“Emperor Nero, it’s said, fiddled while Rome burned. If you don’t want our politicians to continue to follow his example while the world burns, get politically active now.”
Thom Hartmann – Counter Punch
We live in a world of contradictions.
Every day we see warnings about human-induced climate change and its effects on the planet in terms of floods and droughts which is, in turn, impacting on global food production. From the US to Canada, South America, Australia, Asia, and Europe no continent has remained untouched.
In 2019, as reported in the Guardian, 11,000 scientists from 153 countries declared that the world was facing a climate emergency. William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University said that ‘despite 40 years of major global negotiations we have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address the crisis’.
Two years on, the research team that issued the declaration has warned that ‘there has been an unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters including record-shattering heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and devastating cyclones’, and that ‘earth’s vital signs are still deteriorating’.
This week, new research shows a further dangerous slowing of the Gulf Stream. In 2019, currents were at their slowest for at least 1600 years, but a new analysis suggests they may be nearing shutdown, even though precisely when that might happen is still in question. Regardless, we have no time to lose. The Guardian article noted that such an event ‘would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting monsoons that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern US. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.’
Not insignificant consequences, more life-threatening ones.
Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany who did the research, commented that ‘The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary’. And, according to the same 2019 analysis, the planet ‘may have already crossed a series of tipping points’ which will result in ‘an existential threat to civilisation.’
Peter Kalmus, a Climate Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and one of a panel of experts asked by the Guardian about when we need to start changing our economies and ways of consuming and producing said: ‘We have zero years before climate and ecological breakdown, because it’s already here. We have zero years left to procrastinate.’
Globally the signs are not good, and as the recent floods in London and many other climate-induced events elsewhere in the UK have shown, we are not immune. Scientists have said that the UK is singularly unprepared for what is to come, as recent floods have demonstrated. The once-in-a-lifetime events are likely to become ubiquitous features of our climate landscape, and yet we still procrastinate. The government’s recent multi-billion-pound investment in flood prevention is welcome, but it is still failing to deal with the underlying causes of climate change. The unsustainable way we live.
It was surprising therefore that the same Public Accounts Committee that warned earlier this year that the government was not doing enough to prevent damage from flooding, recently said that taxpayers will be left facing significant financial risk for decades to come because of the high levels of government spending on the pandemic.
Once again MPs, with their incomplete knowledge about how the government spends, are claiming that the debt will be a problem. Which then begs the question where do they think the extra cash will come from to deal with the increasingly damaging effects of the climate crisis? If, as they believe, taxpayers are going to be burdened with debt arising from the pandemic?
The contradictions grow daily.
Whilst Rishi Sunak is promising to restore fiscal discipline at the earliest opportunity, the media builds on the narrative that there will be a financial cost to citizens to restore the public accounts to health. While the water pours over our heads. We cannot apparently afford to save ourselves from planetary and human degradation. We must pay back the debt at the cost of human lives.
Surely, at some point, those that govern us will have to acknowledge monetary reality and accept that the real constraints to spending are not fiscal, but real resources and how they are managed to create a sustainable and fairer society.
Contradictions abound wherever you look.
Whilst the Guardian and other media outlets solemnly report regularly on the climate emergency, at the same time they glory, as they did last week, in the expected opening up of the economy to tourism. In this case specifically ‘to unlock more business travel to boost the economy’. We need more growth, but who cares what sort? News of changes to travel restrictions was greeted with a rise in the stock market value of airline companies and demonstrate everything that is wrong about how we determine value. It seems the prospects for a different way of doing things is not so straightforward. The old normal still has its attractions.
In November, the government will be hosting the global climate summit COP26, which is supposedly going to be yet another defining moment of change. Based on previous experience of similar ‘defining moments’ over decades, which promptly got put on the ‘to do’ list and were shelved as soon as everyone went home, why should we believe that this time will be any different?
If it is so important, why are we not grasping the nettle right now? Why are we waiting for another talking shop to tell us what we know today, right now? As has been pointed out in previous MMT Lens, the UK government’s commitment to addressing the climate crisis is lukewarm, known more for its fancy rhetoric than concrete action.
We must not let COP26 become yet another failed opportunity. The time for warnings is over. As Mike Hall, a recent guest on one of GIMMS ‘In Conversation’ events, commenting on social media this week about the slowing of the Gulf Stream, said:
‘This is really shocking. In order to act on, and sustain, any of this, planners and decision makers need to unlearn the mainstream economics drivel they were taught and learn how a monetary economy actually works – something we mostly knew in WWII in building a ‘Mobilisation Economy’. We need to ramp up action now in order to transform all of our major systems by 2050, energy, transportation, industry, agriculture, waste management. We’ll need to eat less meat, farm in ways that store more carbon in the soils, re-forest degraded or abandoned land and restore wetlands.’
