After a Tory car crash of an election, the British voting public have made their choice. GIMMS will not be analysing the whys and wherefores or laying blame in this MMT lens. That is not our job. Suffice it to say that the team is deeply saddened by the results and its implications for the people of this country who have already suffered greatly at the hands of a government which relentlessly pursued household budget economics at the expense of national well-being. There was no alternative, they said, and the price of that lie has been a heavy one, not just for the vulnerable people who have suffered at the sharp end of cuts but also for our public services and the economy as a whole.
When we set up GIMMS 18 months ago our aims were three-fold; to demonstrate that the dominant economics of our day is deeply flawed, to provide the educational framework to challenge the orthodox narratives of how money works in the real world, and to show that a good economic system should consider the effects of policy as an integral part of its design and not as an afterthought.
Over the last year and more GIMMS has reported and discussed on a weekly basis the latest news using the lens of modern monetary reality. We have aimed, through our weekly blogs, both to relate the human dimension of what happens when governments fail to spend sufficiently to ensure full employment and support the public and social infrastructure upon which the economy relies, and to show how the economic and political ideology successive governments have pursued has left citizens without a voice, disenfranchised and impoverished. Those accounts should shame a rich nation and the politicians who made political choices to pursue austerity. Choices made not because there was a financial imperative to balance the public finances, but to deliver an ideological agenda; an agenda which has created a country of increasingly poverty-stricken citizens, generated huge inequalities in wealth and deliberately sowed division and hate.
The title of last week’s lens asked starkly ‘Which way from here?’ It is to be regretted that the consequences of the last 9 years of austerity were lost in the repetitive ‘Get Brexit done’ election broadcasts which provided the main focus for the Conservative election campaign. It is equally regrettable that the consequences of the Conservative win, whatever the public think they voted for, will be less about reclaiming national sovereignty and more about joining us at the hip to the United States in damaging free trade deals. The confusion remains and the future is even more uncertain.
What should we do next? After the heartache of the last few days and in the run-up to Christmas this is a moment to grieve and a moment to reflect on what has happened and why. But it is definitely not a moment to put our heads under the duvet and await the worst. Our values still stand – our belief that economies work best when they are fairer and more equitable; our determination to address social injustice and the encroaching climate crisis to ensure that there is a future for our children and our grandchildren, is still paramount.
At GIMMS we shall continue our work in educating the nation about how we can pay for our public services, how we can make our economy fairer and more equitable, how we can invest in the future for the benefit of future generations. Nothing has changed and there is still much to do.
Before concluding this last MMT lens of the year and in the light of the objectives which drove the formation of GIMMS we’d like to quote George Monbiot who wrote the day after the election:
‘A major part of this resistance, I believe, must be the reclamation of a culture of public learning. Acquiring useful knowledge requires determined study. Yet we have lost the habit of rigorous learning in adulthood, once seen crucial to social justice. This makes us vulnerable to every charlatan who stands for election, and every lie they amplify through the billionaire press and social media.
Those who govern us would love to keep us in ignorance. When they deride the ‘elites’ they don’t mean people like themselves – the rich and powerful. They mean teachers and intellectuals. They are creating an anti-intellectual culture to make people easier to manipulate. Let’s reinvigorate the workers ‘education’ movements. Let’s restore a rich public culture of self-improvement, open to everyone. Knowledge is the most powerful tool in politics.
GIMMS will continue, we hope, to play a part, however small, in reinvigorating that ‘culture of public learning’.
In the meantime, all that remains for us is to thank you all for your support and wish you a peaceful Christmas and New Year wherever you are. The MMT Lens will return on 10th January, renewed and ready for battle!
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Thank you to everyone at GIMMS. You’re doing a brilliant job and continue to inspire me. I went into a local shop today to buy some Christmas cards and ended up having a 20 mnute conversation with the shop keeper about MMT and the possibilities it brings into view for the kind of society we might prefer to live in. Lots of little fires make a lot of smoke. There’s always an opportunity to talk about MMT (whether they like it or not 🙂 )