Episode 9 – The State of MMT Activism Around the World with Christian Reilly

Macro N Cheese – Episode 9
The State of MMT Activism Around the World with Christian Reilly
March 30, 2019

Christian Reilly [intro/music] (00:02):

Point one, I will deepen my knowledge of MMT. Two, I will teach MMT to interested people. Three, I will endeavor to make people curious about MMT. Four, I will make and share resources to help myself and others do one, two and three. Five, I will prioritize engaging with authentically curious people over those who are not. Six, when teaching or debating I will not make statements about MMT that I do not know to be 100% correct. Seven is I recognize that the job guarantee or transition job is part of a MMT and I need to be accomplished at explaining it.

Geoff Ginter [intro/music] (00:47):

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

Steve Grumbine (01:38):

All right, folks. This is Steve with Real Progressives. Today is a fun one. I have a friend from the UK from the MMT podcast, comedian and economic activist, Christian Reilly. Christian has been a friend of Real Progressive’s for some time, but without further ado, what I want to do is I want to bring on my guest. Welcome, sir. How are you today?

Reilly (02:00):

I’m good. Thanks, Steve. It’s an absolutely privileged to talk to you and thank you in person for all the work that you’ve done and all that you’ve taught me in MMT as well. So thanks for that.

Grumbine (02:11):

Well, you’re an amazing guy and that’s why we have you on here. But one of the things that I want our audience to know is that first and foremost, the struggle that we all think we’re fighting here at Real Progressives is not a US-based only fight. I mean, this is a global war against neoliberalism and you guys are leading the charge out there in the UK, along with GIMMS (Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies) and other folks.

Reilly (02:32):

Yeah. We’ll give it a go.

Grumbine (02:33):

Yeah. So, so why don’t you do us a favor, talk a little bit about what you’re doing with the MMT podcast. Talk a little bit about how you got involved in MMT and then we’ll take it from there.

Reilly (02:45):

Okay. Well, after the 2008 crisis, I was looking around for answers about what’s happened because we were told we’d spent too much money and there was no money to pay for anything, but at the same time they made loads of money to bail out the banks. And this is me in 2008. I’m like, right. So there’s loads of money, but there’s not any money at all. It was like . . . [inaudible] his money.

And so I started reading on what money was and I eventually came across the Naked Capitalism blog. And when . . . I read a lot of Michael Hudson and then one day I came across Warren Mosler and that I just thought, “Wow, this guy really knows how to put it across.” And I just devoured everything I could on MMT. And so you can see, this is like a period of years.

I came across your stuff and you’re talking to Ellis and you know, all those really educational chats and stuff. And then they’re just seeing what the. . . this sort of emotion that you put into it. I think is really important to me as well. It’s really inspiring. And so I very much like to consume podcasts myself.

So I thought, first of all right, a few years ago, I thought MMT, once the penny drops, it’s so illuminating that like, “All I need to do really a sit back and wait. I’ll just get on with, I just mind my . . .” You know what I do in my day job is I’m a comedian and what I, what I put shows together for the Edinburgh Festival. I try and make SOAs that make a political point.

And I’m mixing with lots of very, very daft stuff. And that’s, to me, that’s my sort of, I’m trying to, you know, just raise consciousness a millimeter on certain issues through this thing that I do as a job. I just, I happen to find myself being a comedian when all of this stuff became important.

So, I thought where I just need to, this is so obvious and then right about 2014 David Graeber wrote a paper that had been put out by the Bank of England, the title of the article is something like ‘Money is an IOU and the Banks are Rolling in it.’ And it was sort of on page 90 of The Guardian, but I just thought, now it’s in mainstream news.

And so it’s only a matter of time; surely I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to push on this at all. It’s going to happen naturally. But then I don’t know, after Trump was elected and things started moving more to the right, I mean, we’re moving more than racing to the right.

And it kind of, you know, just the death wish that’s seems to have happened globally to society and to decency, I just thought this is not gonna . . . Anyway, I had a few projects to get out of the way. And now I thought, right, I’m going to, I don’t know how to approach this, but, you know, I was very inspired by reading what Patricia was writing on Twitter and, you know, reading what she was putting out on websites.

And I got in touch with her to interview her for a podcast that I thought was just going to be me. You know, I’m just going to interview a whole bunch of people. And then after the first one in between the initial chat and then sitting down to edit it, I thought, “Oh, we could do that regularly if she was up for it.” So I messaged her and said, “Why don’t we do this regularly?” And that’s how the MMT Podcast started.

Grumbine (06:05):

That’s amazing. So, first of all, I want to thank you for acknowledging the passion part of this, you know, offline. I almost wished that we could have done our pre-talk on camera, in retrospect, because some of the things I think are really important, right? We have various stations in this war, you know, and there’s so many opportunities to serve in getting the message out there.

From Real Progressives’ standpoint we didn’t say that we’re real MMT, we’re Real Progressives. And so our job has been to translate MMT to a progressive world so that they can know how to use this to activate a progressive agenda. You know, naturally MMT is nonpartisan so you can morph and move and moving around all sorts of different circles.

But if you think about what a progressive is, you know, a progressive isn’t typically the person sitting there in a smoking jacket with a long curling pipe and a snuff of a scotch or anything like that in a, you know, an old smokey room with him.

Reilly (07:10):

How have you been seeing what goes on in my house? Surveillance state . . .

Grumbine (07:19):

The progressives in the US tend to be at rallies with their fist in the air, yelling about things that are important, the environment, healthcare. And you think about that and you say, “What is always missing with Progressives? They got the right stuff. The Green Party is fighting for a lot of the right things, a lot of the right things, but they keep failing the economics.

