But let me be clear that Steve is not the only person about whom this question is being asked. A leading proponent of MMT asked me yesterday why I was not there, and I had to say it was because the conference organisers – the so-called Gower Initiative for Modern Money, whose early development I encouraged, and to whom I became an adviser – long ago threw me out of that position and ostracised me.
I was once invited to speak at a conference on tax – corporation tax I think it was. Might have been evasion. Anyway, When Spud found out about my invite he insisted that he himself would not speak if I were to. Given that teh conference was being organised by Spud’s friends – or at least people who were speaking to him that week – that was the end of my invite.
So, you know, Har Har.
Thoroughly Modern Money whose early development I encouraged
rather condescending and gracious of me I thought…
and to whom I became an adviser
At my suggestion…
long ago threw me out of that position
Ignorant barbarians…
and ostracised me.
A prophet is never recognised in his own land, alas.
Comedy gold. The Hyacinth Bucket of “expertise” in tax and economics.
“MMT has to get its act in order and allow debate, or the likes of Steve and I will take the ideas in it forward and ignore what the so-called MMT community has to say because, as things stand, it is clear that they are not open to debate or ideas. That is not to their credit.”
This is too fabulous not to quote in full:
My crime was a simple one. I pointed out that a great deal of what Australian academic Bill Mitchell, who created the term ‘MMT’, says is utter nonsense and has nothing, in my opinion, to do with the principles which underlie MMT.
This became very clear over the same issue over which Steven Keen has now been expelled. I wrote a post in 2019 entitled ‘Why Bill Mitchell is simply wrong on modern monetary theory and imports and exports.
You could spend a happy hour or more reading that post and the comments on it, which I acknowledged at the time would annoy many hardcore MMT advocates. It did. The Gower crowd and I parted company because I had the temerity to criticise one of the great white male gods of MMT, and I had no regrets.
The supposedly MMT theory put forward by Bill Mitchell and Warren Mosler on exports and imports has, as far as I can see, nothing whatsoever to do with MMT, whatever they might say. It is also total garbage. Steve Keen has long held this view, I know. We have discussed that fact and shared our utter bafflement at it. Refer to my linked blog to see why.
This (‘Total Garbage’) could be applied to anyone of about 5,000 blog posts in the History of TRUK at an absolute minimum as well as every book he has ever published.
So, let me be clear about what the real issues are here.
The first is that there is claimed to be an MMT community. Outsiders suggest it is cult-like because of its propensity to expel those who question those to whom the truth was apparently revealed. It is hard to argue against this suggestion. This community, and the associated cult around Bill Mitchell, is exceptionally harmful to MMT in this country, and probably elsewhere. They also talk a great deal of nonsense, promulgating the belief that MMT says governments can spend without taxing, when in reality they cannot.
At various times he has implied that the government has the ability to create money out of thin air (the so-called Magic Money Tree) I will probably acknowledge the nuance that he advocates a base tax rate of 99% across the board for private sector workers so you can’t accuse him of not recognizing the need for tax but he certainly believes in the ability to spend beyond your means. The comments around a ‘cult’ from someone who has blocked 25,000 on X simply illustrate his lack of self-awareness.
Secondly, this MMT community thinks its male founders have all the answers to all known questions. They don’t. They got many things wrong, and not just imports and exports.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, they do not understand tax, and when it comes to corporation tax, they are on the far-right, in my opinion, in arguing for its abolition. Either they wholly misunderstand that tax, the nature of the company and the way in which entities operate, or they have a deeply pro-wealth, anti-democratic agenda that they are pursuing when making this suggestion.
Is he angling for the feminist/ Trans vote by using the term ‘Male founders’ here? I also enjoy the fact that any opponent on any issue automatically becomes ‘The Far Right’ – of course he gets irate when characterized as the Extreme Left even though he is arguably on economics probably to the Left of the North Korean Ministry of the economy.
That agenda is also seen in the indifference of some MMT proponents to tax evasion and tax havens – not caring that these activities undermine the tax base so long as others pay more tax to make good the loss, making clear in the process that they are not concerned about any socially progressive agenda.
Bill Mitchell, meanwhile, also proposed support for the far-right in Italy because they opposed the EU.
All of this is profoundly worrying. Those on the left need to be very wary of all this. I have been.
I’d say we need to be wary of Murphy. Angling for the Corbyn job (so looking for employment from a proven anti-semite) and showing overt support for Hamas. That’s certainly considerably more ‘Far Right’ than Euroscepticism or not condemning tax havens.
