The Challenge

This is a letting my heart out moment and I can’t promise it is going to be coherent. But I see some very important things that have happened recently as stakes in the new ground of economic thinking and in politics. There is a challenge laid down to find something new, built out of the old

1) The UK Green Party. Zach Polansky, as membership is soaring, has been saying we must change everything, and he makes it sound possible. This is because people are realising that the system is so broken, you just have to. He also points out that the ideas of mainstream economics – austerity, low wages, trickle down, are flawed and that it does not have to be this way.

2) The Your Party with Jeremy Corbyn invited @Steve Keen to explain the failings of economics and how the system could work for the many with tweaking. This is one of the important stakes – that a political party embraces an economic second opinion. This to me is the beginning of the breaking of the hegemony of mainstream economic theory imbued in all political parties. That is over, that stake is in the ground. TINA meets TAMA There are many alternatives

3) Together with Richard Murphy, Steve has established a new stake in the ground about the way the economy works: it is a system, uses double entry book keeping, of money both going around – where there is no black black hole of government spending, but it benefits someone, and the actual black hole of where credit from banks is money that disappears when then loan is repaid.

4) MMT has been going on long enough for us to say this next stake is in the ground, although it might be in so shallow it can topple: the essential thing to look at when making a national budget is the availability of the resources to drive the economic activity that budget implies.

With the big stake in the ground, that economics is flawed and other thinking can enter politics it should open the floodgates of ideas. Because what comes next is important. This is the WHAT section,

One thing to for rebels to consider is the ideas on the shelf that the argument “how could we pay for it” has been shot down.

Ideas that I have seen:

BIG Basic income Guarantee

JAG Job Agency Guarantee: A Nationalised Job Agency that employs everyone who wants to and pays the BIG whether they are working or not, but guarantees a job.

CORE nationalisation of those operations that are considered to be core to a functioning decent society and to be provided universally.

Now to the HOW section. This is where you come in.

There are eleven major elements of the modern economic system. (Correct me if I am wrong)

1-5 FIVE types of taxes. Wealth, Business, Employment, Private and VAT

6 The national budget

7 Banks, private mostly limited companies

8 Central Bank

9 Government paper system, like bonds, gilts etc.

10 Firms – of different ownership constellations

11 Municipalities

Formulating the challenge:

GIVEN that the political landscape has moved, and a field has opened to consider mainstream economics as flawed.

GIVEN that we are saddled (or blessed) with the present economic system with all its plumbing and parts

GIVEN that most people are unhappy with the present situation

GIVEN that we are close to resource constraints and need to focus on resources

GIVEN that there is a basic floor that we could all agree that society should stand on (Doughnut economics) Live on your income, stop damaging the earth, stop polluting, reign in the power of those with money to influence politics, … (you add here)

HOW COULD WE change the ways the ten elements work together as a system to enable the provision of the universal basic standards we all long for?