Home » xyzzy » Dungeon » Modern Monetary Theory (or, how I stopped worrying about the natl debt.)
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93182 is a reply to message #93154] Mon, 22 February 2021 09:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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Another fine article by BillyBob, Bill Mitchel, principal author of the MMT textbook. He explains how the neoliberal paradigm, the New Keynesian's monetary principals have co opted our legislative bodies to do the bidding of what satisfies the financial markets. The markets are the fantasy built into neoliberal ideology. We're all compromised as a result. The news from Texas this last week is a glaring example. Public trust's held hostage to the markets.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=46942
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93194 is a reply to message #93182] Tue, 23 February 2021 11:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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Our one party system. They bicker and play tug-o-war in Washington. Committees investigate, houses legislate. Politicians pontificate. But the status quo is whom bears the burden. Guess who? Take away the pretense of what either of your political party's can do for you. It's been captured and held for conspicuous consumption.

https://michael-hudson.com/2021/02/the-democrats-role-in-distracting-with-identity-politics/
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93222 is a reply to message #93194] Sun, 28 February 2021 10:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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The 1.9 Trillion covid relief passed the House recently. On to the Senate it goes, along with the usual doom that accompanies any spending by the government. Unless it's military spending. As a matter of due course, figures show the USA spends more than the spending of the top 8,9 or 10 countries on this planet combined. This begs looking again at what MMT economist Eric Tymoigne writes about the subject of our National Debt. It never has, nor ever will be needed to be paid back. It's a number on a spreadsheet for the cumulative amount of debt spent by the federal government since this country has existed.

The debt is not like a commercial bank debt. Ask yourself what is the federal government for? What and who does it serve? The MMT principals are merely the understanding of what and how the workings of our federal government and monetary system actually work. Irrespective of economic models that are "popular" during a historical period. It's there regardless.

As he says. In other words, fiscal deficits are a normal state of affairs for the US government. They have been so for decades. This is the norm in the United States and throughout the world. Get over it.

Eric Tymoigne
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-22-trillion-national-debt-the-alternative-short-interview.html#more-11409
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93325 is a reply to message #93222] Tue, 16 March 2021 12:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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Hi. Guess who! Just me and my MMT shadow. The shadow knows thing's aren't right. And they won't be right even with a recovery from this act of god event. No insurance will cover it. A few years back was a popular phrase, "what would Jesus do, or say". I think this article is what the action and reply Jesus would grace upon us in regards to the big picture, the long haul for our livelihood. Jesus rebuked the money mongers in his time. Nothing has changed since then.

Our rust belt, a bankrupt city of Detroit, a lead laden water supply of Flint is a physical manifestation of our sellout by a financialized short term returns oriented economy. We'll come out of the pandemic eventually with exactly the same issues going into it. Stagnation of wages, high cost of living and deteriorating infrastructure. What would Jesus do?
He'd teach the money mongers how to fish.

https://michael-hudson.com/2021/03/removing-the-debt-barrier-to-economic-growth/
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93328 is a reply to message #93325] Wed, 17 March 2021 17:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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Everything that is wrong is right. And everything that is right is wrong. Because the economics profession is predominantly trained to be that way. We have an economy that is run by the book. The book is written by and for the financial class. Bill Mitchell knows it intimately from his early training. He learned reality all on his own.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=47077
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93538 is a reply to message #93328] Sat, 17 April 2021 11:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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I watch the YouTube channel a lot it seems with the trusty Roku. Just browsing along and checking what may be interesting. Some are very informative, some entertaining, some uplifting and redemptive, (usually animal related). And some sobering and disheartening. I watched several segments of cities across the U.S.. Mainly on the eastern seaboard. The old cities, but some like L.A. and Las Vegas that depicts by drive through or on foot some of the wretched dereliction and decay going on throughout the urban landscape. Homelessness, drug addled and aimless existence. The two from the Kensington area of Philadelphia in particular gave me pause. For the depravity and despair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOBoDT-3oM0&t=1s
Heroin is the drug of choice here. People hunched over and listing like zombies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZaNc-DZA0&t=8s

These people obviously are not being responsible citizens. Are the factors involved with this and all the other myriad social ill's just due to the weak of spirit and drive of the individual alone or are there as well underlying principals in the choice a society makes that give some realization it isn't functioning efficiently.

For me, the economist Michael Hudson consistently exposes the underlying provocations that our society seems to plod along with. Unwilling to take an introspective look at what is at hand, and what can be done with it. Hudson has taken the time throughout his career to get a historical perspective, going back through human history's economic past to expose at our present, what goes around comes around. What some of the ancients did with their society's stability could well be utilized in our modern times. And even an existential threat as we seem to regard now China, can provide a lesson we seemed to have forgotten from our own relatively recent past, made it economically strong. We have relinquished it to the financial class. Their easy money adds to our GDP but not our productivity. Just their profitability.

https://michael-hudson.com/2021/04/americas-neoliberal-financialization-policy-vs-chinas-industrial-socialism/
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93539 is a reply to message #93538] Sat, 17 April 2021 11:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gofar99 is currently offline  gofar99
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Hi, hummmm. I see some of the same sorts of issues. You can see it right here on the web in forums. We may be the small percentage of folks that want to do something...it really doesn't matter what. In the general population IMO the vast amount of individuals have become watchers and whiners. I don't see a lot of interest in inovation. True there are some individuals that are the exception. Those like Bezos, Musk, Branson, Gates and so on. Folks that push the envelop. Ones that won't accept the negatives. But for each one of those there are thousands that just plod along. IMO the last time this country saw a significant amount of innovation and change was just after WW2. Nearly everyone was upbeat and wanted to do something, whatever it might have been. I'm certainly not advocating a war, but something needs to kick start the general population. It has now become fashionable to protest anything, sue anyone and blame anyone else for just about anything that might occur. "bitching..ain't fixin". I don't have the answers, but I can easily see the consequences of what is going on. (jumping off the soap box now).....

Good Listening
Bruce
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93551 is a reply to message #93539] Sat, 17 April 2021 18:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
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Well it's so nice for someone to post, anything amidst my,,, ongoing rant, I guess. It's cathartic for me though. As far as this subject goes. It's really not on many peoples radar. People are caught up in the distractions of making a living and having their emotional and social relationships. Since you bring up the period just after WWII. It was a time of this countries burgeoning prosperity and dominance in the worlds economic, social, scientific and nearly everything other metric of an advanced civilization. It was also following a period of social engineering put in place to escape the ravages of a prolonged depression that was the result of exuberances of the roaring twenties financial elitists.

And ever since then, the social gains from those engineering principals have been eroded. Union busting ensued, income stagnation prevailed and the living standards to maintain becoming more and more being indebted for more and more. The gap between wealth and the middle class widening precipitously.
Our economy went from a mixed industrial to a financial economy in the late 70's early 80's. I well remember the term, "service" economy being bandied with then. That was our trajectory. The rust belt is a physical remnant of what was our pride in this country for being made in America. A relic of being sold out by the new Keynesian brand of Neoliberal thinking for an economics calling for small government intervention with the market, anti regulatory practices and planning the economy by the needs dictated by Wall St. and the financialists in charge. An industrial economy is harder to realize gains monetarily than the financial class can obtain in the short term of using the stock markets.

I think our social unrest these days are just a result of frustration with the status quo. Our political parties are basically aligned the same with the Neoliberal construct, but vary with the peripheral Identity social politics. They are like two huge Sumo wrestlers grappling for the slim power advantage they can obtain in an election cycle.

And we wonder what the hells going on. Well, economist extraordinaire Michael Hudson says it's nothing new under the sun. It's been going on one way or another since civilization began. People and groups of people using the advantages of wealth to influence pharaohs, kings and queens, parliaments and congress. Lets learn from the past, so we don't perpetuate what doesn't work in the present for the benefit of the most of us and a better future.
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93626 is a reply to message #93551] Thu, 29 April 2021 13:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
Messages: 1075
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Location: Kansas City Missouri
Illuminati (2nd Degree)
Little Walter did a knockout blues rocker penned by Willie Dixon in 1959. A great time to be an American. Unless you was black folk. Anyhow then like now, It's a Crazy Mixed Up World. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Hdn98FZdY

If you can take in what Mr. Hudson proclaims in this longish Webinar transcription for a Swedish group. You'll catch on that it's always been a crazy mixed up world. And a struggle to keep the monied interests from taking over and claiming dominancy. They were much better at it in the ages of antiquity. Up until the Roman times. When the toehold of the oligarchy got started. We're in pretty deep now. Our economic models seem to be based on a fictional idealized world. One that doesn't match what the public at large experiences. About all any citizen of the western world can do is try to understand what's been going on. The economics profession has long given up on that. Maybe insist at some point in future time that a democracy isn't a democracy when your always another day older and deeper in debt.

https://michael-hudson.com/2021/04/the-honest-sector/
Re: Modern Monetary Theory [message #93653 is a reply to message #93626] Wed, 05 May 2021 09:07 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Rusty is currently offline  Rusty
Messages: 1075
Registered: May 2018
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I thank Wayne for the opportunity for allowing this expression of views. Many people may still know of the phrase, "Forty acres and a mule". This dates to the end of the civil war. It was a practical means to give some justice for the malice of slavery. A way to give an opportunity to make a decent living on ones one terms. But it was a promise of reparations never kept. Most people including myself never have known this history.
This discussion gives an interesting view on what our American history and even our biblical history gives to the idea of what human rights could and should be. And how they have been manipulated by certain interests of the financial kind.

The discussion starts in earnest around the 8:00 mark of the video with pastor Johnathan Hartgrove of the Poor Peoples Campaign and economist Michael Hudson. They are speaking towards relating society's underclass of all races having reclamations in a sense towards allowing an opportunity to dignify their ability to rise in their economic standing that is chronically oppressed in our society. Very interesting stuff to ponder.

https://michael-hudson.com/2021/05/christian-nationalisms-re-branding-of-jesus/
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