Tag Archives: framing

Over the years it’s been clear to me that we live in a fictional world when it comes to economic matters. The mainstream has created this world that bears little relationship to reality and which serves the interests of a few at the expense of the majority. But the way in which this fiction is inculcated in the framing and language of our public debates leads the majority to think that the conduct of economic policy is somehow in their best interests, even if, at times, governments claim we...

Bingo!By "propaganda" Caitlin Johnstone means "narrative control."Maintaining narrative control was relatively easy prior to the Internet and social media. Now, the process has turned to access and exclusion as the means of censorship through control of the media and social media in particular. Access and exclusion have always been a reality in the case of print media. Now this is being extended to digital platforms. Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue JournalistPropaganda Is The Root Of All Our...

Last week, Thomas Fazi and I had a response to a recent British attack on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) published in The Tribune magazine (June 5, 2019) – For MMT. The article were were responding to – Against MMT – written by a former British Labour Party advisor, was not really about MMT at all, as you will see. Instead, it appeared to be an attempt to defend the Labour Party’s Fiscal Credibility Rule, that has been criticised for being a neoliberal concoction. Whenever, progressives use...

Trump showing his age in denouncing progressive proposals as "socialist"? Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg (D) on Sunday dismissed President Trump's efforts to portray Democratic policy pitches as "socialism," arguing that the term no longer carries negative connotations. “I think he's clinging to a rhetorical strategy that was very powerful when he was coming of age 50 years ago, but it's just a little bit different right now," Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor who has launched...

One thing that interests me in the reports is a particular (very wonkish) detail. For the US and most other countries, the quarter’s GDP is routinely reported relative to the preceding quarter, not relative to four quarters ago. Why do the media and markets routinely focus on the 1-quarter growth rate for the US but focus on the 4-quarter growth rate for China? It is not because China’s National Bureau of Statistics fails to make the 1-quarter change available. It’s there in footnote 2 of...

More framing.This is a really good article. Concise, precise, and clearly formulated so that anyone can understand it. Disseminate widely.Here is the lede: Governments of all stripes base their policies on mainstream economics. Powerful challenges to the mainstream, especially from ecological economics and modern monetary theory, explain why we are in a hole and can’t seem to get out. If this article is largely correct, we can conclude that the economics profession is a major cause –...

Some ideas seem too good to be true. Like this one. It comes from a 13-year-old listener named Amy. She says she knows the government has trouble finding enough money to pay for stuff like schools and hospitals. And she wondered if it has considered just printing more money. She asked us: Can the government do that? Just make more money to pay for stuff? Fiscal hawks say, 'no way!' We'd have crazy inflation! But there's a group of economists that says, 'yes, we can create way more money,...

About framing and cultural mindset. Important now that MMT is gaining traction and neoliberalism is being challenged by social democracy. This is an issue that Bill Mitchell among MMT economists has been particularly devoted to, although they are all concerned with it as a matter of strategy now that MMT is ascendent. My point here is a disquieting one. It is the case that many neoliberal ideas are plain wrong; neoliberalism, for example, might well have retarded productivity growth. It...

This is the third addition in the ‘Exploring the effectiveness of social media’ series, which is reporting current research I am doing with Dr Louisa Connors, which seeks to understand how best to use social media to advance an awareness and understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We will be discussing some of this work at the The Second International Conference of Modern Monetary Theory (New York, September 28-30), that is, later this week. There is no doubt that social media (among...

Strategy and tactics. Important for MMT activists.Bill Mitchell – billy blogExploring the effectiveness of social media – Part 2Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia