Modern Monetary Theory and environmental sustainability – Part 1

There is regular commentary here that seeks to argue that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is flawed, bereft or worse because apparently it avoids any discussion of the natural environment. This apparently arises from the inherent conclusion in MMT that growth in aggregate demand (and real GDP) is required to maintain high levels of employment, which are considered both economically and socially desirable. This is the first part of a two-part blog on this topic. We will see that MMT is highly sympathetic to the challenges posed by anthropogenic global warming (a catch-all term) and central policy indications that follow from an understanding of MMT (for example, the superiority of employment buffer stocks) lead to an understanding of how MMT is a green paradigm as opposed to mainstream (neo-liberal) economics and much of Post Keynesian thinking, the latter which relies on generalised expansion as the solution to entrenched unemployment. We conclude that those who seek to dismiss MMT because it doesn’t satisfy their particular pet solution to climate change issues have probably not read some of the earlier MMT literature nor understood fully what is required to develop and disseminate a new way of thinking about the economy. Further, MMT is not a theory about everything! What we will see is that when MMT advocates economic growth it does so with a very different view of what that economic growth might be comprised of and driven.

At an early Centre of Full Employment and Equity Conference (CofFEE) held in 1999 in Newcastle, Australia, I presented a paper, which probed the question of the “Future of Work” and the environmental constraints facing capitalist economies. This conference paper was subsequently published as W.F. Mitchell (2000) ‘The Job Guarantee in a Small Open Economy’. Economic and Labour Relations Review, Vol. 11, supplement). A scanned copy is available – The Job Guarantee in a Small Open Economy.

At the same conference, UMKC MMT colleague Mat Forstater gave an exceptional paper – Full Employment and Environmental Sustainability – where he outlined the way in which the central themes of MMT (with respect to policy implications) were consistent with the goal of environmental sustainability.

So it is clear that at least 14 odd years ago, the early developers of MMT were intent on placing their ideas within a debate about environmental limits and sustainability. There was no naivety, ignorance or disdain to the issues and it was obvious that a credible alternative economic framework had to be compatible with the broader challenges of our day.

Statement from commentators that MMT is not a valid theory because it does not provide a “full, rigorous and empirically supportable answer” to the issues of Limits To Growth and biospheric homeostatic boundary problems thus reflect the failure of the readers to appreciate the full MMT literature, how we have decided to develop the economic thought process, and the scope of the ideas.

Which leads me to admit, that unfortunately, MMT is not a theory of everything. It doesn’t provide any insights, for example, about Newton’s law of universal gravitation! It cannot tell us why the Planck constant orders microscopic action among physical forms. My, even the terminology – photons, wavelengths and the rest of the nomenclature of quantum mechanics is missing from MMT writing. MMT also will not help you understand why your sporting team loses continually.

But the point is that the early MMT work clearly recognised that economic growth and environment decay are intrinsically linked and an answer to the latter required a different approach than that offered by the mainstream economists (more about which later).

Given the macroeconomic imperative to achieve and sustain full employment, which requires economic growth in the usual meaning of the term – growth in output stimulates employment growth – we knew we had to address the apparent conflict between growth and environmental sustainability.

Further, the fact that I don’t write about these environmental matters every day or rarely in the context of this blog doesn’t mean that the challenges are ignored. Once we get people understanding the basic operations of a monetary system then we can move onto more sophisticated debates. The evidence is very clear – most people still have very little idea of how the economy works and why things happen the way they do.

Sustainability also cuts across dimensional boundaries. It was clear to the early MMT developers that defining full employment in terms of an adequacy of employment opportunities invokes a spatial dimension if we introduce another policy priority – the sustainability of social settlements – where people live and develop communities.

While neoclassical economics tends to think of space (inasmuch as it does) in terms of comparative and competitive advantage, I prefer to think that local communities are the building blocks of society.

The resilience and richness of communities, which in turn is predicated on the depth and strength of social networks, should be an intrinsic design element in a spatially-oriented macroeconomic policy whose aims extend beyond a concern with aggregate outcomes. An approach of this kind departs markedly from the pursuits of those who would merely supplement the Schumpeterian Post-National Workfare State (SPWS) with policies to promote ‘social capital’.

Motivation is provided by evidence that differentials in regional employment growth rates and regional unemployment rates have persisted in most countries since the early 1990s. In Australia, for example, despite relatively robust economic growth since the 1991 recession, which might have promoted convergence in regional labour market outcomes, spatial disparities in unemployment and employment growth have widened.

Some economic geographers (such as Bob Jessop) chart the development of the SPWS in advanced industrial economies driven by transformations in production technology and neo-liberal political strategies. The characteristics of these developments include a ‘hollowing-out’ of the national state in favour of regional devolution and supranational political forms (for example, NAFTA and the EU), the development of new forms of governmentality (facilitative, catalytic, involving partnerships with NGOs and private sector agencies), and a displacement of Keynesian welfare states with systems promoting international competitive advantage, often at the expense of declining ‘old industrial areas’.

Keynesians typically argue that regional employment varies with the changing distribution of industries across space and that the impact of aggregate factors is largely uniform within those industries.

However, even after controlling for industry composition, low growth regions experience stagnant labour conditions and negative shocks endure for a long time.

Neoclassical explanations for poor rates of convergence in regional outcomes tend to focus on wage differentials, low labour mobility and related structural impediments. I have published a lot of papers in the last decade which allows one to refute these claims and demonstrate that employment growth differentials and regional job accessibility strongly determine the health of regional labour markets.

