December 12, 2018

You are fighting for life? On all fronts? MMT can save you! Or maybe not?

Comment on Richard Murphy on ‘The Reality Is Everything Must Change’

Blog-Reference

The crisis is real, says Richard Murphy. No, it’s not Trump, Brexit, trade war, or WWIII but climate change, a disabling fear for future well-being, a broken economic and social order, and not to forget, “private capital has ceased to be available for active investment it is now almost solely directed to rent seeking.”

Everything has to change. “Since that process will be incredibly expensive this requires capital and if that means state investment and co-ownership, so be it.”

How to achieve all this? Perhaps you think the workers are broke, the pensioners are at the subsistence level, and the middle class is indebted over both ears, let the rich pay for it!

No, wake up, get real! “The time for pussy-footing with new taxes to extract a little more from the rich is yesterday’s news. There is no time for that. This is the time to create money for change.”

This is the time for MMT. How does MMT solve all problems and save humanity? Essentially by deficit-spending/money-creation i.e. by increasing the public debt. MMT claims that this is a historically tried and tested method which does NOT cause inflation, an unbearable interest burden, or any problems for future generations. A state with monetary sovereignty and taxing power can never go broke, can prevent inflation, and there is no real debt burden because we owe the debt to ourselves, after all, one man’s debt is another man’s asset. That’s an eternal accounting truth.

So, what holds us back? It’s neoliberalism, the ideology of the ruling Oligarchy, which calls for budget balancing, austerity, and other tortures for the people.

MMT looks like sound economics and economics looks like sound science. Richard Murphy looks like a competent person. He is a Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London, and Director of Tax Research UK. He is a non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics. He is a member of the Progressive Economy Forum.

Yes, all looks good. Every scam looks good. Every fraud comes with the aureole of salvation.

MMT is simply poor economics and economics has been poor science since Adam Smith/Karl Marx.

This is the fact of the matter. The macroeconomic Profit Law reads Qm≡Yd+(I−Sm)+(G−T)+(X−M). With regard to the government’s budget, it boils down to Public Deficit = Private Profit, i.e. (G−T)=Qm. This piece of pure economic analysis translates into the scientific insight that MMT’s foundational sectoral balances equation is false, and into the political insight that MMT’s policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is nothing but a free lunch for the Oligarchy. In other words, “progressive” MMT policy is a political fraud.

MMT is a refuted economic theory and its proponents are either stupid or corrupt or both.#1, #2 MMTers are NOT Friends-of-the-People but propagandists of the Oligarchy.#3 MMTers will NOT save humanity.  In an uncertain world, this is an absolute certainty.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 MMT: Time to say goodbye
#2 Economics: A pointless left-right wrestling show
#3 Richard Murphy: the MMT fraudster dressed up as realist

Related 'MMT = proto-scientific garbage + deception of the 99-percenters' and 'MMT and the overall political corruption of economics'. For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT see cross-references MMT.