Tuesday, September 03, 2019

A New Independent Movement

What Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard have shown is that we need an independent voter movement to weaken corrupt political parties.

The bottom line is this: Tulsi is an independent candidate running in the Democratic Party Primary. So is Sanders. Why are they running in the Democratic Party? Because that's the only practical way they can get on the ballot in all the states.
(See:https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates)
This is what keeps political parties alive, no matter how corrupt they are. In this respect, the United States is still a confederacy.

We all know that the two major political parties are controlled by elites. There is nothing keeping them from being run by elites. Third parties are not controlled by elites, and that is why they are fringe parties that will never be successful. The power resides in the two major parties.

So how did Trump get elected? His platform really wasn't in line with either party and his base was middle class. But, even he found that quallfing in the fifty states was an impossible task and he was from the business world, so the GOP was the natural place for him to avoid having to qualify in the fifty states as an independent candidate. He figured he had the skills to sideline any rivals and turn the GOP in his direction, which he did. But, he ran into the deep state, the security state and the military industrial complex which controls both parties. So he caved in his first term and became a tool of the neocons, possibly because he leaned neocon all along, having close family ties to Israel.

What we need is an independent movement to reduce the power of political parties, which are at their weakest at this point in time. The logical constituency to do this is labor organizations. If they put their resources toward changing state laws to make it easier to qualify for the presidential ballot and by supporting independent candidates, instead of members of political parties, political parties could be weakened to the point where truly independent candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders could be elected president as independents. If both Tulsi and Bernie are sidelined by the DNC in 2020, the Revolution organization started by Sanders could supply the necessary organization to promote this. Sanders age rules him out for future presidential politics, but Tulsi is in a prime position to become the first independent presidential candidate if she chooses to run as an independent for congress this year and in 2022 and wins.

Attention independent politicos and journalists: You could be the first voice to promote this approach. I think your subscriber base would rise dramatically. Independents are the largest group in voter registration now, and many voters are disillusioned by the corruption of political parties.


Sunday, March 31, 2019

MMT is not a Theory

In this discussion, “currency” is used in a collective sense, that is, paper money, reserves, electronic credits, etc.


MMT, Modern Monetary Theory is not a theory. It’s just an explanation of the way things work in a country that issues a currency that is not backed by a valuable physical asset, enacts taxes that are payable only in that currency, and doesn’t incur debt in another currency. This is the way our federal system operates now.

Unlike individuals, states, and countries that don’t conform to these principles, the US can never go bankrupt. It can issue new currency for any purpose that requires it. It doesn’t need to issue government debt because its needs its own currency. It does so because people holding the currency want a secure place to earn interest on the currency they hold and a way of removing spending power from the private sector when the economy is overheating. Interest rates set by the federal reserve are used to keep the system in balance.

Currency issuance increases demand, so it will stimulate the economy. If the demand for goods and services exceed the ability of the economy to provide them, due to shortages of labor, materials, or infrastructure, prices for these means of production will increase (inflation), so demand must be curtained, until supply can keep up with demand. This is where taxation and federal debt come in, to reduce demand until supply catches up.

The best way to increase demand is to put money in the hands of people who spend it, not into the hands of people who use it to buy up assets beyond what is needed for production of goods and services, increasing the price of assets. When people spend money it creates more demand for goods and services, more profits for corporations, higher wages for employees, etc (demand pull). I makes no sense to keep a substantial portion of the population in poverty, burdened by worrying about their health or survival, depriving them of the education, transportation, or other tools they need to maximize their productivity. The more people that are healthy, motivated, and are producing in the economy, the less likely it will be that shortages and inflation will develop, limiting the growth of the economy.