August 27, 2018

MMT Progressives: stupid or corrupt or both?

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘The conservative polity is fracturing ― an opportunity for the Left’

Blog-Reference

Bill Mitchell explains his long-lasting critique of “the Left”: “Regular readers will know that I have spent a lot of time writing about the demise of the Left political parties as they became subsumed with neoliberal economic ideology, which blurred the political landscape as the ‘centre’ moved to the Right.”

The Progressives argue that what people think of “the Left” is false because “the Left” is (i) stupid and has bought into the neoliberal ideology of budget-balancing/austerity, and (ii), has been hijacked by Oxbridge careerists. In other words, the traditional Left is fake and the Progressives are the true fighters for the cause of WeThePeople.

According to Bill Mitchell: “The neoliberal wedge that has compromised the Left side of politics is now clearly splintering the conservative polity …” and, in order to take advantage of the situation “… the social democratic movements has to abandon every vestige of neoliberal economics ― the concepts, policies and language and framing.” which means “The progressive social policies that are core to social democratic parties has to be married with an economics that allows those policies to be advanced.”

This economics is MMT. In brief, WeThePeople is advised to swap “the Left” for “the Progressives” who apply a superior economic policy that is scientifically based on MMT.

What exactly has been the fatal blunder of “the Left”? “Think about British Labour, who told the people who have endured years of disastrous austerity that ‘Sound finances are the foundations on which everything else is possible’.”

The keyword is austerity and austerity is ― everybody knows this ― a pivotal Neoliberal concept. Neoliberal policy, in turn, is the economic sadism that the Oligarchy applies to WeThePeople. The Progressives will change that by swapping austerity for deficit-spending/money-creation.

While it is true that Neoliberals have always talked much about budget-balancing they in effect have practiced the exact opposite. Historically, the greater part of the now existing public debt has been produced by Neoliberals. Contrary to the rhetoric, deficit-spending/ money-creation is good old Neoliberal policy.#1, #2, #3 Deficit-spending/money-creation always and everywhere benefits the one-percenters.

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that Progressives are actually Neoliberals in a social guise.#4 Progressives are either stupid or corrupt or both.

Fact is
• The macroeconomic foundations of MMT are provably false. More specifically, the MMT sectoral balances equation is proto-scientific garbage. Because of this, MMT is scientifically worthless.#5
• According to the axiomatically correct macroeconomic Profit Law, it holds Public Deficit = Private Profit. The MMT sales force, though, falsely claims that Public Deficit = Private Saving.#6
• Because all MMT policy guidance boils down to deficit-spending/money-creation, MMT policy directly and immediately increases macroeconomic profit. The effects on employment/ prices are uncertain and secondary.
• Contrary to the social rhetoric, MMT policy is for the benefit of the one-percenters. MMT is the easily recognizable tip of the iceberg of the political corruption of economics.#7

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Austerity and the idiocy of political economists
#2 Austerity and the utter scientific ignorance of economists
#3 Austerity and the total disconnect between economic policy and science
#4 MMT and the promotion of Wall Street's idea of social policy
#5 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT
#6 For example Tweet of Aug 17, 2018

#7 Lock them up

Related 'How Bill Mitchell stalks Jeremy Corbyn' and 'MMT, Bill Mitchell, and the lack of basic scientific integrity' and 'MMT is criminal economics' and 'Austerity and the political games Progressives play' and 'MMT is dead: An unfriendly critique of Bill Mitchell' and 'Everything you know about MMT is wrong' and 'MMT: scientific incompetence or political fraud?' and 'Why the British Labor Party should NOT adopt MMT' and 'MMTers are false Progressives and false Friends-of-the-People'.