Bill Mitchell’s Uphill Battle (Updated).

 

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It’s a good thing that Prof. Bill Mitchell – one of MMT founders – is as tenacious as he has a sense of humour, for he is fighting an uphill battle.

The passage you see above comes from a recent chat he had with Steven D. Grumbine, host of the Macro & Cheese podcast (audio and transcript). By itself, the fact Grumbine decided to make a meme suggests how much commentary that bit must have caused among Leftists.

Now, why should that comment ruffle anybody’s feathers? After all, what Mitchell says there is not only true, but obviously so: people go into business to make money, lots of it, the more the better.

In fact, that’s been known since forever: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker”, wrote Adam Smith in 1776, “that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love.”

Self-interest is in the DNA of capitalism. Begging First Nations readers their indulgence for my appropriation of their slogan: “Always was, always will be”.

It’s irrelevant what you call self-interest. Lefties may prefer greed, for example, for it makes it clear for all to see their righteous disapproval. But, paraphrasing the poet, a rose by any other name … and the truth is that whatever you call it, under capitalism, “self-interest is good” means the same as “greed is good”.

Those are the rules of the game. Deal with it.

You don’t have to like it. You may be among those losing in the game. I myself don’t like it a bit. But you don’t avoid the health consequences of smoking by burying your head in the sand or by changing to a lite brand of cigarettes. You need to quit smoking.

It’s up to you. Quit capitalism or quit whingeing about greed (and that “or” is of the exclusive variety).

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In our age of vacuous moralising and virtue signalling, it’s comforting to believe those close to us are immune to that kind of boneheaded stupidity. We, after all, have done our best to stamp that kind of thing out.

The problem is that the same idiocy is not uncommon among rank-and-file MMTers, who go around parading their ignorance as bona fide MMT.

I don’t write this with malevolent glee. Trust me, I feel for you, Prof. Mitchell. Any truth, no matter how evident and even trivial or how tactfully stated, is bound to elicit angry reactions among the intentional cretins that populate what passes for the Left.

You have your work cut out.

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Hoping to undo some of the damage pontificating simpletons inflict on MMT, here is Pavlina Tcherneva on unions and the Job Guarantee.

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Go ahead, point your accusing finger at me: I’m being unreasonably cynical. Chastise me because the Biden Administration has just started, so it’s unfairly premature to pass judgement on it. Say that I’m unable to grasp the nuances of American politics. But I suspect that the American liberal/Leftish had just started their next presidential election campaign.

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In 2016 you had to vote for Hillary Clinton because Donald J. Trump was Adolf Hitler reborn, conspiring to seize power in the same way Hitler seized power back then. A Nazi-Fascist takeover of America was just around the corner.

Now it's all about the Republican Party being the NSDAP renamed. A Nazi-Fascist takeover of America is just around the corner. (I hope the similarity between that liberal/Leftish conspiracy theory and the QAnon Storm Right-wing conspiracy theory will not be lost on readers: similar madness, better phrased by slightly more credible people).

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UPDATE:

26-06-2021. Eat your hearts out, Left- and Right-wing union bashers. Another union win!

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Ruby, from the Megaphone team (a part of the Victorian Trades Hall Council), informs us that

“After 3 weeks on strike the General Mills United Workers Union members just endorsed a deal that will see all their conditions maintained. This includes a wage increase of almost 9% over three years, a $1500 bonus and protection for all labour-hire casuals and contractors who participated in the strike.”

Join your union. There is strength in union.

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A General Mills worker writing under a pen-name explained the strike to Jacobin.