Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp is a columnist for The National newspaper in Scotland. I read The National because it is the only reliable pro-independence newspaper in Scotland, and I want to hear that point of view. Yesterday he wrote about modern monetary theory, saying as his opening:
At the core of MMT is an accurate observation of how money works that any serious economist has been aware of since the end of the gold standard: the creation of free-floating currencies. This basis gives MMT credibility.
I agree. He then continued:
The premise of MMT is that a sovereign government with its own free-floating currency and central bank can never go bust as it can produce new money and spend as it likes.
Except that is not true. In fact, it's a total misrepresentation. The premise of MMT is that spending can take place until such time as full employment is achieved, after which time wage-driven inflation will follow. Spending should then stop when the desired level of inflation (and most economists agree some inflation is desirable) is reached. In other words, MMT does not say a government can spend as it likes. It says nothing of the sort.
And when MMT talks about the inability of a government with its own currency and central bank not being able to go bust it does so not do so to encourage fiscal irresponsibility, as no sane person would do, but to instead make clear that what is called the national debt is not, as it is popularly described, ‘a burden in future generations', but is instead the absolutely essential money supply that lets an economy function. The point about not being able to go bust is true. But it is not something anyone would want to use. Rather like I hope to never try the airbags in my car, it's a safety feature to note, not something anyone wants to test, or to be candid, rely upon in normal use.
So MacIntyre-Kemp wholly misrepresented MMT and then said:
Wouldn't it be great if I could end this column here? Unfortunately, I can't because even though this is correct there are many real-life practical restrictions on spending and significant negative side effects with its use.
As I have just noted, MMT is well aware of the restrictions. It is MacIntyre-Kemp who knows no such constraint. He suggests MMT will permit ‘government [to] spend what it wants [as] there is no restriction on unhinged leaders spending in a way that kills the planet'.
He mentions Trump's wall, before suggesting right wingers will abolish business taxes and left wingers will d the same for income taxes. Others might, he suggests, promote rampant military spending.
And all this, he predicts, will lead to the currency of any government that adopts MMT sinking like a stone as its economy spirals out of control whilst hyper-inflation runs riot. He assures his readers that MMT enthusiasts see no problem in this: their answer, he claims, is to just print more money.
As a result he claims that ‘MMT is a good theory but a bad iconic mantra and it's certainly not the answer for an independent Scotland once it launches its own currency'.
As the person who did, perhaps, introduce Common Weal to MMT I have to say that is complete nonsense. There are three reasons for saying so, and I strongly suspect McIntyre-Kemp knows them all.
First, if MMT is a good theory that is because it describes what actually happens. This is, in my opinion, and MacIntyre-Kemp's come to that, true. It would then be absurd to ignore it and use a bad theory instead because some might misunderstand the consequences of the theory to which they claim allegiance. MacIntyre-Kemp's logic is a bit like some people's reaction to social media, or alcohol. They claim that because both can be abused they should be banned. That's absurd. Responsible use is possible, and often beneficial. MacIntyre-Kemp simply has to call out those who do not really understand MMT and so abuse it, as I have done, rather than reject it.
Second, MMT precisely explains how Scotland could use its own currency to assist its development as an independent nation, whilst also making clear what the constraints will be. What it says is Scotland can aim for full employment, sound investment, and a long-term economic view but it also has to be very aware that if inflation and a falling currency are to be avoided - as any responsible government would desire - difficult, and hopefully wise, choices will have to be made. This is the reality that faces Scottish politics. The alternative of running away from those decisions and using the pound instead is to wholly abdicate responsibility and let control stay with London, which is the last thing a new Scotland will need. 'Independence in name only' solves nothing, But that is what retaining the pound would ensure.
Third, what MacIntyre-Kemp proves is the need for intelligent debate, as opposed to ranting based on misinformation or wishful thinking. MacIntyre-Kemp knows no one in Scotland is going to vote for parties who promote an arms race, or the abolition of swathes of taxes when it is obvious their revenues are necessary. And he knows no one is going to build a new wall. So his arguments are clearly absurd, and add nothing to debate. Saying which, as I have already noted myself, some MMT enthusiasts do not help themselves by also making irresponsible claims. I would echo Common Weal's Robin McAlpine here by calling for better debate, and deeper understanding, on all sides if Scotland is to progress.
I would add a final note. What Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp and many in MMT ignore is the essential role of tax in that theory. MMT tends to underplay this. I think that an error. Many in the MMT community do not get this either. But the fact is that money creation and tax are the flip side of each other in MMT. Working hand in hand they create the economic stability matched with full employment that is the Holy Grail of economics. This is why Common Weal and I have put much thought into the role of a Scottish tax system, which needs to be radically different and much more economically and socially progressive than that which the UK has now. I have written about it here.
Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp should respond to and partake in informed debate rather than post nonsense as if it was an argument. Scotland expects and needs that. Might it be granted what it requires?
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There are many constraints and one is a MMT / PQE led Government being elected out of office as tax rises kick in when inflation is biting. It is a double whammy on purchasing power. At this point a reduction in Government expenditure / reversal of PQE becomes inevitable…it then looks no different (to the electorate) of Keynesian policies of the 1970s.
You do realise PQE is about ownership of assets and is nothing at all like QE?
And you do realise 99% of QE will never be reversed?
Alternatively, do you know what you are saying?
And do you realise Keynesianism worked?
So you do accept the reluctance to accept tax increases when inflation is abound as a constraint.
A further constraint is surely the calculating spare capacity in the economy? What do you consider the spare capacity to be at present and how much PQE would this allow before inflation occurs?
I do not think that a constraint
I call it a feature
And spare capacity – come on, look at the work of David Blanchflower and many others
Worstall again?
Probably.
Commenting on the capacity issue (see above) – one can, of course have badly deployed capacity.
The CEO of VW was recently whining about the threat posed by electric vehicles (100k job losses according to the CEO)
Efforts by Germany to renovate housing have stalled (less than 1% renno rate vs the 3% needed) – reason – lack of workers & concerns over inflation (yawn).
Oh & Germany is concerned about the fact that road transport emissions remain stubbornly high – & at the same time there is concern that workers making the ICE vehciles keeping it stubbornly high might lose their jobs – to vehicles that would reduce emissions………… I’m not making this up BTW.
In the UK – there are many 10,000s of McJobs (or would that be AmaJobs?) – people doing menial/meaningless, poorly paid work.
& yet one party (hello Jim) wants to argue about “capacity”.
The UK has plenty of human capacity – it is just deployed in the wrong areas – to be deployed in the right areas would require an industrial strategy & gov spending.
Instead we get what passes for a gov bleating about “markets” or in the case of “Jim” capacity.
Oh Dear………………………….
And there I was thinking that Scotland was a more ‘grown up’ democracy.
It seems that they too have the same ‘canaries in the coal-mine’ like we do here in England. The sort of people who retard change and innovation (and ultimately – hope).
People like MacIntyre-Kemp are the sort that I have always worried about as Scotland walks towards an independent future.
They have the capacity to do untold damage.
M-K should shut his mouth until he’s done some proper reading.
Disgraceful. He should move to England.
I hope that he takes the opportunity to redeem himself.
Excellent rebuttal of Gordon’s article. However, his column is so outrageously bad it is rather like shooting fish in a barrel to debunk it – it’s about 95% very badly wrong.
I can’t believe he has ever read any of the academic work on the subject, or any of the informed blogs such as yours’ or Bill Mitchells.
I really wonder what he has been reading, or why he would set out to write such scaremongering stuff if he actually knows any MMT?.
Hi Brian – haven’t read Gordon’s article yet as I only saw the headline at breakfast. We did, however, disagree strongly when I tackled him about currency (and the Finance Minister) after coffee at the Business for Scotland dinner in September. Derek was totally intransigent on the Growth Commission plan while Gordon has some bizarre idea that we need to keep sterling in order to have a weak currency to boost our exports. If (and it is if) we need a depreciation then you can do that quite easily with the S£. Keeping a strongly depreciating Sterling does not boost our exports to rUK, while it would tend to import inflation and would not be at all popular with the general public as soon as their first trip abroad brought it to their attention.
Agreed
I hope Gordon reads this, and the other responses. He appears to believe the bit about MMT being a description of reality, but imagines that it offers “deficit cancellation”. Maybe he just needs a short course in budget accounting, and a nudge towards the fact that deficits are mostly normal to get him onside.
Either that, George, or he is simply an advocate for retaining the pound who has chosen to digress and be deliberately misleading.
I just re-read your excellent proposal for a Scottish Tax System. You say several times there are six reasons for tax, but only list five – is one reason missing?
See the Joy of Tax
Ah yes, page 66.
Very good. I know Gordon as I am a member of Business for Scotland, and while we agree on much we totally disagree about currency. We absolutely have to have ‘a Scottish currency as soon as practicable after Independence Day.’ And that is really all you need to say on the doorstep, in the press, etc. Clear, comprehensible, the government at the time will decide the exact timings. No nonsense with economically illiterate tests, etc.
There is another benefit to issuing a Scottish Pound which is not generally recognised but which arises because Sterling will be a continuing currency. The new Scottish Reserve Bank (central bank) will create the new currency and use it to buy (in a voluntary exchange) our existing Sterling. That Sterling does not disappear or turn into a puff of smoke but rather becomes the property of the Reserve Bank. So there may be something like £140 billion of Sterling (8% of Sterling M3) in Scotland and if you assume less than half is exchanged (folk are a bit timid) then you could have of the order of £50-70 billion of ‘old’ Sterling ending up in the Reserve Bank while the same new S£ goes into circulation. At a minimum there is the £6 billion of Scottish notes and corresponding £6 billion deposit at the BoE that would move north. So rather uniquely the S£ would be probably the only currency on the planet that on Day 1 had 100% foreign reserves behind it. So much for the garbage that Scotland would have to spend years to build up reserves. We would in fact have reserves coming out of our ears when you bear in mind that the net Foreign Reserves of the BoE are only about US$45 billion. Countries such as Denmark and Finland work quite happily with Foreign Reserves of around €10 billion so Scotland could do the same and thus maybe put £40 billion or more into the new Oil Fund as a down payment. Also, of course, the reluctant exchangers would find that keeping money as Sterling was increasingly both inconvenient and a risk, so there would be a long tail of additional Sterling getting exchanged. Thus upward pressure on the S£ unless the Reserve Bank continued to match the late exchanges with issuing new S£.
All this Sterling is not, of course, a great windfall for the Scottish Government as none of it can be spent in Scotland because it is the wrong currency. Trying to convert it would just put the creation of the S£ into reverse so that is not possible on any significant scale at least in the short to medium term. The only day to day uses would be for things like buying embassies abroad, a contribution toward UK debts (thought personally I don’t think that is either necessary or sensible), or importing military equipment.
Creating the Euro, for example, was of course totally different as all the old currencies were destroyed in the process. I would be interested to know what happened in the ex Soviet states, but rooms full of roubles that were rapidly inflating and non-convertible would, I suspect, not have been of a great deal of use.
The eastern transition economies often ended up with defacto dollarisation – https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edgar_Feige/publication/5218869_Dynamics_of_Currency_Substitution_Asset_Substitution_and_De_facto_Dollarisation_and_Euroisation_in_Transition_Countries/links/0912f50572c34ad103000000/Dynamics-of-Currency-Substitution-Asset-Substitution-and-De-facto-Dollarisation-and-Euroisation-in-Transition-Countries.pdf
Paul R Masson’s tome “Monetary and Exchange-Rate Policies of Transition Economies of Central and Eastern Europe After the Launch of EMU” is a ridiculously expensive overview.
