The Zero Room

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• MMT Responds to Brad DeLong’s Challenge — Randy Wray at New Economic Perspectives: As I said it is hard to think of a general pump-priming; except perhaps sending a $5000 check to every resident. But even this wouldn’t affect all sectors equally. Most Americans, suffering under huge debt loads, would probably pay down some debt. The comfortably well-off would splurge on fancy restaurants and expensive spas that already have long waiting lists. Or add a gold-plated toilet bowl to their third yacht. I’ve long argued that rising tides raise all yachts—not the little dinghies. here and here As Pavlina Tcherneva’s empirical work has proven here , that turns out to be true. More than all the gains from growth now go to the tippy top of the income distribution. No wonder the Neoliberals hate the JG approach and love the pump-priming approach. As Tom Palley complains, the JG would give income directly to the poor and they’d want food. Neoliberals love unemployment—it keeps the “help” hungry and cheap. They are our inflation-fighting force to keep the comfortable classes comfortable.
• MMT Takes Center Stage – and Orthodox Economists Freak — Bill Black at New Economic Perspectives: If neoliberals want to define as “socialism” an effective government that produces markets in which honest people prosper and we imprison or at least drive from the markets the elite cheaters, then we are all socialists. An economic system without an effective rule of law and with massive negative externalities such as global climate change is a suicidal kleptocracy. If neoliberals want to define that as “capitalism,” they should get used to the public rejecting it as an ideology that is as economically illiterate as it is inhumane and unethical. Kleptocracy and plutocracy invariably corrupt and ruin democracy. The truth is that honest markets and governments are complements and that the most effective economies are ‘mixed-economies.’ Using ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ as swear words is a pointless waste.
• The Truth About Dentistry — Ferris Jabr confirms what we've all long suspected in the Atlantic: Studies that explicitly focus on overtreatment in dentistry are rare, but a recent field experiment provides some clues about its pervasiveness. A team of researchers at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, asked a volunteer patient with three tiny, shallow cavities to visit 180 randomly selected dentists in Zurich. The Swiss Dental Guidelines state that such minor cavities do not require fillings; rather, the dentist should monitor the decay and encourage the patient to brush regularly, which can reverse the damage. Despite this, 50 of the 180 dentists suggested unnecessary treatment. Their recommendations were incongruous: Collectively, the overzealous dentists singled out 13 different teeth for drilling; each advised one to six fillings. Similarly, in an investigation for Reader’s Digest, the writer William Ecenbarger visited 50 dentists in 28 states in the U.S. and received prescriptions ranging from a single crown to a full-mouth reconstruction, with the price tag starting at about $500 and going up to nearly $30,000.
• The Reality Behind Trump’s Coalition for Regime Change in Venezuela — Mark Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR): Even if the Trump team had a global majority—which it doesn’t, with only 50 out of 195 countries worldwide backing Venezuelan regime change—their deadly economic sanctions, theft of assets, military threats, and other actions to topple Venezuela’s government would be no more legal or legitimate than George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, or the many U.S.-led regime change efforts that have taken place in this hemisphere. That’s unsurprising, given who’s at the wheel: perennial regime-change advocate John Bolton, for example, or special envoy Elliott Abrams, who supported what the UN later found to be genocide in Guatemala, as well as the US-sponsored atrocities in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s. The cast of characters supporting this regime-change effort, whether in Washington or among some of its closest allies, should underline what is already obvious: The United States’ attempt to oust Maduro has nothing to do with democracy or human rights.
• Let people look out of the window — Richard Murphy: There is an article in the FT this morning that asks how workplaces can foster creative people. […] The whole piece reminds me of the most paradoxical adverts I read. They ask for applicants from ‘original and innovative thinkers’ who are ‘team players’. I am not saying there is no overlap between the Venn diagrams for these two groups. I am saying they are small. […] A few years ago I was given an award for effective campaigning. In the minute or two I was given to note my thanks I gave praise to the Jospeh Rowntree Charitable Trust. They had the courage to fund me for five years to, as I put it, look out of the window. Which is what I did, and still do, quite often. Because inspiration comes from watching the world and wondering why it behaves as it does.
• “Speaking Truth to Power” Is No Substitute for Taking Power — Norman Solomon in Truthout: While noting that “power without love is reckless and abusive,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out that “love without power is sentimental and anemic.” All too often, progressive activists don’t realize their own potential power when they rely on ethical arguments to persuade authorities. Appealing to the hearts of people who run a heartless system is rarely effective. Humane principles are low priorities in the profit-driven scheme of things, as the devastating impacts of economic inequality and militarism attest. By and large, rapacious power already knows what it’s doing — from Wall Street and the boardrooms of mega-corporations to the Pentagon and the top echelons of the “national security” state.

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Vital Signs: Australia’s sudden ultra-low economic growth ought not to have come as surprise — Richard Holden of UNSW in the Conversation: Australia’s big little economic lie was laid bare on Wednesday. National accounts figures show that the Australian economy grew by just 0.2% in the last quarter of 2018. This disappointing result was below market expectations and official forecasts of 0.6%. It put annual growth for the year at just 2.3%. But the shocking revelation was that Gross Domestic Product per person (a more relevant measure of living standards) actually slipped in the December quarter by 0.2%, on the back of a fall of 0.1% in the September quarter. These are the first back-to-back quarters of negative GDP per capita growth in 13 years - since 2006. [Here's Bill Mitchell's less polished but more insightful review of the figures.]
• Future budgets are going to have to spend more on welfare, which is fine. It’s spending on us — ANU's Peter Whiteford in the Conversation: The social services minister has used point-in-time administrative data to show that in 2018 the share of working-age Australians on welfare fell to 15.1%, “the lowest rate of welfare dependency in over 25 years”. But the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey finds that over the course of an entire year (2016) about one-third of working-age households contained someone who received an income support payment for some of it. The longer the time period, the more common becomes the receipt of payments. Between 2001 and 2015 around 70% of working-age households included someone who received an income support payment at some point (not including the age pension or family payments). It is one of the most important lessons of longitudinal surveys like HILDA – we, our family or friends are in this together.
• Michigan Conservatives Don’t Want to Teach Students That America Is a Democracy — Matt Stieb at New York Magazine on what really the right is really scared by in the term "democratic socialism": The proposed curriculum update in Michigan also falls in line with another type of push by conservative education advocates: cutting references to America’s status as a democracy. The first draft of the proposed changes in Michigan attempted to nix the word “democratic” from the phrase “core democratic values,” a slogan that defined virtues like equality, liberty, and diversity. Similar efforts were enacted in Texas and Georgia in 2010 and 2016, when state education boards removed “democracy” as a description of American government, or promoted the unwieldy phrase “representative democracy/republic” instead. […] In a compromise, the proposed standards now use the term “American government” as the most-frequent phrase for the nation’s electoral system, but will also include the phrase “constitutional government,” and occasional uses of “democracy.” Patrick Colbeck, the leading conservative voice in the argument, said that the term “democracy” was not “politically neutral and accurate.”
• Pete Buttigieg argues against free college. This is why progressives can’t agree about subsidizing tuition. — Elizabeth Popp Berman in the Washington Post: The Buttigieg argument goes like this: College increases the incomes of those who complete it. But the people who go to college are typically already better off. By charging them less than the actual cost of their education, we’re using the tax dollars of poorer non-college-goers to pay for the education of their richer counterparts — whose earning potential will only increase with their shiny new bachelor's degree. However standard this position seems today, historically speaking, it’s relatively novel. Making it requires two intellectual moves that didn’t take place until the 1960s. First, you have to think of college in human capital terms: as an investment that produces future earnings. Second, you need a cost-benefit approach to evaluating policy: spending the least possible money to achieve the maximum desired benefit — in this case, education. […] Not all progressives, of course, buy the “free-college-is-regressive” claim. One common counterargument is that this undermines the case for all sorts of public services. As economist J.W. Mason asks, “Suppose users of Central Park are higher-income on average; is progressive policy then to fence it off and charge admission?” Similar arguments could be made about fire stations, if you notice that they particularly benefit well-off homeowners.
• Donald Trump’s use of humiliation could have catastrophic consequences – a psychologist explains why — Simon McCarthy-Jones of Trinity College Dublin in the Conversation on the bullies we have to endure: Some individuals who are shamed will explode with humiliated fury. This is more likely if the person has high levels of narcissism. Such people have grandiose views of themselves, a strong sense of entitlement, and seek to exploit others. They are strongly motivated to maintain their self-esteem and deflect shame by placing blame on others, whom they rage against. […] Trump’s use of humiliation has the potential […] to trigger an extreme and unpredictable reaction, including on the global stage. It also risks setting a social norm in which humiliating people is acceptable. All this undermines the concept of inherent human dignity and risks a conflict in which people are accorded no inherent value.
