Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘Why progressive values align more closely with our basic needs’
Blog-Reference
Bill Mitchell sets the frame: “One of the angles that will be delved into is the way in which neoliberal narratives and constructs have permeated individual consciousness. Yes, sounds a bit psychological doesn’t it.”
Yes, economists love to dwell upon Human Nature/motives/behavior/action since Adam Smith/Karl Marx. Bill Mitchell remembers: “When I was a student … and studying the works of Marx in depth, I was continually confronted with the claim that socialism is against human nature, which apparently is competitive and dog-eat-dog in form.”
The scientific incompetence of economists consists of the fact that it is beyond their means to realize that NO way leads from the understanding of Human Nature/motives/behavior/ action to the understanding of how the economic system works. The point to grasp is that economics is NOT a science of behavior but a systems science.#1
Economics, though, has defined itself as a social science. The result is nothing less than complete scientific failure. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/ formally inconsistent and all got the foundational economic concept ― profit ― wrong. In other words, there is NO such thing as scientifically valid economics. MMT fits into this pattern.
MMT is three things: theory, policy, activism. These three elements are constantly mixed in the public debate and this guarantees never-ending confusion.
Fact is that MMT theory is provably false, i.e. materially/formally inconsistent.#2 MMTers do not get the objective structural relations of the monetary economy right. Because of this, MMT policy proposals have no sound scientific foundations. This, though, does not matter much for the MMT activists because these folks present themselves as the can-do good guys, the real Progressives, the benefactors of WeThePeople.
Whether all MMTers understand it or not does NOT matter. What matters are the economic consequences of MMT policy. And these are disastrous with regard to distribution. Socially, the effects are the exact opposite of what MMTers claim. In a word, MMT policy benefits the one-percenters and NOT the ninety-nine-percenters.
Either MMTers do not understand their own theory and mislead the general public unwittingly or they purposefully push the agenda of the one-percenters and deliberately deceive the general public.#3, #4, #5 Bill Mitchell falls into the latter category.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 Economics is NOT about Human Nature but the economic system
#2 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT
#3 MMT: From science to agenda-pushing to story-telling to fraud
#4 MMTers are NOT Friends-of-the-People
#5 Stephanie Kelton’s legendary Plain-Sight-Ink-Trick