Third, there is closed-mindedness on display. Randy Wray once acknowledged I was the only person outside the MMT founders who had contributed to MMT theory with my work on tax. You will not find that comment now: it was deleted subsequently. And that is because the ranks are closed: the fragile cohort of male founders seem quite sure that they do not think others can contribute to MMT thought.
The fact that I have is ignored.
The fact that Steve Keen has proved why MMT has to be right using Minskey and the logic of double entry is not enough to allow him entry to an MMT conference: he has transgressed, and the sin will not be forgiven.
Steve Keen has proven nothing and MMT is being exposed as a profoundly dangerous and moronic ideology by the course of events. Indeed once the Stock Markets starts collapsing Murphy could be hanging from a tree in very short order. I’ll leave others to comment on ‘The logic of Double entry’
This is profoundly unfortunate. I summarise what MMT is all about in this glossary entry. I will not repeat it here. I do not pretend that is the last word on the issue. Of course, it is not. It is an opening point for debate. That is a debate that needs to happen. Either the MMT cult debates these ideas open-mindedly, or they do irreparable damage to important ideas, which I think are correct and best expressed by Stephanie Kelton.
A debate that numerous banned commentators from this and other areas would like to contribute to – what say you?
As it is, the event in Leeds is not in any way an academic conference. If some academics are excluded because they are deemed inappropriate because of their intellectual ideas, which are not an affront to anyone’s ethics, it cannot be.
MMT has to get its act in order and allow debate, or the likes of Steve and I will take the ideas in it forward and ignore what the so-called MMT community has to say because, as things stand, it is clear that they are not open to debate or ideas. That is not to their credit.
I think you’d need to have been living on Mars not to sense the hypocrisy here – the notion that a man who has banned 50,000 commentators on his blog is ‘up for debate’ and some paragon of impartiality is verging on the grotesque. I’d wager there’s a greater plurality of debate in North Korea than on ‘Funding the future’
It is amusing to see how Murphy continually falls out with his allies – the Tax Justice Network, the Fair Tax Mark, Corbyn/McDonnell and now the MMT crowd. It is pure ego – he demands 100% obedience to him plus grants/jobs/peerages. Even people who largely agree with his agenda can’t stand being in the same room as him.
If Murphy fancied himself as a scientist he’d be writing endless articles about how he was ostracised from the scientific community because he showed that Einstein and Feynman were wrong by proving the world is flat.
“the likes of I” ???
One thing about Murphy remains remarkably constant: The only people who hold him in any regard are those who haven’t had to deal with him in person. Esteem for Murphy never survives actual contact.
“A leading proponent of MMT asked me yesterday why I was not there”
I’ve mentioned before Spud’s habit of inventing interactions with “important people” and here it is on display again…..what a sad little man.
It’s also an interesting definition of ‘debate’ – dictionary definition as follows:
‘a discussion, as of a public question in an assembly, involving opposing viewpoints:’
His definition is:
‘ A simulacrum of discussion where participants recognise the leader’s unique level of intelligence and insight and acknowledge their superior knowledge and dissent is not tolerated’
And as if by magic one of the legendary ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’ – Ivan Horrocks (who I actually thought was dead) appears to lend credence to Murphy’s claims of censorship – truly evil never sleeps:
‘ Ivan Horrocks says:
July 16 2024 at 1:52 pm
Crikey! Talk about pettiness and insecurity. I say that as an academic who was heavily into/involved in Critical Realism for over a decade from the late 1990s. This was an emergent (at the time) theoretical/analytical approach generally associated with Roy Bhaskar and Margaret Archer (both sadly no longer with us), and I attended numerous conferences and workshops where papers that sought to advance, refine or take issue with various aspects of Critical Realism were presented and discussed, and nobody was ever rejected or ejected for putting forward alternative arguments and ideas. Indeed, I can confidently say that many (most?) of those who were involved in these events and debates benefited greatly from them, as did Critical Realism more generally as the approach was honed and refined and its application extended right across the social sciences.
+5
Reply
Richard Murphy says:
July 16 2024 at 3:02 pm
It is absurd
Actually, he’s taken it all quite well… by his standards. He took at least 8 paragraphs to denounce them as far right, neoliberal stooges of the Mont Pelerin satanic underworld (OK, I’ve embellished slightly)
Why does Murphy’s post read like it was ripped out of the pages of a Soviet archive from 1933. Substitute a couple of words here and there and you have apparatchiks arguing over the methods to be used to increase grain production to meet the quotas set for the five year plan of the Ural Oblast
Here’s an uneducated and unpleasant man, with no qualifications earned by himself, but somehow masquerading as a professor, pontificating about discredited theories on MMT and other obvious nonsense, and criticizing others for pointing out that he’s an idiot.