I’m not sure the massive literature has helpful conclusions. Working for the World Bank I was expected to tow a party-line that transition would be over in 150 days. Outside, people experienced much longer poverty and worse. Scotland presumably is mich less in need of convergence.
Happy new year Timothy, a wee correction if I may – I also agree wholeheartedly that Scotland should have a Scottish currency as soon as possible after independence day. What we disagree on is what timescale ASAP represents in practical terms and that is dependent on what Brexit deal or No Deal is arrived at and what happens to the value of the pound after that. In other words, I don’t believe in being prescriptive is such a chaotic situation as Brexit.
Indeed a certain Brexit outcome may have us agreeing completely on timescale but that’s a different issue altogether than MMT.
ASAP means day 1
Nothing else will do
Read Common Weal on the issue – the issue has been comprehensively addressed
Any delay would effectively mean ‘never’ and those arguing for it no it
I wasn’t actually prescriptive about it in that I think the positioning for pre referendum campaigning should simply be ‘as soon as practicable after Independence Day’. That can mean whatever the listener wants it to mean and avoids all discussion about 1 day, 1 month, 10 years or whatever. In practice AFTER a Yes vote then we should take all steps to ensure this is as close to Day 1 as possible. So I, for example, advocate preparations such as having the Bill to establish the Scottish Reserve Bank ready to be introduced to Holyrood right away. We can simply do a cut and paste job on the comparable Irish legislation and I also advocate using the Bank of Ireland as a sort of template for what we would need. If I ever get the time I plan to try and do some of that and sketch out both the Bill and e.g. what roles you need, number of staff positions, etc. I already adapted the Common Weal paper on currency into my own version (available on request – just email me at tim@xyzmaps.com) and I think they are unduly pessimistic about the time scale. They say a minimum of three years from start to finish, which is actually far longer than it took in e.g. Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa or any of the ex Soviet states. So far as I can see the thing that takes longest is getting notes and coins as they take an age to design and manufacture. On the digital side all you really need is a PC plugged into the bank payments system with accounting software that can suitably maintain, debit and credit accounts. All the banks already deal with multiple currencies so they just have to add another, and we need a new S£ interbank payments channel which can use the software / technology developed for the Eurozone and adopted as an EU standard for bank payments.
@GMK
Currency issue is independence day.
The referendum or announcement day or whatever, dependent on how the cookie crumbles, is not independence day. There will necessarily be a transition period (much to the fantasists’ disgust – see Brexit proposals as a guide) of …..three years or thereabouts and that transition period will be determined by how long it takes to launch the currency.
No ifs, no buts…that’s how it is. Or it just isn’t. It’s just bloody Brigadoon.
So the sooner we all get real about this the sooner we get somewhere we want to be.
Somebody has to drag these straw men out into the open so we can torch them.
I’m not confident that GMcK is doing it aswell as he might, but he’s getting some informed and knowledgeable responses. I notice, for example, a certain Prof Murphy taking another opportunity to weigh into the discussion and I spotted this via a link on MMT Scotland. Those lured in to the debate/discussion have now got live links to more explanatory articles.) … no debate in the history of mankind has ever been conducted without a free and fair exchange of bullshit. And no useful debate has ever been conducted in silence.
Without manure or compost no rhubarb will grow, and no roses either.
The wagons are rolling…..ye ha ! Onward to the promised land…… it’s a long and tiresome trail.
What a travesty of a description of MMT!!
It seems that those criticising MMT never get past the first part — that a sovereign currency issuing government is not financially constrained — to the second part — that the constraint is the level and quality of the real resources available to it —and that it is by fully utilising these resources that the welfare of all is improved.
A further article on MMT appeared on the Bella Caledonia website on 5th January – see https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2019/01/05/an-alternative-for-scotland-the-investment-led-model/
Aside from the numerous typos and grammatical/syntactical errors, at no point does the author clarify that many of his assertions require, as a sine qua non, that a country has to issue its own sovereign currency. Given the Growth Commission’s advocation of an independent Scotland piggy-backing sterling to solve the “currency dilemma”, this is a grave and misleading omission. In the event of Scotland going independent it’s essential that it gets the currency issue sensibly sorted from the outset, so articles that mislead and/or are imprecisely worded create a seriouys risk. I found the taxresearch site because I wanted to improve my knowledge of economics, so there’s maybe a pay-off that some of Bella’s readers may seek out better-informed information.
In passing, it’s good to see The Fast Show’s Swiss Toni getting a mention at Comment No.12: “Building an economy, Toni, is very much like making love to a beautiful woman…”
I agree: the piece missed a core point
And it did not mention tax….
Kemp is clearly wrong as Richard outlines. What we need is to know more on how we get returns from the green projects. My view is that standard business plans won’t do the job, though I doubt these plans now represent much description of what’s going on. Build loads of houses no one will live in appears to be a “business plan” as does build or redeploy no housing that people can afford to make homes. The rationality of MMT/Green QE as initial funding is compelling logic, but how do we get the projects we want into roll-over condition with their own “profits”?
I’d low the funding to do more work on that
Richard thanks for engaging – There have been a lot of comments from MMT supporters (I expected as much) saying that I am misrepresenting MMT. So can you and others who posted comments suggesting this, just answer this question with a yes or no so we can decide if I am indeed misrepresenting MMT.
Answer me this – Am I misrepresenting MMT by saying that its a theory that claims that the British Government has got it wrong on budgeting and spending rules because “When it comes to the British Government money is no object”.
By No object, I mean money is no obstacle.
Is it also a misrepresentation to say that “MMT claims that these governments (with a sovereign currency also have an unlimited ability to provide funds to other sectors, and that because of this, it is not possible for a government that issues its own currency to be bankrupt”.
A simple Yes or No would suffice.
If you really think ‘Have you stopped beating your wife’ questions are the basis for informed debate Gordon you are seriously mistaken.
For heaven’s sake, answer the criticisms I have made and stop digging deeper holes for yourself when I have already made it abundantly clear that your representations of MMT are completely incorrect.
I am more than happy to discuss issues, but I do presume you will have the decency to inform yourself of what MMT is actually about when taking very public stances on the issue.
So let us get this straight you publish an article with the main claim that I have misrepresented MMT. You invite me to comment to participate in “informed debate rather than post nonsense as if it was an argument”. So I seek to understand if my understanding of MMT is different from yours and you post a misrepresentation of my comment and call it a ‘Have you stopped beating your wife’ question – which is essentially employing a straw man argument.
You think my comment was a trap, your whole blog and invitation for me to comment now looks like a trap. I engaged politely then you essentially trolled me in your own comments section. I would argue that I was the one willing to engage in a little discussion but that you clearly are not, unless its completely on your terms.
I see no piont in continuing.
Gordon
OK, the straight answer – and I cannot see why you cannot see it from the original comment piece – is that you have wholly misrepresented what MMT says, and your follow up questions mischaracterise it even more than you did in the first instance.
I feel like the one being trolled.
But shall we get over that? Will you now engage on the basis of what MMT is, and not on the basis of a straw man version of it?
Given your position and that of your group I think you have a duty to do that having published an article that is so grossly inaccurate.
Richard
I answered your question on The National comments section. Richard can appear a bit sharp sometimes, but that is also a common failing of e-mail and the like as there is no ‘tone’. However your ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ demand is a ‘Have you stopped beating your wife’ question. Strictly speaking the answer has to be yes (i.e if you have your own currency there is (in extremis) no limit to how much of it you can spend (print is not a good word as it isn’t printed), but that would be foolish in the extreme. MMT also says that you are constrained by the real resources available. So if you spend too much you will exceed the productive capacity of the economy and get inflation. Spend too little and you will get unemployed resources and deflation. MMT is simply a theory (and so far as I can see as an economist by training a much better theory than any of the other ones) of how money works. It is not a political programme. You could pursue any agenda from left to right and still base your understanding of the macro economy on MMT. That is unlike Chicago School Monetarism which wasn’t just a theory but a small state ‘free’ market ideology.
