The point is, not every deficit serves the broader public good. Deficits can be used for good or evil. They can enrich a small segment of the population, lifting the yachts of the rich and powerful to new heights, while leaving millions behind. They can fund unjust wars that destabilize the world and cost millions their lives. Or they can be used to sustain life … Continue reading Making Sense of the Economy through the Lens of MMT
The tribal life doesn’t turn people into saints; it enables ordinary people to make a living together with a minimum of stress year after year, generation after generation. Daniel Quinn Lately, I’ve been mentioning BHBs a lot (Bigger Home Bases). But it’s been a long time, I think, since I laid out exactly how I envision getting these larger household formats into the public discussion. … Continue reading The BHB Project: Breaking Through to a New Way of Life
The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing E.F. Schumacher First things first: let’s remind ourselves of the (seemingly) unassailable nature of the current American plutocracy. This plutocratic infrastructure is so tightly sealed that seemingly nothing can crack it. The two main parties take turns at the reins of power, mostly burning their time in office just … Continue reading Dissolving the Plutocracy from Below
SCOTT PELLEY: Is that tax money that the Fed is spending? BEN BERNANKE: It’s not tax money. the banks have — accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank. So, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. So it’s … Continue reading The Revolutionary Potential of Modern Money Theory
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Fredric Jameson I am writing on the last day of 2025, a year that has been truly breathtaking, in its pace of social and political upheaval. The sheer breadth of offenses churned out by Donald Trump and his Project 2025 ghouls is staggering, leaving libs, Dems, and the American populace … Continue reading Is Democratic Socialism Even Enough?
If change is to come, it will have to come from the margins. Wendell Berry You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller Before we get into what could be called a “rural strategy” for de-Trumping our non-urban areas in America, let’s do a quick recap of the overall scheme … Continue reading De-Trumping Rural America
Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. Dick Cheney Who the hell cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country. Donald Trump In Part 1, we looked at UBI as the new primary purpose of government, the only way out of the immediate predicaments of underemployment, collapsing labor value, and the political explosiveness generated by the resulting economic deprivation. Then in Part 2, we explored … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 3: Modern Money Theory
You are captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity. This is what prevents them: they are unable to find the bars of the cage. Daniel Quinn The child who is not embraced by the … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 2: Bigger Home Bases
I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967) The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide … Continue reading Last Chance Moonshot – Part 1: Basic Income
For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. H.L. Mencken In (what feels like) the thousand years since the election, the postmortems have been coming fast and furious, including one on this very blog. The theories for the Democratic debacle are many, from the perseverance of systemic racism and sexism, to the global turn to strongman leaders in times of … Continue reading Where Do Dems Go From Here? The Chimera of Appealing to the Working Class
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