Ben

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[Ashok Kumar @comrade_kumar_]

100%

[David McNab @[email protected] @DavidMcNab17]

Terrific interview! Thomas is right about so much - but can’t shake the tax to pay-for / borrowing household analogy enshrined in the stability and growth pact - and QE is not money printing. The west needs to shed Friedman’s money focus and embrace national resource management.

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

Dominic Cummings' list of stuff we need to do to get the UK moving. It could have been written by a 12-yr-old David Brent during his first week in the Army Cadets. How do we get rid of these people?

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

The Economist, whose logo should be "wrong about everything since 1843", has surpassed its historical bungling and gone schizoid. In an attempt to chastise China for overproducing cheap goods it downplays the fact that the Western creditor class invested in China as they deindustrialised their own nations after 1980, turning the bulk of workers into baristas and shop assistants. This is a tacit admission that a Leninist government planning and regulating a hybrid state/market economy has been remarkably successful in the brutally competitive global market economy neoliberals claim to be the natural order of things that makes everyone in the world richer. Except the poor, of course, but that's their fault for making 'bad decisions'.

Inadvertantly - I say that because Zanny and the gang don't usually think too deeply - they've raised a simplified economic variant of the Hobbesian question. During the period of maximised financial deregulation 1980-2008, did our hallowed private investors use their freedom to invest wisely and bring prosperity and security to Western populations? Did they maintain and develop essential productive capacity, infrastructure and services across whole nations? Perhaps not. Principal investment targets have been privatization of existing public assets, software and IT, financial services, derivatives and commercial real estate, facilitated by leveraged buyouts, share buybacks, stock market bubbles and the sort of irresponsible moneylending that led to 2008. So who is making the really bad decisions round here?

So, is it fair to say that China, a nation in which some individual economic freedom is encouraged yet also compelled to make a weighty trade-off with a competently managed state, is producing better results for the population as whole? Without this strong keel and heavy rudder, does the turbulent economic sea tend to be dominated by opportunistic, unthinking, shortsighted, self-enriching individuals unworthy of their freedom, while the rest of us sink or swim? Were a whole line of influential economists from Quesnay, Smith and Ricardo through to extremists such to Mises, Hayek and Rothbard - who argued that the economy should function in relative freedom from governance - completely wrong?

We need to know. Sharpish, because shit is about to hit the fan.
https://t.co/1gbPULr0NE

[Prof. Steve Keen @ProfSteveKeen]

I could not agree more! Policymakers have been deluded by economists to think that climate change is a distant and minor problem. They’re about to find out the hard way how totally wrong the economists were.

[Clare Daly @ClareDalyIRL]

The security we actually want is the security of a decent job and a place to live, to be able to get better when we're sick, not to get poorer every year, for our children to have a future. Normal, natural things to want.

But that's all contemptuous, eye-rolling "magic money" stuff to a Tánaiste whose government is blowing 100,000,000s of our "real" euros on a hysterical European "defence spending" spree nobody asked for except "our" (their) "European partners," all to placate the global rich.

[Dirk Ehnts @DEhnts]

"The free market always works better than the government" - except it doesn't.

[William Thomson @Williamgallus]

Same old same old. Growth as the only way to have the things that most of us had when the economy was half the size. And yet they keep banging the same tired old drum.

[Wayne Rooney @WayneRooney]

Me and Joe hart having a few beers. Oooossssshhhhh

[Daniela Gabor @DanielaGabor]

Get this - Church of England voted against rewilding because it prioritizes 'long-term capital growth' of its massive land holdings.

Nature as an asset class, in the minds of the clergy too.

https://t.co/OTnINHKu4f

[Josh Deburnke @DrDeburnke]

This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen

[El Borto @bortinez_]

🚨SHOCKING🚨

Nigel Farage STEALS flowers from a vigil for Ann Widdecombe.

This is so disgusting. I’m at a loss for words.

[David Graeber Institute @Graeber_social]

"In fact, most of the economic innovations of the last thirty years make more sense politically than economically. Eliminating guaranteed life employment for precarious contracts doesn’t re- ally create a more effective workforce, but it is extraordinarily effective in destroying unions and otherwise depoliticizing labor.

The same can be said of endlessly increasing working hours. No one has much time for political activity if they’re working 60-hour weeks."

- David Graeber

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

The Marxists are right about this. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The 'investors' - the creditor class - can no longer make enough money on normal stuff like agriculture and manufacturing. They have to cancel democratic politics, disempower the state and privatise everything that was once public. One sweeping, final asset-strip for the rentiers. They also task their tech nerds with the creation of a decadent fantasy world we can rent from them every day. To sustain 'investor confidence', nothing must be public, nothing free, nothing sacred and nothing real.

But it rests on the big lie that we need their money. In fact we have our own money, created by the state every day. They're desperate to restrict that, so the IMF tells each nation to keep its spending/investment down to 3% of GDP. Enough for the minimal welfare and everyday maintenance required to quell civil unrest. Defy the creditor class and they'll sell off your bonds and currency on global markets and tank your economy. The other big lie - they can do that only if we let them.

This is why the creditor class is terrified of the economic truths uncovered by heterodox economics positions such as post-Keynesianism and #MMT. Understanding this simple fact - we do not need them or their money - is revolutionary.

[Steve Hall @ProfHall1955]

We cannot remain dependent on foreign investors interested only in unproductive asset-stripping and rentierism, you moron. Thames Water is only one example. Global money-market power has turned 2/3 of this country to virtual dereliction. There are numerous ways of displacing it without depreciation and inflation, but you're not clever enough to understand them.

[amanai @Markus7Red]

“If you don’t support foreign billionaires owning every single asset in Britain then you’re not a real economist”

[Malcolm Reavell @malcolm_reavell]

@Robertbigbags We don’t need a wealth tax. We need to tax wealth.
We don’t need rich people’s money to pay for anything, we just don’t need the rich. Tax is about wealth distribution and equality.
Tax is not a funding mechanism it is a ticket to participate in a society that provides for all

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

Living in a system where nearly every place is designed to take money is so exhausting, every moment is meant to cost money, everything is about money. It’s like our entire lives are just for rent, nowhere to sit down for free, nowhere to rest, then you pay again.

[Ben @_Bennigno_]

@ZoeJardiniere Not a fan of this