June 6, 2019

Against the mainstream! Against MMT!

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘How social democratic parties erect the plank and then walk it’*

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference on Jun 7

In his critique of the mainstream, Bill Mitchell is correct on these points:

• “… the likes of Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, and Kenneth Rogoff, who are regularly referred to as ‘the world’s leading economic thinkers’ or ‘Nobel Prize-winning economists’ as if any of that established authority.” Indeed, there are no scientific authorities in economics, only political clowns/useful idiots.#1

• “The standardised framework is crafted on a series of erroneous propositions, first, about human behaviour that no psychologist or sociologist would identify as being relevant to our decision-making at all; and, second, about the way the fiat monetary system operates.” Indeed, macroeconomics in all its variants is axiomatically false since Keynes.#2

• “Not much of what the mainstream has said ever turns out to be the case.” and “Mainstream macro has failed ― it is categorical.” Indeed, economics is what Feynman called a cargo cult science.#3

• “Le roi est mort!” As a matter of fact, he was already dead in the cradle.#4, #5, #6, #7

From the failure of the mainstream, however, does NOT logically follow that MMT is true.#8

Although MMT is methodologically better than mainstream economics, Bill Mitchell is wrong on two points:

• “Only through an MMT understanding can one understand what has been going on in the world economies.” No, MMT is not materially and formally consistent, that is, it does not satisfy scientific standards.#9, #10, #11, #12

• “But when they [criticisms of MMT] come out of Social Democratic or Labour political machines one realises that these economic spokespeople actually believe in the causalities that the mainstream macroeconomics framework asserts.” … “And then they wonder why they lose elections.” Not at all, the “Social Democratic or Labour political machines” somehow get it instinctively right. Their reservation is fully justified. The MMT policy of deficit-spending/money-creation is NOT for the benefit of WeThePeople but for the benefit of the Oligarchy. MMT-Progressives are fake Friends-of-the-People.#13

MMT is a scientific failure and a political fraud. Economics is in dire need of a genuine Paradigm Shift.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


* billyblog
#1 For details see cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists
#2 Macroeconomics ― dead since Keynes
#3 Macroeconomics: Economists are too stupid for science
#4 Stop beating mainstream economics ― it is long dead
#5 CORE: more lipstick on the dead economics pig
#6 Just revealed: IS-LM is dead for 80+ years
#7 Just for the record: economics is dead
#8 Debunking idiots does not prove that MMT is valid
#9 Controlled demolition of MMT ― an exercise in elementary logic
#10 Refuting MMT’s Macroeconomics Textbook
#11 The canonical macroeconomic model
#12 MMT is refuted on all counts, see cross-references MMT
#13 Links on MMTers push Wall Street’s agenda