by Summary:
I keep hearing from friends who live in Britain that I will be shocked when I get there on Thursday of this week after a nearly four year absence. One friend, who has just returned said that the deterioration in the public infrastructure is now fairly evident. Despite my absence, I have been keeping a regular eye on the data and so these anecdotal reports and reflections come as no surprise. It is obvious that the Tory government has sought a depoliticisation strategy by cutting local government spending capacity as a way of diverting blame for the consequences of their austerity push. The problem now is that after 13 or so years of Tory rule, the cuts are eating into the very essence of civil society in Britain. Like all these neoliberal motivated cuts, the cuts to council grants will
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I keep hearing from friends who live in Britain that I will be shocked when I get there on Thursday of this week after a nearly four year absence. One friend, who has just returned said that the deterioration in the public infrastructure is now fairly evident. Despite my absence, I have been keeping a regular eye on the data and so these anecdotal reports and reflections come as no surprise. It is obvious that the Tory government has sought a depoliticisation strategy by cutting local government spending capacity as a way of diverting blame for the consequences of their austerity push. The problem now is that after 13 or so years of Tory rule, the cuts are eating into the very essence of civil society in Britain. Like all these neoliberal motivated cuts, the cuts to council grants will
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I keep hearing from friends who live in Britain that I will be shocked when I get there on Thursday of this week after a nearly four year absence. One friend, who has just returned said that the deterioration in the public infrastructure is now fairly evident. Despite my absence, I have been keeping a regular eye on the data and so these anecdotal reports and reflections come as no surprise. It is obvious that the Tory government has sought a depoliticisation strategy by cutting local government spending capacity as a way of diverting blame for the consequences of their austerity push. The problem now is that after 13 or so years of Tory rule, the cuts are eating into the very essence of civil society in Britain. Like all these neoliberal motivated cuts, the cuts to council grants will prove to be myopic. The dystopia they are creating will come back to haunt the whole nation.Something similar happened in the US since the 60s (Vietnam era). The deterioration in public infrastructure has continued. The problems have bipartisan recognition but they have not yet been dealt with effectively because of an erroneous notion of affordability. Ironically, funding existing and projected needs adequately would draw forth increased supply of resources, create new jobs, and stimulate demand without necessarily being inflationary.
MMT shows how financial affordability is never the problem for a monetary sovereign if real resources are available to address the issues. Of course, this is some competition in allocation of real resources to consider also. The constraint is not the availability of funding but rather of inflation if demand outstrips the availability of resources to meet it.
Then it becomes a matter of setting priorities. This is a political matter involving many influences. A big reason that analysis of priorities differs among interest groups is incentives and in addition, different parties use different frameworks for framing the analysis.
William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory
Civil society is in jeopardy in the UK as funding cuts erode local government capacity
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia