Sometimes Gloating is Justified.

“Long-term unemployed NewStart recipients have been telling us how interesting it is that now that wealthier people — the people who are not ‘meant’ to be unemployed — are unemployed, that they’re getting all these concessions.

“That the Government can click their fingers and double the NewStart rate and waive now a lot of the punitive eligibility requirements.” — Jeremy Poxon, from the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union, as quoted by the ABC’s Daniel Ziffer.

Although the sentence “I told you so” leaves the sweetest taste in the mouths uttering it, gloating is frowned upon. Too bad, for current events warrant MMTers the right to gloat.

More importantly, as Poxon’s example suggests, events seem to provide common people some of the insights MMT offers. In particular, that the zero-sum game of “responsible budget management”, where one’s gain necessarily comes from another’s loss, is a scam.

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Last March the Morrison Government was busy spending money:

1. On Thursday 12 a stimulus package worth $17.6 billion;
2. Ten days later, another $81.1 billion (the RBA separately announced monetary expansion policies amounting to $90 billion);
3. But it was on Monday 30 when the really big announcement was made: $130 billion.

And get this, those are federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s own figures. The surplus man didn’t shy away from providing them. Altogether $228.7 billion, or 14.6% of GDP. As Ned Flanders could have said, the promised fiscal surplus was gone, gone diddly on.

A Liberal collector’s item.

But let’s be fair with hypocritical charlatans COALition or Labor politicians. I can’t recall any expert uttering the word “inflation”, which once upon a time they used to repeat is the inevitable result of fiscal deficits (particularly one that big). Because those $228.7 billion are new spending, so there is no need to cut from, say, the age pension to increase the dole, as we’ve been assured was necessary. No new taxes raised.

All that consistent with MMT, as I suppose readers will agree.

I do remember clearly an untold number of teary-eyed testimonies from bosses (often in hospitality, where wage theft was the business model) having to let their beloved staff go. TV news was full of that. So, I suppose that explains why I didn’t hear -- either -- a peep about “crowding out investment” or about “choosing winners and losers” when the last tranche of spending (March 30) was announced. The JobKeeper scheme, announced that day, was meant as a subsidy to capitalists -- whether big or “mum-and-dad” ones: they are paid not to sack their staff. No woman, no cry.

As readers can appreciate, experts, journalists, and businesspeople are in no position to cast the first stone.

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With all its problems, JobKeeper will still benefit those workers lucky enough to have their jobs subsidised (which doesn’t include many casual and foreign workers and excludes all university ones).

That’s why Sally McManus, ACTU Secretary, pushed for it [*]. The point is that, until she came up with that idea, the Morrison Government had flagged no intention whatsoever to help workers beyond increasing the dole (which it did, on March 22) [#]. And after an inauspicious start, the only way to gain the support of employers, teary-eyed or not, was giving them a subsidy.

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Now, there’s a more technical insight to be gained from the Morrison Government’s efforts to contain COVID-19. Those curious about MMT could find it interesting.

I will ask readers to have a look at ABC’s veteran business reporter David Taylor’s three consecutive short articles (April 7, April 9 and April 17), which we’ll comment in coming posts.

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I hope someday Sally McManus, Michele O’Neill, and Greg Combet will make public their accounts of the ides of March.

NOTES:
[*] McManus’ recent and deserved prominence has attracted the attention of some who never gave a damn about unions, but now feel entitled to pontificate about what should the workers’ movement’s goals be. The gall of professional parasites.
[#] Somehow I get the sense neither the media nor the political parties give mum-and-dad workers the same appreciation mum-and-dad capitalists receive.