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Showing posts sorted by date for query spam Mitchell. Sort by relevance Show all posts

July 30, 2021

What is MMT? (III) ― Rectifying Bill Mitchell

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘Booming growth in Britain (Brexit?) but child poverty rises (austerity)’


“Social media is, of course, awash with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and a host of different characters have made it a goal to become MMT proponents, which is a good thing in some respects.”

It is pretty obvious that “MMT proponents” on social media and elsewhere are overwhelmingly agenda-pushers/applause-trolls/useful idiots/sales-reps and #EconBlockers.#1, #2, #3

“MMT is an economic framework for understanding how the macroeconomy works and the role of the currency-issuer in the monetary economy.”

MMT got macrofoundations wrong. Because of this, the whole analytical superstructure is scientifically worthless.#4

“But MMT is not a ‘movement’, nor, is it a progressive agenda.”

MMTers present themselves as Real Progressives when it suits them, e.g. when they fight UK Labour. Actually, MMT is a movement of and for the Oligarchy.#5, #6, #7

“I keep reading things like ‘MMT advocates taxing the rich’. It doesn’t.”

No, MMT advocates deficit-spending/money-creation which is (because of the 3-sector Profit Law Q≡(G−T)+(I−S)+Yd) to the advantage of the Oligarchy and to the disadvantage of WeThePeople.#8, #9

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke



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Twitter Jul 30


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January 28, 2020

Economics, MMT, and the corruption of science

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘If it quacks!’*

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

The political fact of the matter is this: currently, there is NO Democracy and there is NO Autocracy. The currently prevailing form of government was called an Oligarchy by the ancient Greeks. #1 The first problem of the Oligarchy is to keep up the appearances of democracy, that is, political measures should appear as the faithful execution of the will/best interest of WeThePeople. This applies in particular to economic policy. So, one important activity of the Oligarchy has always been to produce public opinion and populist pressure. Needless to emphasize that the term Oligarchy does not denote something homogenous and fixed, but a temporary institutional arrangement. Neither does the term imply a moral valuation.

The economic fact of the matter is this: the market economy has already been dependent on the life support of the State for a long time. The economy runs on profits, and macroeconomic profit is mainly produced by public deficits. The axiomatically correct macroeconomic Profit Law reads Q≡Qm+Qn with Qm≡Yd+(I−Sm)+(G−T)+(X−M). This Law tells one, among many other things, that Public Deficit G−T>0 = Private Profit Qm, which means that the Oligarchy’s financial wealth and public debt grow in lockstep, or, in a formula: Financial Wealth of the Oligarchy = Public Debt of WeThePeople. The beauty of the situation is that people think that public debt is somebody else’s problem. This is true, of course, until it is no longer true, that is, until the debt stops growing or goes into reverse. The market economy lives literally on borrowed time.

The Oligarchy, in turn, uses the opulent deficit-produced free lunches to nudge the State’s legislative, executive, and judiciary institutions in its favor. Much of the money goes into the production of public opinion. Without knowing the details, one can assume for a mature Oligarchy that key opinion producers like journalists, entertainers, priests/preachers/ gurus, writers, filmmakers, and academics are, with few exceptions, directly or indirectly sponsored/supported/controlled by the Oligarchy.

And here is the problem: in the political realm, anybody can talk any bullshit whatsoever; in the scientific realm, this is NOT admitted. Science is committed to the growth of knowledge, and scientific knowledge is well-defined by material and formal consistency. At least, this was the idea before science became politically weaponized. This happened in economics at an early stage. The founding fathers considered themselves political economists, which is to say useful idiots for the (then-) Oligarchy.

“That Political Economy is a science which teaches, or professes to teach, in what manner a nation may be made rich. This notion of what constitutes science is, to some degree, countenanced by the title and arrangement which Adam Smith gave to his invaluable work. A systematic treatise on Political Economy, he chose to call an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; and the topics are introduced in an order suitable to that view of the purpose of his book.” (J. S. Mill)

To this day, economics is at the proto-scientific level. The major approaches — Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT — are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/formally inconsistent. Economics does NOT satisfy scientific criteria. This would be no problem because, under the license of free speech/ freedom of the press, anything goes in the political realm. However, economists claim from Adam Smith/Karl Marx onward to the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” to do science. This is NOT the case; the representative economist is NOT a scientist but a political fraudster.

The actual case is MMT. Academic MMTers like Bill Mitchell and Stephanie Kelton are currently extremely busy spreading the gospel of deficit-spending/money-creation. This runs in perfect harmony with Mr. Trump’s policy.

