Comment on Bill Mitchell on ‘Voodoo economic revisionism abounds ― and it is not MMT doing the voodoo’
Blog-Reference and
Blog-Reference
Science is about true/false and NOTHING else. Economics is supposed to be a science, and by consequence, it is about how the monetary economy operates and NOT about what journalists, politicians, trolls, tweeters, Mr. Trump, Rush Limbaugh, or any other brain-dead agenda pusher in the Circus Maximus hallucinates.
From an economist, one expects to learn the true (= materially/formally consistent) theory and NOT that economic policy guidance in the incarnation of Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is voodoo. Everybody knows this by now. No need for Bill Mitchell to repeat the same old folk-psychological crap over and over again.
• “Both articles … are rehearsing the growing angst that the deficit terrorists who were dominant in the 1990s up until recent years are now feeling as their anti-government, anti-fiscal policy message ― their continued prophesies of doom ― but most of all, their relevance ― is evaporating before their very eyes ― exposed by too many predictions of doom and disaster which have never been realised.”
• “The angst these conservatives are now going through is mirrored by the obvious fact that mainstream macroeconomics is growing in irrelevance itself. Which is why many of the ‘big’ names are attacking MMT so relentlessly.”
• “The MMT economists are delivering the alternative paradigm in macroeconomics. No other challenge to the mainstream has succeeded, and the heterodox tradition just become lost in peripheral issues. MMT is front and central macroeconomics, and the mainstream cannot deal with it.”
• “And when a character like Trump comes along who doesn’t play by the script, the world of these ‘free market’ liars is blown apart.”
• “And Trump is demonstrating by his fiscal actions that the main weapon the Republicans used to kill off any progressive policy dreams is now defunct. #1 No one believes the deficit horror stories any more.”
• “Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore … All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.” (Limbaugh) #2
• “How many years have people tried to scare everybody about the deficit? The years, how many decades of politicians tried to scare us about the deficit, the national debt, and any number of things? And yet, here we’re still here, and the great jaws of the deficit have not bitten off our heads and chewed them up and spit them out.” (Limbaugh)
In sum: “Cover blown.” and “… all the deficit terrorists … are now running around like headless chooks because their lies have lost traction.”
As far as the failure of mainstream economics is concerned, this is accurate, of course, but from this he-said-she-said-I-said gossip does NOT follow that MMTers “… are delivering the alternative paradigm in macroeconomics.” The fact is that MMT macroeconomics is refuted on all counts. #3
MMT is the academic cover for a straightforward political agenda: to push deficit-spending/money-creation. Bill Mitchell’s message is simple: government deficits and growing public debt are good, there are no risks to speak of, and the residual risks can be easily handled, and everybody who says otherwise is a liar and deficit-terrorist.
There is not the smallest snippet of science in this talk. Obviously, Bill Mitchell has moved from serious scientific research to Orwell’s propaganda ministry.
MMT is provably false, i.e., materially/logically inconsistent, and therefore, MMT policy guidance lacks sound scientific foundations. MMTers deceive the general public because they never address the toxic distributional effect of their policy.
The policy of deficit-spending/money-creation benefits the Oligarchy because it increases macroeconomic profit according to the Profit Law, which entails
Public Deficit = Private Profit. MMT is a free lunch program for the Oligarchy. Financial wealth and public debt grow in lockstep, and the fabulous financial wealth in the USA is roughly equal to humongous public debt ($22 trillion and counting). The Profit Law explains how billionaires are able to accumulate that much money and why they can buy all the bonds the Treasury issues and cash in the ultra-safe interest that is reliably taxed from WeThePeople as long as the debt is rolled over, which can be very long indeed. MMT policy is a Ponzi scheme that works as long as public debt grows. But infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet. This also holds for public debt. The fact that things have gone fine so far proves NOTHING about the future. And it does NOT prove the scientific validity of MMT.
While it is true that mainstream economic policy is voodoo, the same holds for MMT policy.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1
Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump, etc. and exploding profit
#2
Links on Austerity
#3 For the full-spectrum refutation of MMT, see
cross-references MMT
Related '
Economics debate ― just another variant of hardcore wrestling' and '
Economists: scientists or political clowns?' and '
Economics: A pointless left-right wrestling show' and '
Debunking idiots does not prove that MMT is valid' and '
Econogenics in action'. For details of the big picture, see
cross-references Failed/Fake Scientists.
Immediately preceding
Bill Mitchell ― Wall Street’s hitman keeps an eye on MMT defeatists.
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REPLY to Bob Roddis on Jul 25
Fiat money, or evil fiat funny money as you call it, is not the basic problem of the monetary economy, but how it is injected into the system. See
The right and the wrong way to bring money into the economy.