All the available observation suggests MMT is actually how money works. For example the Bank of Japan will at the current rate own the entire 300% of GDP Japanese ‘National Debt’ and yet they still suffer from deflation. The sky has not fallen in because of all this ‘printing’ and indeed it is an inefficient policy if the aim is to grow the economy. Germany has an idiotic policy of paying off the National Debt which is at the heart of the Eurozone problem – they are exporting the deflation onto everyone else like it was going out of fashion. Neo-classical economic theory had no more explanation for the 1930s nor any better way of getting out of it than neo-liberalism did in 2008 or since
Before this “engagement” descends into needless needling, it would be much better if you first engaged with a clear, athoritative statement of MMT before you asked your questions. I recommend Randall Wray, ‘Modern Money Theory’, and I think you may find Ch.3 invaluable for a trenchant explanation of the domestic monetary system (start with the opening paragraph of 3.1, p.71). The conclusions in Ch.3.8 (pp.101-2) I think you will find short, crisp and useful.
MMT is essentially a description of monetary reality – of how the system actually functions; nothing more. The critical feature is that it is much better for the formation of “policy” if the policy makers actually understand how the system works. And before you propose that obviously they must understand; the 2007-8 crash finally exploded that canard. Clearly they don’t.
What this thread illustrates is the need for much broader understanding of MMT (and conventional economics too) across UK-wide society. As an instance, how often has Nigel Lawson been called on by the media as an “expert” in economic matters during the ongoing Brexit debacle FFS? Alas, this blogsite isn’t typical of the prevalent economic thinking among most media, politicians and the public, so there is clearly a massive need to clarify MMT and its political applications in the wider world.
It’s of huge credit to Richard that he puts so much time, energy and thought into this site to propagate interest and discussion. It’s also of massive, possibly existential, importance to Scotland, if it is to become independent, to get its economy and currency on a sensible basis from the outset. If that were to happen, it would surely also have a beneficial knock-on effect to the economic thinking of rUK (although I can’t see the Tories being interested).
So how can wider understanding of MMT’s principles and potential benefits be effected, particularly if it’s not being widely taught? Would a series of succinct articles aimed at the Opinion Columns of the press with links to online resources for greater detail be useful? I can’t imagine the Sun carrying them, but if enough of the others do it might generate wider curiosity. Likewise, radio & TV programmes with an economics slant could be targeted (surely the Beeb’s requirements for “balance” would make an MMT spokesperson a necessity?).
Sorry, if this appears off-topic, but lack of broad-based knowledge and understanding seems to typify so much economic debate nowadays and I don’t see how meaningful progress can be made until it’s addressed.
Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp says:
“Answer me this — Am I misrepresenting MMT by saying that its a theory that claims that the British Government has got it wrong on budgeting and spending rules because “When it comes to the British Government money is no object”.
Where did £435 billion bank bail out come from, Gordon?
It sure as hell wasn’t down the back of the sofa in No 11 Downing Street !
Yes of course there are constraints…….. but let’s consider what the real ones are that will shape policy.
The article was a travesty of a description of MMT!!
It seems that those criticising MMT never get past the first part — that a sovereign currency issuing government is not financially constrained — to the second part — that the constraint is the level and quality of the real resources available to it —and that it is by fully utilising these resources that the welfare of all is improved.
Sorry about my duplicate posting. I was on a shoogly LNER train to Perth
The way to research green QE projects would be to get some under reviewed action. This said, and I wish it was happening, I have seen EU structural and regional projects up close and audit and evaluation were a disaster. A disaster pretty much built-in at the start. The money generally came very late, with expectations the work had been done to original schedules. Criteria were impossible, like jobs created, jobs safeguarded and education delivered to people with the right EU objective post codes. There were various fictitious multipliers and farcical risk and project management. On occasion, quite wonderful people overcame.