There is strong evidence from various countries suggesting that low rates of job accessibility combine with patterns of local interactions to isolate the long-term joblessness. In this regard, the emerging literature on social interaction and dependence among economic agents and spatial spillovers is relevant to progressive economists who want to design full employment strategies.

These effects are compounded by agglomeration effects within industrial districts, which seem to be driven by ‘local information spillovers’ and capital accumulation processes.

Regional spillovers are most likely to exist in regions tightly linked by interregional migration, commuting and trade. These spill-over effects ensure that local shocks spread to neighbouring regions. Neighbourhood stratification and widening inequalities accompany these endogenous spatial dependencies.

These issues have occupied our research group for the last 15 years or so. What we argue is that full employment and the continuity and health of the social settlement are necessary conditions for achieving economic and social sustainability, which is the overarching aim.

However, they are not sufficient conditions. Without a balance being achieved between these elements and the natural (physical) environment, the macroeconomic situation is not sustainable.

Thus, a forward-looking, progressive macroeconomics – such as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) – requires economic activity to be in balance with the natural environment. There are two aspects of this concept of ‘sustainability’ that are relevant to macroeconomic policy design: (a) the level of production (and consumption) must be consistent with the demands of the physical environment; and (b) locally- or community-based production should be encouraged.

All Post Keynesians agree that the orthodox (neo-liberal) unemployment buffer stock approach (NAIRU) to inflation control is costly and unacceptable. The neo-liberal solution to the resulting unemployment is to pursue supply-side policies (labour market deregulation, welfare state retrenchment, privatisation, and public-private partnerships) to give the economy ‘room’ to expand without cost pressures emerging.

Post Keynesians, in general, reject this strategy because the sacrifice ratios are high and the distributional implications (creation of under class and working poor and loss of essential services) are unsavoury.

However there is no alternative consensus. Some Post Keynesians, following closely the policy recommendations of Keynes himself advocate what I have termed ‘generalised expansion’, where the government ensures that spending is sufficient to purchase all available output.

In essence, this policy approach, purchases at market prices or provides incentives to profit-seekers to create private employment expansion. As a rule, public and private capital formation is targeted, although cash handouts to promote private consumption spending is also seen as being part of the generalised expansion toolkit.

Typically, Post Keynesians advocate generalised fiscal and monetary expansion mediated by incomes policy and controlled investment as a solution to unemployment. You will find no shortage of papers written by leading Post Keynesian economists advocating this approach.

Where MMT departs from this approach is that recognises that (indiscriminate) expansion in isolation is unlikely to lead to employment opportunities for the most disadvantaged members of society and does not incorporate an explicit counter-inflation mechanism.

It also fails to address the spatial labour market disparities. How can we be sure that the investment stimulated by fiscal expansion will provide jobs in failing regions? Upon what basis are the most disadvantaged workers with skills that are unlikely to match those required by new technologies going to be included in the ‘generalised expansion’? Where is the inflation anchor?

In the 1999 paper I mentioned above, I wrote that:

Even if it were possible to expand demand enough to promote growth sufficient to keep pace with labour force growth and productivity growth and mop up the huge stocks of long-term unemployment, how could the natural ecosystems, already under great strain, cope? There is a need to change the composition of final output toward environmentally sustainable activities. It is not increased demand per se that is necessary, but increased demand in certain areas of activity.

Which provides the clue to the approach that MMT takes when advocating economic growth. Growth is necessary for employment but it cannot be unfettered and left to the market. It has to be a very guided growth with new tools not normally used by economists to help governments decide on what their contribution should be and how they should regulate the contribution of the non-government sector.

It is clear that MMT places the government at the centre of the solution to environmental problems. In the paper by Mathew Forstater cited above we read:

Because competition compels firms to base their decisions on private cost minimization, there are considerable obstacles to producing green products, utilizing cleaner technologies and alternative energy. Absent a comprehensive environmental program, expanding the private sector through Keynesian stimulus all but assures increased use of nonrenewable resources, more pollution, and more products with short life cycles and that harm the environment. Pumping up the private sector does not address the issues regarding the composition of output and the technological structure of production, so crucial for sustainability

This raises the issue noted above of how economists conceive of decision-making and policy frameworks. In this blog – Australia’s response to climate change gets worse … – I outlined for non-economists how carbon taxes and trading schemes work.

I also reported on a public forum that I was invited to speak at in 2009 on the future for Australian coal. This invitation stemmed as a result of a lot of modelling I have done with my CofFEE colleagues on the employment impacts of replacing coal with renewables.

I provided links to the program content (it was an ABC national production) in this blog – Climate change – Australian government further entrenches the market myth.

At that Forum, I argued for a rules-based regulation approach rather than a market-based approach to this issue. This distinction – policy choice – is not central in the public debate because of the dominance of the neo-liberal ideology. Even The Greens are not advancing rules-based regulation in any coherent way.

The important point is that carbon trading schemes (CTS) are neo-liberal constructs which start with the presumption that a free market is the best way to organise allocation.

They recognise market-failure – that is negative externalities arising from the fact that the true cost of carbon use is not reflected in the final price we pay in the goods and services that rely on it and hence we over allocate resources to those industries. The ETS aims to reduce emissions through price incentives. But as I argued (see the blogs cited) they are deeply flawed as a result of their rationalist underpinnings.

