On Aug 7, 2011, at 6:02 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Aug 7, 2011, at 12:24 AM, Mike Beggs wrote:
>> http://scandalum.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/mitchell-strikes-back/
> At which you say:
>> I think the whole Mitchell system appeals to a certain kind of
>> person, who is rightly sickened by a permanent pool of
>> unemployment, sees policymakers as irrational, and thinks the whole
>> thing could be put right, with no losers and no conflict, with a
>> single Big Idea. As such, it risks being a Douglas Credit for the
>> 21st century. I would rather see the energy joining a broader
>> project which realises the extent to which capital shapes
>> capitalist political possibilities, and recognises that there is no
>> simple policy switch that would suddenly make everything rational
>> without a serious confrontation with that power. Mitchell says
>> that’s ‘quasi-Marxist’ and so it is!
> To which I say: "Bingo!"
But of course MMT is as much quasi-Marxist as it is quasi-Keynesian. No accident that Jamie Galbraith cites Joan Robinson among his major post-Keynesian influences (along with Lerner, Minsky, and his father). If we are ever to have a left-populist political alternative, its full- employment, green energy, infrastructure revolutionizing, inequality slashing, medicare-for-all, and tax reform programs will have to be financed: and they can only be effectively financed through central bank credits. Against Krugman/Summers style ortho-Keynesian stimulationism, as well as the dominant Obamist neoclassical orthodox austerianism, our place is in the MMT camp. Euthanize the Rentiers!
Shane Mage
"scientific discovery is basically recognition of obvious realities that self-interest or ideology have kept everybody from paying attention to"