Reilly (07:40):

Well, I think the reason that I went down the route of calling the podcast, the MMT Podcast is I don’t care who picks it up and runs with it. If it happens to be a right winger or something like that, that’s fine eventually for it to permeate and be part of our culture. Like a lot of MMTers are fond of saying, “Look, we created a school system and it’s federally funded and locally administered.”

We’re beyond the debate about whether that’s good or bad, or whether we could afford it or not afford it. And we need to be like that with say Medicare for All, or over here in the, in the UK about the NHS. And unfortunately in the UK popular opinion is very aligned with the NHS. You know, everybody loves the NHS. If you took a poll, you’d get like 80% of the population are really in favor of the NHS.

So loads of those are going to be conservatives. So we tend to get our aspirations as Progressives curtailed by – and it’s really been hammered home since 2008 – by this idea that there’s not enough money; we could run out of money. And so that’s why I went down the route of trying to understand what money is. And then that led me to MMT. So it really is our answering machine to all of that.

And so I identify as left of center. I would call myself actually I like anarchism. You know, I think forces, not self-justifying, all that stuff, you know? And so, but I’m not like, “Oh, let’s dismantle the whole state.” I mean, first we’ve got to make our modifications, approve the power. Is it legitimate before we go that far? So that’s where I’m coming from, especially political conscience.

But I totally, I’ve got conservative friends. I like them. And I always try and see things from the perspective of . . . they think competition is healthy. And as a corollary of that, they’re going to be thinking, “Yeah, so unemployment means some people just have to lose the competition and they’re just gonna have to deal with it.” And, you know, MMT goes, “Look have it your way.

You could have a really competitive private sector, but you know, there doesn’t have to be a zero bid for unemployed labor, and you can understand this. You don’t have to become a Marxist to understand this.” And you know, that’s what MMT gives us anyway.

Grumbine (10:10):

It gives that spectrum. And, you know, I watch neoliberal after neoliberal after neoliberal got elected. Yes. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got through, but then again, she was basically uncontested. That was, we knew she was going to win. The rest of them, the other people like Tim Canova, Rudolpho Cortez, Ki Mamoon.

I mean, the poor guy, I think he got 368 votes or something like that, an the libertarian that had left and quit the race a month prior got 1700. And it’s like, Progressives in general, got shellacked. You know, you got . . . Tim Canova barely got 5% of the vote. And this is a guy who I feel has presidential qualities. And then . . .

Reilly (10:53):

Was that in Florida?

Grumbine (10:54):

That was in Florida. Yes.

Reilly (10:58):

I think somebody commented on real progressive voting, but he’s like, well, come on, it’s Florida, so who knows what actually happened.

Grumbine (11:06):

Well, but here’s the thing And this is what I think is dangerous, and this is why this conversation for me is so powerful today. You know, I think that we realized, at least I realized, that we want to believe that we’re closer to critical mass than we are. The reality is we have a hearty group of people that really, really dig this, that get it, that are motivated by it.

And I remember this feeling back in the 1980s, and it was called Dungeons and Dragons. I was rolling a 20 sided die plus 10 pallet and of whatever. And, and the reality is, is that we all took it very seriously. Our slumber parties were met with the best of it. But what I’m saying is that we were still relegated to nerd status. It wasn’t mainstream yet.

Reilly (11:55):

Maybe this is why we’ve got to define where we’re going, like where we want to go. Right? And so that’s why I wrote that manifesto and put it up there on the Real Progressives Group, because I just thought this is probably the biggest number of people that have got a good enough grasp of MMT to want to do something with it.

Grumbine (12:16):

Let’s take a step back and talk about that. Cause we, I wanted, it was where I was headed with this. I wanted the manifesto, right? So it’s still this hardy band of people. And they, you know, some of them are running over here saying, “I want a UBI.” Some of them are over here saying, “Well, you know, MMT is kind of good in theory.” And you’ve got a bunch of there’s . . .

There is a core group, a very small core, actually that really truly understands the vitality, the necessity of the federal job guarantee as part of the MMT framework. There’s a very, very small core of people that understands that MMT is not just something that sounds good in the barstool terminology of theory, but it’s a real congruent set of observable facts, produce a lens by which we can evaluate all of our hopes and dreams.

And so when you put together this manifesto, for those who you don’t know, Christian is an admin with us as well in the Modern Monetary Theory for Real Progressives Group. And he put together a phenomenal starting point for a, a manifesto of sorts for MMT activists. And basically he got it run through several layers of MMT PhDs, and through a bunch of us folks that really care about this and we all went like this to it.

Okay. And so I asked Christian to come on the show to basically walk us through the manifesto so we could get folks to understand the underlying foundational layer before we even talk about anything beyond that. How do we know we can do these great things until we understand the foundation?

And that’s what he really did by putting this thing out there. He really gave us a blueprint, not only for how to conduct ourselves, but what we’re trying to leverage. So Christian, I’m going to turn this over to you to kind of walk through the manifesto.

Reilly (14:06):

Okay. Thanks, mate. Well, so I’d just give a little bit of personal background if you’ll indulge me. I’m a big believer in a movement without an actual end goal, a point where you’ll declare, “Right. It’s over. We don’t need to do anything now because we’ve got there.” If you don’t have that, you’re not going to get there. So my fiance recently started this campaign on London transport.

She’s disabled. And she can’t stand for very long. She walks with a stick and she experienced that she couldn’t get a seat at peak times on London transport. So she started a movement, but it was because people are engrossed. It’s London, people are engrossed in their newspapers and their phones and stuff, and they don’t look up and probably would offer a seat if they looked up.

So she started this campaign to get the words, “Look up. Does somebody need your seat?” added to all the minds (the reminders), the gap announcements, which is something, if you’ve ever been to London, that’s what they say on the tube – when the doors open, you know, “mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

So what she didn’t do was start a movement saying, “Hey, everybody just be nice,” because it’s too broad. You know, and this is a movement to make people . . . no, it’s just a movement with a very specific end.

