Tsk! Tsk!! to the Savers

Penalize savers — harshly

Ooooo, bit of clickbait (or alienation?) there? I can never tell which.

Was reading a Bill Mitchell piece: Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund and the yen – mainstream macro myths driving bad policy.

I would go further.¹

We/government, must penalize savers. Harshly.

Essentially a Gesell currency strategy — of which there are “many ways to skin a possum.”²

You can even say this is the logic of capitalism too, if you want that framing. Savers are demand leakages. We do not want them, or at least do not want to encourage them, the limit of “a saver” being a billionaire. It is also the same logic under socialism. Both. MMT being ideology neutral.

Non fine Arts MMT Graffiti. One of my semi-skilled pastimes.

And now for something completely nuanced

I’m not much of one for MMT policy prescriptions except for the obvious. The base case for MMT should not be regarded as a prescription so much as a logical requirement (for intellectual consistency) namely: (1) Floating exchange rate, (2) Job Guarantee (floats the government deficit), (3) Permanent zero interest rate policy (floats credit properly), (4) narrow banking (clear payments, assess credit worthiness — nothin’ else). (5) Close the bond market, and (7) the other Deep Sixing policies (if these are not logically obvious to you, then you need to see an MMT informed psychiatrist).

With savings disincentives I am certainly not a policy nor ideological regime prescriber. There are cultural nuances to propensities to save or spend. It is a diabolical minefield to trample over such territory without taking into account your social fabric. Not all nations of people want to be commies or anarchists. Respect them.

That said, I’d try to educate people of all nations to see the benefits of slowly burning the currency (aka tax credits) immediately upon issuance. A Gesell currency. There are many ways to do this, one is Theodore Gesell’s original stamped depreciation labour certificate. A good system. But not culturally for all people. There is no accounting for aesthetic preferences for savings accounts. Money fetishes.

In somewhat ᐸ𖦪ᗕ𖢧𖥣ꛘ𖥕ꚶ𖨚 cultures like Germany (or the USA, UK, the Netherlands, and many others) we’d be committing mild brain violence I’d guess, if we wiped out people who have strong savings desires. So the slow burning of the currency (but not too slowly) would in their case maybe start after some reasonable threshold, like say 100,000 DMK for the gauge where the lowest wage is around 10,000 DMK/year (is ten years of nominal savings not good enough for you ᐸ𖦪ᗕ𖢧𖥣ꛘ𖨚 ?) . (Let’s fantasize they get off the euro.) But do so democratically, with public acceptance. Most importantly, with public awareness of the MMT system that you’ve already got! Just start using it wisely.

I can be quite the MMT Extremist™. If you vote for me for Emperor, I’d make that a threshold of one year of wages, so start burning the currency fairly fast starting at 10,000 savings. Can I game simulate this and prove it’ll be a wonderful society? No. But do not need to. Making the point that this is a feasible and egalitarian policy is the point, not to foist my policy opinions upon anyone who’s not wanting them. You can say it is “Academic.” I don’t disagree, and do not care.

A good Paeloconservative³ might accuse me of being a wimp, a liberal. But I do not see it that way. Academic arguments are important. This is the whole 4chan reddit phenomenon in case they’re all unaware. It’s academic debate outside of Ivory Towers. It became very unfortunate that it all spawned a fascistic MAGA movement. (Many Paleo’s have admitted as much.) I actually found I have a lot in common with a few of the more sane thinking paleoconservatives. Like, I’m all for protecting the natural ecology & biosphere, all for low energy consumption, and all for getting rid of neoliberals and neoconservatives. I’m all for eliminating government corruption and boondoggles and waste. But I’m also in favour of eliminating the same crud in the private sector. And I am absolutely not in favour of any totalizing ideology becoming a paradigm of governments.

Principles are wonderful to govern by — the only good way to govern if you ask me, especially if one of your principles is to not ignore the credible data backed by sound theoretical framework (if prices go up, it’s not due to government spending you fools, the need to increase spending follows the price pressure).

But Christian fascisms, Jewish zionisms, and Islamic theocracies are not principles. They are corruptions of the human mind. If only their zealots knew. They are what possibly otherwise decent principled sources become when you start thinking only you know the full implications from the source, your side is right and everyone else is wrong. It is not wimpy of a liberal to admit they might not have a monopoly on wisdom. It is courageous and a strength. (Neoliberals are obviously not liberals, not by any stretch of the imagination.⁴)

I can even boil this down a bit to evolutionary biology. Most people (even you?) have darwinian Natural Selection all wrongly comprehended. It is not about “survival of the fittest.” The main principle and driver of evolution of life is tolerance for the weakest and the miscreants, since they are the pool of your diversity and hence robustness when external change is imposed. With a Paleoconservative survived fittest your society is fragile and more prone to extinction. But, Hey Liberal! You should not fetishize the wimps and miscreants. Poor and hapless people are not to be designed by policy (aka neoliberalism & plutocracy/oligarchy). The goal of society is to all grow spiritually, which means helping the poor and hapless out of their relative misery. I mean, we are all miserable to some degree, but let’s not fetishize misery, absurdism and doomerism, the goal of a good life is to work to rise above it all, but most importantly help others rise first. (If I am the weakest and the most miscreant, then society has done very well, thank you very much.)

I’ve always found being tolerant and aware of one’s own inadequacies and humility makes one stronger. The weak are those who stand up tall and flex and think they are correct about most things. Of course, that classes me among the weak, since I’m quite aggressive about MMT. But I give myself a pass on this, since MMT really is correct, and the above policy implications that I consider logical are hardly open to debate. Also, I do not mind educational paths, I prefer them to the diktat “MMT is correct, so get over it bro!” (Although that is a fair statement.) My issue is that few “non-believers” 🤣 come to me for learning.⁵ Not to worry. One can never run out of students if one is a perpetual learner oneself.

1. Alienating libertarians is an art from. I’m only a stick figure cartoonist in this art.

2. Simple progressive taxation is a Gesell policy. In the MMT Lens taxes delete the currency. So is “burning” by instant matter—antimatter annihilation.

3. Been on a mini tear reading about these characters.

4. I am almost convinced most neoliberals are advanced computations sent to us from the future by nasty n3rds who were about to be declined their UBI and defaulted into community benefit work job guarantee labour. They did not want their math or coding skill to be useful to anyone. Extreme G.H. Hardy Bros.

5. I am fully aware I am, in my writing, a bit of an alienator, not a uniter, and more than a tad insufferable. I’m very different in person, fwiw.