Emission trading schemes amount to nothing more than a privatisation of the commons asset which we call the atmosphere. It is hard to see why progressive thinkers (including The Greens) would ever contemplate supporting such an approach. Emission trading schemes create private property relations over public space.

While I outlined a number of flaws in the market approach to climate change, one issue which is of paramount relevance here is that markets are insensitive to biological systems. The mainstream economics approach is that you can pay for pollution through more growth. We have to generate wealth before we can clean the place up. Many progressives also believe this line.

Mainstream economic theories about resource efficiency are based on the idea of a production possibilities frontier where maximum output is obtained through some optimal mix of inputs (including pollution). The only thing you need to do is make sure the true costs of all resources are reflected in the mix.

That theory underpins the idea of an emission trading schemes. Any type of cap scheme assumes that there is some known pollution level that is safe. But market systems do not know when a biological system dies – so we need to be more risk averse than economists would recommend.

There may be a point – that we certainly cannot predict with any accuracy – beyond which there is no trade-off between pollution and other goods and services. After that point the planet dies.

Further, it is clear that the tools that mainstream economists use to guide policy design and in particular regulation designed to address environmental challenges are inadequate.

There is an important but often ignored distinction between Cost-Benefit analyis (CBA) and Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA).

Mainstream economics approaches the issue of environmental sustainability in a way that makes little distinction between the intrinsic qualities of the resources being used in production. They are all productive resources and come at a price which should be minimised by the techniques chosen.

The problem of environmental pollution and resource depletion is seen as a problem of incomplete specification of property rights (after the work of Ronald Coase) such that the market price for the use of the natural resources is unable to be correctly arrived at. Correctly means in terms of the “market optimum”.

This is sometimes related to the statement that capitalist firms make decisions based on private costs and benefits and aim to minimise those costs in the pursuit of the private objective. So if a resource that forms part of the overall resource mix is not paid for in the same way as other resources then it is not considered in the decision-making process.

For example, a firm might emit pollution in a river which impacts on people downstream. But if there are no enforceable property rights on that river then the firm will not consider the “cost” of that pollution and thus overproduce the product that causes the emission.

The mainstream approach is to argue that the property rights to clean water should be defined and enforced which would give those downstream legal recourse and push the “price” of the product up, and according to market logic, drive the demand down to some optimal and equilibrium level – reflecting the true use values and costs.

The obvious question is: What if the river dies and cannot be replaced in the same way that a worn-out piece of machinery can be replaced or renovated?

The market solution considers that once the property rights can be priced then optimal transactions will occur.

In that case, CBA will be the essential decision-making tool to determine whether a course of action will be followed. CBA seeks to monetise all the costs and benefits of some proposed action. That is, all aspects of an activity are quantified in dollar terms.

Then the framework delivers a straight-forward (so-called objective) result by analysing the discounted monetary flows over the course of the “project” – that is, the present values. If the net benefit-cost ratio (in present value terms) exceeds one then the project deliver net benefits. Projects are then ranked according to the size of the ratio.

The technique has led to economists proposing the most outrageous estimates of the “value of a human life”. For example, in Mankiw’s textbook – Principles of Economics – we learn about the “value of a statistical life” (VSL), which is defined as the is “the value placed on changes in the likelihood of death”.

This article (October 7, 2008) – How to value life? EPA devalues its estimate – is an interesting introduction to these notions.

Forensic economists apply these mindless tools to valuing the loss of a limb or integer etc. Always a market-based approach is taken. And, I would argue, always is the estimate grossly wrong.

In 2005, there was an interesting paper published by the Georgetown Law Scholarly Commons – Applying Cost-Benefit to Past Decisions: Was Environmental Protection Ever a Good Idea?. It was also published under the same title in the Administrative Law Review, Vol 57, 155-192, but you need a subscription for that version.

The paper is interesting because it probes the issue of whether CBA delivers good outcomes to regulators. The authors note that “(o)ne of the most contentious issues in contemporary debates over environmental policy is whether regulators should use cost-benefit analysis in evaluating their decisions”.

Economists have long tried to argue that CBA “is a neutral tool” although the critics have responded by suggesting that CBA is just a “one-way street to deregulation”.

The paper then asks a simple question:

If this analytical device had been applied in the 1970s and earlier, would it have endorsed the early successes of health and environmental regulation? Or would it have resulted in negative judgments wherever and whenever it was applied? The latter is the more accurate answer, with just a few exceptions …

They investigate three major case studies – the “removal of lead from gasoline in the 1970s and 1980s”; “the decision not to dam the Grand Canyon for hydroelectric power in the 1960s” and “the strict regulation of workplace exposure to vinyl chloride in 1974”. Each of these decisions, now hailed as being successful, were not arrived at via CBA.

So given how beneficial the decisions have been, the authors suggest they should also have easily passed the CBA criteria.

The conclusion (it is a very interesting article and approach to read in detail) is that if the respective decisions had have relied on CBA then the resulting protective legislation and/or decisions would not have been taken.

For example, the authors say that:

… cost-benefit analysis would have shown that vinyl chloride regulation was too expensive for the benefits it produced. It would seemingly have been optimal, in cost-benefit terms, to have allowed more workers to die of cancer every year in order to have cheaper vinyl siding on the market.

