The issue of our nation’s debt has been the cornerstone of the neoliberal agenda since the late ’70s and is at the heart of our economic (and many social) problems. This author has been made aware of the contradictions in her premise without response and chooses to simply repeat the false assumptions her dire warnings depend upon. This is the common tact taken by those wishing to preserve the status quo that so greatly favors the wealthy and their corrupt lapdog politicians.
None of the austerity cheerleaders have answers for the most basic logic of MMT and play to the experience of voters’ personal interaction with our currency and outdated gold standard thinking as the foundation of their assertion that the most affluent economy in history cannot afford to provide the security and benefits that so many lesser economies take for granted. Denying the Constitutional mandate of Congress to use the power of the purse in achieving economic and social goals has greatly benefitted banking and the wealthy to the detriment of the middle class. That denial is supported by both major parties, so my criticism is not political.
Even disregarding the threat of climate change, America cannot continue to exist as a viable democratic Republic while following the downward economic path we have been on. The New Deal gave us a dramatic lead in the world, but that lead has been swallowed up and has largely disappeared into the policies of neoliberalism which are supported by fiscal conservatism and government-imposed austerity that forces the people to fund their own economy via private-sector debt.
This sort of works, as long as we are willing and able to allow continual growth in extraction/consumption and extreme misery at the bottom of the economy to “rollover” that debt, but it quickly fails at the slightest hint of economic retraction, and it fails dramatically as we saw in ‘08. This hardly causes pause for the oligarchs and bankers as they always have the knowledge of the “real” economic system and the assurance that their bought and paid for neoliberal politicians will use that power of the purse to make a soft landing for them.
