Macro N Cheese

Cory Doctorow’s bio says he is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He’s also a podcaster, blogger, Tweeter, and that rarest of birds, an MMTer. We invited him on to Macro N Cheese because of his article The Rent's Too Damn High: A Human Right, Commodified and Rendered Zero Sum. Steve talks to him about the multiple and complex causes of the pandemic housing bubble. Perhaps because he’s a novelist, Cory communicates in a compelling way, describing not just the causes, but the social implication of the housing situation.The US made homeownership one of its two primary means for class mobility and intergenerational wealth transfer and intergenerational mobility. So the US historically had a labor pathway to social mobility where if you got a better job than your parents, you could live a better life than them. And then it had an asset pathway where an asset that you or your parents bought might appreciate so much that as generations went by, if you were able to hand it down, that each generation would be more affluent than the last.The employment path to a rising standard of living vanished by getting rid of unionized employment, and with it a check against the concentrated power of capital when negotiating with the diffuse power of labor. The imbalance has also resulted in a loss of defined pension benefits.And so now if you want to survive into your dotage without forcing your children to give up their most productive labor years to take care of you, you have to either get unbelievably lucky with your 401k - and again, empirically, American 401ks are not and will not be sufficient to carry them through a dignified retirement - or you have to liquidate your family assets.Cory talks about the effect of reduced incomes on the rental market and the paradoxical effect on housing values, the dissolution of tenants rights, and the way all of these elements are connected to zoning, transportation, and the quality of public schools.The personal responsibility doctrine made popular by Reagan and Thatcher conveniently replaces our identities as workers and citizens with that of consumers. It also requires that we no longer conceive of problems as being systemic and think of them as being individual. Steve and Cory discuss the gigification and Uberization of the economy, and the possible path forward. Cory reminds us, “with so many technological questions or policy questions, we can ask what something does, and that's important. But it's also really important to ask who it does it for and who it does it to.”A science fiction novelist’s métier involves imagining different scenarios for the future. Some of Cory’s might give us a bit of hope.Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist. He is a contributor to many magazines, websites and newspapers. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties.@DoctorowFind his blog, podcast, newsletter, books and more atpluralistic.netcraphound.com

Real Progressives is on a mission to bring Modern Monetary Theory to the layperson. We don’t assume you’ve studied economics, only that you’re open-minded and curious. Once the MMT light bulb goes on, it reveals a myriad of implications, making it a powerful tool for political activists and organizers. It’s almost impossible to think of a political agenda unaffected.Some Macro N Cheese episodes can be difficult for newcomers, but it’s worth sticking with us. All will be revealed!Steve’s guest this week is Warren Mosler, the man who created (discovered?) MMT. Many of our listeners first learned the basics from him and whenever he comes on the show, he and Steve spend at least part of the interview going over the money story. This episode is no different. They discuss the dollar as a tax credit and what it means to say the government is the price setter. Warren explains why “every MMT proponent starts off any inflation discussion by pointing out the reminder that the currency is a public monopoly.”Looking at the current situation in the US, Warren notes that early in the pandemic we saw the reduction of harmful emissions by around 50% as a result of eliminating non-essentials.Now, after a year or so, as the economy has come back, now we're starting to perform these non-essentials again. Emissions are back to where they were, and we're talking about massive new programs with real resources, funding multiple tens of trillions to stop emissions going up and maybe bring them down to where we got to the first week of the crisis by eliminating non-essentials. Does that tell you something?Warren goes through the economic results of the pandemic, discussing what has been going on with personal consumption and private debt accumulation and whether we’re facing the threat of inflation, as well as potential actions of the administration and the Fed. Warren gives us his take on banking regulation - rather, deregulation - and the mortgage crisis. They even touch on one of Steve’s favorite paper tigers, the petrodollar.We mustn’t neglect to mention Representative Yarmuth, Democratic Chairman of the House Budget Committee. He recently appeared on C-Span where he explained, “The federal government is not like any other user of currency, not like any household, any business, any state or local government. We issue our own currency, and we can spend enough to meet the needs of the American people. The only constraint being that we do have to worry about inflation.” He proceeded to give a shout-out to The Deficit Myth. That sounds like a victory for MMT.Warren Mosler is an American economist and theorist, and one of the leading voices in the field of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Presently, Warren resides on St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, where he owns and operates Valance Co., Inc. He is the author of “The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy” and “Soft Currency Economics,” which are available on his website.moslereconomics.com@wbmosler on Twitter

