I suspect the billionaires don't have much need for most of us anymore. If we "disappeared" the planet would be less burdened by our consumer detritus and return to a more natural state.
Making life increasingly precarious is a means to an end. A diminished population leaves the planet free to be enjoyed by an elite few (maybe a billion people) who can (for example) harness all intellectual assets required to 3D print whatever they require etc.
The billionaire owners of most of the physical assets and capital will take vacations in pristine, natural habitats without being pestered by us ingrates.
I mean... no offense, but this is just so weak that it gets hilarious at some points. Your takes on cash tackle an issue that doesn't get talked about enough and it's definitely worth discussing more. This on the other hand is just my lil bro rambling about capitalism after his freshman year, covering just about every single cliche ever pronounced.
Just Q =f(L;K) bro, no need of legos or semantic crap. If you hate billionaires just think and write about progressive taxation.
- If you have an actual critique, then feel free to post it. Tell me what you find so hilarious. As it stands, this comment is just an insult, mostly towards your brother
- My work is not weak, and the stuff I'm deconstructing in this piece is not strong - our world is full of weak bullshit statements that support powerful people and which routinely get repeated by the Econ discipline, with its equations
- You say these points are cliched, but some cliches are cliches because they're true
- You sound like a snarly Econ student when you dismiss my attempts to help non-experts with diagrams. You suggest that I just use mathematical equations, as if that has any chance of describing a political issue. That shows no sympathy towards the majority of the public, who find Econ deeply alienating
- My work on cash uses the same underlying forms of analysis
- If my work triggers you, just leave and go read people you do like - life is too short to sit writing insults
Whaaa?? I wish the boss *would* take my job, that'd give me more useful things to do.
Is "jobs" the issue here? There is no end of socially necessary work people can do, should do, could do right now. But the government must pay the wage if it ain't making sales. Note, there is no "AI" (machine for emitting strings by stochastic inference) nor robots story here, that's a productivity story, not a jobs story.
So the issue is never "jobs". We wake up every day to severe labour shortages. And the private firms role is to produce real output we want with as few workers as possible, preferably zero.
The sole source of unemployment is the government. Unemployment DEFINED as people seeking to exchange their goods or labour time for the tax credit. The government is the sole institution with capacity to eliminate all the unemployment. It is a policy mistake not to. An epic tragic mistake.
I do sense MMT vibes here, but I gotta admit that I'm struggling to understand your point. Are you saying you'd like your boss to fire you, provided the government is there to step in and pay you to do more socially useful work? When you say 'the sole source of unemployment is the govt', are you really saying 'because the government has the ability to eliminate unemployment by issuing new money to employ someone, their decision to not do that is the source of the unemployment'?
#3. I fell the need to emphasize the point that it is *not* because the government "has the capacity" that they *should* eliminate unemployment. It is because they have the *moral obligation* to eliminate the unemployment since they create it. The tax drives the demand for the currency. Always has, for over 6000 years of known history.
It is only since the government always *has* the fiscal capacity that there is no "tax pay for" for the procedures to eliminate the unemployment, and it is non-inflationary. A UBI in contrast is pure inflation (it defines downwards the currency).
But first comes the moral obligation to correct the policy mistake of leaving people unemployed. This is not the role nor obligation of the private sector. Unemployment is always an unspent income story. If the private sector saves then this forces the government to deficit spend, but the government can spend too little, the evidence is unemployment. It is a policy mistake, and epic tragic policy mistake.
Government Budgets are not currency management documents, they are moral documents. They are about what resources to mobilize and move from private to public sector. The government deficit is an accounting record residual, ex poste scorekeeping.
None of this should be up for debate. What *is* up for debate is *how* the government goes about fixing their ppolicy mistake — how it goes about eliminating all involuntary unemployment. Liberals and conservatives can disagree on *that*, and that's healthy.
Some nuance: It is not really that government has the currency capacity — since that goes without saying and is a debate that is long over, MMT won — the proper point is more about class politics. It *is* a purely political decision to impose tax liabilities at a level higher than the currency injection by government deficit spending that affords the non-government sector the means to pay the tax and meet reasonable savings desires without going into credit card debt. It is not a market effect. It is political. Admittedly, mostly out of ignorance rather than malice ((one might generously presume?)
#1. Literally I wrote "I wish the boss would take my job" — that is, not fire me, but do the work for me. Robot automate it... whatever. I want to be working on something far more useful to society. What was Graeber's rough estimate? 40% of jobs are bullsh1t? Got it now?
On the other matter, it is not a debate. The government *is* the sole source of all unemployment in a *single currency* region. (I should not have to add the 'single currency' qualifiers! It should be obviously inferred.)
The definition of unemployment is *not8 "not working". It is seeking to exchange your goods or labour for the tax credit, and not being able to do so. That is what the statistics for U3 U6, etc., are measuring.
I'm not sure that "the sole source of unemployment is the government" and MMT's 'government can act as the employer of last resort by utilising all spare labour to do socially useful work' are equivalent, though I'm sure that's Bijou's point.
MMT's claim is highly dependent on the notion that government can provide work at the low skill / low wage end of the spectrum so as not to compete with the private sector at a marginally higher skill / higher wage level. This is predicated on the notion that there IS a scale of skill / wage equivalence. I would argue that such a scale is as mythological as the precepts of Neoclassical economics (representative agent models, rising cost of production etc.) can be shown to be. The best that can be hoped for at the lowest wage end of the spectrum is those 'you pretend to work and we'll pretend to pay you' minimum wage jobs on roadworks gangs, which IMO can only exist because of the virtual monopoly / monopsony that exists in local and national transport authority contracting.
His point is that the only feasible way for there to be unemployment as we understand it in the modern era, that is people who are willing and able to work, but don’t because they are looking for better opportunities (ie receiving unemployment benefits). If the government were to abolish unemployment insurance, no one would get cozy in receiving benefits and not looking for work. This is an anti MMT argument. If you stop paying people to do nothing they will do something for money. His point is that labor isn’t properly allocated because people often choose to do nothing by abusing unemployment insurance and disability systems. This is a part of our “labor shortages”. And of course it is inflationary when you pay people to do nothing productive (definitionally all of government as they don’t produce goods or services that people are willing to pay for). I think our decline in purchasing power has much more to do with the increase of the money supply (direct fiat creation, fiscal deficit and low reserve requirement fractionalized reserve banking) than the greed of Jeff Bezos.
The phrase, "pay people to do nothing," is an interesting one worth considering. When I was needing food assistance at one point in my life, I was given this assistance but doing many things, including raising my son and taking care of our home and starting a doctoral program. In fact, the times I've been doing doing doing the most in my life were the times that I was also receiving government payments.
There is no need to "pay people to do nothing." Everyone has something to contribute to their community. Those who cannot or shoudl not work should have a Basic Income Guarantee (not a regressive pittance of a UBI).
Anything useful someone can do with a UBI is something that the government should compensate with a decent living wage, not a welfare handout pittance.
And anyway, most humans "doing" are contributing to the demise of our planet. We'd do much better to be not doing. That's not a call to be "passive." That's a call to do "love" from a quiet inner peace. This is the hardest, most rugged job anyone will ever do.
I suspect the billionaires don't have much need for most of us anymore. If we "disappeared" the planet would be less burdened by our consumer detritus and return to a more natural state.
Making life increasingly precarious is a means to an end. A diminished population leaves the planet free to be enjoyed by an elite few (maybe a billion people) who can (for example) harness all intellectual assets required to 3D print whatever they require etc.
The billionaire owners of most of the physical assets and capital will take vacations in pristine, natural habitats without being pestered by us ingrates.
I mean... no offense, but this is just so weak that it gets hilarious at some points. Your takes on cash tackle an issue that doesn't get talked about enough and it's definitely worth discussing more. This on the other hand is just my lil bro rambling about capitalism after his freshman year, covering just about every single cliche ever pronounced.
Just Q =f(L;K) bro, no need of legos or semantic crap. If you hate billionaires just think and write about progressive taxation.
Ok, I've found time to get to this comment now
- You say no offence, but you clearly intend it
- If you have an actual critique, then feel free to post it. Tell me what you find so hilarious. As it stands, this comment is just an insult, mostly towards your brother
- My work is not weak, and the stuff I'm deconstructing in this piece is not strong - our world is full of weak bullshit statements that support powerful people and which routinely get repeated by the Econ discipline, with its equations
- You say these points are cliched, but some cliches are cliches because they're true
- You sound like a snarly Econ student when you dismiss my attempts to help non-experts with diagrams. You suggest that I just use mathematical equations, as if that has any chance of describing a political issue. That shows no sympathy towards the majority of the public, who find Econ deeply alienating
- My work on cash uses the same underlying forms of analysis
- If my work triggers you, just leave and go read people you do like - life is too short to sit writing insults
Whaaa?? I wish the boss *would* take my job, that'd give me more useful things to do.
Is "jobs" the issue here? There is no end of socially necessary work people can do, should do, could do right now. But the government must pay the wage if it ain't making sales. Note, there is no "AI" (machine for emitting strings by stochastic inference) nor robots story here, that's a productivity story, not a jobs story.
So the issue is never "jobs". We wake up every day to severe labour shortages. And the private firms role is to produce real output we want with as few workers as possible, preferably zero.
The sole source of unemployment is the government. Unemployment DEFINED as people seeking to exchange their goods or labour time for the tax credit. The government is the sole institution with capacity to eliminate all the unemployment. It is a policy mistake not to. An epic tragic mistake.
I do sense MMT vibes here, but I gotta admit that I'm struggling to understand your point. Are you saying you'd like your boss to fire you, provided the government is there to step in and pay you to do more socially useful work? When you say 'the sole source of unemployment is the govt', are you really saying 'because the government has the ability to eliminate unemployment by issuing new money to employ someone, their decision to not do that is the source of the unemployment'?
