The Eco-Fiscal Crisis | James Meadway
The Eco-Fiscal Crisis | James Meadway
What to do — and not do — in an emergency
Appears in this episode
“If you think about how you might get out of this and get to something better, what really matters is the distribution of resources. Who has what? Who holds the wealth? And what are they doing with it? Government borrowing and quantitative easing, this sort of thing, can change some of that, but really when you get down to it, you're going to have to think about how you're going to tax some of that wealth because you need to shift actual resources around. The most effective mechanism we have for doing that is taxation.”
Economics is a pretty bizarre field: A social science masquerading as an actual science, economics inflexibly dictates life, relationships, election manifestos and policy despite none of it being set in stone. The beauty of economics is we can radically overhaul our economic systems and institutions to better serve us, rather than being prey to the outputs of a haggard and worn out system. Such a realisation is, though, beyond the imagination of most economic leaders.
But there are economists out there working to debunk the myths, cut through the noise, and creating policies which would serve both people and planet. James Meadway—former treasury advisor, member of the Progressive Economy Forum council, and the host of the Macrodose podcast—is one of them. He joins me to discuss the emergency and long-term policies we should implement to navigate the climate crisis, the economic crisis, and to radically overhaul and transition our societies to those which support life over productivity. We discuss some alternative frameworks that are being researched around the world, including de-growth and modern monetary theory, whilst James insists that which needs to be re-evaluated is value itself.
The Eco-Fiscal Crisis | James Meadway
If you want to get a very good MMT interview to correct Meadway's misrepresentation and poor understanding of "borrowing" and QE, you should please invite Bill Mitchell or Warren Mosler on.
Great interview. I agree with everything Meadway says, and he makes some interesting observations and points — up to 41 minutes. Then he goes off the rails when MMT is mentioned.
His explanation of MMT isn't wrong, but the criticisms as he explains them are not valid because MMT recognises the constraints of currency sovereignty. MMT does not simply advocate that we "print our way to prosperity". But he doesn't like MMT, so he uses the (very good by the way) "butchering" description which you fed him to further the false criticisms of MMT in a more reasonable sounding tone. That was just irritating, but expected since he has publicly attacked MMT in the past: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/06/against-modern-monetary-theory. To which Bill Mitchell responded: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/06/for-mmt.
I had to stop listening when he explained government borrowing and QE. His explanation is not just wrong, it is complete bull****. Governments don't "borrow", and QE doesn't fund government spending. I can explain, but I'll not go into it here.
Warren is very approachable and I can pass you contacts for both if you are interested.
Then there’s saving the planet. It simply cannot be done by private finance (for profit) and can only be done by the public sector, which is the only way of creating money for free. It’s why governments fight wars on the public payroll and don’t outsource them to the corporate sector. And ‘fighting’ the Polycrisis will be the biggest ‘war’ humankind has ever fought. Except it has to be a war of love and caring not of aggression and aggrandizement.