But no, instead, the media talks about opening up, creating more unsustainable growth, and unlocking business to boost it, at a time when we should be urgently talking about how we move the global economy towards sustainability, and addressing the huge global wealth inequalities that have kept a destructive economic system in place for decades, creating vast wealth inequity and leading to the on-going decay of our public and social infrastructure.
For over a decade, working people and their families have been at the sharp end of those consequences, which have proved stark, not to mention disturbing, as public money has been shovelled and continues to be shovelled into private profit, whilst at the same time, further austerity in the form of higher taxes or cuts to public spending, is being promoted daily in the media as the solution to ‘paying down the debt’. The message is stuck in a groove that seems inescapable and is preparing us for the next bout of fiscal retrenchment, not because the government needs to pay down the illusory debt, but because it forms part of its neoliberally driven political agenda.
That neoliberal ideology insidiously pervades our belief systems and is destroying us bit by bit. As George Monbiot wrote in an article in 2016
‘We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.
Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job, it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.
Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us.’
The adherence by all political parties to this toxic economic creed, over decades, is responsible for the exploitation of the planet’s resources and has caused huge environmental destruction, it has impoverished people financially and culturally, created huge wealth inequality, left our public and social infrastructure in tatters, and created huge societal divisions to distract us while the political elites continue to serve the insatiable god of unsustainable growth and their own bank accounts. It has divided us and diluted the concept of common cause and cooperation.
As a result, while we are facing an environmental crisis of gigantic, life-threatening proportions, we are now watching the Minister of Hard Decisions in No 11 evaluate options for paying down the non-existent national debt with the media savouring its role in keeping people fearful of the future. What will the Chancellor do? Almost daily that is the question posed. Will he remove the pension triple lock to reduce the pensions bill as if it were a question of monetary affordability, which it is not, or claim that it is a question of intergenerational fairness as if there were a finite pot of money, which there isn’t. Or will he continue with his plan to withdraw the £20 Universal Credit uplift from some of the poorest people in the country? People who were already struggling to make ends meet before the pandemic.
With this week’s announcement that energy prices will rise, charities are rightly warning that this will hit families very hard at a time when many household budgets are already stretched to the limit.
While the government spews out its rhetoric, our society is in meltdown and our children, who represent the future, are bearing the brunt of government failure. This week it was reported that high levels of deprivation in the north-east of England are driving more and more demand for children’s social care services. A Director of children’s services said that ‘poverty is stark, shameful and obvious. Life chances are blighted. I’ve worked in a number of local authorities all over the country, but I’ve never worked anywhere where poverty is as bad and life chances so poor.
Whilst directors are calling for a radical rethink of how to provide good foster homes for children who need them and recommend the removal or capping of profit-making opportunities in the residential care sector, we should also be looking at the origins of this failure, which is rooted not only in government cuts to spending over a decade, but also the insecure, low wage employment environment which has been promoted for decades and which, in turn, has impacted on the lives of many families.
The pandemic is not over, furlough is ending, and unemployment is predicted to rise as a result. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research said this week that the jobless rate would likely increase from 4.8% to 5.4%. Whilst an upbeat picture is being presented contending that the opening up of the economy will lead to new jobs, nothing is certain if the Chancellor continues along the fiscal retrenchment route. Cutting spending or increasing taxes as the Chancellor suggested earlier this year might be an option, would be, at this time of great challenge and uncertainty, the wrong path to take. As would increasing taxes to pay for social care as No 10 proposed last month or as Zoe Williams from the Guardian put it in an article this week the ‘blindingly obvious way’ would be to fund it with ‘inheritance tax’.
Again, we have politicians and journalists reinforcing the pervasive message that taxes fund spending, without even thinking about the economic consequences of doing so. Whilst they promote boosting the economy, they take away the means for that to happen. Again, contradictions.
Taking money out of people’s pockets when the economy is still emerging from the effects of the pandemic would be not just unwise, but hugely damaging. Adding to the harm already caused by 10 years of spending cuts and public policy decisions which have ravaged our public and social infrastructure, forced people into homelessness and hunger, driven poor wages and employment insecurity with all the associated consequences on people’s health and well-being, would be tantamount to madness. Combine that with the challenges posed by the climate emergency, such a route would be more than disastrous.
Worse, the fact that it is predicated on the lies of monetary scarcity or rising debt, which it is claimed will pose a financial burden on future generations, begs the question, yet again, in whose interests do such lies work? Certainly, not those of working people and their families and friends, nor the planet!
Although much improvement has been made through MMT education networks such as GIMMS and the MMT Podcast, with a nation still largely ignorant of monetary reality, there remains much work to do. At first sight, the mention of economics may be seen as irrelevant to people’s lives, inducing an immediate mental switch off. It is understandable. But once one realises the potential of such an understanding it becomes the art of the possible. Economics is not an arcane subject; it is about us and the impact of government spending and politically driven policies on our lives. Nobody needs a degree to understand this, and the basics of how the government spends can be described very simply in less than 10 minutes, as the video below shows.
While the right-wing press cries wolf over public debt and urges fiscal retrenchment, those on the progressive left are still, disappointingly, adopting Margaret Thatcher’s narrative about how governments spend. Week in, week out, left-wing groups on social media are awash with memes decrying the Conservative record on deficits and debt. Progressive Labour politicians demand on their pages that the rich are made to pay their tax so that public services can be funded, when, instead, they should talk about taxing the rich to address wealth and real resource inequalities to remove some of their purchasing power and the political influence their wealth wields. That is just as powerful a message and stops dead the incorrect narrative that taxes fund spending. As Warren Mosler says, it’s all a question of sequence and progressive politicians need to understand that governments like the UK’s spend to tax not tax to spend, and whilst they also indulge in the illusion of borrowing, they can’t do that either until they have spent the money into existence. It’s simple when you know.
Instead of calling out the Tories on their economic record, those on the left allow themselves to be side-tracked by such memes which do more damage than good and reinforce in the minds of their readers the idea that the public finances are like their own household budgets. Instead of worrying about the size of the National Debt they could, instead and more productively, focus more on critiquing the economic policies which have, for more than a decade, created huge poverty and inequality, created vast disparities in wealth and destroyed our public infrastructure, whilst at the same time benefitting global corporations and those politicians that serve them through the revolving door.
At election time, the household budget narrative is used by politicians of all shades to discredit each other’s records on deficit and debt. The note left in the Treasury by the Labour MP Liam Byrne, claiming that there was no money left, is an example of this false narrative and proved a gift to the Conservatives allowing them to justify their austerity agenda.
This is absolutely the wrong measure by which to determine the efficacy or otherwise of a government’s time in power. Such beliefs will ultimately drive us into a destructive cul-de-sac at a time when we need to address the climate emergency and bring about a just transition towards a sustainable world as a matter of urgency.
It matters not who increased deficits or created the most debt – it is a red herring designed to take the public’s eyes off the real ball. What matters are the economic conditions at the time and how the government responded. What did they do or not do to ensure the economy could function effectively both in good times and bad? Who benefited and who did not?
Currently, as Frances Ryan, the journalist and disability campaigner, wrote in the Guardian this week:
‘The gap between reality and Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” rhetoric could hardly be starker. It is only concrete action that can lead us down a different path: on housing, disability, insecurity at work, and the gaping holes in our welfare state. A government that leaves millions of the public unable to even eat or wash has, by any definition, failed. Poverty is indeed a mark of shame – but one solely on ministers’ shoulders.’
It is interesting to note this week that Steve Baker, who is the Conservative MP for Wycombe in the traditionally conservative home counties, has urged ministers to abandon its plans to cut universal credit, remarking on the ‘intolerable’ hunger and poverty faced by many of his constituents.
These are the direct consequences of a decade and more of spending decisions and public policy.
Last week, it was astonishing to learn that the Prime Minister and his Home Secretary Priti Patel were proposing a new crime-fighting strategy consisting of ‘chain gangs’ of offenders dressed in such a way as to draw public attention to who was litter picking. Will they be calling for a return of the stocks next or public shaming? Apart from the vile nature of their proposals, reminiscent of Victorian ideals and Dickens novels, it is symptomatic of their singular neoliberal belief in the value of personal responsibility which, at the same time, ignores the role of government in creating an economic environment that strips people of the means by which they can live with dignity and sufficiency and is conducive to an increase in crime.
James Timpson from the UK shoe repair chain was critical of the proposals and tweeted in response:
‘Instead of making offenders wear high viz jackets in chain gangs, how about helping them get a real job instead? In my shops we employ lots of ex-offenders and they wear a shirt and tie. Same people, different approach, a much better outcome.’
Why not go one step further and introduce a properly funded Job Guarantee so that no one faces the indignity of involuntary unemployment? It would provide useful community-based work at a living wage, give people employment and training opportunities when they need them and allow them to make their contribution to society and the economy. It would, at the same time, also promote a sense of self-worth and improve their chances of transitioning into private sector work when the opportunity arises.
Over the past year, we have learned the value of real resources, in this case, the people who do the jobs and keep the economy functioning and productive. Leaving people to flounder, without good work or wages, is detrimental to those affected and detrimental to the economy. These are the people who should be paid decent wages and benefit from good terms and conditions, not be at the mercy of employers exploiting their labour for more profit. A Job Guarantee sets the price for labour and ensures that working people don’t have to work for peanuts or precariously.
This is a time for radical action. Not just to deal with the pressing and urgent climate crisis by rethinking how we live our lives, but also to deal with the vast global inequities of wealth and resources that have arisen over many decades as a result of the exploitation of both people and the finite resources that sustain our western lifestyles.
Time to think the unthinkable! Time to start thinking MMT.
Join our mailing list
If you would like GIMMS to let you know about news and events, please click to sign up here
Support us
The Gower Initiative for Money Studies is run by volunteers and relies on donations to continue its work. If you would like to donate, please see our donations page here