Making Sense of the Economy through the Lens of MMT

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 BHB Project: Breaking Through to a New Way of Life

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

De-Trumping Rural America

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

Last Chance Moonshot – Part 1: Basic Income

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

Morality & the Meaning of Money

Dreams of individual accomplishment and desires to contribute to the common good become firmly attached to waged work, where they can be hijacked to rather different ends: to produce neither individual riches nor social wealth, but privately appropriately surplus value. Kathi Weeks, “The Problem with Work” Capitalism lures us onward like the mechanical hare before the greyhounds, insisting that the economy is infinite and sharing … Continue reading Morality & the Meaning of Money