And then it took her about three or four weeks. She got on, she got quite a bit of mainstream broadcast time and some famous people involved, but she kind of became famous for the cause through her activism because it was, it was simple and it was something that everybody could get behind. So I find that really inspiring.

So I decided that’s what we need as MMTers is to maybe agree on where we’re going. So I sat down and thought about that and I figured that what we want as MMTers and again, everything I’m about to say is “You correct me.” I’m saying, “I think this is where we all aligne.” And “You correct me if you don’t think you’re aligned with this.”

And then “We’ll find a way through together. It’s not about me, it’s about us.” So I think what we’re trying to achieve globally as MMTers is full employment and price stability; and full employment at a dignified wage just to avoid anybody hijacking it and turning it into some dystopian nightmare.

Yeah. So we recognize that people reject that policy goal of full employment, and it’s usually because they’re afraid of inflation or they misunderstand monetary sovereignty. So this is why we need to explain MMT to everybody.

I think some people go at it, and like well, if I can just get a bit of time with say the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, I’d explain it to him. He’ll be the super domino. And then MMT will be . . . I don’t think that way. I think it’s gonna take a grassroots campaign. Our politicians we’ve seen it with Bernie.

We’ve seen it with all, with all our most progressive heroes that are in mainstream politics. We even suspect that they might know MMT, but they always stop short, and it’s because we haven’t created the culture where they could safely come out, I don’t think. There’s some people may say they should just come out and be strong and fair enough, but I can’t make them do that.

What I can do is I can talk to Steven Grumbine. I can talk to Patricia. I can talk to everybody I meet. I can talk to, you know, so it’s about creating a grassroots consciousness. It’s like the teacher in movements, you know, back in the sixties or whatever.

So, we could . . . let’s create a grassroots movement so that politician that tries to push these, “the government’s going to run out of money,” or “if you spend one penny over a certain ratio, it’s, we’re going to end up as Zimbabwe.” So those people are just start looking like clowns. So, I think the best way to spread MMT, this is, again, this is not a list of demands.

I just wrote seven points down. And I was, I was happy that it was seven points cause you know, “Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds.” So I wrote these seven points down and they could be added to, but I don’t think they could be taken away from. So I’m almost ashamed to say them out loud because they sound so simple.

But I think it just deserves saying out loud so that we can go. “Yeah. That’s yeah. We agree with that.” So here we go. Point one, I will deepen my knowledge of MMT – stands to reason, right? Two, I will teach MMT to interested people.

Now I don’t know about you, Steve, but what, you know, when you first discover MMT, you go, “Oh my God, I’ve got to tell everybody.” And you just walk it up to strangers at bus stops, “The government can’t run out of money because it’s the monopoly issuer.”

Grumbine (18:39):

You’re drivin’ into the fast food restaurant . . . Let me tell you about Modern Monetary Theory. . .

Reilly (18:47):

Exactly. That’s kind of how I got down to making a podcast. Cause I thought, I think the kind of people who are going to eventually sort of want to take the time to understand this are the kind of people that will get out and listen to things in podcast form rather than on Twitter. It’s just like, people just love that. You’re like 290 characters. Yeah. You know, just, I’m cleverer than you.

No, I’m cleverer than you. And it’s just, you know, anyway, that’s how I decided to try and teach only people that are already interested. Cause otherwise it’s like you’re a car salesman. You just walk around on the street trying to flag cars to people or you get a job at a car dealership. You’ve got to, you’ve got to move them through a longer transition if you just walk up to them on the street as a car dealer.

So, so one is deeper knowledge of MMT. Two, teach MMT to interested people. Three, I really found out the hard way, you know, it costs me in relationships for sure. Three, I will endeavor to make people curious about MMT and again, that’s just wide open. It could be art, could be, could just be conversations. It could be, you know, that’s as broad as you want it to be.

 Four, I will make and share resources to help myself and others do one, two and three. So again, I would count my hour podcasts, mine and Patricia’s podcast, in that category of like, this is a tool.

So if you come across somebody who’s interested in MMT or seems to have an interest in macroeconomics, you can go rather than arguing on Twitter with people, you know, just start here and listen, you know, you spend a lot time of your day doing chores or something, just plug this into your ears and see what you think.

So we’ll move you along from curious to maybe questioning and maybe want to just push back on it and maybe to the point where you get it. And then five, I will prioritize engaging with authentically curious people over those who are not. So I think that happens a lot online as well, you can spot it instantly, I think.

Or I think we need to develop a sort of an instinct for knowing when to just go, “Hang on a second.” You know, usually somebody will pop up online and go, “Hey idiot. You’re an idiot.” When I see people try to . . . when I see people try to go, “Oh, idiot house, let’s turn it either.

This person really wants me to turn them around. I’m like, no, I don’t carry that.” That person’s just come in and just wants to waste your time. You know, as long as you’re typing words into that keyboard, try to win some stupid competition, think of the opportunity cost, or the people you could have been changing or get, or making curious or answering questions that were genuinely curious.

Think of where you’re losing if you go down that rabbit hole with this, with that guy, you know, it’s always a, it’s always a guy as well.

Grumbine (21:38):

Oh yes it is.

Reilly (21:40):

Yeah. So, yeah, I know there was this thing. I know, I think I linked to it somewhere, but there’s this . . . if you haven’t heard of it, you should Google it – sea lioning, right? So it’s this sort of person that just comes up and just keeps asking you questions that are just on the surface of it, it looks like they’re coming across as a curious person, but really they’re just wasting your time . . . described as a sort of physical, denial of service attack.

Cause while you’re doing this, you can’t actually, you can’t actually function because you’re answering all these inane questions or off point questions. So, you know, it’s good to be able to sort of identify those people early on, I think. Number six, when teaching or debating, I will not make statements about MMT that I do not know to be a hundred percent correct.