The upshot is that the reason that these beneficial decisions were taken is because “economics has not been the gatekeeper, allowed to make the final decision on which regulations will take effect and which will not”. If economists had have been given the latitude to make decisions using CBA then the nation would have:

… in retrospect, have gotten the wrong answer time after time.

On of the reasons why the standard economics approach fails is because in environmental instances (and most cases for that matter) many of the important societal benefits are unquantifiable and thus ignored in CBA.

The authors summarise this by saying that:

In a word, the benefits are priceless.

Their results are consistent with other retrospective evaluations. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) performed a “multi-year, peer-reviewed study … of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act (1970-90)” – Retrospective Study – 1970 to 1990 – (published in 1997). This study “found benefits from air pollution regulation equal to about forty times the costs”.

But the point is that this result could not have been adduced from CBA at the time the Clean Air Act was legislated because a “huge proportion of the benefits found by the EPA were due to regulating emissions of fine particles in the air–but the full magnitude of the harm done by such particles was not known for many years after the Act was first implemented”.

By contrast, cost-effectiveness analysis doesn’t seek to apply a monetary value to the decision-making framework. CEA still attempts to compare “the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of two or more courses of action” but uses different (non-monetary) measures to define the benefits of the proposed actions.

For example, in medical examples where the cost of a human life is notoriously evasive of monetary valuation, CEA migth use as the denominator the “a gain in health” measured perhaps by “years of life” or “premature births averted”. The costs are the monetary outlays associated with the particular health gain.

The other important point, which stems from this basic difference in approach is summarised by my colleague Mathew Forstater, in the paper I cited earlier. We read:

In cost-benefit analysis (of which Pigouvian and Coasian analyses are particular forms), the ends of policy are determined by the (economic) analysis itself. The amount of pollution to be emitted, the amount of a resource to be depleted, or wetlands to be preserved, will be the amount corresponding to the equilibrium. In cost-effectiveness analysis, on the other hand, the ends are determined outside the economics, say by a democratic political process informed by scientific information regarding the biophysical limits. Economics is then employed to try to find the most cost-effective means for attaining those independently determined ends. This is a huge difference. To get the point across, for some it may be more useful to mention that cost-benefit analysis can be used to derive the optimal level of child labor, the optimal level of slavery, or the optimal level of crime.

So once again, the ignorance of the possibility of a biological limit is central to the flawed mainstream approach.

MMT proponents see the economy as a vehicle for human welfare rather than an end in itself. The economy is the means and should be managed in that manner.

This fits in well with a rules-based approach to environmental issues. The society decides that they want clean air and rely on the government to advance that agenda. The government, in turn, employs various techniques (including CEA) to ensure that the policies they choose to achieve the collective end are efficient (that is, not wasteful or counter-productive to other policy goals such as full employment).

MMT proponents don’t consider an “optimal level of pollution” is a valid concept.

Conclusion

In Part 2 I will address these issues in more detail. As a inkling to where the argument will go consider this.

While environmental constraints militate against generalised Keynesian expansion, Job Guarantee proponents emphasise the regional dispersion of unemployment. Higher output levels are required to increase employment, but the composition of output remains a pivotal policy issue.

Job Guarantee jobs would be designed to support local community development and advance environmental sustainability. Job Guarantee workers could participate in many community-based, socially beneficial activities that have intergenerational payoffs, including urban renewal projects, community and personal care, and environmental schemes such as reforestation, sand dune stabilisation, and river valley and erosion control.

Further, those who criticise the Job Guarantee from a Kaleckian viewpoint have to address the issue of binding constraints. Kalecki comes from a traditional Marxian framework where industrial capital and labour face each other in conflict. The goals of capital are antithetical to those of labour.

In this environment, the relative bargaining power of the two sides determines the distribution of income and the rate of accumulation. Industrial capital protects its powerful position by balancing the high profits that come from strong growth with the need to keep labour weak through unemployment.

However, the swings in bargaining power that have marked this conflict over many years have no natural limits. But the concept of natural capital, ignored by Kalecki and other Marxians, is now becoming the binding constraint on the functionality and longevity of the system.

It doesn’t really matter what the state of distributional conflict is if the biosystem fails to support the continued levels of production. The research agenda for Marxians and Kaleckians has to embrace this additional factor – natural capital.

Paul Hawken said in 1999 that:

We fire people, perfectly capable people, to wring out one more wave of profits. Some of the restructuring is necessary and overdue. But, as physicists Amory Lovins and Ernst von Weizsšcker have repeatedly advised, what we should do is fire the unproductive kilowatts, barrels of oil, tons of material, and pulp from old-growth forests — and hire more people to do so.

Happy New Year

This is the last blog for 2012. It has been a mixed year but overall progress towards the abandonment of the dominant neo-liberal paradigm has been very slow.

Millions of people will not be enjoying the heralding of 2013 tonight because their governments have deliberately forced them to endure long-term unemployment and increased poverty rates.

The dominant paradigm has failed but still maintains its hegemony. More effort is need in 2013 to spread the alternative approach (MMT) and empower people to challenge the elites and invoke a collective spirit.

So onto next year – which I hope is a happy one for all my readers.

Take care
bill

That is enough for today!

(c) Copyright 2012 Bill Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.

This Post Has 31 Comments

  1. I see where you are coming from here ,Bill,and I support your position.

    You may be familiar with the position of Herman Daly et al re a stable economy. I happen to think that a stable economy is not a stagnant economy.It would not be an economy without growth but it depends on how you define growth. As you say,there are myriads of tasks which need to be performed in Australia,some urgently, which are not going to see profit to private hands but will see a great deal of benefit to the public and/or the commons.This is where the Employment Guarantee has a part to play.