• Off the Mark — by Mark Parisi:
  

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Meritocracy doesn’t exist, and believing it does is bad for you — Clifton Mark in Fast Company: Meritocracy is a false and not very salutary belief. As with any ideology, part of its draw is that it justifies the status quo, explaining why people belong where they happen to be in the social order. It is a well-established psychological principle that people prefer to believe that the world is just. However, in addition to legitimation, meritocracy also offers flattery. Where success is determined by merit, each win can be viewed as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth. Meritocracy is the most self-congratulatory of distribution principles. Its ideological alchemy transmutes property into praise, material inequality into personal superiority. It licenses the rich and powerful to view themselves as productive geniuses. While this effect is most spectacular among the elite, nearly any accomplishment can be viewed through meritocratic eyes. Graduating from high school, artistic success, or simply having money can all be seen as evidence of talent and effort. By the same token, worldly failures becomes signs of personal defects, providing a reason why those at the bottom of the social hierarchy deserve to remain there.
• No, Wikipedia didn’t get Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman’s birthdate wrong — Alexandre Hocquet in the Conversation: What is then the explanation for this fuss? It is not impossible that Olivia Colman confused Wikipedia and another site. For example, in 2011 the actress Joan Collins tweeted that Wikipedia had mistakenly stated that she had an affair with a certain Arthur Lowe. After checking the facts, Wikipedians found that Collins was in fact referring to an obscure site that had nothing to do with Wikipedia (and information she denied is still there eight years later, by the way). Is there a biographic fact mentioned on the web that’s incorrect? Then surely it’s Wikipedia!
• We Need a Wall to Protect the Troops We Need Because There’s Not a Wall — Ted Rall:
  
• How to sell a massacre: NRA's playbook revealed — Peter Charley, Al Jazeera: [Rodger] Muller, Al Jazeera's undercover reporter who posed as a gun-rights campaigner, introduced One Nation's Chief of Staff, James Ashby, and the leader of its Queensland branch, Steve Dickson, to the NRA, and travelled with the pair to Washington, DC last year. Ashby and Dickson were hoping to secure up to $20m in political donations from supporters of the US gun lobby. In meetings at the NRA's Virginia headquarters, officials provided Ashby and Dickson tips to galvanise public support to change Australia's gun laws and coached the pair on how to respond to a mass shooting.
• Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) — Charlotte Lieberman pads out the NY Times with some Interesting Facts from psychology: Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond. “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem,” said Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa. In a 2013 study, Dr. Pychyl and Dr. Sirois found that procrastination can be understood as “the primacy of short-term mood repair … over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions.” Put simply, procrastination is about being more focused on “the immediate urgency of managing negative moods” than getting on with the task, Dr. Sirois said.
• The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub: How does a new generation of researchers perceive Sci-Hub? — David Nicholas in LSE Impact blog: Much of the growth of Sci-Hub is […] ideological, no more so than in France, where nearly all our [Early Career Researchers] were Sci-Hub users. For French ECRs Sci-Hub was considered to be merely a way of providing open access to the scientific literature: part and parcel of the OA movement, which is to be supported by whatever means necessary. From this perspective, publishers are seen as the enemy, whose greediness erects unnecessary barriers, thereby obstructing the advancement of science. National infrastructures, such as HAL and ISTEX, have been created to break the publishers’ monopoly, but ECRs are wondering whether Sci-Hub (and ResearchGate) can accomplish the task more cheaply and effectively? In fact, Sci-Hub is seen as a ‘Robin Hood’ figure. There then is an element of defiance about the French use of Sci-Hub and they certainly do not view it as being wrong, because they are breaking the rules for good reason, to increase access to scientific knowledge.
• Modern Monetary Theory is On the March — Bill Black at the New Economic Perspectives blog: One of the proofs of MMT’s advances is a nearly respectable treatment by the Wall Street Journal as the feature of a news article. The other major proof is the pathetic efforts of MMT critics quoted in the article to attack MMT. The article, implicitly, admits that MMT scholars have repeatedly proved correct in their predictions that the existing and projected U.S. fiscal budget deficits would not trigger damaging shortages of real resources that will cause damaging levels of inflation. The article, implicitly, admits that nations with fully sovereign currencies are vastly less vulnerable to economic injury from budget deficits. The article implicitly admits that MMT opponents’ predictions have failed and that reality has repeatedly falsified their archaic monetary theories that described nations living under the gold standard and therefore lacked a fully sovereign currency.
• Bloom County — by Berkeley Breathed:
  
• What the Bernie Sanders 2020 Campaign Means for Progressives — Norman Solomon: In the obvious contrasts with Harris and in the less obvious yet significant contrasts with Warren on matters of economic justice as well as on foreign policy, Bernie Sanders represents a different approach to the root causes of -- and possible solutions to -- extreme economic inequality, systemic injustice and a dire shortage of democracy. It’s not mere happenstance that Bernie is willing to use the word “oligarchy” to describe the current social order in the United States. What’s more, he pointedly ties his candid analysis of reality to more far-reaching -- and potentially effective -- solutions.
• THE WAR ON VENEZUELA IS BUILT ON LIES — John Pilger: Although identity politics are all the rage in the pages of liberal newspapers in the West, race and class are two words almost never uttered in the mendacious "coverage" of Washington's latest, most naked attempt to grab the world's greatest source of oil and reclaim its "backyard". For all the chavistas' faults - such as allowing the Venezuelan economy to become hostage to the fortunes of oil and never seriously challenging big capital and corruption - they brought social justice and pride to millions of people and they did it with unprecedented democracy. "Of the 92 elections that we've monitored," said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Centre is a respected monitor of elections around the world, "I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." By way of contrast, said Carter, the US election system, with its emphasis on campaign money, "is one of the worst".

This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Terra Nullius — Cory Doctorow in Locus Online: The labor theory of property always begins with an act of erasure: “All the people who created, used, and improved this thing before me were doing something banal and unimportant – but my contribution is the step that moved this thing from a useless, unregarded commons to a special, proprietary, finished good.” Criticism of this delusion of personal exceptionalism is buttressed by a kind of affronted perplexity: “Can’t you see how much of my really top-notch labor I have blended with this natural resource to improve it? Who will willingly give their own labor to future projects if, every time they do, loafers and takers come and freeride on their new property?”
• A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it’s time to give democratic socialists a chance — Zack Beauchamp interviews self-identified "Rubin Democrat" Brad Delong in Vox: [Brad] DeLong believes that the time of people like him running the Democratic Party has passed. “The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left,” DeLong wrote. “We are still here, but it is not our time to lead.” […] The core reason, DeLong argues, is political. The policies he supports depend on a responsible center-right partner to succeed. They’re premised on the understanding that at least a faction of the Republican Party would be willing to support market-friendly ideas like Obamacare or a cap-and-trade system for climate change. This is no longer the case, if it ever were. “Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy,” DeLong notes. “And did George H.W. Bush, did Mitt Romney, did John McCain say a single good word about anything Barack Obama ever did over the course of eight solid years? No, they fucking did not.”
• Trump’s Brilliant Strategy to Dismember U.S. Dollar Hegemony — Michael Hudson: The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold by 1971, its sponsorship and funding of violent regime change wars against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is now driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial institutions. This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire. The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties.
• Why the left and Labour really do need to adopt the core ideas of modern monetary theory — Richard Murphy: I read Jonathan Portes’ attack on modern monetary theory in Prospect with some bemusement. Firstly that is because many in the UK modern monetary theory community will be quite surprised to know that I am, as Portes suggests, its main proponent. I have in fact for some time been quite critical of some of its leading exponents. Second, I was surprised that if Portes did not understand any of my comments, as he suggested, that he had not get in touch to check them. I am not hard to find. And third, the article did in fact seem rather more a defence of Jonathan Portes than it was an attack on MMT. But nonetheless, I would like to set the record straight.
• How Fox News Pushes Trump to Make Every Bad Decision — Matthew Gertz at the Daily Beast: President Donald Trump’s announcement last Friday that he would end the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history without securing funding from congressional Democrats for his long-promised border wall came after weeks of brutal headlines and sagging poll numbers. But when Trump arose the following morning, he did not devote his time to convening his White House advisers to figure out what went wrong or reaching out to Republican congressional leaders to plot their next move. Instead, he did the same thing he’s done on countless days of his administration: He turned on his television, tuned in to his favorite program, Fox & Friends, and started tweeting about what he saw.