Linkage

Degrowth lacks a theory of how the state can finance ambitious social-ecological policies and public provisioning systems while maintaining macroeconomic stability during a reduction of economic activity. Addressing this question, we present a synthesis of degrowth scholarship and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) rooted in their shared understanding of money as a public good and their common opposition to artificial scarcity. We present two arguments. First, we draw on MMT to argue that states with sufficient monetary sovereignty face no obstacle to funding the policies necessary for a just and sustainable degrowth transition. Increased public spending neither requires nor implies GDP growth. Second, we draw on degrowth research to bring MMT in line with ecological reality. MMT posits that fiscal spending is limited only by inflation, and thus the productive capacity of the economy. We argue that efforts to deal with this constraint must also pay attention to social and ecological limits. Based on this synthesis we propose a set of monetary and fiscal policies suitable for a stable degrowth transition, including a stronger regulation of private finance, tax reforms, price controls, public provisioning systems and an emancipatory job guarantee. This approach can support broad democratic mobilization for a degrowth transition.

The central argument of this book is that the foundations for sustainable prosperity lie in an approach to economic management based on modern monetary theory and a job guarantee. This approach builds on the work of Keynes, Kalecki, Minsky, Davidson, Godley and other Post- Keynesian economists—as well as research by behavioral economists including Simon, Kahneman and Loewenstein—to explore the role that a permanent, equitable job guarantee could play in building an inclusive, participatory and just society. Orthodox (neoclassical) economics, in its various forms, has failed to deliver sustainable prosperity. An important reason for this failure is its lack of realistic foundations. It misrepresents both human nature and economic institutions, and its use as a frame for the development and assessment of economic policy proposals has had disastrous consequences for social inclusion and the quality of life of millions of people. This book discusses an alternative, more realistic and more useful set of economic foundations, which could deliver the opportunity of a decent quality of life with dignity to all.  

If global energy consumption returns to its pre-pandemic growth rate, it will be almost impossible to transition to a zero-emission or net-zero-emission energy system by 2050 in the absence of large-scale CO2 removal. Since relying on unproven technologies for CO2 removal is speculative and risky, this paper considers an energy descent scenario for reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions from energy by 2050. To drive the rapid transition from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources and ensure demand reduction, funding is needed urgently in order to implement four strategies: (i) technology change, i.e., implementing the growth of zero-carbon energy production, end-use energy efficiency and ‘green’ energy carriers, together with ongoing R&D on CO2 removal; (ii) reducing climate impacts; (iii) reducing energy consumption by social and behavioural changes; and (iv) improving human wellbeing while increasing social justice. Modern monetary theory explains how monetary sovereign governments, with their own fiat currencies, can create the necessary funding without financial constraints, although constraints do result from the productive capacities of their economies. The energy transition could be part-funded by a significant transfer of resources from monetary sovereign countries of the global North to the global South, financed by currency issuance.

At the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), we are committed to three things: public debate around new ideas; sustainable investment in social infrastructures; and public policy aimed at improving the quality of people’s lives. We have been inspired by experiments in universal basic income (UBI) around the world, and by a series of discussions about how to rethink economies, both local and global. In this report, we lay out some ideas about how to deliver quality of life for the UK, improve public services in ways that are affordable, and link radical policy initiatves to improved social integration and cohesion. These are ideas for debate across the broadest spectrum in the UK, including local communities. We call this set of ideas Universal Basic Services.

MMT had been making inroads before the pandemic in terms of the number of lawmakers who were starting to ask whether they had gotten some big things wrong over the years. I was in meetings in Washington, DC, in February of 2020 with very high-level members of both the House and the Senate. This was leading up to the November 2020 election. So I’m sitting there, and they’re talking about the Trump administration’s massive tax cuts, how they increase the deficit and the national debt, adding some $2 trillion to deficits with total disregard for the fiscal impacts.

This is what Republicans always do when they have power. They don’t care about debt and deficits. They focus like a laser on passing their agenda. So they got their huge tax cuts passed.

Democrats fall for this story every time. When they get into power, they try to tighten the purse strings and say, “We’re going to be good stewards of ‘taxpayer money’ and try to avoid running deficits” and all that. Meanwhile, the Republicans never do that. They just use the deficit to pass their agenda.

Democrats had me come in and they said, “Listen, we think we’ve been misled about the risks of deficits. We don’t think that these things are the bogeyman that we’ve long been told, that it’s the road to ruin.” MMT had caused them to rethink these things.

On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced that Dr. David L. Mills, the inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), died peacefully at age 85 on January 17, 2024. The announcement came in a post on the Internet Society mailing list after Cerf was informed of David's death by Mills' daughter, Leigh.

"He was such an iconic element of the early Internet," wrote Cerf.

Dr. Mills created the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in 1985 to address a crucial challenge in the online world: the synchronization of time across different computer systems and networks. In a digital environment where computers and servers are located all over the world, each with its own internal clock, there's a significant need for a standardized and accurate timekeeping system.

NTP provides the solution by allowing clocks of computers over a network to synchronize to a common time source. This synchronization is vital for everything from data integrity to network security. For example, NTP keeps network financial transaction timestamps accurate, and it ensures accurate and synchronized timestamps for logging and monitoring network activities.

Following the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the hardline nationalist party Likud came back to power under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has spent the rest of his political career in a relentless and so far successful effort to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. He has never been a partner for peace with any Palestinian faction. His game is to play them off against one another in order to frustrate the Palestinian national struggle. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told his Likud colleagues in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” By weakening and discrediting the moderates in the West Bank, Netanyahu inadvertently assisted the rise of Hamas.

The 1988 Hamas Charter is antisemitic, denies Israel’s right to exist and calls for a unitary Muslim state in the whole of historic Palestine, “from the river to the sea” as the slogan goes. But like the PLO before it, Hamas gradually moderated its political programme. Perhaps realising that the suicide bombings it carried out during the Second Intifada were both morally wrong and politically counter-productive, it opted for the parliamentary road to power. In January 2006, Hamas won an absolute majority in an all-Palestine election, in both Gaza and the West Bank, and proceeded to form a government. This was a more moderate, pragmatic government and it offered to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel for 20, 30 or 40 years. Although the Charter was not revised until 2017, in a long series of speeches Hamas leaders indicated that they would accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. 

Israel refused to recognise the democratically elected Hamas government and turned down its offer of negotiations. The US and EU followed Israel’s lead and joined it in measures of economic warfare designed to undermine it. The western powers claim to believe in democracy but evidently not when the Palestinian people vote for the “wrong” party. To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, if the Israeli and western governments are dissatisfied with the Palestinian people, they should dissolve the people and elect another.

Today I’m launching CityDensity.com to compare the world’s big cities.

The website works by breaking the world up into tiny squares, with each square having 1km sides. Because the squares are essentially random they’re also fair - no political borders can make a city seem bigger or smaller than it is. 

Australia’s system has long been designed in a deficit paradigm, underpinned by two flawed theories. Firstly, that unemployment is always an individual failing (ignoring structural and major barriers like ageism, racism, a lack of suitable work and thin labour markets, health, and disability). This drives the belief that if you only beat disadvantaged people hard enough to do the same things over and over they’ll somehow magically get a job, and if they don’t they’re lazy—the pernicious myth of the ‘dole-bludger’. Secondly, that more choice and competition in human services in every place, as well as harsh performance management, will inevitably result in better services and employment outcomes—especially for vulnerable and long-term unemployed people. Both theories have been proven to be rubbish, yet we have persisted in designing the entire system around them. The system designed for the few who cheat–around the worst people in society and the worst providers.

Consistent with the findings of previous reviews, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of unemployed people want to work. But the current rigid approach to mutual obligations is killing unemployed people’s intrinsic motivations and efforts to seek work, by drowning them and those paid to help them in a mountain of red tape, compliance requirements and pointless mandatory activities. People are made to do silly things that don’t help them get a job—such as pointless training courses or applying for jobs they won’t get—and are then harshly and repeatedly sanctioned for trivial or inadvertent breaches of prescriptive rules. It is ridiculous that over 70per cent of people with providers have been subject to payment suspensions despite zero evidence that 70per cent of people are cheating the system. The Robodebt Royal Commission’s finding that fraud in the welfare system is minuscule is apt. The nature and extent of mutual obligations is like using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito.