My Green New Deal colleague Colin Hines had this letter in the Guardian overnight:
Your editorial (23 November) highlights how Rishi Sunak is softening the country up for more, long-term austerity, and Polly Toynbee (By freezing pay and benefits, Sunak will be levelling down, not up, 24 November) eloquently points out its inevitable adverse effects on individuals, society and our economic wellbeing. This should surely remind us of the failure of the left to counter George Osborne's austerity narrative, as hopes of the financiers getting their just deserts and capitalism made more socially responsible were quickly dashed. Just as we can hope that Covid will be less of a threat by spring, so now we need to prepare to counter Sunak's bid to mimic Osborne.
Finding the money to reset our damaged economy into something fairer and greener should need no cuts. Few realise that this year the government has already turned to the Bank of England to inject — via quantitative easing £350bn — of electronic money into the economy to cover Covid costs this year. What politicians and activists of all political persuasions need to grasp is that this mechanism requires no extra demands on taxpayers or increased government borrowing, and in the past decade of its use, it has not resulted in rising inflation.
Seeing off austerity will require the realisation that QE must be used to help finance longer-term measures to deal with regional inequality, the need for secure jobs in every constituency, the repair of our threadbare social infrastructure and the climate crisis.
Colin Hines
Convenor, UK Green New Deal Group
I know it's not pure MMT, but it works, and that's why we're promoting it.
If you read the letters page of the Guardian you will have noted of late that it has all been doom and gloom. There has been no mention of solutions to problems, but just reiteration of the problems themselves. That's never been my way, of Colin's way, and we work together, a lot. The focus for us is on solutions. We need them, very badly. I am not expecting to hear many today.
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[…] then the state sector has to deliver, either by demanding the services required (all those needed to deliver a Green New Deal, for example) or by employing people directly in care, education, and so […]
Well that’s the paucity of the contemporary Left for you isn’t it?
Shed a few tears, state the bleedin’ obvious and hope that you get elected so that you can just do a slightly less nasty version of Mrs Thatcher: which is just a slower and more imperceptible version because you actually see the world the same way as your supposedly avowed ideological enemy.
And when the classic Lefty’s get bored, there’s plenty to fight about amongst themselves to keep them occupied!
I fear you are right
And those with real solutions are sidelined
It took many attempts to get that letter in thew Guardian
I’m interested to know how those with real solutions could be “unsidelined”? Is it just getting sensible letters like this one into the Guardian?
Yes….
And from others too, of course
I wonder if you get preferential treatment if you sign up?
No
I can assure you of that
Despite the good work of yourself and Colin Hines in explaining MMT and the government’s (mis)use of QE, there is no let up in the use of the phrase “wasting tax-payers’ money” . It’s in almost every newspaper, including the Guardian who should no better, on the BBC and even in the House of Commons being parroted by Opposition ministers. There is still this childish mantra that assumes all government spending derives either from payers of tax or from borrowing which is in itself a very bad thing to have to do. Please can someone get them to stop.
I wish I could