A very reasonable observation. One of the standards of MMT is that its principles are based upon what actually happens in the way of outcomes. It might be a very radical concept to have people actually hold economists responsible for the results of their recommendations, as contrasted with a gaggle of econo wonks babbling about tweaking and adjustments, and then nothing happens or something significant fails to happen. Placing labor as important participant in the economic commons, rather than labor being treated as solely a commodity, would be a vast improvement in itself. Part of the functional finance side of the process basically would eliminate welfare as it has been used as a threat to labor through a guaranteed minimum wage jobs program which is engaged in a counter cyclical fashion. Treating various social support services as infrastructure, such as medical coverage and higher education would establish new domains of employment to boost coverage of the existing systems. This would be beyond physical infrastructure projects which would also be at a skilled level, could end up providing mass transit systems where none exist now. Setting standards in this way would at least elevate expectations. And... the truth is that every possible fiscal and economic policy would have the capacity of being subverted or turned to anti-democratic ends. Still if the citizenry is ignorant and passive lots of nefarious stuff can and would happen. No process can deliver a benign outcome without alert and engaged voters. So the choice seems to be keep the current system and expect change to magically happen, or work to elevate the economic literacy of the population and remove the parasites. The deficit terrorism which has had a recent resurgence in the wake of the big whoops, is guaranteed to make things much, much worse and it cannot be be perpetuated indefinitely. or people will simply explode into a long bloody rage, often minus any viable alternatives other than crime. Does your cynicism extend to nihilism? What about a body of theory and policy which has had a much higher degree of success that has been provided otherwise Faith based economics and willing ignorance hasn't served us very well. And ye ole trickle down bait and switch scheming and scamming hasn't produced much other than chaos. Yes, the usual courtier crooks, frauds, and thieves will still be there. Is it even imaginable that the appropriate regulatory processes can be re-established? MMT is based upon what is essentially a authentic scientific discourse which would a major shift all by iteslf. What would a commons centered economics look like for the unwilling and the hardened skeptics? I'm listening, if you have something better in mind. My guess is that it is possible to develop a context in which the state is not inherently hostile. Tadit On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:04:45 -0400, Sandwichman <[email protected]> wrote:

I don't know about "cult" but everything I've read by MMT advocates assumes either that governments serve the public interest or that, if they don't they *should* serve the public interest. Yeah? Well, I agree they "should" but what is going to make them? That's what I find distressing. A political disconnect. Marx at least posited a revolutionary subject, the proletariat. The big question for me is not would MMT work but who is going to implement it?

I continue to operate on the premise that the State is inherently hostile or at best is passive and will only reluctantly pursue a progressive program, however it may be couched technically, if compelled to by a mobilized civil society.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:05 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

...

From Stephanie Kelton at the UMKC economics department

Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:15:13 -0400

Have these folks look at our Twitter following. Journalists, progressive groups, reporters (Reuters and such, not crackpots), MPs (two of them, actually, one a Labor MP from Wales and one from Netherlands (socialist party). Randy and I are now recognized as "contributors" at Truthdig. Anything we write for them (as our New New Deal piece of 2 weeks ago) will be picked up by scores of other progressive sites (Counterpunch ran our latest after it appeared in Truthdig), as well as less progressive places like Global Economic Intersection (which also ran it). Roughly half of MMT blogs are run by traders -- not economists (Pragmatic Capitalism, Center of the Universe, Naked Capitalism, CreditWritedowns (and Ed Harris was an Austrian before he discovered, and then wrestled with, MMT). We are becoming the mainstream in economics, and history will not be kind to the holdouts. We have been right about every major economic event (both forecasting it and then explaining why the policy response would fail to bring about the desired results). Krugman didn't say that QE wouldn't work. We did. Dean Baker is moving toward OUR position. His latest piece on SocSec is a clear indication. In it, he says that there is no reason that SocSec can't be funded out of general revenue FOREVER. That IS MMT. Affordability is not the issue. Why do you think he said that? We know Dean. We like him as a person. But he is NOT a macro economist, and he does not understand the monetary system/government finance. Same goes for Krugman. Not a macro person. Ellen Brown has gotten much better. Why? Because behind the scenes, she is sending e-mails like crazy, seeking input from Randy, Marshall and other MMTers!!! It's nuts. They love these guys, and they are getting their material from us.

snip

Stephanie

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Interesting debate, for me to the heart of the matter nevertheless, given strong social movements and a better balance of power, there have been periods of history with much better social policies, and in this context, a reconstructed social movement could take up the recommendations of MMT ... Irrespective of the relative hostility of the institution in charge of collective services, it will always need policies? whether we have power now or not, one day, we may, and thus, we are obliged to think of the policies that would be implemented were that the case, Michel On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Sandwichman <[email protected]> wrote:

I woruld define "a context in which the state is not inherently hostile" as one in which the state faces a popular uprising that it cannot placate or dissipate by manoeuvrings. This requires the fostering and maturation of independent parallel structures -- non-state, non-market institutions with broad popular participation.