Now, I’m sorry if that sounds a bit scoldy or a bit prohibitive, all I mean to say is if you get into an area where you’re not confident that you’re going to say the right thing, it’s okay to say, “I think it’s like this and keep me honest.” You know, you ask around, there’s so much out there, isn’t there; and you’ve made off of it. So, you know, there’s so much out there that you can link to.

You know, the weird thing about the MMT now is there was some discussion about whether the job guarantee is in or out of part of MMT or not part of MMT and people are going, the people are saying, “No, it’s not.”

And then there are only a small number of people, but no, it’s not part of MMT. When we’re when we’re having the back and forth, I’m thinking, it’s not like we’re debating what Marx said and meant, you know, the people who wrote this stuff, they’re still alive. We could just ask them, in fact, even better, we don’t need to ask them. It’s well-documented.

Grumbine (23:25):

I see MMT in two ways, right? I see MMT as the operational reality: you can trace the balance sheets, the ledgers, you can go through, see the accounting identities, see how the stuff flows. It’s empirical. This is not . . . you’re watching it happen. Then you have, now that I’ve gotten these new glasses from the optician, you know, now I can see things a little differently.

And so now I can theoretically create a framework for programs and policies based on these new glasses I have, now that I understand how the ledgers work, now I can see clearly. And this is where the theoretical portion of it . . . this is the ever expanding here’s how this knowledge translates into other things. It can expand how the body of knowledge ebbs and flows and grows.

There’s a core that is just facts, and it’s not up for debate. The debates . . . This is like gravity. It’s – this is it. And so when you fight with folks about what is, it’s kind of like insanity, right? That at some point in time, they have to want to pick up a book. They got to crack the spine of a book. They got to click a link. They got to do something other than fight with you about reality cause that is a time waste. Anyway, keep going. I just wanted to throw that in there.

Reilly (24:43):

I mean, I’m nearly done. So, that last thing I talked about was just being okay with saying, “Look, I don’t know whether I’m a hundred percent correct, but these things, I know; these things I’m sketchy on.” Just make sure that you know what you’re talking about; but that shouldn’t stop me from talking if you don’t, but just say, “This thing, I’m not sure on.”

I think it’s a better way forward. And then that also highlights where you need to go back to step one and I will deepen my knowledge of MMT. These conversations also shine a light on where you delve into your learning a bit deeper. I think it’s good. It’s good to have conversations and get into an area where you don’t know the answers because it shows you the way forward as a learner.

Number seven is I recognize that the job guarantee or transition job is part of MMT and I need to be accomplished at explaining it. And that’s the end of it really. And when, when I floated it on the MMT for Real Progressives Forum, the only real pushback was that there was this “is the job guarantee part of MMT or not.”

I think maybe we’ve solved that one. I think there’s enough consensus that it is. And obviously we know it’s in the literature. And then the other thing was using the word teaching. I will teach MMT to interested people. I can’t remember who, but it was a valid point.

They said teach might be not the appropriate word. You know, we’re like, we’re not the teachers. We need to refer people to the experts. So maybe the other word was . . .way I was thinking about maybe rephrasing that was, I will share what I know with them about MMT to interested people.

Intermission (26:32):

You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast brought to you by Real Progressives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching the masses about MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. Please help our efforts and become a monthly donor at PayPal or Patreon, like and follow our pages on Facebook and YouTube and follow us on Periscope, Twitter and Instagram.

Grumbine (27:22):

We think about this, right? So we have professors that teach, right? And then we have us who are . . .

Reilly (27:29):

John the Baptist.

Grumbine (27:30):

Yes. That’s the line actually is I write. And I think that we’re pointing the way to the people that know, but we’re taking what we know and we’re extrapolating it down for consumable bite sizes. And this is one thing that I think is worth taking a moment to talk about. Back when Ellis and I used to do our show together.

You know, we got critiques from on high and from on low because we quote, unquote “simplified things.” Oh, well that’s not precisely correct. And stuff like that. And Ellis would get very, very upset because it’s like, guys, listen, we’re trying to convey the essence of this message. None of these people we’re talking to are planning to become MMT economists.

They are not going to be getting their PhD based on this livestream. If they get their PhD, they’ll go through whatever training and rigor that they need to go through. So you don’t have to worry about that. We’re not going to send bad . . . We’ve already . . . economists are already terrible to begin with. So we can’t hurt it anymore.

Reilly (28:31):

I totally agree. It sounds to me like you guys were just annoying precisely the right people that needed to be annoyed basically.

Grumbine (28:39):

We tried, you know. We would have people come through, right. And you know, we’re here. You have to come to us. It’s not like we’re going to you here. And, and they would come into the chats or they would come into the show and they would start saying, “Oh, the Federal Reserve’s private banksters,” you know. They come up with all these things and distractigons. You know, this sentence . . .

Reilly (29:01):

What’s that mean? That’s what I’m saying, I mean “sealioning.”

Grumbine (29:01):

Yes!

Reilly (29:05):

It’s been answered. Here’s the link. Just . . . still in dispute to anybody with eyes . . .

Grumbine (29:11):

Yes. Yes. So, okay. So I want to talk just for a minute about the job guarantee itself and for a program, what seems like a policy program to matter . . . Why, why would this program be essential to MMT? Well, it’s essential for an efficient economy when you understand what the dollar was to begin with, as Mosler says, “The dollar created the first unemployed person, the tax.”

You know, once you impose that tax, you now have created the very first unemployed person because that person has to do something to get that dollar to pay that tax. And, and this goes back forever. You know, as long as there’s been a fiat currency of any flavor, even medalist currencies, they had the kings, you know, the king’s gold as it were.

