yeah, well that's why we're here.

Again, 'equality' isn't about 'conformity in outcomes' -- it's about equal *access* to society's bounty, and means, at the individual self-determining scale of use, and then in combination with others interpersonally, up to *mass production* for entire areas and populations.

We can ask, today, why some are *ushered* into the corridors of power in politics or the corporate world, while others are in other 'castes', by race or socioeconomic status, on the whole.


'The New Jim Crow' - Author Michelle Alexander, George E. Kent Lecture 2013

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How do you know which economic policies will work without implementing them and looking at the results? Implementing MMT would be "trying it out".

I'll save you the trouble -- it's not going to work out.

U.S. GDP has been *stagnant* for at least a couple of decades now, and that's *with* the steady increase in government deficit spending:




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You fail to understand that people's lives and livelihoods could be much, much worse than they are now. If you're just willing to risk that by implementing any idea that suits your fancy then you are dangerous. MMT could cause high inflation and create market bubbles and crashes, do you not care? Does this not worry you at all?

This is a *huge* misconception -- that the productivity of the U.S. economy is like what it was in the 1970s, and that the slightest slip in economic policy could throw the whole machine out-of-whack, putting it into runaway hyperinflation like some isolated, plundered, indebted Third World country.

The interest rate has been *moribund* -- like GDP -- for decades now, meaning that the material conditions are that of *abundance*, from *overproduction*, from historically unprecedented levels of *productivity*, vastly outstripping demand, resulting in the current *deflation* and low-pricing regime.

I think it's you and others that are using society as a giant petri dish to experiment-on.

Funny, that -- as though we're actually in power, pulling the levers of establishment politics and economic policy.

That's exactly what communism was: a failed experiment.

No, that's a very inaccurate characterization -- it was more about a strangled revolution, versus the consolidation of nationalist political power:

The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927[1] headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924. Originally, the battle lines were drawn between Trotsky and his supporters who signed The Declaration of 46 in October 1923 on the one hand and a triumvirate (also known by its Russian name troika) of Comintern chairman Grigory Zinoviev, Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin and Politburo chairman Lev Kamenev on the other hand.

The Left Opposition argued that the New Economic Policy had weakened the Soviet Union by allowing the private sector to achieve an increasingly important position in the Soviet economy while in their opinion, the centrally planned, socialised sector of the economy languished (including the mostly state-run heavy industries which were seen as essential not only for continued industrialisation but also defense). The platform called for the state to adopt a programme for mass industrialisation and to encourage the mechanization and collectivisation of agriculture, thereby developing the means of production and helping the Soviet Union move towards parity with Western capitalist countries, which would also increase the proportion of the economy which was part of the socialised sector of the economy and definitively shift the Soviet Union towards a socialist mode of production.[2]

There was also the Right Opposition, which was led by the leading party theoretician and Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin and supported by Sovnarkom Chairman (prime minister) Alexei Rykov. In late 1924, as Stalin proposed his new socialism in one country theory, Stalin drew closer to the Right Opposition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Opposition

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I'm telling people to BEWARE with these experiments. MMT would be an experiment because the results are very much unknown.

If you were the US President what would your economic policy be? Immediately eliminate private property, or make the means of production owned by an organization's workers? Do you have any idea what the results of that would be? No economist in the world could ever know.

Yeah, funny you should mention that, because there *is* a historical precedent:

• All private property was nationalized by the government.

• All Russian banks were nationalized.

• Private bank accounts were expropriated.

• The properties of the Russian Orthodox Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated.

• All foreign debts were repudiated.

• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.

• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution

[Potemkin]

U.S. GDP has been *stagnant* for at least a couple of decades now, and that's *with* the steady increase in government deficit spending:

Actually, the graph shows that the growth rate of US GDP is stagnant. This is entirely to be expected for a mature capitalist economy.

The interest rate has been *moribund* -- like GDP -- for decades now, meaning that the material conditions are that of *abundance*, from *overproduction*, from historically unprecedented levels of *productivity*, vastly outstripping demand, resulting in the current *deflation* and low-pricing regime.

I can't disagree with that.