This is where I am politically right now. Despite Melenchon's rousing speeches and appeals to appropriate post-Keynesian economic policies, the current European riots have sunk into their usual headless, directionless shape. The polls have hardly shifted - le Pen was already well ahead. Any 'revolutionary' situation will be captured by the far right. The awkward corollary of what I've written below is that if we seek to construct a serious, committed opposition, first we must elicit an equal and opposite fear grounded in reality. We must replace the manufactured fears of immigrants, public 'debt', bond markets and so on with an overriding objective fear. What will really happen to the West if we carry on like this? It's an unfortunate fact that fear is the primary fuel for the hope, rational discussions of political economy and positive protest and action - aimed at what we're FOR rather than against - that come later. Dupuy's 'enlightened catastrophism' - @winlow_s has written about this cambridge.org/core/books/abs… and there's a useful summary here. cyrilhedoin.substack.com/p/e…

I repeat, I'm not exclusively #MMT. But why do none of the professional economists on this thread apart from Itamar understand it even at a basic level? For instance, MMT does advocate tax increases in specific circumstances. It's basically a description of the operation of fiat currency systems, influenced by but not limited to older positions such as Chartalism, functional finance, endogenous money creation, sectoral balances and financial instability. It's certainly related to post-Keynesianism, which can help remedy some of its flaws such as trade balances, international currency valuation etc. I'm just a lowly all-rounder - economic history, sociology, social psychology - who worked in criminology departments. If I can understand it and summarise it why can't professional economists? Spoiler - the basic reason is that they have to straw-man it to fit their ideologically bound off-the-peg criticisms. Empirically grounded and theoretically sophisticated reformulation of provisional knowledge just isn't their forte. Paradigm-changing ideas are out of the question - disallowed. I block these people because there's no point in debating with them. You might as well argue with scientologists. I'm not trashing the intellectual capabilities of individuals I don't know outside their orthodox writings, but simply stating the incontrovertible truth that thus far the mainstream neoclassical position has been ideologically locked, that's all. Press any of them hard enough and you'll find its dual root is a deep fear of the state, socialism, collectivism, totalitarianism etc. and an equally deep belief in the individual's right to enter markets to aquire and bequeath unlimited assets. Professional/institutional advocates are not allowed to stray from these principles.