    I see MMT as a viable alternative to the straight jacket of conventional economics. I do not see it as a cure all for the ills of our society and our SYSTEM. Nevertheless,it is refreshing to see an economist who is prepared to examine the bigger picture. This is what economics should be about – not mathematical models to prove that it is a science (not),not about defending vested interests – but about empirical observations in order to establish a viable way forward.

    Anyway,this is just the viewpoint of a rank amateur in the economic field but somebody who has had 65 years of coping with that economic field. Best wishes to all for 2013

  2. “…… and invoke a collective spirit.” Amen to that.

    Have a great new year Bill. See you in 2013.

    Andy

  3. Wonderful blog Bill. Thank you very much for sharing it with you.

    2013 is the year when we have to promote a better vision of the future and show people that it is there for the taking.

    Happy New Year to everybody.

  4. “I see MMT as a viable alternative to the straight jacket of conventional economics. I do not see it as a cure all for the ills of our society and our SYSTEM.”

    I see the central message of MMT in two words:

    Get Real

  5. If I have been an irritation, I hope it has been a creative spur towards a review of the relevant issues. If I have been too irritating I apologise and am now in retreat mode. Overall, I find myself in agreement with the post. A couple of key points are as follows.

    Bill said;

    1. “…I argued for a rules-based regulation approach rather than a market-based approach to this issue. This distinction – policy choice – is not central in the public debate because of the dominance of the neo-liberal ideology. Even The Greens are not advancing rules-based regulation in any coherent way.”

    Absolutely! I agree 100%. As John Ralston Saul says and writes (to paraphrase him very roughly from memory), “Where do we get this idea that economics should lead our society? It comes only from a self-serving ideology (neoclassical economics) which wants to subvert democracy and usurp its decision making power. The oligarchic advocates of the unregulated market pretend that it is neutral and efficient but really it is expressly designed to get the oligarchs the precise (highly inequitable) decisions they desire. In a democracy, democratic decision making should lead. Democratic power via effective representative democratic government is the one power that the average person has (short of revolution) to counterbalance the power of corporate capital.”

    2. “The important point is that carbon trading schemes (CTS) are neo-liberal constructs which start with the presumption that a free market is the best way to organise allocation…. But as I argued (see the blogs cited) they {CTS or ETS schemes} are deeply flawed as a result of their rationalist underpinnings…. Emission trading schemes amount to nothing more than a privatisation of the commons asset which we call the atmosphere. It is hard to see why progressive thinkers (including The Greens) would ever contemplate supporting such an approach. Emission trading schemes create private property relations over public space.” – Bill.

    Absolutely! I agree 100%.

    I have argued on other blogs and maybe here too that ETS (Emissions Trading Schemes) are fundamentally flawed because they represent a trade, not in goods, but in “bads” (negative externalities and the mitigation thereof). Nobody wants to trade in “bads” (obviously) as they are not desired. Therefore a faux market has to be set up by regulation to cost the negative externality and create a trade in “permissions to pollute”. A fake market runs counter to natural market tendencies by which is meant the natural tendency to exchange and trade in goods. Government does not have to legislate to fundamentally induce people to trade in goods. They do so naturally. The “natural market” needs regulation and control but not legislative fiat to induce it to exist. The fake negative externalities market needs legislative fiat to call it into existence.

    Would you work with a complicated set of levers and pincers if you could just safely pick up something directly with your hand? Of course you would not. So why set up a fake “reverse” market to trade in “bads” to indirectly lever the behaviour of polluters? The logical approach is direct regulation and direct pigovian carbon taxes to directly lever the changes required. The ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) has been expressly designed quite deliberately by the neocons to delay action, evade control, evade compliance, extract huge subsidies from government and then double dip by charging consumers as well. The bigger the polluter the bigger is the windfall under this (close to) greatest con of all time.

    I could write more but I will wait until the 2nd post on this topic.

  6. I’m baffled as to why anyone needs to write long articles on this subject. I just insert the three word phrase “within environmental constraints” every now and then in what I write, and that covers the point. Problem solved. Sorted. End of.

    But then I’m famous in my neighborhood for being a curt, uncommunicative, unsociable bastard.

  7. Dear Bill
    Jobs can be created by the removal of bads as well as by the production of goods. For instance, if there is a sharp increase in the crime rate, more jobs may be created for police officers and security guards to remove this bad. Factory X can invest 10 million to expand output while factory Y can invest 10 million to reduce its toxic emissions. From the point of view of job creation, the two nvestments may be the same, but not from the point of view of private consumption because the investment by X results in the greater production of a good while the investment of Y results in the greater removal of a bad.

    The more we have to invest to reduce pollution, the lower our level of private consumption will be, but there is no reason to suppose that this will have negative consequences for employment. On the other hand, scarcity of energy and other natural resources may set limits on production. The production of all goods requires energy and raw materials. Since these are finite, economic growth can’t go on forever. In such a case, increases in productivity should be used to shorten the workweek rather than to increase consumption.

    To illustrate this, a factory produces two million cotton shirts per year with 250 employees who work 2000 hours per year. If productivity increases by 25% but no additional cotton is available, then the same output can be produced and the same number of employees can work if each employee works 1600 hours per year.

    Regards. James

  8. Thanks for taking the time to address this issue, Bill. I look forward to the next instalment.

    Happy New Year

  9. “Environmental sustainability?” It is usury that requires exponential growth until collapse and credit creation that hastens that process since it drives people into debt.

    Solution? Ban further credit creation (at least temporarily) and bailout* the entire population equally, including non-debtors, until all reserves are 100% backed by reserves and encourage the use of non-usury based private money forms such as common stock. After the bailout, then banks could be allowed to extend credit again but without benefit of government priviledges such as government deposit insurance and a legal tender lender of last resort.

    * The bailout could be metered to just replace existing credit debt as it is paid off for no net change in the money supply

  10. This is the last blog for 2012. It has been a mixed year but overall progress towards the abandonment of the dominant neo-liberal paradigm has been very slow.

    I can’t agree. I have learned so much over the last year-and-a-half since I was first introduced to MMT via this blog. I in turn have passed on those ideas to hundreds of others, a few of which will do the same, the very definition of exponential growth. While I readily admit it appears little progress has been made in academic and policy circles, MMT is rapidly building a grassroots movement. The trick to an exponential curve is that while for a time it looks unimpressive and gradual, it will very suddenly take a sharp turn into tremendous growth.

    Given the media coverage and quantity of discussion over the last year, I think MMT is finally there.

  11. God how I hate those Euro Greens.

    If you could explain to Europeans their savings & Environmental sacrifices are going into global banks which then use their savings to burn coal in China people might think very differently.

    The nearly 2 MBD of oil now not burned in Europe since its decline in 2006 is simply burned somewhere else (Asia)

    I try to explain this to a former Irish Green politician but he really will not engage with these grand global issues.
    Kind if ironic when he wants to give even more of his tax to global banks.

    http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2012/12/28/carbon-taxes-make-ireland-even-greener/

  12. The global banks are clearly trying to reduce what little internal energy redundancy we have remaining.

    In this case they buy turfcutters off.

    http://buckplanning.blogspot.ie/2012/12/over-3m-paid-out-to-turfcutters.html

    The European market state experiment is a expression of pure evil.

    They expect little old Ireland to reverse Chinese carbon emissions…………funny but true.

    Contract a economy to a singularity while investing in a economy which gives the banks a higher wage arbitrage return.

    From a energy perspective the bankers have built a global barbel economy.

    With the neo liberal western dash for nat gas weight (now collapsing in Europe)
    And the other coal weight in China.

    These 2 weights is linked by Marine Bunker fuel………

    But the entire construct is becoming unstable as it has no nation state redundancy.
    One of those 3 things going the way of the Dodo and the global economy is sunk.

  13. I would like to second the comments from Ben Johannson above. Yes, there is still a lot to be done, but I am starting to notice, at least in my small circle of acquaintances, more frequent use of the phrase “neo liberal” in a pejorative context… that is a step, however small, in the right direction. By the way, this was a fascinating blog entry and I look forward to reading the cited references.

  14. Hi Bill,

    Thanks for this summary of some of the various environmental and cultural concerns which fall within the pervue of MMT advocacy (at least, as conceded by many, including yourself). While I find the concerns of ‘responsible and rational’ MMT advocates to be admirable as regards the ways in which the monetary/financial institutions should be designed to integrate with environmental considerations within a large organization such as a nation, the more difficult problems seem to be related with the identity/education/motivation/etc. of the expediters (politicans and civil servants). It seems that most present day nations are being run by very talented, clever, cunning and wealthy crooks; furthermore, there is little apparent motivation for those who are being controlled [by their very wealthy backers/funders] to consider allowing honest actors to participate in any meaningful way with governmental control. Any ideas?

  15. “Emission trading schemes amount to nothing more than a privatisation of the commons asset which we call the atmosphere.”

    Absolutely brilliant statement. Happy 2013, Bill.

  16. “The production of all goods requires energy and raw materials. Since these are finite, economic growth can’t go on forever.”

    Excuse me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, but isn’t the point that economic growth is monetary, so doesn’t *necessarily* imply the use of physical resources? Of course it may do, but not in a direct way.

  17. The private British electrical energy system is in a bad way.

    It has recently seen a dramatic rise in coal consumption (surplus coal from the Americas) as the dash for gas /equity extraction era is now over .
    The recent British energy trends pub.

    “Total demand for coal in the third quarter of 2012, at
    13.4 million tonnes, was 35.6 per cent higher than in
    the third quarter of 2011. Consumption by electricity
    generators was up by 49.6 per cent to 11.2 million
    tonnes, reflecting the switch from gas to coal for
    electricity generation.
    Electricity generators accounted for 83.3 per cent of
    total coal use in the third quarter of 2012; compared
    with 75.5 per cent a year earlier.
    Sales to industrial users increased by 4.2 per cent in
    quarter 3 2012 while sales to final consumers (as
    measured by disposals to final consumers) were
    down by 4.5 per cent.
    Coal consumption by generators over the three
    quarters of 2012 is already at 93 per cent of the level
    seen in 2011.”

    UK demand for natural gas in Q3 2012 was 18.0
    per cent lower than in the same period a year ago
    and was the lowest third quarter demand since
    1995.
    This is largely driven by the fall in gas demand for
    electricity generation at the expense of coal. Gas
    used for electricity generation was lower by 39.4
    per cent in Q3 2012 compared with Q3 2011.
    Gas use for generation over the three quarters of
    2012 is at 52 per cent of the total level seen in
    2011.”