It’s customary to think of growth as something to aspire to and celebrate. It’s one of those words with positive connotations, like progress. Growth represents our progress as a society. The MMT community has called this into question by exposing the underbelly of the most celebrated measure of economic growth, the GDP. The costs of clean-up after a man-made or natural disaster, like an oil spill or hurricane, represent an increase to the GDP. How twisted is that?Steve’s guest this week is Lorenz Keyszer, a master’s student of environmental systems and policy in Zurich. His paper, 1.5° C Degrowth Scenarios Suggests the Need for New Mitigation Pathways, co-authored with Manfred Lenzen, attempts to subvert the positive meanings associated with traditional concepts of growth.In the face of ongoing climate catastrophe, Lorenz sees the need to dig deeper and ask which things we really want to see increase and which things which we want to decrease. In other words, we must ask ourselves which sectors, which areas of life should we prioritize and which areas could be reduced.I usually use the ecological-economic definition, which sees degrowth as a process of an equitable downscaling of energy resource use in an economy which is coupled to GDP. gross domestic product. So GDP is likely to decline or stagnate in such a transition, but societal well-being should be maintained or secured in such a transition. So this is sort of a prosperous descent scenario which really tries to decouple well-being from GDP growth and focus on the things that matter directly, no matter what this means for GDP growth.Referring to the 2017 IPCC report and its 12-year timeline, Lorenz warns of the dangers in discussing this in terms of deadlines. We’re already seeing climate change causing real harm to people’s lives as numerous catastrophes are being substantially worsened.Lorenz talks of the need for the state to take an active role, directing massive investment programs into renewable energy. as well as regulating the fossil fuel industry. A ‘just transition’ is possible if we provide universal basic services and a federal job guarantee. Such policies would minimize the fear of losing livelihoods as we dismantle the exploitative and extractive entities that currently provide us our means to access necessities like food, housing, medicine and, of course, energy. A key point of the degrowth agenda is that we can secure livelihoods and access to the goods and services people need, regardless of GDP, if we change how our economy functions and choose different things to prioritize.Steve and Lorenz discuss GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) as an alternative to GDP for measuring economic health and stability. Unsurprisingly, the ‘richer’ countries with high GDP seem to lag behind in GPI numbers.Lorenz also touches on the Decent Living Energy Scenario, which estimates the minimum amount of energy required to provide decent standards of health care, transportation, housing, and our other needs. It’s a massive reduction compared to today, and will take a pluralistic approach through technological revolution and waste reduction.This episode takes a deep dive into a subject we cannot afford to ignore.Lorenz Keyßer is a master student of environmental systems and policy at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. His research focuses on climate mitigation scenarios, post- and degrowth approaches to socio-ecological problems as well as strategies to address them, such as the green new deal.@LorenzClimate on TwitterAround the World Without a Plane, by Giulia Fontana & Lorenz KeyszerGrounded from Zurich to Sydney, by Giulia Fontana & Lorenz Keyszer

To unpack the confusion around the push for state-based vs federal programs, it’s necessary to understand the race to the bottom. So this is where Steve Grumbine begins his interview with Bill Black and Fadhel Kaboub. The inequities among the Eurozone nations have their parallel in the US. At both the global and national levels, the race to the bottom affects labor standards, environmental regulations, tax rates, and basic services. To understand this, we always turn to the MMT explanation of the difference between a currency issuer and a currency user.The federal government can afford to provide healthcare, infrastructure, environmental protection, childcare, and other necessary services. When it abdicates its responsibilities, it shifts the burdens to individuals who can't afford them as well as to states and municipalities who, by definition, don't have the resources and must compete with each other to attract businesses like fracking companies, pipelines, Amazon headquarters, or whatever they can get. When a state needs more revenue, as it inevitably will, raising corporate taxes will drive these businesses to a “friendlier” location. Ultimately the end result is neglect of community needs and full-bore pain for its citizens. Lost opportunities and negative consequences have been compounding over decades of the neoliberal project.Virtually every state has a constitutional or statutory requirement either limiting or prohibiting running a deficit. However, even without these restrictions, states can’t run substantial deficits without experiencing a sharp increase in the interest rates on their debt and, of course, cannot issue currency to pay those interest rates.Because of vastly different tax bases and competition between the states, the guests make clear that the progressive agenda will be hobbled if we try to apply it piecemeal. Funding major programs like health care at the state level is not only impossible for the majority of US states, but counterproductive to the national Medicare for All movement. The federal government can “wait and see” as state-based initiatives inevitably fail, all of which gives ammo to the “we can’t afford it” argument, and ultimately hurts everyone.Some American progressives have become beaten down with despair, losing hope that such comprehensive plans can ever be achieved. In desperation, they are mobilizing for state-based healthcare programs. Even if these are achievable in a few states, it is not the solution for most and is dissipating the energy that should be focused on a comprehensive agenda.The episode closes by honoring their work while offering specific suggestions for effectively mobilizing targeted action at the local level capable of uniting rather than fracturing the movement. By organizing, educating and empowering people to fight for the right policies, we can consolidate the efforts of the state-based groups across the country into a unified voice for universal health care and other massive programs, funded at the federal level, in lieu of 50 groups fighting separate battles.Bill Black is a professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) and the Distinguished Scholar in Residence for Financial Regulation at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is a serial whistleblower and authored The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.global-isp.org@FadhelKaboub@WilliamKBlack

If you’re a crypto-phobe, or simply bored by fintech and all those “coins,” don’t let it stop you from listening to this episode. Rohan Grey places these topics within the context of our history, political economy, the law, MMT, policy, and today’s progressive movement. The fact that technology changes the world is nothing new. It affects everything.You can look across history and say, look, it mattered when we created the written word and stopped building societies around oral communities where they passed things down through word of mouth. It matters when we had the printing press and created a system by which information could be developed, stored, mass-transmitted to large numbers of people. It mattered when we built the telegraph in the 19th century and started to connect the Atlantic to the new world and to be able to send wires across the world in a matter of minutes that used to take months to send through ship messages … So if you start from that point of view and look at that long history of different kinds of technology, obviously law and money play a big role in. It matters who funds these things.Once again, technology is changing the landscape. Railroad and oil barons are being replaced by the Elon Musks of the world. There’s a blockchain consortium in Congress, ensuring that their needs are met. The conversation around defining money and establishing the boundaries of public digital financial infrastructure reflects the ideologies and the interests of all kinds of people. Who will protect our privacy?When seeking a force powerful enough to transform society, we turn to the working class. It, like everything else, is undergoing a transformation.They said in an industrial age it was the common identity of being a factory worker that really built the industrial proletariat consciousness. You're sitting there doing the same thing as people next to you. And you're like, hey, we're pretty similar. Nowadays, 70 percent of Americans are in debt for one of three or four creditors. And that kind of relationship creates a different kind of class identity. But so does the fact that everybody has a damn cell phone.While there’s plenty of discussion about bitcoin and financial technology, Steve and Rohan constantly bring it back to MMT and the progressive movement. The questions we face as leftists are far-reaching and consequential. It’s not too soon to begin asking them.Rohan Grey is an Assistant Professor of Law at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, the founder and president of the Modern Money Network, and a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.https://modernmoneynetwork.org/@rohangrey on Twitter

Professor Bill Mitchell was our very first guest on Macro N Cheese, and now here he is, 122 weeks later. Episode #1 was Putting the T in MMT. This week Steve asks him to discuss the single policy prescription at the core of MMT - the Federal Job Guarantee. The discussion goes into the parameters and nuance of the FJG and the pitfalls of a Universal Basic Income as a competing possibility.Bill asserts that implementing a UBI to deal with unemployment and poverty would be capitulating to the neoliberal claim that government is helpless in the face of unemployment - as if it’s a natural phenomenon. MMT shows us the federal government can buy and utilize the excess unemployed labor force the same way it guarantees a stable price floor to agricultural surpluses. In each case these are resources the private market didn’t need.Steve and Bill delve into some details of the FJG advocated by leading MMT experts. This is not some ‘dig a hole, fill a hole’ make-work charade, but a federally funded, locally administered program that aims to fill in crucial resource gaps in communities the private sector neglects for a reason. These jobs don’t generate profit, but they are some of the most valuable services, such as the arts and education, or care for children, the elderly, and the environment. The job guarantee directly addresses unemployment and poverty, unlike the UBI.Steve brings up the automation bogeyman. “The robots are coming for our jobs!” Bill reminds us we are still in charge.Well, this comes down to this sort of myth that has evolved in this neoliberal era, that the market is supreme. And somehow the economy is beyond us now. And that we have to serve the economy, not the economy serve us, and that we have to pull our belts in and sacrifice and whatever in the name of advancing the economy and the market. Now, I mean, it's an absurd proposition when you think about it. All of these constructs are our constructs, our legal and conceptual constructs. The economy is our concept. And the idea that we've just got to lie down and be whipped by the market is just nonsensical.Bill further elaborates the FJG is multi-dimensional. In the short run it solves poverty and income insecurity, but in the long term, it will help evolve the concept of 'meaningful work.' Jobs don’t need to be soul-crushing, but can actually be personally fulfilling and beneficial to society at the same time. We are only limited by our imagination.Professor Bill Mitchell holds the Chair in Economics and is the Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), an official research centre at the University of Newcastle. He also is a Visiting Professor at Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and is on the management board of CofFEE-Europe, a sister centre located at that university.Enroll, support and donate to MMTed at mmted.org@billy_blog on Twitterhttp://www.billmitchell.org/“Macroeconomics” ordering information on bilbo.economicoutlook.net/