And what do I need this for? I’m going fishing. You know, I’m going to pick a potato out of the ground, whatever. So now why do I need this? And, and the imposition of the hut tax, the imposition of a tax, the imposition of an obligation payable only in that is what generated unemployment. So if the government can generate unemployment, it has the responsibility to end it as well.

And, and so from a, from just a pure ethical standpoint, the job guarantee functions to create a ethical bottom of the economy that you no longer have people that are living in destitution, that you’ve created a situation where we’ve imposed this thing on you, and rather than making you slaves, we’ve now given you a way out that you’ll always be able to meet your obligations.

Reilly (30:43):

I think a way into it. I think we need to be able to talk to, you and I both identify as progressives and you know, left of center. I do think we need to put some effort into learning how to talk to people who are right of center about the job guarantee, because left of center people get it on political conscience ground. And, you know, I think it’s almost like we need to forget that stuff.

Forget it because sooner or later you’re going to end up talking to somebody or the person that you’re talking to who’s left of center will end up talking to somebody who is right of center. And if they don’t have the right way of putting it across, our idea is going to stop there. And we need it spread beyond our tribe.

Grumbine (31:24):

Now, the trick with Grumbine is that Grumbine started out a radical right-wing conservative. So I spoke fluent tea party. I spoke fluent Ron Paul. I spoke fluent LOLBERTARIAN and I spoke fluent GOP. So I come from that world. And part of that, that transition is that I learned how to speak both languages. And you think about this, conservatives are largely concerned with fairness too, in the different way.

We, as progressives are concerned about fairness in that we see capital reigning supreme over labor and so forth. But on the other side of the game, they’re saying, “Hey, I worked really hard for my money. Why should you who are lazy get the same thing I’m getting.” You know, so there’s a bit of a fairness element there as well.

Reilly (32:13):

Exactly. There are loads of areas where we can act on, on both sides of the spectrum. And I was thinking I was having a chat on Twitter with just before I came on air with you. Yeah. With Jeff Epstein, I was chatting with him on Twitter and we took it about libertarians, probably not liking the job guarantee, but I’m thinking actually, well, the government intervenes to make people unemployed.

So we’re trying to get it back to the state of no intervention by using the job guarantee. Now, obviously you could say, “Well, that means we should just dismantle the government,” and duh. Yeah. But like, until that point until we totally dismantle the government, and we’re all living in caves off our wit, forging our own steel, fighting each other to the death for the each other’s meat.

Until we get to that point, we should maybe try and get the, you know, get it back to a state of no intervention. You know, the intervention is the thing that makes the unemployment. I dunno if that’s a worthwhile talking point, I’m just throwing it out.

Grumbine (33:18):

You know, it’s interesting coming from that libertarian world, you know, they believe tax is force. So I think that when you understand that the tax is also what creates this environment, what you’re doing is saying, “Hey, listen, we’re kind of putting one on the left side of the equal sign and we’re putting one on the right. We’re making this balance out now.

Now we’re taking away some of the force and we’re giving you an easy out, so to speak. We’re giving you a way of being what you want to be and taking away some of the force element and by creating communities, which is, you know, you know, they want volunteerism and so forth. I mean, this is a voluntary program.”

Reilly (33:57):

I think that gets lost a lot of the time. People think, “Oh, you know, there’s, that’s the government coming in and saying, ‘you’re not allowed to be unemployed.'” And of course, I think episode four of our podcast series, shameless plug, we talked to Fadhel Kaboub who’s amazing.

I’m sure everybody watching knows he’s amazing, and one of the first things he says is, “If you don’t want to work in the job guarantee on moral grounds, on ideological grounds, nobody has to. You could be voluntarily unemployed. You can be between jobs.”

So I think two big things people miss about the job guarantee is it’s a voluntary scheme and it’s federally funded and locally administered. A lot of people always forget that, but we’ve been over that a thousand times, I’m sure. But to the earlier point about tax is force. Yeah, it is. So the point is, is it a legitimate force?

It is if the reasons that you’re taxing and spending have been arrived at democratically then, yeah, that is a legitimate force. So I think the solution to that is to legitimize that force by expanding democracy and doing what you can to do that, rather than dismantling the whole system.

I just don’t think that’s going to create a fairer world because the first thing that happens is when you dismantle the state, you’ve still got these large conglomerations of private power. And they’re just going to be the new government where you can have two relationships with a corporation: as an individual, a consumer, or an employee.

That’s it. Noam Chomsky is very fond of saying a lot of the time, you know, corporations are top-down tyrannies, they’re pure totalitarian organizations. I think that’s a spot-on analysis of it. So the only countervailing force we’ve got at the moment is government state power. And so we need to, instead of having that state power constantly captured by private power, we need to do what we can to change that equation and participate in democracy.

Grumbine (35:55):

I love it. The election here in the United States, it was a travesty for Progressives and . . .

Reilly (36:02):

Well, in a way, they’re not being radical enough. The Democrats aren’t being radical enough and that’s why they’re getting their asses kicked.

Grumbine (36:06):

Well, the Democrats though, by definition are the center party. They’ve always been the center party and that’s the problem, right? There is no left in America. And the left that is there is getting 200 votes instead of, you know, 20,000 or 2 million.

I mean, the left has been marginalized and cut out and then vote shamed out of anything. We have this problem in the United States, unlike other places where we don’t have ruling coalitions, we have this first past the post.

Reilly (36:33):

We have first past the post here as well.

Grumbine (36:36):

There is no coalition. It’s a duopoly period. Because of that, there’s this thing called Duverger’s law that goes out there and it really makes it impossible for independents and third parties of any variety to make any real traction.

They almost have to have a movement backing them, which is what this Movement for a People’s Party was banking on hoping and praying that Bernie Sanders would walk away and ride on his horse, taking this party to the promised land.