    Gas for electricity is now at a 14 year low , many of these post 1990 privatisation gas plants now remain idle.

    Meanwhile EDF much now refurbish 1970s era Nuke plants.

    http://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/press-news/EDF-Energy-announces-seven-year-life-extension-to-Hinkley-Point-B-and-Hunterston-B-nuclear-power-stations.shtml

    The failure of the neo liberal era coincides with the final retirement of nation state era utility investments.

  18. Dear Bill

    Thank you for your enlightening blog but as you say “….overall progress towards the abandonment of the dominant neo-liberal paradigm has been very slow”. Frighteningly so, yet paradigm shifts are slow. Unfortunately only war or revolution seems to hurry them along.

    On that pessimistic note

    Happy New Year

    Nigel

  19. Dear Prof. Mitchell!

    Thanks so much for this extraordinarily informative blog post, and for all the other incredibly useful posts over the last year. All the best in 2013!

    This post is so wide-ranging, despite being concise, that it clears up various misconceptions that clearly have muddled my thinking for a couple of years. For instance, in an earlier blog you wrote “A fully employed sustainable economy will still require real GDP growth rates of say 2-3 per cent (depending on labour productivity and labour force growth). It will still require aggregate demand (spending) to grow. But its employment structures will be very different.” I read this, and had understood from Randall Wray’s work that the job guarantee was likely to be slightly dis-inflationary (on its own), but did not really understand until I read your text above that the job guarantee and related policies actually held the possibility of reducing physical inputs (or actually increasing the supply of environmental goods) sufficiently to make this 2 to 3 percent sustainable. Thanks a million!

    Thanks as well for the discussion of optimal pollution and CBA, as I often have had recourse to these “faute de mieux”. Very, very useful stuff. As also are your discussions of regional economics. To have this stuff all integrated into one piece is incredibly useful. I look forward avidly to part 2.

  20. Happy New Year, Bill. Thanks for a glorious 2012 – a truly momentous year, I think.

    I know it’s hard to see the relative progress when the absolute economic carnage is so sad to look upon. But do try. Looking at history, it strikes me that the big things are easy – it’s the little things that are hard. The little things make the big things possible. MMT is one such thing. In and of itself, it is nothing – just some calculations on the back of an envelope. Just a book or two on a library shelf somewhere. But don’t doubt that there is a Khunian scientific revolution hiding behind these mere appearances. Inside of your little economic re-think, a giant is struggling to be born.

    You are not mistaken in sensing this. We all sense it. And the stakes could not be higher. In the long post-Enlightenment struggle to bring dignity and security to every person, economics has not just been missing in action for the last 30-odd years. It has been working for the other side. What you are doing – what we are all trying to do – is reclaim it for the future, and restore it to its proper place among the ranks of the humane sciences. This is a little thing. It is accomplished through words and symbols spilt out on pieces of paper, or glowing in little swarms of electrons on a little digital screen somewhere. But the things that will ultimately depend on it are big. There are none bigger, I believe.

    I don’t know, but I think it may be your proximity to influence that makes you feel the lack of it so keenly. You have to look on, not from a safe distance, like most of us, but from a seat in the front row, as the same old fools make the same old mistakes over and over again. Another clueless quarter on the labor-force data. Another windy tribute to the God of Surpluses. Why do so few notice that not just the Emperor, but the entire Imperial class, are dressed for a reunion at a nudist colony?

    I don’t know. I can’t give you an answer. I can only say that to those of us who labor to make this place a better vineyard, and this vineyard a better place, you are a daily inspiration. Here’s to you.

    And, sure, here’s to 2013 as well. Let’s make the most of it.

  21. Happy new year and best to all!

    And yet another of many posts that will rise to the top of the heap of the economic history of thought!

    I also recall presenting on at your conferences on how often the cause of environmental degradation is unemployment. When the govt. doesn’t spend enough to cover its tax liabilities and residual ‘savings desires’ the economy will cut down trees, pollute the air and water, and in general do whatever it takes to avoid the non payment penalties.

    Also, as you suggest, markets operate only within institutional structure, which is a political decision, and can include ‘thou shalt not kill’ to suggest a starting point…

    Also, let me suggest the only reason we are mmt and not pk is because the remaining pk’s failed to ingest ‘the currency is a public monopoly’ and run with it as we did.

    Also interesting is how the only progressives left standing are mmt. All the ‘out of paradigm progressives’/deficit doves/logically deficient/etc. have turned regressive, supporting US FICA tax hikes and cap and trade, VAT, and other highly regressive taxation, as well as ‘entitlement cuts’ and export led growth policy.