Traditionally, trade unions, churches, civic organizations and political parties have played these roles. But those associations have relied principally on a moralistic rhetoric while states and corporations have employed the quantitative rhetoric of accounting. It hardly matters that the books have been cooked. The bottom line is that corporations and the state have ruled from the bottom line. Nothing short of a counter-accounting can challenge that hegemony. That means transforming trade unions, transforming civic associations (such as environmental organizations and consumer co-ops) rather than a top-down technocratic transformation of the government.

Obviously the task of such transformation appears, on its face, daunting -- an extraordinarily long and arduous march through the institutions. That's what makes the technocratic fix so enticing -- it looks easier to accomplish. But it's not. It's only easier to imagine. Imaginary MMT is indeed easier than real ground-up commons institution building. But it's only imaginary. Actually implementing MMT would be no easier than establishing "socialism" or a "perfectly competitive free market" for that matter.

The nice part is that developing a counter-accounting mentality and vocabulary is worth doing anyway. It can help achieve transitional objectives in everyday life -- like negotiating collective agreements or structuring community resource sharing enterprises.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 7:00 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

...

A very reasonable observation. One of the standards of MMT is that its principles are based upon what actually happens in the way of outcomes. It might be a very radical concept to have people actually hold economists responsible for the results of their recommendations, as contrasted with a gaggle of econo wonks babbling about tweaking and adjustments, and then nothing happens or something significant fails to happen. Placing labor as important participant in the economic commons, rather than labor being treated as solely a commodity, would be a vast improvement in itself.

Part of the functional finance side of the process basically would eliminate welfare as it has been used as a threat to labor through a guaranteed minimum wage jobs program which is engaged in a counter cyclical fashion. Treating various social support services as infrastructure, such as medical coverage and higher education would establish new domains of employment to boost coverage of the existing systems. This would be beyond physical infrastructure projects which would also be at a skilled level, could end up providing mass transit systems where none exist now. Setting standards in this way would at least elevate expectations.

And... the truth is that every possible fiscal and economic policy would have the capacity of being subverted or turned to anti-democratic ends. Still if the citizenry is ignorant and passive lots of nefarious stuff can and would happen. No process can deliver a benign outcome without alert and engaged voters. So the choice seems to be keep the current system and expect change to magically happen, or work to elevate the economic literacy of the population and remove the parasites. The deficit terrorism which has had a recent resurgence in the wake of the big whoops, is guaranteed to make things much, much worse and it cannot be be perpetuated indefinitely. or people will simply explode into a long bloody rage, often minus any viable alternatives other than crime. Does your cynicism extend to nihilism? What about a body of theory and policy which has had a much higher degree of success that has been provided otherwise

Faith based economics and willing ignorance hasn't served us very well. And ye ole trickle down bait and switch scheming and scamming hasn't produced much other than chaos. Yes, the usual courtier crooks, frauds, and thieves will still be there. Is it even imaginable that the appropriate regulatory processes can be re-established?

MMT is based upon what is essentially a authentic scientific discourse which would a major shift all by iteslf. What would a commons centered economics look like for the unwilling and the hardened skeptics?

I'm listening, if you have something better in mind. My guess is that it is possible to develop a context in which the state is not inherently hostile.

Tadit

On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:04:45 -0400, Sandwichman <[email protected]> wrote:

...

I don't know about "cult" but everything I've read by MMT advocates assumes either that governments serve the public interest or that, if they don't they *should* serve the public interest. Yeah? Well, I agree they "should" but what is going to make them? That's what I find distressing. A political disconnect. Marx at least posited a revolutionary subject, the proletariat. The big question for me is not would MMT work but who is going to implement it?

I continue to operate on the premise that the State is inherently hostile or at best is passive and will only reluctantly pursue a progressive program, however it may be couched technically, if compelled to by a mobilized civil society.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:05 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

...

