Anything that can be resourced in real terms the government can get done by funding in nominal terms, without question.

Question: Can we “afford” a green energy transition?
Answer: Yes, because we already have the real resources needed, maybe not the time to do so to avoid catastrophes, but all that means is the government investment is needed without further delay, and this can easily be done… in monetary terms. The obstacle is pure political will and mal-education, nothing else. Mainly lack of spiritual education, but scientific as well.

And yes, for the title today, the NZ government budget was Red. Red here meaning burning things up, not communist red! Oh the frickin’ ignorance of it all. They are all — politicans and journalists alike — still moaning and whining about the “debt” and “deficit” all failing to realize there are always two sides to every accounting ledger. The government budget is always in balance, if not then someone made an accounting mistake. Their red ink is our black ink. To the last balanced penny.

The politicians and journalists never mention the government debt equals private sector savings, and that all these outstanding accounting records are in the bank accounts of the Top Ten Percent, instead of where it belongs which is in the bank accounts of the workers.

Question: (Now don’t get too alienated here). Can we “get off oil”?
Answer: No, we cannot. We need oil for chemical feedstocks vital for modern life, and the global south should not be deprived of such development pathways that we all enjoyed (or at least the Boomers did). But… we can certainly afford to stop burning the fossil fuels. Big Oil does not need to be Big Pollution.

We Cannot Afford Not to Invest in Renewables

The real answer here though is that we simply cannot afford to continue burning fossil fuels and pumping out concrete, crypotocurrency, chatbot server farm crud, and other noxious emissions. The real cost (not monetary cost) the real cost of failure to invest in renewable energy and energy conservation efforts today will be massive real costs in the future, far exceeding the real cost to us today of making the investments.

We are talking about real costs, not monetary costs. The relevant costs for a government in only real stuff, that is, moving labour and output towards green energy infrastructure rather than nice television and opera, cosmetic vanities, and fashion accessories. But in reality, we probably do not need to sacrifice performance of a single opera. The effort to build renewable energy resources is not all that overwhelming. It just takes a bit of time.

Do not fall for the Prof Steve Keen myth that we lack the minerals. We do not lack the minerals. That idea is premised on the assumption we have to keep increasing energy output rate. In truth we do not. We already over-produce, and cutting back on energy rate of consumption is not going to lower the median standard of living at all. Just think of all the enormous amount of crap you buy that you never needed. Including that second Smartphone.

Quit buying that stuff, you do not need it.

True Investment

It constantly surprises me so many capitalistic minded so-called “Investors” fail to grasp all this, and wish to just leave things up to so-called “free markets” to sort out.

These idiots are fake investors. They forgot the meaning of the term “invest”. You know damn well why too, because to these bastards “investment” means monetary returns. Whereas the ethical investor is always seeking real returns, not monetary returns. People who seek monetary returns are net anti-investors. Clearly, by definition. They are the savers, they are the ones who reduce currency circulation and force government to run more massive deficits.

They are promoters of austerity, because no matter what circulation their investments generate, the fact they net save means someone else has to be spending more than their income. Dollars to donuts that is some low paid worker who can ill afford to slide further into bank debt. But it doesn’t have to be that way, because the government can in fact run large deficits, in perpetuity, and thereby prevent the lowest income families from suffering bank debt.

It is all about where the government net spending ends up. The problem being it is not going to those who need it. It is good we have government deficits, but very not good who it all gets channelled towards in our present era of gross neoliberal class war macroeconomics.

Wrong idea! Market investment only works via profit motive if the returns can be realized in the short run. But the returns to investment in renewable energy technology are far in the future, they are the returns of not suffering massive ecological collapse.

This is true whether you believe the science that millions will lose their communities due to sea level rise, and millions may die of wet bulb conditions, millions will starve from subsequent agricultural production collapse in these wet bulb regions. This is before we start talking about possible desertification or ocean AMOC Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation collapse.

These tipping points might be mere possibilities, not inevitability. But the fact they have non-zero probability of occurring is the reason to invest in renewables and mitigation, and even if possible reversal of our rate of energy consumption.

Question: Can this be achieved without job losses and mass unemployment?
Answer: Yes, of course. The government is the source of all unemployment, and has the sole authority to eliminate all the unemployment It creates. Jobs will be lost in some industries, but without unemployment. If people need employment then there are endless good things they can do for their community, pleasant things, far better than digging up coal or burying nuclear waste. The government can always pay these wages, without question,without inflation bias, and with much greater fair compensation than a welfare hand-out.

As with most macroeconomic issues, it is always about government willingness to spend, not capacity to spend. They have infinite capacity to spend.

For government policy then, the focus has to be on the real costs of failure to spend, not on the money amount. The money amount is utterly irrelevant if you are the monopoly creator of the currency.