Steve Keen can be counted on to bring a unique and controversial perspective. This time he turns his critical gaze toward what some feel is sacred in Marx’s legacy. The interview takes a dive into complex theory, which we won’t even attempt to summarize here.Keen says Marx’s philosophical thinking ultimately transcended his own labor theory of value which asserts that all surplus value derives solely from labor. In the Grundrisse, he acknowledges the role of machinery in the production process showing that, with its input into production, machinery can be a source of surplus value.Keen believes this disproves the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Therefore, socialist revolution is not inevitable. According to Keen, however, after contradicting his own basis for scientific socialism, Marx refused to give it up.Let's get one thing clear... I regard Marx as one of the greatest intellects in economics, probably the greatest. So I put him above Keynes, comparable to Schumpeter. I regard Schumpeter as an incredibly original thinker. And if I want to see my pantheon of great economists, it starts with Richard Cantillon, leaps to François Quesnay, jumps over Ricardo and Smith, and lands on Marx.At one point in the interview, Grumbine brings up the necessity of a future built around green energy. Keen goes into the laws of thermodynamics, the transition from high frequency energy to low frequency energy, and the law of entropy.Grumbine reminds Keen of his last visit to Macro N Cheese, when he called attention to the breakdown in the global supply chain during the pandemic. This gets them talking about the need for, in Keen’s words, “a symbiosis between central control and distributed control.”There’s so much more to this episode. We said we wouldn’t attempt to summarize it, but we’re providing plenty of resource material in the “Extras” page. If you’re not listening on the Real Progressives website, be sure to check it out. There’s a transcript of the interview as well. You may need it.Professor Keen is a Distinguished Research Fellow at UCL and the author of “Debunking Economics,” “Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis?” and his latest “The New Economics: A Manifesto.” He is one of the few economists to anticipate the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, for which he received a Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review. His main research interests are developing the complex systems approach to macroeconomics, and the economics of climate change.@ProfSteveKeen on TwitterHe has plenty of free content on Patreon. Subscribe: patreon.com/ProfSteveKeenbookshop.org/books/the-new-economics-a-manifesto/9781509545285bookshop.org/books/can-we-avoid-another-financial-crisis/9781509513734

Mike Figueredo and Steve Grumbine have a lot in common. Both are on a journey toward radicalization. Both recognize the importance of MMT in this process. Steve was recently Mike’s guest on The Humanist Report in an episode that was part MMT primer and part discussion of their mutual anti-capitalist awakening. This week, Mike comes to us.When we activists and non-economists first learn MMT, we experience a chain reaction as one shibboleth after another is toppled. The insights strike us as both profound and profoundly obvious. Of course it can also be both exciting and depressing at the same time. Mike tries to ward off despair as he acknowledges the stark implications:We're staring down the barrel of a gun right now. Climate change. What is it the IPCC says? By now we have 10 years to act to avoid catastrophic climate change? Tweaking around the edges, it's not just insufficient, it's literally deadly at this point. And nobody is willing to say that in DC. Nobody is willing to frame it with the urgency that's needed.It’s no longer about mitigating climate change. It’s about adapting to its reality. By the time we decide to build a seawall it will be too late. Besides, as Mike says, “when we talk about a seawall in 15 years, then it's ‘well, you know, the deficit is really getting high.’”Steve points to recent comments by Janet Yellen about the need for fiscal responsibility. It would make sense for Biden to actively encourage this deficit fear porn; with these bogeymen as well-planted distractions the administration has plausible deniability. We need not bother to expect success.Returning to the gun metaphor, they speak of austerity. Steve says:People associate the gun with murder. They don't associate the policy with murder. And so when I see this play out, I'm not seeing it like some benign thing. I see this as a legitimate gun to the head of anyone that is not flush with cash. So many died unnecessarily in this pandemic. And I don't see any path forward. You said the people have to be angry. They can't just vote. They've got to organize. The problem is they don't know that there is a legitimate war going on right now against them with this austerity narrative. That's like a sanction against the American people.Steve and Mike delve into the #MedicareForAll conversation, specifically, the currently trending, but fatally flawed idea of state-based single payer. As MMT shows us, US states are currency users and need to generate the revenue through taxation or borrowing, unlike the currency-issuing federal government. The state-funded health care system is not only doomed to fail because of an impossible revenue deficit, but as Mike notes, the failure could be used by the political elite as a false representation of the failure of #M4A.Like many on the left nowadays, these two independent media hosts are finding the more they study capitalism, the harder it is to imagine a future for it.Mike Figueredo is the founder and host of the Humanist Report. Support and follow them:Website humanistreport.comPatreon patreon.com/humanistreportTwitter @HumanistReportYouTube goo.gl/E5D8gG

