Metaphors! They are more than a fancy way of emphasising some point – that is, their power goes beyond meagre linguistic construction. The research suggests they are part of our deep mental or neural capacity, which we draw on to sort out facts and ideas. They are conceptual devices intrinsically linked to the way we think abstractly. Metaphorical language reinforces our ideology (worldview) and so it is no surprise that political parties have become very interested in framing their messages using simple and common metaphors which resonate with the way we feel about things. George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist, considers we do not make our political choices on the basis of rational dissection of competing facts and arguments but rather respond to central (or grand) metaphors with reinforce our worldview. We thus consider facts or argument within that framework of thought. I am doing a bit of work in this area as a way of understanding why central Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) propositions (which are so patently obvious and have strong explanatory capacity) evade acceptance among people, even those who express liberal perspectives (in this context meaning – are open to new ideas).

There was an UK Guardian article today (September 23, 2013) – The American dream has become a burden for most – which argues that the narratives about the American dream are becoming increasingly recognised as a “delusional myth”. The discussion is relevant for a number of growing research agendas that attempt to construct a new understanding of what has been happening over the neo-liberal period (say, the last 3 decades), how the financial crisis occurred, why it is persisting, who underpins the well-funded campaign against budget deficits as a means of reducing unemployment and redistributing national income towards the bottom of the distribution, and how we might go about reforming/restructuring a global financial order that clearly does not work in the interests of all (make that almost everybody!). One such research agenda is emerging from the field of network analysis and some of the results to date provide a chilling picture of who controls the world financial markets and the governments and central banks that seek to regulate these markets. Essentially, if we want to engage in serious reform we have to unseat the power of some 161 individuals.

On September 7, 2013, the federal election in Australia saw the incumbent Labor Party deposed in fairly categorical terms and replaced by the “born-to-rule” conservative coalition (Liberal and Nationals). The Labor Party had been in power for two terms since 2007 after defeating the conservatives even more categorically, who had, in turn, been in power for 11 years. The Labor Party stormed to office in the 2007 federal election, taking 22 seats of coalition (and a further 1 from an independent) to hold 83 seats (primary vote 43.38 per cent, and two-party preferred 52.70 per cent). The conservative coalition was reduced to 65 seats (in the 150 seat lower house). The conservative Prime Minister lost his own seat so great was the rout. Between 2007 and 2013, the Australian Labor Party squandered that lead and in the process we had three Prime Ministers (2 different) as the Party factions conducted an internecene war. After last Saturday’s defeat, one of the Labor Prime Ministers (who had been deposed in June 2013 as a result of her total failure to win electoral appeal) wrote her assessment of the state of Labor as a result of the electoral defeat. The article – Julia Gillard writes on power, purpose and Labor’s future – is an extraordinary exercise in self-denial, despite much of it providing an assessment that I would agree with. But in the big issue – of economic credibility, Ms Gillard demonstrates why her Party was unfit to govern and why the conservatives are back in power and beginning yet another period where the rights and outcomes of workers will be attacked and dragged down. But this has only happened because of the monumental failure of the Labor Party to present a progressive alternative at a time when they had the Australian voters eating out of their hands.

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post over the weekend (September 7, 2013) – Why Keynes wouldn’t have too rosy a view of our economic future – written by – Mike Konczal. It broaches the topic of self-adjustment in capitalist monetary economies and the divide within the economics profession with respect to that topic. It also introduces the issue that the long-run trajectory of the economy is dependent on the short-run path taken (the so-called hysteresis hypothesis), which is largely ignored by those who advocated fiscal austerity. What is typically denied is that the costs of fiscal austerity are more than a temporary increase in unemployment and lost income. The intergenerational consequences and the impact on the capacity of the economy are likely to be massive.

Today, I was (perhaps) going to discuss the Federal coalition’s so-called budget costings, which they have released this afternoon a day and a half before the federal election is held. The major policy proposals are not costed and the whole exercise makes a mockery of their claims to transparency. The Coalition hired three so-called experts to validate the “costings” (after the debacle in the last election when their were major mistakes in the arithmetic revealed) and those characters should be ashamed of themselves for giving their imprimatur to such a shoddy process. Even from the pittance of information they have released it is clear they do not understand the macroeconomic reality and will damage overall growth. So that is all I intend to say about that matter. But in the last few days I have done a few media interviews (radio) on an article that appeared in the local Fairfax press, but was originally published in the Strike! Magazine as – On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by LSE anthropologist, David Graeber. The title in the local article had changed to “nonsense jobs” – a sign of the conservatism of our press. The interviews I did were interesting because the article brings together a number of strands that further expose the weakness of the economic theory taught to students in most universities. That is much more interesting to write about here than the tawdry realities of Australian politics at present which can be described as indecent ignorance.

Tomorrow, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release the June-quarter National Accounts for Australia. In the lead up to this release, we get some information about the components of national expenditure and the contribution to the final real GDP growth result that will be released tomorrow. Last week, we learned, courtesy of the release – Private New Capital Expenditure and Expected Expenditure, Australia, June 2013 – That seasonally adjusted new capital expenditure and fallen by 2.3 per cent in the year to June 2013. This is off an extremely high base and suggests that the investment boom associated with the mining sector is winding down, albeit steadily. Today, the ABS released the latest – Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, Australia, June 2013 – which showed a widening Current Account deficit (by 7 per cent) with the surplus on the trade part of the account falling by 2 per cent. In volume terms, it is estimated that the external deficit would reduce real GDP growth by 0.04 percentage points. That is, a modest spending drain from the domestic economy.

Australia is in the final stages of a federal election campaign and it is likely that the conservatives will be returned to power after being out of office for eight years. The current government, allegedly non-conservative, is so close in most respects to the conservatives that it is hard to distinguish between the two. One significant point of difference over the last several years relates to the effectiveness of the fiscal stimulus that the current government introduced in late 2008 to attenuate the consequences of the global financial crisis. The conservative opposition claimed they would not have allowed the budget to move back into deficit during this period. Given the scale of the crisis, they would have had no choice anyone because the cyclical impacts via lost tax revenue would have been sufficient to drive the budget into deficit irrespective of the discretionary stimulus packages that were introduced in stages by the current government. Both major parties are obsessed with pursuing budget surpluses without the slightest recognition that in current circumstances such a policy orientation is destructive to growth and employment. I was examining some data relating to the construction industry today for another project, which demonstrates why the introduction of the 2008-09 fiscal stimulus packages were extremely effective in reducing the output and employment losses that might otherwise have occurred. The future under a surplus-obsessed conservative government for workers looks rather bleak. Here is some evidence.

There were two interesting articles I read (among others) in recent days that attack mainstream economic analysis in different ways. The first, published August 18, 2013 – Removing deadweight loss from economic discourse on income taxation and public spending – is by Northwestern Economics Professor Charles F. Manski. He wants our profession to dump all its negative welfare analysis about the impacts of taxation (as “deadweight losses”) and, instead, focus on the benefits that come from government spending, in particular, highly productive infrastructure provision. So, an attack from the inside! The second article was a Bloomberg Op Ed (August 21, 2013) – Economists Need to Admit When They’re Wrong – by the theoretical physicist, Mark Buchanan, who has taken a set against my profession in recent years. Not without justification and with some panache, one should add. They both add up to the same conclusion – mainstream economics is defunct and we should decommission teaching programs throughout the world and introduce new progressive approaches to the discipline that will produce a new bread of useful Phd graduates, rather than the moribund graduate classes that get rubber-stamped out of our higher education institutions, ad nauseum, at present.