In doing this kind of work and such as community enterprise projects I got interested in such as net exchequer costing. Amounts spent were much lower if one deducted the cost of doing nothing. Somewhere in all this, one elides the crude shoe-box accounting of value chains with money being made faster than costs accrued. The ideology of crude return on capital in money terms remains a big problem. Green projects would need no interventions if we had investment right and a better understanding of what a going concern is beyond the brown economy. They would simply make money from a market faster than cost spend. This is, of course, trite nonsense in a world of coffee shops evading tax. Getting the question marks in deep enough for accounting that sustains the sustainable is tough. My guess is that money is much more ideological than we assume and accounting in money much further removed (and corrupt) from resource realities than we know. Currently, we can imagine a point say three years into MMT green projects at which further government flick of a switch money is required. What accounting might justify this that we can put in place now? I believe we could get an explanatory system in place.
I very strongly recognise that description of EU funded academic projects
But I am not wholly sure it is the EU’s fault
Interesting; but I confess the way you appear to have ‘dashed this off’ makes it difficult to read and follow. Nevertheless, it turned my mind to ‘cost-benefit-analysis’, which I understand has been used widely to justify the massive skewing of national infrastructure spend into London projects. I have only read journalism about the analysis used (not a source for rigour), but have been appalled by the assumptions and methodology that it is claimed are used.
This also brings to mind the failure in the corporate world through my life (although I may now be out-of-date) to carry out post-investment audit appraisal of projects. Investment appraisal, as a matter of fact, was only ex-ante. Nobody ever wanted to crawl over the evidence, often it seemed to me because reputations might not long survive; what was lost was the potential to add wisdom to the executive armoury. Business is like the Bourbons; it learns nothing and forgets nothing.
Gordon
I’m sorry, but as someone who has a widely distributed outlet for your opinions and are therefore in a position to affect people’s knowledge and therefore their interaction with their democracy that will impact on their present and future quality of life, you Sir have a MORAL duty to your readers and Scotland to get your facts right before you make any pronouncements about MMT in relation to Scottish independence. The National is not the Daily Mail is it?
Scotland needs to get this right, other wise if you do become independent and this is not sorted the long term viability of your country will not be sound and a worse case scenario is that there will have to be a fire-sale of assets and budget cuts and where would you be after that?
So, please come back here and engage with the debate and dig deeper. As an Englishman I do not want to say Scotland fail because if it did so under false pretences badged as MMT, that failure would be used as an ‘argument’ against using MMT in England and Wales as well as the Euro zone (perhaps world wide). Also I have spent a lot of time in Scotland over the years and could just imagine the awful impact if the worst case scenario came to be.
BTW – I am not pro-independence for Scotland because I find it hard to accept out of an old fashioned feeling about ‘the Union’ but I fully understand and appreciate why Scotland would want to be so.
Come back Gordon and sort it for your readers and for Scotland. I tell you again, the basis of your independence has to be set up the right way. It’s critical.
I have written to Gordon to ask him to re-engage
The issue is not going away
What I can’t understand about printing money, up to the limit imposed by Resources and Employment, being “A Good Thing”, is that if the employment increase produced is abroad, in China for example, it does almost nothing for the home country! Since UK imports almost everything physical, it is difficult to see where the benefit lies.
So the policy has to be loinked with an industrial strategy
WHich is exactly what the GND is
No one is suggesting using it randomly
No, it is obvious and very easy to see where the benefit lies. People in the UK are then living well largely off the labor and resources of the Chinese, not their own resources, including labor. UK labor can then be used for public goods produced by a guaranteed job, for more spending on the NHS, housing etc – things which cannot be outsourced to China. This will give the members of the Ukogbani tribe an even more lavish lifestyle.
There is never any sane, speakable reason to prevent people from gainful employment against their will, but is done all the time. Employment/unemployment is a decision (ultimately of the state), an independent, controllable, explanatory variable not a dependent, response, explained variable. It is amazing how deeply and consistently mainstream thought inverts this and other causal relationships, contradicting everybody’s experience in daily life.
Hmmmmmm….
I will take some persuading