{"id":52750,"date":"2020-09-10T07:26:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T06:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=52750"},"modified":"2020-09-10T07:27:24","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T06:27:24","slug":"boris-johnson-did-not-look-in-the-piggy-bank-to-see-if-he-had-100-billion-for-a-moonshot-because-the-one-thing-he-knew-was-that-the-money-could-be-made-to-deliver-the-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/09\/10\/boris-johnson-did-not-look-in-the-piggy-bank-to-see-if-he-had-100-billion-for-a-moonshot-because-the-one-thing-he-knew-was-that-the-money-could-be-made-to-deliver-the-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson did not look in the Piggy Bank to see if he had \u00c2\u00a3100 billion for a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmoonshot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 because the one thing he knew was that the money could be created to deliver the deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government announced its new \u2018rule of 6\u2019 yesterday. It is illogical.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time it announced it\u2019s \u00a3100 billion \u2018moonshot\u2019 plan to deliver mass coronavirus testing in the absence of a vaccine. It is utterly implausible.<\/p>\n<p>Or rather, it is implausible barring one thing. Boris Johnson did not look in the Piggy Bank to see if he had \u00a3100 billion for this deal because the one thing he knew was that the money could be created to deliver the deal. As I noted in a tweet this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I\u2019ll just make the quiet observation that no one is asking where the \u00a3100 billion for Johnson\u2019s \u2018moonshot\u2019 testing programme is coming from. That\u2019s because without fuss or rancour modern monetary theory is at work. Indeed, it\u2019s the only part of the plan that will deliver.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RichardJMurphy\/status\/1303937130792706049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 10, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Let me add a note if caution though. MMT does, of course, \u00a0say that the funding for this programme is available.<\/p>\n<p>MMT also says that the spend will not be inflationary \u00a0because we are facing mass unemployment.<\/p>\n<p>But MMT does not say that the project will work.<\/p>\n<p>Nor does it say that this might not just be a giant scandal to divert money to the government\u2019s friends, yet again.<\/p>\n<p>The risk of corruption in this plan is enormous. MMT is good, but it cannot prevent abuse. And I have to say that I smell something pretty rotten in this plan. I can\u2019t prove it. But \u00a3100 billion of spending plans on something totally unproven has the risk of potential corruption written all over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government announced its new \u2018rule of 6\u2019 yesterday. It is illogical. At the same time it announced it\u2019s \u00a3100 billion \u2018moonshot\u2019 plan to deliver<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2020\/09\/10\/boris-johnson-did-not-look-in-the-piggy-bank-to-see-if-he-had-100-billion-for-a-moonshot-because-the-one-thing-he-knew-was-that-the-money-could-be-made-to-deliver-the-deal\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,14,35,174,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-corruption","category-economics","category-modern-monetary-theory","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}