And that would have then depleted the Democrats and moved them over here to this new thing that would be democratized and all the superdelegates would be gone and all of this stuff, you know, and it didn’t quite play out that way. So we’re sitting here as progressives, basically men without a home, women without a home, because the Democratic Party doesn’t actually do progressive stuff.

They really don’t. In fact, we were joking yesterday about a Christmas Carol and talking about the Democrats of Christmas past, the Democrats of Christmas present, and the Democrats of Christmas future. And the Democrats at Christmas future ended up being Republicans.

The Democrats of today have this ghostly remembrance of what it was like to be FDR, of what it was like to be JFK, of what it was like to actually fight for public services. And the Democrats of today really don’t do that. So they don’t really know who they are. And if you just want a Republican, Republicans do republicanism better than anybody.

Reilly (38:01):

Yeah. I think a way out of not being depressed by this situation, and we have it in the UK, we’ve got a bit more of a spectrum now because we’ve got Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labor Party. So it’s looking like more of an authentically left-wing Labor Party and a more real, authentic left-wing opposition than we’ve had for some time.

So I think deliberately or by accident, the Labor Party as an institution has learned the lessons of the Blair years. But I always think a way to stop getting depressed by this situation is think of politics as movements, not as getting your party elected – it’s just, that’s the last stage.

And so that’s why I’m trying to think of MMT as a movement. And so instead of going MMT, we want a Green New Deal, it’s like, no, no, the people who want that can use MMT, but MMT is globally, I think we want full employment and price stability because it doesn’t mean we don’t care about those other things.

But like if we start adding extra missions to it, to our grassroots efforts, to spread MMT, we’re going to get distracted. And that’s pretty much what happens to political parties.

They end up they have to have this plank and that plank and that plank and about the time its own manifestos come out is compromise after compromise and well, like again, sorry, I’m going to the second time I brought up Chomsky, but like, he goes though, this one party in America, that’s the business party and it’s got two arms – it’s got the Republican arm and the Democrat arm, but it’s the same party.

You know, if you are power or connected to power, that’s the way you want it. You want it to look like there’s choice. As a parent, you’re a parent, you know, I would say, you know, I’ve got two kids. You want them to get dressed and they don’t want to get dressed. You know, you go, all right, whoever can get dressed the quickest, wins the competition.

And they’re dressed all of a sudden. If you’ve got a kid that doesn’t want to get dressed, do you go, do you want to put on the red top or the blue top? And they make a choice that they put it, Oh, then you’re like, yes, I got you dress. I think parents understand how the two party system works.

Grumbine (40:02):

That was actually very good. I have to remember that as a dad. I got to put that into the book. Alright. One more thing I want to bring up before we get into the final leg here.

Reilly (40:14):

We want to answer these UBI questions for another hour.

Grumbine (40:18):

I mean, you figured this, right? We have been inundated with misinformation, disinformation, you name it. There is a lot of fighting going on on Twitter, amongst academics, even right now. And these academic wars cascade down to the worker bees, the warriors on the front line.

And they don’t have all the tools. I mean, we’ve got people on our team, quite frankly, that haven’t taken the time to ingest and consume and read the literature so that they’re prepared for these battles. And they’ll go out there and go, you’re an idiot or you’re this. And it’s like, yeah . . .

Reilly (40:53):

It’s a gift to them. Because then they, instead of dealing with the like the hardcore literature, they’ll go, “An MMTesk Twitterer said this, so I’m going to address this,” but they don’t speak for every MMTer – two decades of scholarly work have gone into it.

We won’t mention her by name, but there is a financial blogger over here in the UK that’s, you know, has not exactly covered herself in glory. You know, she’s tilting at straw men all day long. It’s just . . . I think we don’t need to address that. Let them slug it out.

You know, this is a massive low ball estimate. There’s a thousand people you could be talking to who are genuinely curious that you could have some impact with. The person that gets up in your grill and you know, “Hey idiot, explain this.” And it’s like, “Well, no, that’s, I don’t need to explain that. Why don’t you go and Google that? Why don’t you bring that question up later when I’m not here?”

Grumbine (41:49):

You know, I was looking at Bill Mitchell being thrashed by this individual.

Reilly (41:53):

Have you read his blog? His latest blog. It’s the perfect comeback. It was. What is it? Something like MMT doesn’t show how monetary sovereignty works on Pluto.

Grumbine (42:05):

It was beautiful.

Reilly (42:06):

Show me where on Snapchat. You’ve addressed this.

Grumbine (42:14):

Right? I, you know, my first instinct is, you know, I’m close to Bill. I like Bill a lot. And there he is, you know, being publicly flamed by this person with 40 plus thousand followers and I’m frustrated. And then I look in our inbox and our inbox is full of people coming to us.

What about this article? And I used notes from a guy who does bond economics, Brian Romanchuk. He wrote a great rebuttal as well to her monetary sovereignty.

Reilly (42:45):

Yeah. The myth, the myth of monetary sovereignty. There was a great myth, yeah.

Grumbine (42:51):

It was beautiful. But you know, we’re in there answering inboxes from this. And it’s like, Claire came to me and said, you know, “Let them fight this out. We’re good.” And I thought to myself, wait a minute, she brought up a great point. She said, you know what, if they’re accidentally now asking about MMT because the charlatan went out there and – call it a win. So I think that it’s always a matter of perspective.

Reilly (43:15):

This is what’s going to happen as it gets more and more traction. It was so fringe a year ago. Now it’s, it’s still a fringe, but it’s growing. I think more Warren said in one of his talks that I heard that it’s becoming more, he heard a reaction to mainstream media that was something like, “Oh, well, MMT says this instead of, or Keynesianism would have said this.” So, you know, it’s already starting to be a “go to” trope.

Grumbine (43:41):

I think that it’s important though. I want to make this point to tie it back to your manifesto because this manifesto is something that I want RP to kind of get behind. I mean, we, to be clear when Real Progressives started, we started as a political movement to both support Stephanie Kelton, but also support Bernie Sanders.

We’re only here to talk about MMT. We’re not here to talk about the progressive movement. We’re not here to talk about an agenda. We’re here to talk about MMT. For a lot of us, we’ve been suffering through this. And I watch people that follow us defeat after defeat, after impending defeat over and over and over again.

And you know, for years they’ve had these great visions and for years, victory has been snatched out from in front of them. And they watch the cackling Hillary Clinton laughing and saying, “How are you going to pay for it? It’s pie in the sky.” And that horrible neoliberal cackle of the vote blue corporate Democrats in America has plagued progressives forever. It’s what really haunts their existence.

Reilly (44:43):

Did you see Nancy Pelosi straight after the why they took back the house? She was just sweating. Hey, we’re not going to be like Republicans. And it’s like, “You exactly need to be like Republicans. Have you learned nothing?”

Grumbine (44:56):

Nothing, nothing. The idea here is, is that progressives are hurting and they’ve always been hurting. And they’ve always been angry at quite frankly. I know that they’ll hate me for saying this, but it’s okay. I largely see activists and independents as the activist wing of the Democratic Party, even though they don’t want to see themselves that way.

Because right now there aren’t any greens really elected at the moment. There aren’t a whole lot of independents out there elected at the moment. And so whether we like it or not, these jokers are running the show and that’s just in the US. I see this happening all around the world, the you’ve a little bit more freedom to work in multi-caucused groups.

You have multiple ways of pulling people together to work. Well, we have that too. And unfortunately, because of the way that the bylaws are written in the United States, I mean, these are private corporations, these parties, and they have no requirement to hold a primary. They can just hand pick whoever they want to be their candidate.

So for activists that have fought for Bernie Sanders that maybe got woken to that moment, you know, had a huge chasm of defeat in their heart. I mean, everything fell apart. They started to believe for a minute, and then it was taken away.

Reilly (46:12):

Well, I was going to say that if you look at it, if you go, I have to get Bernie elected. Bernie has to be president. Everything else is going to depress me. You’re going to be depressed, but you know, I love Bernie, but I think what we should do as progressives, as any kind of activists, and it’s gonna sound weird, but we should learn from UKIP. UKIP is the UK Independence Party.

And they were set up to get Britain out of the European Union. People mistakenly think, Oh, they’re irrelevant. They’ve never won any elections. They’ve no . . . what they did was they threatened to cost conservatives the election over here in the UK and the conservatives had to promise an “in and out referendum” on the European Union.

And it took 17 years for this guy, Nigel Farage who, you know, I don’t like UKIP. I don’t like Nigel Farage. I’m actually a remain voter. I, you know, I wish we were still in the European Union even though it has massive flaws, but that, you know, that’s another topic for another day. So they pressured the conservatives to, including this referendum in their manifesto.

And then the conservatives, you know, managed to hold onto power because they adopted that. Then the referendum happened and now we’re leaving the European Union. So as a movement, UKIP actually worked. It took him 17 years, but that’s how you pull a party to your end of the political spectrum.

Grumbine (47:38):

It’s funny, I’m watching some of the comments here about UKIP, because obviously UKIP played with conservative side of the things, but the reality is . . .

Reilly (47:45):

We can do a left wing UKIP. You can, you know, pull them this way,

Grumbine (47:48):

Stop worrying about what they are and start worrying about what model they use. You know, I did a stream called Spreadsheets and I talked about how the right wing is organized. They don’t sit there and bicker. It’s simple. They focus and they get shit done. It’s bad shit, but they get it done.

And I’m like, guys, in order for us to take even baby steps forward, we’ve gotta really organize, and that means we need systems. That means we need people dialed into some basic principles that we don’t cross over, that we state no matter what – this is ground zero right here. And that’s what they do. And that’s why they keep cleaning our clock.

Reilly (48:27):

I hope this doesn’t sound too off color, but I think, I think some of the best activists in the world are in the business community. Cause they, you know, if you think about like what a startup is or how you’ve moved from a startup to a successful businesses, you’ve got, where are we going?

And there’s no step in a business plan that’s like ‘magic happens,’ and then we’ll be in profit. No, it’s like, will this lead to that? Okay, no, it won’t. We need to rethink this step or, you know, and hammer it out until we get these steps that actually work.

And if you’re a progressive, I think you need to do that as well. You need to have that kind of a ethic behind the direction you’re going in. And it all starts with knowing where you want to get to in real specific terms, like the more specific you can be, the better chance you’ve got of hitting it. Right?

Grumbine (49:15):

If you think about it, the people were up against God. It sounds so bad. But you see us talking about folks throwing rocks at police and stuff like that. And then they shoot them with a bullet and it’s like, that’s disgusting. It’s evil. It’s horrible.

But that’s kind of what it’s like when you’re a progressive or just a regular proletariat fighting back against a machine that’s organized. If all we’re going to do is run around with cardboard signs in our hands and growls and be miserable. We’re not going to do much of anything.

Reilly (49:47):

I mean, I’m thinking out loud here. So, you know, give me enough rope. I will hang myself. Maybe it’s like, these are not the folks we’re up . . . cause you know, you’re saying the folks we’re up against. Maybe it’s a question of thinking, are we up against them? Cause you know, remember at some point in this conversation, we’re going, actually, there’s a lot of alignment here.

They want this. We actually want this, we’re just talking about it a different way. So I always think if the idea you’re trying to get across requires the person you’re talking to to completely change their worldview, you’re not going to get there. And you, if you want people to understand MMT, the great thing about it is I don’t need to change their world view. They can be a conservative. They can be like very into capitalism.