    But everyone reading this already knows that!
    😉

    Best!!!
    Warren

  22. Hi Warren
    Good to see you on here. Can you clarify the ‘pk’s not accepting the currency as a public monopoly’?
    My understanding is that Godley & Lavoie at least understood that central banks had been ‘awarded the monopoly’. I’m keen to understand better the distinction between mmt and pk.
    Thanks and Happy New Year !
    Andy

  23. Once again, great post Bill !
    You say: “MMT is not a theory about everything” and that may be. However, I think it provides a very informative
    understanding at the macroscopic level that could serve as a template for the further understanding of other issues that involve the aggregation of disparate inputs. The fallacies of composition inherent in neo liberal economic assumptions can ,in different ways, be found in the climate change debate. People like Ed Peters in “Fractal Market Analysis”, identified the inadequacies of the Efficient Market Hypothesis by focusing on the “failure of the Gaussian hypothesis”, a similar critique would be welcome in the political debate in regard to climate change. The climate
    like the economy is an aggregate phenomenon that cannot be adequately modelled used equilibrium theories derived from classical physics. The non linear inputs that render neo liberal prescriptions about the economy
    invalid create the same sort of uncertainty in regard to the climate. Once the ice caps melt and reflect less sunlight
    and the melting permafrost release more methane( a much worse greenhouse gas), whether we reduce carbon dioxide two or four percent becomes largely irrelevant, governments have to act now. The moment the tipping point is reached, the interaction of non linear inputs,will drive the system to a new, probably undesirable dynamic equilibrium.
    As Bill says: “we need to be more risk averse than economists would recommend” as the wealth we seek comes from the bounty of the planet we so foolishly disregard.

    PS : in regard to :
    “More effort is need in 2013 to spread the alternative approach (MMT) and empower people to challenge the elites and invoke a collective spirit.”

    I’ll be the first paid up member of any campaign or political party you may wish to start.

    Regards,

    Bob

  24. I think the key issue preventing MMT and Environmental Economics from being seen as compatible (which I think they ultimately are) is that it is extremely easy for Environmental Economics to fall into the position that what we need is thermodynamic accounting and that the fiat money system, which is by and large conflated with the fractional reserve banking system, is unable to properly incorporate thermodynamic accounting because money values are arbitrary (fiat). Therefore, a theromodynamic standard (energy, thermodynamic free energy, entropy, ore some similar quantity) for money is often proposed as the solution to all our economic woes. Anyone who takes MMT seriously will recognise that an energy standard is just as deflationary in terms of employment as a gold standard or any other commodity standard. The resolution of the dilemma is to point out that employment does not need to mean high-environmental-impact employment. Clearly employing people in personal services has a much lower environmental impact than employing the same people in resource extraction, energy-intensive manufacturing, etc. And the economy can “grow in nominal terms’ while not growing in environmental impact by an adjustment in the mix of goods and services consumed, in the direction of lower resource intensity goods and services.

    A lot of people come into Environmental Economics from engineering or natural science, and such a background predisposes one against social convention (“fiat” money, nominal accounting) and for objective measures (real accounting, hence commodity money, gold standards, and thermodynamic money standards). “Money as a thing” is one of the most engrained concepts in our culture and it dovetails with the engineer/scientist tendency to prefer a commodity standard for money.

    At present, monetary austerity is being used as an argument for environmental business as usual (“we cannot afford the investment needed to transition to a green energy economy”). This is a conceptual mistake of mixing resource austerity with money austerity, but if you believe money should map resources, you can’t break the link between money austerity and resource austerity. The fact is that MMT through “functional finance” provides a way to justify that yes, we do (if only we have the political will) have the money to mobilize the resources necessary for the massive investment involved in a wholesale transition to a green energy future. This is akin to Keynes’ quip that

    “Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the ‘financial’ burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment”.

    We may in fact paraphrase Keynes: “Thus we are so sensible taking careful thought before we add to the financial burdens of posterity by building them windfarms to power their society, that we have no escape from the sufferings of environmental destruction”.

    To be sure, I personally agree that “a forward-looking, progressive macroeconomics – such as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) – requires economic activity to be in balance with the natural environment”, but I think it is really important, to address and break the easy conceptual link between Environmental Economics and Commodity Money.

  25. Hello prof. Mitchell , as an ecological economist ( not enviromental economist) , this post has impressed and enjoyed me deeply. I´m waitting for its second part impatiently. Thanks for writing this so necessary blog.
    From another Fake Austerity´s Economic Hell (aka Spain).

  26. @ Warren Mosler:

    You write

    I also recall presenting on at your conferences on how often the cause of environmental degradation is unemployment. When the govt. doesn’t spend enough to cover its tax liabilities and residual ‘savings desires’ the economy will cut down trees, pollute the air and water, and in general do whatever it takes to avoid the non payment penalties.

    and today I read The environmental impact of austerity

    The Greek state without any real understanding of the needs of its people, without any understanding of the consequences of its actions imposed another tax on heating oil which increased its price by 48%. The consequences?

    A lot of fuel businesses will close which will result in further unemployment
    People are freezing in their homes with disastrous consequences for vulnerable groups like the elderly, the disabled and the sick

    School students in the north of the country are freezing

    The smog in urban areas is reaching dangerous levels (scientists at the University of Athens are talking about a further 5,000 premature deaths per year in the area of Athens alone)

    The few remaining woodlands of Greece are being looted by illegal logging.

    The irony is that the state has been unable to collect even 1/5 of the projected tax revenues. So, what has come out of this initiative that is endangering the health of the population and is an ecological disaster? Nothing. Another blunder that is making the Greek people suffer, another blunder of the incompetent people that govern us. Where will it all end?

    I am also reminded that one of the many themes of David Graeber’s recent book on Debt is that indebted people are prone to committing atrocities in a flight forward as they raise the stakes trying to get out of debt by striking it lucky. Graeber’s dramatic example is the Spanish conquistadors in Central and South America, but obviously “environmental destruction for the purpose of avoiding the penalties of debt nonpayment” reflects the same social and (a)moral dynamics.

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