The exact point where the fraud kicks in is when MMTers tell the general public that MMT is for the benefit of WeThePeople and that MMT helps to solve almost all problems, from unemployment to the survival of humanity.

Bill Mitchell argues: “… the current challenges are different to a military threat but an existential threat no less and require urgent and significant response from the public sector. … The broader point is that the ‘means’… cannot be constructed in terms of financial aggregates. To do so is to construct the currency-issuing government as being financially-constrained in the same way a household is. A household has to earn income or borrow or run down prior savings, or sell previously acquired assets (financial or otherwise) in order to spend. A currency-issuing government is not financially constrained and can purchase whatever is for sale in that currency, including all idle labour.”

This is true in the same sense that a counterfeiter always has the ‘means’ to buy whatever he wants. However, from the fact that this is technically possible does NOT follow that it is a good policy. Taking the economy as a whole, it is a bad policy for WeThePeople and a good policy for the Oligarchy. Bringing money into the economy at the demand side amounts to robbing WeThePeople. #2, #3

There is NO way around it: MMT policy is a political fraud and MMT academics are stupid/corrupt scientists. Science is built on the ethics of individual integrity and self-government of the scientific community. As MMT proves, economics is politically corrupted, and the mechanisms of scientific self-government do not function properly.

MMT is false theory, MMT is false policy, MMTers are fake scientists and agenda pushers for the Oligarchy. #4 The rest of economics, though, is NOT any better.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


*   Billy Blog
#1 Wikipedia Oligarchy
#2 Criminals and the monetary order
#3 Q: How are you going to pay for it? MMT: By stealth taxation!
#4 MMT: How the Oligarchy communicates with WeThePeople

Related 'There is no truth in political economics' and 'Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump, etc. and exploding profit' and 'Another MMT shitshow' and 'Bill Mitchell, MMT, Progressives: economists as Oligarchy hacks' and 'Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder' and 'Bill Mitchell cracks the spending whip over the Swabian Housewife' and 'MMT, Bill Mitchell, and the lack of basic scientific integrity' and 'MMT: Academic snake oil for the people'. and 'Very busy these days: Wall Street’s agents' and 'The problem with economics as a discipline' and 'Trust in science? Yes, but economics is NOT a science' and 'Exploding the Household Fallacy' and 'Stephanie Kelton: “All deficits are good for someone” Yes, Someone=Oligarchy' and 'Mr. Wray goes to Washington' and 'Deficit cheerleaders ― the Oligarchy’s useful idiots' and 'How to spot economics trolls' and 'Show first your economic axioms or get out of the discussion' and 'Links on the Economics Nobel' and 'Economics and corruption'.


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Philip Mirowski, Money and the Unflappable Economist



Twitter/X  Oct 26, 2025  On borrowed time

April 17, 2019

Economics, MMT, and the capture of science by the political mob

Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘When the MMT critics jump the shark’*

Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference

Bill Mitchell is well aware of how communication works: “Terminology, semantics matter a lot in framing arguments and educational dissemination.” and “So framing and language matter and one of the things that the core MMT group has been mindful of and intent on ensuring is that these conceptual points are clear in peoples’ minds.”

And then he starts framing and mobbing Thomas Palley (who has indeed delivered a brain-dead critique of MMT.#1):

“I have known him for decades. He continually disappoints. He has become one of those self-styled Post Keynesians who are trying to destroy the credibility of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) for reasons that are not entirely clear although I know things I won’t write here.”

“But, the reality is that his work (what limited academic work that he has published) sits squarely in the Neoclassical IS-LM synthesis tradition, which is not Post Keynesian nor heterodox at all. It is the antithesis of Post Keynesian.”

“So I have never understood how he wants to appear Post Keynesian. Anyway whatever the answer to that little puzzle is, he definitely has a set on MMT and regularly recycles the same sorts of attacks, which, continue to have the same problems. In other words, he does not seem to (or does not want to) learn.”

“He also accuses those who respond of dishonesty ― playing the pure is me card ― although his own work on MMT fails, …”

“At the time, it was a ridiculous claim that suggested he had read very little of our work or was just being a vindictive or both.”

“Has Palley not read my work? The answer is he has, and indeed, in February 2014, he did cite my work and lied about it.”

“He either hasn’t read much and therefore should not be holding himself out as any sort of expert on the matter or he has deliberately avoided referring to those sections of our work that are inconvenient for his vindictiveness, which disqualifies him through a lack of credibility.”