Question: Can the invisible hand of The Market turn Big Oil (or any other industry) into a non-polluter?
Answer: I would say no, the evidence is overwhelming that government regulation is absolutely necessary. In any case, every MMT aware person knows the government creates the entire market in the first place, for goods with prices denominated in the state’s unit of account.

I doubt we will be transitioning to pastoral life styles and local currencies without central governments any time soon. Although that utopia appealing to me, I have to be realistic. I’m not asking you to be realistic. I’m self-imposing realism austerity on myself, ok.

Besides, if we did soon transition to simple pastoral lifestyles that would imply in-between times millions of people have died. It is an Accelerationist scenario. You’d need a total collapse of systems to destroy central government. Maybe this will come to pass, but I’m not fond of entertaining that scenario, if you don’t mind.

We can be more civilized.

Yeah, but you won’t be more civilized if you have a backwards understanding of the monetary system, and if you falsely believe the government must tax us to create it’s own scorepoints at Its own central bank.

Does the scorekeeper in a game of Bridge or Scrabble have to get the scorepoints off the players first?

Answer is no. Government does not get Its own currency off the tax payer. When taxes are paid the currency is destroyed. All that remains is an accounting record of the redemption operation. You extinguished some units of tax liability. The government did not get anything useful from this, except the accounting record. These accounting records can of course be useful for some analysis purposes, but really they are not terribly useful and if we lost the hard drives with these records on them no one would starve or die.

Right. So Finding the Money is never the problem. Finding the Votes is the problem.

Catch-22 though? We cannot find the votes for green energy investments because the people running our governments still idiotically believe the government has to get the NZD scorepoints off the tax payer, or by borrowing from private banks who have no counterfeit capacity.

I promised a reader I’d talk about credit money some time, but let’s just make a bookmark here that banks cannot fund anything. They only get charter from the state to issue credit, with interest. So that is net negative money. However, while that credit circulates it does promote more economic activity. It is the economic activity that is enhanced through commercial banking operations, not the NET money supply that also needs to grow for a growing population.

Only the monopoly issuer of the currency can create the necessary growing money supply. This is called government deficit spending. But it is healthier to refer to it as net private savings. Or if you want to be stock–flow consistent in language it is net private income.

The resource the government lacks is sufficient votes in Parliament.

Today I want to boost a good piece by Prof. Bill Mitchell on the need and howto for a just transition to a renewable energy economy. Renewable, that is, for as long as the star we call the Sun is stable and human civilization has not yet collapsed.

However, this needs constant repetition and amplification, and at the end of this episode I’ll have more to say about the repetition and amplification.

In MMT and climate justice activism we have a unification with economic justice. There are no trade-offs here, it is all a virtuous circle.

If the messaging gets tedious for you, I urge you to be creative. We need to repeat the same damn messages ad infinitum, until the government policy responses propagate through to markets and things improve for all people, and all future generations (until the sun stops shinning).

But you do not want to get stale and tedious I reckon. At least I don’t. You do not have to. Any good idea can be re-presented in many ways. If you think you have exhausted all forms of activism then I am afraid you have a dim imagination. And in that case your activism can afford a period of learning just how to be more creative. Take an art class or something.

The One Real Resource We Lack

The last topic today is the real resource we are most critically failing to fully employ, and it is the most critical resource of all the good things we desire.

Earlier I noted the real resource the government lacks is votes in Parliament. They do not lack the currency units, “finding the money” is an inapplicable concept for a monopoly creator of tax credits in a tax-driven single currency region.

But the most critical resource we lack is not the votes in Parliament. I’ll give you a second to guess what it is…

I am talking about macroeconomic policy education.

Without sufficient MMT education there will never be the votes we need. And thus there will never be the good regulations to correct the malevolent market forces we need. With only austerity on the agenda the consumer will be powerless to force change for the good on climate, employment, anti-fascism, anti-war movements, or anything else. We’ll be too crippled needing to work for a disgusting boss just to eat.

We have a massive Knowledge and wisdom deficit among our liberal elites who are running the government show.

They are so badly ignorant it is bordering now on downright evil destruction. Galactic Evil Empire proportions. And this is true even for many Green Party MP’s. How many of them still stupidly believe the government needs to get the currency off the counterfeit printing presses of the proverbial tax payer?

Wake up people!

Your ignorance is killing us.

No pitchforks and protests can remove this weapon of mass destruction called ignorance. Journalists and teachers can destroy these weapons. Just think about it. Macroeconomics ignorance has been more destructive than the nuclear bomb. There has never been a more destructive force in all human history than this ignorance.

Does that now make you want to start teaching people about MMT? If not, I’m lost as to how to help you. But I will repeat the message in a thousand creative ways anyway before I die. No self-immolation protesting for me. I am going for the far more painful path of trying to educate the wilfully ignorant.