Grumbine (50:30):

When I say the powers that be, the powers that we’re fighting against, this is the two sides of the one party that Noam Chomsky talks about. They have the Democrat arm and the Republican arm, but it’s still the capital arm. And the bottom line is that the illusion of choice.

When we talk about fighting that our own misinformation, it’s the illusions that people, I mean, why would somebody that watches the United States out of thin air come up with 700 billion like that for the military, suddenly think that we can’t come up with the basics to pay for health care. I was just, just spitballing and can’t figure it out.

And so there’s some mind game that has gone on to allow people to believe this thing. And I have been so morose with looking at politics in America because everybody’s telling me I’m not a Democrat or I’m not a this. Tell me what you’re for. Help me out. Tell me what you are for.

Show me what you will do when you govern. And if you don’t understand the economic base, everything else is horseshit because you literally can’t do anything you just said. So everything you say past the butt, can’t be done. There’s no having the rest of that conversation. I don’t care what your morality is. I don’t care what your politics are. If you don’t understand the economics of it, you’re selling snake oil.

Reilly (51:55):

Yeah. I think that that should be your posture. Just like, do you want to understand how to get what you want? Do you understand how to talk about it . . . the first thing that you’re going to come up against is somebody going, “the government’s run out of money or how you gonna pay for it.”

And if you’re interested, I can solve that problem for you. Like you’ve said in the past, if you just want to put your fist in there and hold a sign and stuff, then yeah, that’s good as well. It’s nice to have a get together, but you know, this, this will really get you where you want to go. It’s in your hands.

Grumbine (52:28):

Yeah. And see, and that’s it. You take away the victim side of this and you give them the keys to the car. You say, listen, this right here drives the vehicle. You put these keys in, it goes. MMT is the keys. It’s the gas. It’s whatever you want to call it. It’s the engine of the car. Otherwise sitting there in like a tin can, you’re doing nothing, and you’re going nowhere.

And so I think that this thing that we’re doing here and this manifesto that you’ve put together is really, really important. I think that, you know, one of the challenges I would give to my own followers, the people that are part of Real Progressives, take the time to learn this stuff. Don’t shortchange the learning. Don’t shortchange the getting to know the material. Know where to find information.

Don’t just immediately yell for a floaty to find it. Do the hard work. Go to New Economic Perspectives. Go to Fadhel Kaboub and Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Go to Levy Institute. Go to UMKC. Go to Naked Capitalism, go to these places that have the stuff. Come here, go, go to Deficit Owls. Go to Modern Money Network. Go to the MMT podcast . . .

Reilly (53:36):

That sounds like a great podcast, Steve.

Grumbine (53:38):

It sure does. Use the tools.

Reilly (53:41):

There’s loads of them out there and loads of ways. So I mean, you don’t have to go down the library anymore. I thing that I’m fond of saying is if you can’t find where these things are, just tweet me. Tweet Patricia. Tweet, Steve, you know, he knows where the stuff is. He can link you to the stuff.

Grumbine (54:01):

My inbox is full. I’m constantly. I mean, no, I’m serious. This is what we do. And I think that everybody has a little bit of a responsibility to get to the point where they shoulder some of that. But this manifesto though, what I love about it is it says point blank: Don’t go past your knowledge level. Once you don’t understand something, call for a lifeline. Go out there and point to an expert.

Find someone to help you. And if not, point them in the direction, because we don’t want to spread false information. We don’t want to just come off half cocked. We really do want to be advancing knowledge, real knowledge and MMT is to me is real hope.

Reilly (54:43):

Maybe that should be the next conversation that we open up on the forum is like, okay, how to talk about the job guarantee to people who don’t identify as progressives. Cause I’m sure that people have got great ideas about that. I think that might be the next thing.

Grumbine (54:57):

Absolutely. So, uh, real quick, I wanna, I want to plug the MMT Podcast and Patricia one more time.

Reilly (55:04):

It’s a great podcast.

Grumbine (55:05):

No, it really is.

Reilly (55:07):

Okay. Well the podcast is, if you want to talk to the podcast, it’s @MMT podcast on Twitter. That’s the easiest way to remember it. And then our Twitter handles are in the description of the @MMT podcast profile. So that’s the easiest way to remember to find us and the link to all the episodes is there. If you Google MMT podcast, it’s easy to Google Reknr MMT podcasts.

Reknr is the platform a zeen that’s putting us out. Does anybody say zeen anymore? I just did. Reknr spelled R E K N R so sorry. It’s like 6:00 PM. I haven’t woken up yet. Yeah. Rekner. So if you put, Reknr MMT podcast into Google, you’ll get it. And there we go. There’s, there’s nine episodes out now.

On Saturday night in the UK, Sunday morning in Australia, we’re going to be talking to Bill Mitchell. So we asked for questions for Bill. We asked on the Modern Monetary Theory for Real Progressives Forum if anybody had any questions for Bill. So, you know, keep those coming. We’re getting a lot of them.

And if you can get the questions down to like three paragraphs, that would help us. Very seriously, we’re absolutely stoked that everybody’s interested. And they’ve got, they’ve got things to say. So, you know, sorry if I come off flippant sometimes I, you know, I genuinely honored to be part of this community.

That’s, you know, just, they want to learn. They want to spread MMT and I’m still learning. And you know, I feel very privileged and, you know, thanks for talking to me, Steve, and thanks for everything that you’ve done.

Grumbine (56:54):

No, this is wonderful. I really appreciate it. So folks want to thank you all very much. Please check out Christian and Patricia on the MMT Podcast. And with that, thank you so much, man. I appreciate you being my friend. And thanks for everything you do.

Reilly (57:09):

My pleasure.

Ending Credits (57:15):

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.