“The selective quoting of literature is, in fact, the exemplar of the way academics construct dishonest scholarship. Not that Palley is working in an academic post (despite trying).”

“Palley either hasn’t read my work or deliberately avoids citing it. That is not the behaviour of a person acting in good faith.”

“That is a dishonest representation. I would forgive a non-economist, not trained in concepts such as opportunity cost, etc if they had made that statement.”

“That might make him feel important. But it certainly doesn’t help him establish the credibility he has so sorely desired over the years but never seems to find.”

“So, Tom, you can do better than the pathetic stuff you are pumping out at present. It doesn’t help your standing at all.”

That sort of argumentation is known as the Ad Hominem Fallacy. Genuine scientists avoid motive speculation and folk psychology because they know that it leads away from the point at issue and directly into the bottomless swamp of inconclusive blather. As Schumpeter put it: “Remember: occasionally, it may be an interesting question to ask why a man says what he says; but whatever the answer, it does not tell us anything about whether what he says is true or false.”

The proto-scientific swamp, though, is the natural habitat of political agenda pushers who have no truck whatsoever with true or false. The methodological point to grasp is that there is theoretical economics and political economics. The main differences are: (i) the goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, and the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics, anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed. The fact is that theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years.

Economics is NOT a science. Economists are NOT scientists but useful political idiots. MMTers are NO exception. Bill Mitchell, in particular, has disqualified himself in multiple dimensions
• heavy use of ad hominem,
• suppression of serious critique,#2
• redundant refutation of blatant straw-man critique,#3
• continuous deflection from the point at issue, i.e., the inconsistency of MMT theory and the fraudulence of MMT policy.

The real point at issue is that MMT is built upon a provably false sectoral balances equation, i.e., (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)=0.#4 The true balances equation reads (I−S)+(G−T)+(X−M)−(Q−Yd)=0. Because all variables are measurable with the precision of two decimal places, the real point at issue can be decided once and for all by mathematical proof and empirical test. However, NO MMTer has ever answered to the proof of material/formal inconsistency of MMT.

Economics is a failed/fake science. Economic debates do not advance science but are nothing more than political brawls. #5 The “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” is a fraud. MMT academics are an integral part of the fraud. Debates between competing schools have no scientific content but are propaganda exercises. The MMTer Bill Mitchell is NOT a scientist but a political agenda pusher. The same holds for the Post Keynesian Thomas Palley. Both have to be expelled from the scientific community.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


* Bill Mitchell When the MMT critics jump the shark
#1 Post-Keynesianism vs MMT: a Zombie debate
#2 Cryptoeconomics ― the best of Bill Mitchell’s spam folder
#3 Debunking idiots does not prove that MMT is valid
#4 Yes, economists are really that stupid
#5 Economics: The proto-scientific mob embroiled in just another gang war

Related 'Economics: A science without scientists' and 'Economists: Time to say goodbye' and 'Dear idiots, MMTers are Wall Street’s agenda pushers' and 'How a Swedish professor cares about the Oligarchy’s financial well-being'. For details of the big picture, see cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists.

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AXEC144c

February 12, 2019

Economists: agenda pushers, distractors, blockers, muters, censors

Comment on Noah Way on Inês Goncalves Raposo’s ‘On Modern Monetary Theory’

Blog-Reference

Overview


Economics: a hereditary mental disease with scientific incompetence as father and political fraud as mother
Opinion, conversation, interpretation, blather: the economist’s major immunizing stratagems
Fraud comes always in the cloak of charity, salvation, or threat of doom
If religion is opium of the people, economics is crack of the people
Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
Economics is a science? You must be joking!
Economists, stupid or corrupt or both?

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Scientific incompetence and lack of integrity


For details of the big picture, see cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


Related 'You don’t see what you don’t see: censorship in the econblogosphere' and 'Economics, free speech, and censorship' and 'Needed: The Worst of the Worst of economics blogs' and 'Economists: Incompetent? Stupid? Corrupt?' and 'Economists: “a bevy of camp-following whores”' and 'Circus Maximus: Economics as entertainment, personality gossip, virtue signaling, and lifestyle promotion'.

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#PointOfProof
#EconBlocker
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For more about #Econblocker, see AXECquery.
 
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It is noteworthy that the #EconBlocker Unlearning Economics of all people has put a video about The Toxic Culture of the Economics Profession on YouTube.


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Twitter/X, Nov 11, 2024  Visibility