Robert Hockett is back to share his irrepressible optimism as he and Steve review Biden’s first 100 days. They both admit the administration has done more than they expected, but then again, they weren’t expecting much. When Pramila Jayapal awarded the president an A, she must have been grading on a curve.Bob isn’t confident predicting what the coming months will bring, but he expresses both his hopes and fears around a number of issues. How will Biden navigate the shoals of very shallow Democratic support in the Senate? What are his choices and what are their potential consequences? With two more big spending bills in the wings, there’s a lot riding on Congress. To some extent, Bob sees Biden’s fortunes aligned with our own: successful and popular domestic policies would translate into votes expanding the Democratic majority in the midterm elections.Perhaps it’s unfair to judge an administration on the achievements of the first 100 days. Just consider FDR:So one of the things that we tend to forget about the New Deal is that it wasn't really just one big enactment and it wasn't even like three or four big enactments. It was literally scores of distinct pieces of legislation rolled out sequentially over about a 13-year period . . . and the way it was sequenced, it was done in such a way as to ensure that FDR kept winning reelection and each time he won reelection, he could do even more.On the international front, we’re witnessing a revival of America as agonist. This administration has no qualms about amping up a new cold war against Russia and China. The US uses tariffs and sanctions as a means of wielding power over other countries. Steve asks about the use of the payment system to lock them out.Bob thinks China is playing a very smart game. As long as they remain an export-led growth economy, they benefit from the dollar's dominant position in the global monetary system. But China is moving towards a domestically generated demand-focused economy, at which point the dollar’s position as reserve currency will no longer serve their interests. In Bob’s view, they’re taking advantage of the current arrangements while wisely getting their ducks in a row. Meanwhile, they’re making advances towards becoming one of the most important global players in digital currency and finance.There’s much more to this episode, from elite control fraud in the financial industry to the effect of the pandemic on the powerless. Agree or disagree, an hour with Bob Hockett is sure to engage, inform, and probably amuse you.Robert Hockett is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Visiting Professor of Finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Senior Counsel at Westwood Capital, LLC. He specializes in the law, economics, and philosophy of money, finance, and enterprise organization in their theoretical and practical, their positive and normative, and their local, national, and transnational dimensions.@rch371 on Twitterhttps://bookshop.org/books/financing-the-green-new-deal-a-plan-of-action-and-renewal/9783030484491https://realprogressives.org/books/money-from-nothing-or-why-we-should-stop-worrying-about-debt-and-learn-to-love-the-federal-reserve/https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhockett/?sh=d551a2fe54a0

This week our guest is the fearless Jen Perelman, host of JENerational Change and recent challenger to establishment sweetheart Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Jen and Steve have a genial conversation about electoral politics, revolutionary action, and the path forward.Jen talks about her campaign against the notorious DWS, and how inherently flawed and exclusionary our current political framework is. We will never vote our way to revolution. Significant change will only be born of a huge labor movement willing to engage in a general strike.She refers to the Chris Hedges statement about fighting fascists not because we can win, but because they’re fascists.I don't know another way to do anything and I'm not going to just do nothing. Right? So this is the menu right now. How do you sleep better at night? Do you sleep better knowing that you're working on the side of justice, or do you want to just say we can't win, so forget it?They discuss some of the roadblocks to building a movement, especially when we live in an echo chamber. With electoral politics, we have people who are bought and paid for, standing in the way. Tribalism appeals to our need to be on a team, with an identifiable enemy. Jen feels this society is lacking some serious critical reasoning skills.Many talk of building bridges. Jen builds spiderwebs, each thread connecting people to herself and to each other, by taking on the issues that touch their lives. Her organization JENCorps, is one way she continues to serve her community. Check them out on the website jenerationalchange.com.Jen Perelman ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Florida's 23rd Congressional District, but lost to Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the 2020 Democratic primary. Her show, JENerational Change, is available on YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes.@JENFL23 on Twitter