Young Master Smeet
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ISTR someone writing that faced with a crisis, throwing everything at multiple possible approaches is the sensible response, one of them might work, and you haven’t got time to try and pick winners at the start.
Indeed, a state financed entirely through printing money would *have* to let inflation run, in as much as the value of resources it claimed would have to come out of the pockets of someone else (in that case, everyone who holds onto cash assets). It could be done, and it would be cheaper, really, than organising tax, but it wouldn’t be very fair, as it would be hit and miss on who won and who lost out (I suppose an incomes policy and a degree of corporatism could manage it). The state doesn’t ned to tax, it only has to say that only contracts of exchange denominated in the fiat currency are enforceable.
Yours seems a good answer. I don’t think your correspondent has a strong case via Marx’ class struggle in France: ” droit au travail, the right to work, the first clumsy formula wherein the revolutionary demands of the proletariat are summarized…The right to work is, in the bourgeois sense, an absurdity, a miserable, pious wish. But behind the right to work stands the power over capital; behind the power over capital, the appropriation of the means of production, their subjection to the associated working class, and therefore the abolition of wage labor, of capital, and of their mutual relations. ” [my emphasis].
So, MMT bringing about full employment through printing money is, I’d suggest, the right to work in the bourgeois sense (since it would necessarily be about enabling the law of no profit no employment to operate by driving employment by making it profitable). In Marx’ paragraph, above, the point is that the failure of the capitalism to deliver the right to work drives the logic of the workers seizing the MoP.
That said, I think “the right to work” is a much better proposition than UBI.
Oh, and let’s not forget Solar foods synthesising raw protein:
Current situation:
https://solarfoods.fi/our-news/business-finland-greenlights-solar-foods-e8-6m-project/
And now they’re going to look verrrrrry carefully at a four day week:
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1333396742017048577
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18908868.snp-conference-backs-calls-four-day-working-week/
Sort of relevant to this thread:
https://www.ippr.org/blog/economists-urge-bbc-rethink-inappropriate-reporting-uk-economy
“To focus on the “credit card” analogy, we would argue that this is never an appropriate metaphor for public finances. Maxing out a credit card would imply that the government is approaching a hard limit on its ability to borrow. This is not the case. It is the consensus amongst economists that the government should at this point in time not focus on reducing the deficit, but rather on delivering the spending necessary to secure a recovery from Covid-19. Modelling suggests that public debt as a proportion of GDP could actually fall were the government to embark upon a major investment package boosting jobs and growth, a position similar to that of the IMF in its flagship publication (pp 18-19) on the issue. This is in line with standard macroeconomic literature which stresses the beneficial effects of countercyclical government spending during crises.”
GDP includes government spending, so of course govt. spending increases GDP.
The letter touches on the salient fact that in terms of government debt, the state being immortal, it has a very different relationship to it’s obligations than we do. So long as the government can mange it’s repayments, it can wear any level of debt (as when the Coalition Government rather foolishly made a song and dance about repaying the the Napoleonic war debt – or even worse, bragged about the debt used to buy the Empire’s slaves from their owners).
As with the article at the top, the only real limit to government intervention is the physical resources of the economy, and it’s place in the international system.
The discussion of how to leave the Euro was interesting, it reminded me of Operation Brutus:
“Brian Walden, then a backbench MP, says the “mad plan” would have involved forbidding foreign travel, banning any cash from being sent abroad, effectively seizing pensions held abroad – “a virtual financial coup d’etat”.”
There’s been protests against the new law:
https://twitter.com/search?q=paris%20&src=typed_query
Apparently there fires at the bank of France.
Bottom line, this level of policing is expensive, officers have been hurt, and that costs the state in the long run, I don’t think this is sustainable.
Some reckoning 200K turned out to march.
LBird,
“If ‘we ask‘, YMS, how will we know that ‘we’ve received‘, without a vote?””
Well, the absence of a motion of censure would be a start.
But what you’re saying is that if we ask to go and produce possibly conflicting theories, and then we note we’ve received them all. That wouldn’t give us any truth. At best it would just give us robustness of debate (which would be a good thing in itself).
As to private theories in private time, they’d be held without a vote, wouldn’t they?
LBird,
So, if “we the collective producers”, ask some scientists to go off and develop multiple, conflicting theories (given ethics guidelines, a “budget”, service level agreements, standards, etc.), all is well and good with you, and there’s no need to vote on the truth? And we’ll have resources so people can use “private time” to pursue their own researches, and try to get their ideas published?
“YMS wrote: “That is, we’d mandate a diversity of views…“.
I entirely agree with you, YMS, as I said earlier.”
I don’t see how you can agree with me, I was saying we’d give a free hand and a positive instruction to have differing opinions, you’ve said that we’ll “democratically” mandate theories and what they will be. So maybe one or other of us is misunderstanding the other.
LBird,
I think what you’re finding is we do support the democraticisation of Maths, Physics, etc. but that many here we would vote against mandating any official “truth” save, maybe, the sort of vote the Astronomical Union held to remove planet status from Pluto.
That is, we’d mandate a diversity of views so as to better explore the possibilities we might find. The order to soldiers to “Fire at will (poor Will)” is still an order.
So, it’s up to you, now, to demonstrate why that cannot work and be compatible with democracy, and why your version of democracy (how do you define democracy?) is the only necessary model.
Robbo,
I think we actually know very well what Charlie meant:
“All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one.
“All labour in which many individuals co-operate necessarily requires a commanding will to co-ordinate and unify the process, and functions which apply not to partial operations but to the total activity of the workshop, much as that of an orchestra conductor. This is a productive job, which must be performed in every combined mode of production.”
So, specialised direction is a productive social function, and there will be individual activities within a collective process.
There’s a law that councils must run an “efficient and comprehensive” library services, that the courts gutted by interpreting “efficient” as relative to the scale of the council’s spending. The courts will have to decide “reasonable” here (and the councils will decide the quality). The FOI law is quite clear as well…
It’s nice to see some good news on this forum: obviously, we’ll have to see which councils obstruct this or cut costs (administrative foot dragging is an art, much as with yesterday’s story about civil service obstruction of Freedom of information requests (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/uk-government-running-orwellian-unit-to-block-release-of-sensitive-information/)).
But, nonetheless, there’s no need to be curmudgeonly about this, a genuine advance.
