I noted that the Guardian has quoted Richard Burgon MP, the former shadow justice secretary, who is now secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, as saying:
The question facing all politicians now is: who is going to pay for this crisis? And if we don't have an answer for that, then we are in a position where Labour doesn't have an answer to one of the biggest questions facing us.
No, Richard: it is not the biggest problem facing us. The biggest problem facing us is your incomprehension of the fact that this bill has been paid, in full, already. You are the constraint on Labour winning, in other words.
I have already tackled this once today in this video, and I will be doing so again tomorrow morning when I release the text of what I will be saying to Keele World Affairs tonight:
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Indeed. There are none so blind as those who will not see. One should, perhaps, cut some slack for the know-nothing, learn-nothing anti-capitalist, anti-western left along the lines of “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do” – even if they do generate acres of propaganda for the Tory press. But for those more mainstream MPs in whatever is left of the social democratic, mixed economy tradition, it is unforgiveable.
Can they not see that, when governments spend more than tax and plug the gap by issuing sovereign bonds, they create private wealth? There is no indication that savers and investors are unwilling to hold part of their wealth in this form. Indeed, they appear willing to hold more of their wealth in this form at what are historically low yields.
Obviously, there is a risk that, due to changes in relative yields or in perceptions of risk, their willingness to do so may decline or that they will demand much higher yields, but, currently and for the foreseeable future, there appears to be no reason why governments shouldn’t go with this flow and increase productive investment and spending. As Keynes put it, look after unemployment and the budget will look after itself.
Unfortunately all of this indicates the intellectual bankruptcy of Labour.
I hold my head in despair, at times. Still, I found it really difficult to undo the decades of ‘house hold budget’ into which I had bought (my interest in economics began by reading Victor Keegan in The Guardian as an undergraduate in the early 80’s – I was determined to understand what they were on about in the really boring pages at the back of the paper – and from then the focus was always on ‘how it might be paid for’ – Keegan at that time was warning that Thatcher would blow the North Sea oil bonanza… e.g. firmly within taht paradigm) and learning MMT took a while, and I think it was a lecature on youtube with you, Bill Mitchel and Anne Petifor that lead me on to the understanding of how everyone had been captured by the neo-liberal framework, and undoing that is taking dogged, determined and persistent effort (so thatnk you again Richard, really appreciate what you do).
Thank
“Keegan at that time was warning that Thatcher would blow the North Sea oil bonanza”
Um, Thatcher did blow the North Sea Oil bonanza.
You think all the QE is consequence free? That’s not what long dated US Treasuries are saying.
I made no such claim
Of course QE has consequences. I did a whole lecture tonight saying so
But what I do know is that the inflation fears are wholly misplaced
Trolling is not welcome here
How can the people whom we look to to manage our country be so dense, so stupid, so ill-informed about such matters when it is literally hiding in plain sight?
My view? ‘Political advisors’ – yeah – that’s who.
Damn them all I say.
Tell me – what sort of politicians need to be told what to say?
Can we at least have politicians who write their own speeches, actually believe in what they say as well as actually read!!??
What a circus.
Must be deeply irritating to keep having to repeat yourself.
May I suggest you post another video which is this one curtailed at 2:09. The rest is all good stuff but a short, snappy 2 min version might have some use.
How odd….
maybe I was not clear…. but I think there might be value as a “stand alone” video of the first 2;09 mins of the video where you just say – it’s is already paid for – the money has been spent and we don’t owe anyone. Short, simple and powerful.
Just a thought.
The irritation must be having to keep pounding the message home to Richard Burgon et al.
Ah….I will ask for it…..
Richard
Don’t you ever get tired of hitting your head against a brick wall?
I don’t claim to be all that smart, but even I have grasped the existence of the ‘magic money tree’. AKA the BoE.
Great talk at Keele tonight, Richard. Think you broke the chat! Thought you made the case for tax reform very compellingly.
Thank you
Here’s yet another example the Guardian publishing an article by a Tory with the following sub-heading in which the nature of the damage isn’t even defined! Prior to the Covid pandemic it almost feels as though the country was swept by an invisible Stupid pandemic!
“Voters are showing a new willingness to sacrifice more of their earnings to repair the damage done by the pandemic”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/25/tax-rises-party-uk-rewards-voters-pandemic#comments
This was also on Channel 4 New last night.
To me it was like Turkeys voting to bring Christmas forward, never mind Christmas itself.
But it also tells us how much work there is still to do because obviously the public believe the debt narrative.
As Timothy Snyder alludes – this is indeed the politics of ‘inevitability’.
Frightening.
Agreed
While there are many disagreements and disappointing views from Labour on key monetary issues I don’t think picking a quote from the Guardian by an MP who wasn’t even sure he’d get a line or two in the piece as a statement of deeply held views is useful. I suspect most readers interpreted it as an attack on large corporations and Tory cronyism who made lots out of Covid.
As the other article in the Guardian to which Helen Schofield refers despite it’s slightly improved notions of debt, the voters are still locked into the ‘state as a household’.
Many voters don’t think period. They simply regurgitate in their head and to others what they hear and read in a predominantly right-wing media. Even if they get as far as accepting their sovereign government can create money from nowhere like private sector banks they are so biased against government they think the economy doesn’t generate economic activity from government created money but private sector bank money does (As if a business discriminates between the increased demand generated by two currencies!). This is like living in the Dark Ages when an extensive schooling system to help people to think didn’t exist! Indeed there’s now massive resentment against the very idea of fact gathering and checking and then engaging in critical thinking. Much of the UK has now largely deteriorated into raw tribalism.
Surely the point is that labour should have a position on who should pay, even if that position is that nobody has to pay. At the moment we don’t know who, if anyone, would bear the largest burden if labour were in power. If the position is that nobody pays then they should adopt and explain that position.
I believe this message would be really enhanced by the use of a good graph like this one from the FT, although you could come up with your own version:
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net%2Fprod%2F82e5aa50-4ea2-11eb-9157-375164004c69-standard.png?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700
Taken from this article
https://www.ft.com/content/f92b6c67-15ef-460f-8655-e458f2fe2487
It adds so much to the words. Even a non expert can look at that graph and see that there is something not quite right about the Bank’s claim that its QE programme is nothing to do with the government’s deficit spending.
I’m sure there are other videos where a graph or graphic could help enhance the message. I remember Stephen Hawking being told by his publishers that every equation would halve the sales of A Brief History of Time but he insisted on keeping one (E=mc²) so I don’t know if you are keen to avoid such things to make the videos more accessible or if it’s to do with the health issues you spoke about for your video editor and you haven’t worked out the best way to do this yourself yet.
As for Richard Burgon, I previously didn’t have a high opinion of him but last year he was one the MPs pushing hardest for a zero Covid strategy so I now have a high opinion of him for that alone and so am more prepared to forgive him on things like this. Of course no one paid any attention to him because he’s not a prominent MP but I think that message is so important that I am grateful to him for making an effort.