From Stephanie Kelton at the UMKC economics department

Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:15:13 -0400

Have these folks look at our Twitter following. Journalists, progressive groups, reporters (Reuters and such, not crackpots), MPs (two of them, actually, one a Labor MP from Wales and one from Netherlands (socialist party). Randy and I are now recognized as "contributors" at Truthdig. Anything we write for them (as our New New Deal piece of 2 weeks ago) will be picked up by scores of other progressive sites (Counterpunch ran our latest after it appeared in Truthdig), as well as less progressive places like Global Economic Intersection (which also ran it). Roughly half of MMT blogs are run by traders -- not economists (Pragmatic Capitalism, Center of the Universe, Naked Capitalism, CreditWritedowns (and Ed Harris was an Austrian before he discovered, and then wrestled with, MMT). We are becoming the mainstream in economics, and history will not be kind to the holdouts. We have been right about every major economic event (both forecasting it and then explaining why the policy response would fail to bring about the desired results). Krugman didn't say that QE wouldn't work. We did. Dean Baker is moving toward OUR position. His latest piece on SocSec is a clear indication. In it, he says that there is no reason that SocSec can't be funded out of general revenue FOREVER. That IS MMT. Affordability is not the issue. Why do you think he said that? We know Dean. We like him as a person. But he is NOT a macro economist, and he does not understand the monetary system/government finance. Same goes for Krugman. Not a macro person. Ellen Brown has gotten much better. Why? Because behind the scenes, she is sending e-mails like crazy, seeking input from Randy, Marshall and other MMTers!!! It's nuts. They love these guys, and they are getting their material from us.

snip

Stephanie

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Michel, Your blog posting of Matt Cropp's ideas about the fall in transaction costs states in bold: "THIS IS A MOST IMPORTANT ARGUMENT AND CRUCIAL ASPECT OF THE ‘P2P Revolution’!!" Why do you think it's so important? Currency systems are about tracking ownership and subjective value perception rather than providing open access and accurately tracking production inputs and outputs. It seems to me it has almost nothing to do with open source, the commons, or peer production. Why would anyone want to "micro-own" parts of something when they could get access to the whole for free? Matt closes by saying that technology "could be paving the way towards the age of the co-operative". This is history already - there is no "could be" about it. -Karl

On Saturday, October 22, 2011 09:30:46 pm Patrick Anderson wrote:

Karl Robillard wrote:

...

Why would anyone want to "micro-own" parts of something when they could get access to the whole for free?

All production has costs.

If we could make things available without any work and without any side-effects, then we would have solved this problem long ago, but as it is, we need to find a way to cover those costs so we are not begging the current owners to "do the right thing".

Ownership, tempered by a legally-binding social contract, can be used by us to organize production for our own, mutual benefit.

Sincerely, Patrick Anderson http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com

Patrick, What I mean by free access is access to the means of production, not taking the outputs without regard to inputs. That is, allowing people to adjust and optimize how the inputs are used and power to determine what the outputs are. I want to see systems which allow people to *do* work (on more personal terms and without having to reproduce existing infrastructure because it is "owned"), not avoid it. Matt thinks that lowering the financial barriers to co-op entry is a good thing. My question is: Why does there need to be any financial barrier at all? How do you get lower than zero? Work is what peer production is all about. The barrier to entry for any P2P co-operative should simply be the willingness and ability to help with the project, not having to buy-in to gain an ownership stake. -Karl

People may be interested in the "conventional economic theory" about transaction costs. I've done a bit of work on this in response to reviewer comments on a paper I wrote. The reviewer suggested that I should contextualize my analysis (of working time and productivity) as to how it related to mainstream theory. This struck me as somewhat odd because I am dealing with what I have already identified as a gaping hole in conventional theory. Be that as it may, I traced the broken threads of mainstream theory back to where they were cut and I think the result is a blistering, albeit calmly presented, indictment of the mainstream. http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/p/problem-with-problem-of-social-cos... Essentially, mainstream economic models are constructed on the premise that things like transaction costs, overhead costs, external economies and social costs are "incidentals" that can be assumed away as a simplification and then added back into the equation at a later stage in the analysis. On the contrary, these things are central to the economic processes of production and exchange in a market economy. Furthermore, this centrality was well known to pioneers of neoclassical economic analysis and was a keystone of their methodology. On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:

what I find interesting about it is that it gives an objective grounding to the trend towards distributed ownership.

While I'm not opposed to collective pr*operty and obviously not to the commons, I think that distributed individual property of productive forces will be an important part of a future social order, as it extends the contributory logic of p2p to the physical world.*

That an individual can freely constitute collective capital by aggregating and disaggregating his own 'citizen share' of the productive forces has everything to do with peer production and the commons, since it opens the possibility of fr*eely creating 'common stock' comm**ons.

I h*ave no knowledge of current possibilities of having access to productive forces for free ? * Michel *

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Karl Robillard <[email protected]>wrote:

...

Michel,

Your blog posting of Matt Cropp's ideas about the fall in transaction costs states in bold:

"THIS IS A MOST IMPORTANT ARGUMENT AND CRUCIAL ASPECT OF THE ‘P2P Revolution’!!"

Why do you think it's so important? Currency systems are about tracking ownership and subjective value perception rather than providing open access and accurately tracking production inputs and outputs. It seems to me it has almost nothing to do with open source, the commons, or peer production.

Why would anyone want to "micro-own" parts of something when they could get access to the whole for free? Matt closes by saying that technology "could be paving the way towards the age of the co-operative". This is history already - there is no "could be" about it.

-Karl

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hi apostolis (and: thanks sandwichman!), I believe that we should go in the direction of un-alienable citizen shares ... in this way, there would be small differences in reward, but the access to productive capital would remain equally distributed, Michel On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 9:47 PM, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis < [email protected]> wrote:

Even if we had distributed ownership, I think that it will go back into an unequal distribution. That is a much better question, the tendency question.

If we allow only consumers to own the means of production, then it seems to me that inequality will be created in the form of loans to create those means of production.

The only freedom that I give each participant is that of trading their own work with the work of others.

At first, each persons wealth will gain goods based on his skills and how much his product is needed. Due to small differences in skill or demand, a small amount of excess wealth will be in the hands of few.

Imagine now that consumers want a specific product and that a specific means of production would cut the costs significantly. They would prefer to make the loan than pay the costs of the old means of production.

It seems to me that this will create unbounded inequalities, where old 'dead' work will be exchanged with more amounts of future work. The skills of the worker or the demand of his work will not be as important as his previous accumulated work which he has exchanded with future work that others need. That will create a class of people that will not need to work.

We need to find a way to bound those inequalities, but that would ultimately be against the basic liberty of trading your own labor.

If anyone has found a way i would be happy to hear it. (if someone proposes a loan in money without interest, I would be happy if he transformed this amount of money into future work as the same amount of money represent different things in the future)

One idea is to disallow contracts of work or the means of production to be inherited. That would limit the time interval for inequalites to expand to at most 100 years.

(Please excuse the fact that I prefer to think in commodites or contracts of work rather than money)

2011/10/24 Sandwichman <[email protected]>

...

People may be interested in the "conventional economic theory" about transaction costs. I've done a bit of work on this in response to reviewer comments on a paper I wrote. The reviewer suggested that I should contextualize my analysis (of working time and productivity) as to how it related to mainstream theory. This struck me as somewhat odd because I am dealing with what I have already identified as a gaping hole in conventional theory. Be that as it may, I traced the broken threads of mainstream theory back to where they were cut and I think the result is a blistering, albeit calmly presented, indictment of the mainstream.

http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/p/problem-with-problem-of-social-cos...

Essentially, mainstream economic models are constructed on the premise that things like transaction costs, overhead costs, external economies and social costs are "incidentals" that can be assumed away as a simplification and then added back into the equation at a later stage in the analysis. On the contrary, these things are central to the economic processes of production and exchange in a market economy. Furthermore, this centrality was well known to pioneers of neoclassical economic analysis and was a keystone of their methodology.

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]

...

wrote:

...

what I find interesting about it is that it gives an objective grounding to the trend towards distributed ownership.

While I'm not opposed to collective pr*operty and obviously not to the commons, I think that distributed individual property of productive forces will be an important part of a future social order, as it extends the contributory logic of p2p to the physical world.*

That an individual can freely constitute collective capital by aggregating and disaggregating his own 'citizen share' of the productive forces has everything to do with peer production and the commons, since it opens the possibility of fr*eely creating 'common stock' comm**ons.

I h*ave no knowledge of current possibilities of having access to productive forces for free ? * Michel *

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Karl Robillard <[email protected]>wrote:

...

Michel,

Your blog posting of Matt Cropp's ideas about the fall in transaction costs states in bold:

"THIS IS A MOST IMPORTANT ARGUMENT AND CRUCIAL ASPECT OF THE ‘P2P Revolution’!!"

Why do you think it's so important? Currency systems are about tracking ownership and subjective value perception rather than providing open access and accurately tracking production inputs and outputs. It seems to me it has almost nothing to do with open source, the commons, or peer production.

Why would anyone want to "micro-own" parts of something when they could get access to the whole for free? Matt closes by saying that technology "could be paving the way towards the age of the co-operative". This is history already - there is no "could be" about it.

-Karl

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--

Sincerely yours,

Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis

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Yes I am also in favor of unalienable consumer or citizen shares, but in every new creation of means of production due to those very small differences in reward( and for many other personal reasons_spending), it is possible after a long period of time that one group of people would loan their money to the other group. with favorable terms to the lenders . Those loans for the creation of the means of production have the effect of magnifying the inequalities. In all cases, the consumers or citizens together with the workers control the means of production. So to put my ideas in your example, a citizen might not be able to pay a specific amount to retain his percentage in case the cooperative needs to raise capital. He would have to make a loan. I cant really understand how unalienable shares might help. I know that the starndard marxist theory says that profit is gained through the control of the means of prod. Here the consumers and workers control the means fo prod. but the lenders obtain profit. Is there a mistake in my assumptions? 2011/10/25 Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>

Tom, perhaps you could present this essay on our p2p blog?

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 9:15 AM, Sandwichman <[email protected]>wrote:

...

People may be interested in the "conventional economic theory" about transaction costs. I've done a bit of work on this in response to reviewer comments on a paper I wrote. The reviewer suggested that I should contextualize my analysis (of working time and productivity) as to how it related to mainstream theory. This struck me as somewhat odd because I am dealing with what I have already identified as a gaping hole in conventional theory. Be that as it may, I traced the broken threads of mainstream theory back to where they were cut and I think the result is a blistering, albeit calmly presented, indictment of the mainstream.

http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/p/problem-with-problem-of-social-cos...

Essentially, mainstream economic models are constructed on the premise that things like transaction costs, overhead costs, external economies and social costs are "incidentals" that can be assumed away as a simplification and then added back into the equation at a later stage in the analysis. On the contrary, these things are central to the economic processes of production and exchange in a market economy. Furthermore, this centrality was well known to pioneers of neoclassical economic analysis and was a keystone of their methodology.

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]

...

wrote:

...

what I find interesting about it is that it gives an objective grounding to the trend towards distributed ownership.

While I'm not opposed to collective pr*operty and obviously not to the commons, I think that distributed individual property of productive forces will be an important part of a future social order, as it extends the contributory logic of p2p to the physical world.*

That an individual can freely constitute collective capital by aggregating and disaggregating his own 'citizen share' of the productive forces has everything to do with peer production and the commons, since it opens the possibility of fr*eely creating 'common stock' comm**ons.

I h*ave no knowledge of current possibilities of having access to productive forces for free ? * Michel *

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Karl Robillard <[email protected]>wrote:

...

Michel,

Your blog posting of Matt Cropp's ideas about the fall in transaction costs states in bold:

"THIS IS A MOST IMPORTANT ARGUMENT AND CRUCIAL ASPECT OF THE ‘P2P Revolution’!!"

Why do you think it's so important? Currency systems are about tracking ownership and subjective value perception rather than providing open access and accurately tracking production inputs and outputs. It seems to me it has almost nothing to do with open source, the commons, or peer production.

Why would anyone want to "micro-own" parts of something when they could get access to the whole for free? Matt closes by saying that technology "could be paving the way towards the age of the co-operative". This is history already - there is no "could be" about it.

