Values

The sociopaths rise to the top of power by clawing, bullying, intimidating, lying, charming, betraying their ways.

They rise to the top by being enabled by the bullied, the craven, the stupid, the naive, the opportunistic, the distracted, the brainwashed, and/or by crony bullies.

Colin Todhunter in “Psychopathy, Politics and The New World Order” writes: Read below the fold...

Based on what I perceive happening in industrialized society and in particular the U.S.
the psychological state of denial is fully rampant.

This article titled "America in denial: We're number 29 (of 30)" certaainly makes a case for such a state. Read below the fold...

A few weeks ago I called for a technocratic debate on the merits of the JG, relative to other fiscal policies. A number of bloggers took the charge but the debate was not immune to ideological biases, which proved the starting point of my piece that one cannot separate fact from theory or ideology (and by ideology I do not mean the derogatory use of the word, but that which signifies ‘ontology’ or a ‘world view’). What I didn’t expect is for friends and sympathizers to resurrect one particularly invidious charge we have long heard from MMT deniers, namely that MMT is pushing authoritarian policies.

Oh, boy. How did we even get here? I thought this was going to be a technocratic debate. Read below the fold...

This is an introduction to a series of 16 posts I began in reply to a number of posts by John Carney at the CNBC blog and Cullen Roche at Pragmatic Capitalism, and discussions replying to them. The posts by Carney and Roche criticized the MMT Job Guarantee (JG) proposal. Read below the fold...

This is the concluding post in this Job Guarantee and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) series. Read below the fold...

In this post I'll list the primary components of the MMT Knowledge Claim Network (KCN) classified under the major categories: the Social/Value Gaps; the Knowledge Gaps (Problems); the Descriptive Components (including Solutions); the Policy Prescriptions; and the Narratives.

The Social/Value Gaps mentioned by MMT developers

-- Failure of Economics to contribute to the Public Purpose as defined by the failure to close the other social value gaps listed below;

-- the gap between actual output and projected “full” output;

-- High involuntary unemployment vs. full employment;

Read below the fold...

The recent extensive blogosphere discussion on the JG and the MMT core began with a post by John Carney that stated his opposition to the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Job Guarantee proposal and claimed it either wasn't an essential component of MMT, or that if it was, then MMT was wrong. Cullen Roche, a well-known popularizer of MMT at his Pragmatic Capitalism blog then asserted: Read below the fold...

In my first two posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event and discussed the pre=conference phase and the first two steps. As we saw, these steps reflected a strong bias toward socializing participants into the idea that there is a deficit problem and that it has to treated by cutting expenditures and/or raising taxes. Read below the fold...