As a committed advocate of Modern Monetary Theory and one who thinks it should be renamed, Modern Monetary System, for reasons I will explain, there have been occasions when I have felt a sense of futility, trying to explain something so simple, but finding myself unable to convince even those who should know better.
Firstly, MMT should be referred to as MMS because it is no longer a theory. It is the way our fiat economy was set up to operate and does operate today. Its implementation took place in 1983 and the fact that it has never been used as it was intended, does not mean it is theoretical.
The fact that we still fear deficit spending, strive to balance budgets, lust for surpluses and consider bond issues as debt, is a hangover from a past era, that of the gold standard.
The fact that we fail to fully utilise our available resources, consider 5% unemployment near full employment, shy away from providing the necessary infrastructure for our industries and neglect our national health and education needs, when each of these represents real jobs and growth opportunities, is a travesty of mismanagement and failed leadership.
Last night’s Q&A which highlighted the difficulties experienced by those reliant on the NDIS, gave us a clear indicator that the government is not even spending its own budget allocation on this vital piece of infrastructure. The NBN rollout is just another example of this failed leadership.
And it seems that no matter how clear and concise we are in explaining the economic reality of MMT, successive governments still cling to the gold standard mindset. Why?
Michael Pascoe’s article in ‘The New Daily’ today, sheds some light on the truth of the matter. In discussing the latest on the never-ending tax debate, something the entire country is heartily sick of hearing, he points to what the government is really doing in pursuing this matter.
He writes, “In the short term, it’s a formula in keeping with the Institute of Public Affairs’ prescription for a new Australia – an Australia with less government, richer rich and fewer controls on markets – especially the labour market.”
He goes on to say, “The IPA has emerged as not just the favoured right-wing think tank, but the government’s guiding light. It is too tempting to not again repeat one of John Kenneth Galbraith’s many golden quotes:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.””
We have known from the beginning of the Howard years, and perhaps from some of Paul Keating’s decisions, that it is the rich who run the country. They run it for the rich and they get the best results by supporting conservative leaning parties and their politicians.
Trying to establish a tax system, using confected figures to present fairness and equality, as Scott Morrison has done suggesting average workers are expected to earn six figure sums in a few years’ time, displays a height of arrogance as bold as his government’s self-serving aspirations.
It is a disgrace. But, we know that if you tell a lie, big enough and often enough, people who don’t know any better, will be inclined to believe it. And therein lies the difficulty with people like me who are trying to explain MMT to the average person in the street. How could anything so simple be right. It must be more complicated than that, surely. No, actually it isn’t.
As Michael Pascoe says so eloquently in his article, “In the longer term, flattening our progressive tax system is a tiny part of one of history’s repeating cycles: wealth and power being used to entrench and extend wealth and power until it becomes unsupportable.”
Notwithstanding the difficulties of explaining MMT, there is progress. But it is painfully slow. Much like the NBN. However, one day we will get there, even if it is only a partial implementation. The alternative is the status quo, which, for those who haven’t yet worked it out, is all about keeping the average worker at arm’s length from the rich.
And that really is an unsustainable option.