-Karl

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-- Sincerely yours, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis

I was amused to read that MMT is regarded as a cult. One economist claimed that Transfinancial Economics, or TFE was like a cult, and ofcourse some conspiracy theorist on the internet claimed that it was a plot of the super rich to get rid of taxation...and take over the world!     RS.    http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics                 From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: P2P Foundation mailing list <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 27 September 2011, 3:00 Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Regarding MMT being a cult A very reasonable observation. One of the standards of MMT is that its  principles are based upon what actually happens in the way of outcomes. It  might be a very radical concept to have people actually hold economists  responsible for the results of their recommendations, as contrasted with a  gaggle of econo wonks babbling about tweaking and adjustments, and then  nothing happens or something significant fails to happen. Placing labor as  important participant in the economic commons, rather than labor being  treated as solely a commodity, would be a vast improvement in itself. Part of the functional finance side of the process basically would  eliminate welfare as it has been used as a threat to labor through a  guaranteed minimum wage jobs program which is engaged in a counter  cyclical fashion. Treating various social support services as  infrastructure, such as medical coverage and higher education would  establish new domains of employment to boost coverage of the existing  systems. This would be beyond physical infrastructure projects which would  also be at a skilled level, could end up providing mass transit systems  where none exist now. Setting standards in this way would at least elevate  expectations. And... the truth is that every possible fiscal and economic policy would  have the capacity of being subverted or turned to anti-democratic ends.  Still if the citizenry is ignorant and passive lots of nefarious stuff can  and would happen. No process can deliver a benign outcome without alert  and engaged voters. So the choice seems to be keep the current system and  expect change to magically happen, or work to elevate the economic  literacy of the population and remove the parasites. The deficit terrorism  which has had a recent resurgence in the wake of the big whoops, is  guaranteed to make things much, much worse and it cannot be be perpetuated  indefinitely. or people will simply explode into a long bloody rage, often  minus any viable alternatives other than crime. Does your cynicism  extend  to nihilism?  What about a body of theory and policy which has had a much  higher degree of success that has been provided otherwise Faith based economics and willing ignorance hasn't served us very well.  And ye ole trickle down bait and switch scheming and scamming hasn't  produced much other than chaos. Yes, the usual courtier crooks, frauds,  and thieves will still be there. Is it even imaginable that the  appropriate regulatory processes can be re-established? MMT is based upon what is essentially a authentic scientific discourse  which would a major shift all by iteslf. What would a commons centered  economics look like for the unwilling and the hardened skeptics? I'm listening, if you have something better in mind. My guess is that it  is possible to develop a context in which the state is not inherently  hostile. Tadit On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:04:45 -0400, Sandwichman <[email protected]>  wrote:

I don't know about "cult" but everything I've read by MMT advocates  assumes either that governments serve the public interest or that, if they don't they *should* serve the public interest. Yeah? Well, I agree they  "should" but what is going to make them? That's what I find distressing. A  political disconnect. Marx at least posited a revolutionary subject, the  proletariat. The big question for me is not would MMT work but who is going to  implement it?

I continue to operate on the premise that the State is inherently  hostile or at best is passive and will only reluctantly pursue a progressive  program, however it may be couched technically, if compelled to by a mobilized  civil society.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 2:05 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

...

  From Stephanie Kelton at the UMKC economics department

Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:15:13 -0400

Have these folks look at our Twitter following.  Journalists,  progressive groups, reporters (Reuters and such, not crackpots), MPs (two of them, actually, one a Labor MP from Wales and one from Netherlands (socialist party).  Randy and I are now recognized as "contributors" at Truthdig. Anything we write for them (as our New New Deal piece of 2 weeks ago)  will be picked up by scores of other progressive sites (Counterpunch ran our latest after it appeared in Truthdig), as well as less progressive  places like Global Economic Intersection (which also ran it).  Roughly half of MMT blogs are run by traders -- not economists (Pragmatic Capitalism, Center of the Universe, Naked Capitalism, CreditWritedowns (and Ed  Harris was an Austrian before he discovered, and then wrestled with, MMT).  We are becoming the mainstream in economics, and history will not be kind  to the holdouts.  We have been right about every major economic event (both forecasting it and then explaining why the policy response would fail to bring about the desired results).  Krugman didn't say that QE wouldn't work.  We did.  Dean Baker is moving toward OUR position.  His latest piece on SocSec is a clear indication.  In it, he says that there is no reason that SocSec can't be funded out of general revenue FOREVER.  That IS MMT.  Affordability is not the issue.  Why do you think he said that? We know Dean.  We like him as a person.  But he is NOT a macro  economist, and he does not understand the monetary system/government finance.  Same goes for Krugman.  Not a macro person.  Ellen Brown has gotten much better.  Why?  Because behind the scenes, she is sending e-mails like crazy, seeking input from Randy, Marshall and other MMTers!!!  It's  nuts. They love these guys, and they are getting their material from us.

snip

Stephanie

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