#3. I fell the need to emphasize the point that it is *not* because the government "has the capacity" that they *should* eliminate unemployment. It is because they have the *moral obligation* to eliminate the unemployment since they create it. The tax drives the demand for the currency. Always has, for over 6000 years of known history.
It is only since the government always *has* the fiscal capacity that there is no "tax pay for" for the procedures to eliminate the unemployment, and it is non-inflationary. A UBI in contrast is pure inflation (it defines downwards the currency).
But first comes the moral obligation to correct the policy mistake of leaving people unemployed. This is not the role nor obligation of the private sector. Unemployment is always an unspent income story. If the private sector saves then this forces the government to deficit spend, but the government can spend too little, the evidence is unemployment. It is a policy mistake, and epic tragic policy mistake.
Government Budgets are not currency management documents, they are moral documents. They are about what resources to mobilize and move from private to public sector. The government deficit is an accounting record residual, ex poste scorekeeping.
None of this should be up for debate. What *is* up for debate is *how* the government goes about fixing their ppolicy mistake — how it goes about eliminating all involuntary unemployment. Liberals and conservatives can disagree on *that*, and that's healthy.
#2. Yes mostly, btw. (Your last point Brett :)
Some nuance: It is not really that government has the currency capacity — since that goes without saying and is a debate that is long over, MMT won — the proper point is more about class politics. It *is* a purely political decision to impose tax liabilities at a level higher than the currency injection by government deficit spending that affords the non-government sector the means to pay the tax and meet reasonable savings desires without going into credit card debt. It is not a market effect. It is political. Admittedly, mostly out of ignorance rather than malice ((one might generously presume?)
I cannot honestly think this is a debate. If anyone disagrees then DM me for a chat. But read Ohanga Pai first: https://smithwillsuffice.github.io/ohanga-pai/questions/001_basic_ohangapai/ so you at least know where I am coming from.
#1. Literally I wrote "I wish the boss would take my job" — that is, not fire me, but do the work for me. Robot automate it... whatever. I want to be working on something far more useful to society. What was Graeber's rough estimate? 40% of jobs are bullsh1t? Got it now?
On the other matter, it is not a debate. The government *is* the sole source of all unemployment in a *single currency* region. (I should not have to add the 'single currency' qualifiers! It should be obviously inferred.)
The definition of unemployment is *not8 "not working". It is seeking to exchange your goods or labour for the tax credit, and not being able to do so. That is what the statistics for U3 U6, etc., are measuring.
I'm not sure that "the sole source of unemployment is the government" and MMT's 'government can act as the employer of last resort by utilising all spare labour to do socially useful work' are equivalent, though I'm sure that's Bijou's point.
MMT's claim is highly dependent on the notion that government can provide work at the low skill / low wage end of the spectrum so as not to compete with the private sector at a marginally higher skill / higher wage level. This is predicated on the notion that there IS a scale of skill / wage equivalence. I would argue that such a scale is as mythological as the precepts of Neoclassical economics (representative agent models, rising cost of production etc.) can be shown to be. The best that can be hoped for at the lowest wage end of the spectrum is those 'you pretend to work and we'll pretend to pay you' minimum wage jobs on roadworks gangs, which IMO can only exist because of the virtual monopoly / monopsony that exists in local and national transport authority contracting.
His point is that the only feasible way for there to be unemployment as we understand it in the modern era, that is people who are willing and able to work, but don’t because they are looking for better opportunities (ie receiving unemployment benefits). If the government were to abolish unemployment insurance, no one would get cozy in receiving benefits and not looking for work. This is an anti MMT argument. If you stop paying people to do nothing they will do something for money. His point is that labor isn’t properly allocated because people often choose to do nothing by abusing unemployment insurance and disability systems. This is a part of our “labor shortages”. And of course it is inflationary when you pay people to do nothing productive (definitionally all of government as they don’t produce goods or services that people are willing to pay for). I think our decline in purchasing power has much more to do with the increase of the money supply (direct fiat creation, fiscal deficit and low reserve requirement fractionalized reserve banking) than the greed of Jeff Bezos.
Something tells me this isn't actually his point
The phrase, "pay people to do nothing," is an interesting one worth considering. When I was needing food assistance at one point in my life, I was given this assistance but doing many things, including raising my son and taking care of our home and starting a doctoral program. In fact, the times I've been doing doing doing the most in my life were the times that I was also receiving government payments.
There is no need to "pay people to do nothing." Everyone has something to contribute to their community. Those who cannot or shoudl not work should have a Basic Income Guarantee (not a regressive pittance of a UBI).
Anything useful someone can do with a UBI is something that the government should compensate with a decent living wage, not a welfare handout pittance.
yeah, I'd love to see this society grow a bit of culture by remembering what is truly of communal value.
And anyway, most humans "doing" are contributing to the demise of our planet. We'd do much better to be not doing. That's not a call to be "passive." That's a call to do "love" from a quiet inner peace. This is the hardest, most rugged job anyone will ever do.