Mocking the Mockers
or how to gently correct ignorance of MMT with laughter
Over here at around 41º17' S 174º44' E at MMT Aotearoa, we are putting together a short list of Pythonesque one-liner counter-narratives to mainstream macroeconomics, given the Kiwi population is traditionally highly amenable to such humour and good-natured mockery. Our recommendation is however to “Use With Caution” since out in the wild Kiwi’s can turn into flaming lizard pits of neoliberal cheesy grey-matter.
(For the cartoon I wanted to aim more for a Terry Gilliam style, so it needs some work.)
Below are a few mockery suggestions for your dinner party conversations. Many originated from Warren Mosler (as in, from whom I first heard them in an MMT context). You are not supposed to be a nerd and complain they are not perfect logic. Mockery is the purpose, and a good humoured aphorism is what is suitable. (NB: I am not a pro comedy writer, so if you can think of a way to spice these up feel free to drop a comment.)
On the Deficit/Currency-sequence Myth (and Pension Funding Myth)
The football stadium needs to collect more tickets than it sells to save up for the next big game.
The cricket scoreboard is short of runs, it needs to get more runs off the batsmen.
Our government cannot send you any emails until you send them one first.
We’ve got to balance all emails sent by government with a corresponding email recevied by government, otherwise we are in communication deficit.
Lotto threatened to stop the gambling because they could not get enough numbers off the gamblers.
If we don’t make more hamburgers at home then the MacDonalds is going to run out of beef. [Maybe not so good, since this is a real resource frame. Can we improve it?]
We’ve got to keep saying “Mmmmm!” or the local MacDonalds will run out of M’s for their advertising.
In Marxville they could not raise the minimum wage despite them all being proletarians and Bolsheviks, because the miners were not digging up enough gold and putting it back in the ground in Karl’s vault. [I see little point trying this on an Austrian School guy, they’ll just blink and say, “uhuh!”]
One agents' debit is the credit of another. When a government falls off a “fiscal cliff” the households we all live in net fly upwards on the ledger — who doesn't like that? The converse also holds. Do you like the idea of your household falling off a fiscal cliff? No? then it must be the government that goes down. They always can, no one ever dies.
To paraphrase Kubrick: Governments have to learn to stop worrying and love the deficit.
As Arnie said in Terminator: "I'll be bank."
As President Merkin Muffley said in Doctor Strangelove “Gentlemen, you can't spend in here. This is the money printing room!”
As The Wizard of OZ said: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” — the upper crust do not want you to know how the money system works.
Of the deficit governments need to learn to not pine for the Scarlet O'Hara of a balanced budget: “Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.”
We need to point more mirrors toward the sun so that it doesn't run out of light.
On the Interest Rate and NAIRU/Inflation Myths
We’ve got to drill holes in the bottom of the boat to let more water out.
The central water bank needs to deliver more buckets of water to the beach at low tide to make sure the tide comes back in. [Also a money sequence myth mock.]
No matter how much I cut off this stick it still keeps getting shorter.
We need to keep wages low, since if everyone eats ten more Big Macs a day there will be MacDonalds inflation.
[The origin for the last one was the car tires inflation bogeyman/fear-mongering quip:] If I pump up my car tires too much they’ll burst.
No matter how much we cut wages the unemployed keep popping back up like groundhogs. [The too literal version of lengthening the stick by chopping off the end. Good for telling to central bankers though.]
It is better to cover the whole race track each year with your battery load, if the race track is doubling and your speed is doubling you can always do it, but the middle class and the rich seem to prefer to not double their speed even if it means they can now only cover half the racetrack.
That worker is struggling for oxygen, we need to bury him deeper in the quicksand to make his lungs work harder.
The Greeks are so lazy we need to punish them by putting them out of work.
I don’t have a good javelin throwing joke, but worth noting that was one sport they needed to cripple the javelin throw so the javelins did not hit athletes on the other side of the racing oval. Legit austerity! LOL.
Trade Myths
These could get me in trouble with Prof Keen, but so what?
Economics is the opposite of religion, it is better to receive than to give.
No matter how much we ship off to foreigners we still keep getting back too much stuff.
No matter how much better quality pizza I make I still get too many customers. [Also can go under inflation myths.]
If no one overseas buys our output we’ll have too much stuff. Or… We need to export more stuff to the USA since they don’t have enough stuff.
Tariff man: the Canadians aren’t charging us enough for their lumber.
Myths like — “Argentina is ‘doing MMT’ so this disproves MMT”
Yes, Argentina have an MMT system under the hood. Peronism (nor the current regimes) are not an MMT expert prescription! Good grief. You can use a fire extinguisher to put out a fire, or go clobbering workers over the head with like a clunky ass cudgel.
Just as Japan “does” MMT, so does the USA, so does Argentina. So does New Zealand. They all “prove MMT”. The proof is in the predictions MMT makes about the impact of backwards policies, as well as just examining the Law.
This entire line of argument where "such-and-such country X is a basket case disproves MMT" is like throwing oil on a fire and saying the fire disproves the theory that water or foam or CO2 quell a fire, not oil. The point of the theory is to use water or foam. The theory cannot be held to be bad or faulty because some idiot uses oil.
Or like saying airplanes flying disproves gravity. If your theory of gravity is “all things fall down all the time” then... disproof established!
If you need any of these explained then you are operating in the false paradigm. I will offer to explain one mockery for every NZ$10,000 donation.1
When I get the inspiration and time I will update this post. As you can probably suspect, there is probably a whole coffee table book worth of this stuff. So go write & illustrate it!
I am also open to Shakepearian mockery, but I find the Monty Python absurdist style a little more aesthetically pleasing. Lastly, I am well aware mockery can be turned back on itself and the army of neoclassical and monetarist dingbats is surely not short of a good hack poet or three, and then it can become a circular game, in which case it has exhausted usefulness. Hence best to use some humour on people who will receive with good cheer.
That’s supposed to be incentive to figure it out for yourself, which is almost always the betetr learning style.
Cricket is however inexplicable to the world not raised with it.
Call it an answer still in need of a question. (: