USA Holds Back

On the MMT MacroTrader livestream I often enjoy politely shocking a few friends by saying how much I love Americans. This does not extend to their government or organizations, particularly not the parasitic financial sector (the latter can just go away with no damage to the economy, with the exception of banks that are permitted to asses credit risk and run the payments layer). I love their land and their people. They’re beautiful (for the most part${}^\ast$).

Today I want to write some about some nuances to add to those comments I often make.

${}^\ast$I do not hold the obesity epidemic against the average American, it’s their government (lack of action) and food industry (too much profit action) doing that to them.

How is the USA Held Back?

Let’s go highly macro!

What we have with the USA is a mighty resource rich nation that is operating well below its full capacity, while at the same time employing people in millions of wasteful pointless bullsh1t jobs

The USA is thus holding back on Its true potential in two terrible ways.

1. The USA economy could easily be heated up monetarily, without heating up energetically, buy massive government investment in sustainable industry. These would be good private sector jobs, supported by public sector infrastructure.
2. The USA economy could be drastically cooled off by eliminating millions of bullsh1t jobs.

You can see the offsetting operation factors here! Heat-up to tasty. Cool-off the nasty. Sounds pretty good to me.

The cooling off effect is desperately needed when you know a bit of industrial science and engineering, because the hard truth is the world currently runs on oil, and by that I do not mean just fossil fuels. We need oil and chemical derivatives from crude oil. If the industry that can potentially provide for decent standards of living for all people across the globe, no exceptions, is to be realised, then the spice must flow. Sorry, the oil must flow". (Maybe not so much the coal.)

(Highly macro) the way to keep the spice flowing is to eliminate all the bullsh1t jobs (and art of subjective judgement as much as a science) and especially all energy intensive work that does not need to be done. That frees up energy use “space” for producing the goods everyone wants (or needs, more importantly) o enjoy for a green transition to even be possible.

I think by now it is well established that a green transition will have to use more oil derivatives and energy than currently, to get over a fossil fuel energy hill to green valley you need a lot of fossil fuel. If this is not well-established don’t sue me! I won’t debate you, you might be right. I still think it is fairly well established. Or are we really seriously going to go all neo-luddite or pastoral and all head to the permaculture farms and agribio-hacking? I don’t think so.

We know the main political impediments to the suite of policy changes this broad dual change would need to surmount. SO there is a lot of activist work to be done.

However, the low hanging fruit is getting more people educated about MMT. Because the problems with these two high level operational changes is not at all about “finding the money”.

International Holding Back

Because the USA is a global reach superpower home to several multinational corporations, what the USA leads the world, like it or not.

If the USA is holding back, think how much more they are holding back other nations. Smaller and resource poorer nations in particular rely on imports from the big producing nations, and if the big producers are running million- people level bullsh1t jobs… you can see the terrible waste of potential on the global scale.

Recent Climate Actions Talks

The most ridiculous thing I hear from well-meaning philanthropic organizations is this idea governments need private sector support.

This is true. The private sector needs to get on board with the UN SDGs.

But the undertone of the rhetoric is always about needing to tax the corporations or “release capital” — by which the speakers usually implicitly mean currency. This is so wrong it drives me to despair sometimes.

The reason to tax corporations is to shut them down, to stop them polluting. There is no need on Earth to tax healthy productive corporations. Governments do not need their savings. The government creates that currency in the first place, by crediting bank accounts with computer entries. They cannot run out of computer entries.

Takke a short MMT lesson all you philanthropy people:

Government can issue their own currency, demand being driven by imposed tax liabilities. The governments can always bring private sector resources into public good use, by either moving the work into the pubic sector, or hiring and contracting the private firms, to work for the public interest and continue making their profits).

But also:

The profits of these private corporations derive one way or another from government currency issue. The state currency does not come from anywhere else. Governments have an infinite supply of the “stuff” (records of credit and debits).

So for heavens sake philanthropy! It’s not about finding the money.

What governments do not have are endless material resources and time to put them into employment before climate, pandemic, agriculture and pollutions crises break out and kill millions.

Use the currency issuing capacity now! Do not wait for the currency to trickle up into the hands of the wealthy bastards, who are not in any case true philanthropists (they’d spend all their income on the poor if they were true).

It is a funny thing learning MMT isn’t it? You at once gain incredible long-term hope for humanity. And at the same time massive short-run despair.