Posts about linguistics, framing and the way to present arguments

Why do we support political inaction that undermines our well-being?

I have been very sad in the last week or so as the news of the environmental devastation and its impact on human life in Nepal has steadily infiltrated our attention. The causes of that disaster are many but overwhelmingly point to the impact of climate change on the Himalayan permafrost and glacial lakes, which, in turn, is undermining the water and food security of mostly materially poor communities. But there is also the impact of inequality which sees the least advantaged members of those communities with inadequate housing and clustered, instead, in flimsy huts and dwellings along river banks that make them the most vulnerable when these disasters occur. Over the weekend, a major political event occurred in the state of Western Australia, where the far Right loony party, One Nation scored a significant political victory in the by election and signalled that both major parties (Liberal and Labour) are now in danger of being swept away by this far Right push, which is mimicking the trends across the globe. The relevance of between the two seemingly disparate events is that the One Nation leadership spoke at a rally yesterday (August 30, 2026) in Victoria and promised that if elected to federal government at the next election they will ramp up investment in coal power and abandon renewable energy and carbon emissions targets and expand mining (Source). I have been researching why the Right is leading the charge on climate denialism and why low income people are being increasingly attracted to their ideas that run counter to the well established scientific evidence and empirical realities that unfold on a regular basis that support the contentions of the scientists. The story that unfolds also bears on why mainstream macroeconomic fictions continue to dominate our thinking about policy despite the massive harm their implementation does to the well-being of societies. This is an on-going theme that I am working on.

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Government debt hysteria relies on acceptance of a totally unnecessary administrative practice

As a followup on Monday’s blog post – Australian government debt approaching $A1 trillion – who cares? Everybody it seems but me (August 24, 2026) – there is an additional aspect of the hysteria around government debt levels that was implicit in that post but bears more detailed discussion. What I am writing today is nothing that I haven’t written before but as the debt hysteria comes in cycles and then becomes more subdued once the more ridiculous predictions fail as time passes, the counter has to be regularly repeated. I am studying the Japanese language at present and as it becomes more complex (for me), repetition is the only way I can ingrain the written language and sounds. The point today is that the mainstream commentary, even from so-called progressive sources, takes as given a major institutional feature of the modern system that is totally unnecessary in a fiat monetary system. Further, that feature just happens to be imposed to advance the ideological interests of the elites, while it masquerades as a non-negotiable and natural requirement of a sustainable system. The implications of abandoning that feature is what I am discussing here today.

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Australian government debt approaching $A1 trillion – who cares? Everybody it seems but me

The neoliberal era has made humanity progressively crazy when it comes to currency matters. At the moment, this trend seems to have reached new heights of absurdity. I note that the US government is now buying up its own debt with more debt as a cover for the stupidity that its President and his lackeys have launched on the World. By substituting longer-term debt with short-term Treasury bills, the composition of bond demand changes (higher demand for long-term debt – government induced), which lowers the yields. But the debt level overall remains unchanged. This is different to quantitative easing because the Treasury buyback scheme is not facilitated through the central bank creating new bank reserves, but it is equally as absurd. And in Australia, the media is going crazy about the ‘journey to $A1 trillion debt’ as the August bond auctions issued $A4 billion in new issuance in early August. Frothing lines quoting that this means every man, woman, and child (and I presume those who have other gender affiliations) owe $A36,000 up from $A35,700 and that ‘taxpayers’ have to spend about $A30 billion a year now servicing the debt abound. The Australian government responds – buying into the horror story line – that the debt might be a trillion but it is still much lower than that of other English-speaking nations. As if that matters. And, last time I checked, I didn’t owe any money on outstanding federal government bond liabilities and I certainly have never paid any ‘debt servicing’ charges, but I am a taxpayer. The problem is that these fantastical media stories and actions by the crazies in the US government send a signal of impending doom to the public which then complies with all sorts of bad policy moves.

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RBA governor makes another self-serving public presentation ignoring the dismal reality she is helping to create

Earlier this week (July 28, 2026), the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia presented to a fundraising event in Sydney on the topic of – Monetary Policy in an Era of Shocks. Later she conducted a Q&A session where she declined to answer key questions about the policy choices the RBA has taken under her leadership, opting instead to treat the assembled as bereft of basic analytical capacity. The speech continued the sequence of self-serving misrepresentations of the true state of the Australian economy. Apparently, the RBA thinks that a broad labour underutilisation rate of 10.9 per cent (that is, resource wastage approaching 11 per cent) and a capacity utilisation at its lowest since June 2020 (when lots of production enterprises were shut!) is still below the slack needed to restore ‘balance’ (full employment). The prominence of central banks and monetary policy as the primary macroeconomic counter-stabilisation policy tool is one of the worst aspects of this neoliberal era. At some point, we will understand that the central banks should be reduced in their role and self-serving appearances of the senior staff at public events terminated.

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Robert Skidelsky death – some recollections

The biographer of Keynes in three volumes – Robert Skidelsky – died on April 15, 2026 at the age of 84. As I explain below, Skidelsky was what we consider to be a mainstream ‘deficit dove’, who are Keynesian and Post Keynesian economists that are comfortable with using fiscal deficits to increase economic activity when there is mass unemployment, but then consider the government must then pursue surpluses on the other side of the cycle to balance out the fiscal position over the full cycle. They couch their recommendations in conservative logic bounded by appropriate movements in the debt to GDP ratio. They are ‘mainstream lite’ and typically oppose Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). As I explain, I met Skildesky in London a few times when MMT was becoming very popular (early in GFC) and we had fundamental disagreements even though he was attracted to certain element of MMT including the Job Guarantee. Here are some recollections.

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A structured approach for progressive political ambitions – Part 7

This is Part 7 of the short series of briefing notes that arose out of discussions I recently had in London about how a progressive political party might want to break out of the shackles that the British Labour Party has bound itself in with its obsession with fiscal rules and an adherence to the fiscal fictions of mainstream macroeconomics. The thoughts, in my view, are relevant for all aspiring progressive political parties that might have fallen prey to the fictional world of mainstream economics and cannot find a way back. In the first part, I suggested a way forward was to shift the focus of what can be done with fiscal policy away from financial matters towards an emphasis on real resource constraints – that is, what productive resources are available for public use. In this sense, the discussion becomes focused on how much nominal spending growth is possible without sparking inflationary pressures as a result of nominal spending growth outstripping the productive capacity of the economy. In Part 2, I focused on aspects of the institutional structure that should be considered to support that shift in focus, including a planning network and a return to a public employment service. In Part 3, I began an examination of the long debate about economic planning, In Part 4, I continued that discussion. In Part 5, I discussed how the age of rapid, networked communication systems eliminate the basis of the pro-market, anti-planning critics. In Part 6, I provided a detailed case study of the role that the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Japan played after WW2 to ensure rapid development could occur within the available real resource envelope. Today, I reflect on industry policy and the way the arch neoliberals are silently conceding defeat.

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The Manosphere fills a void created by neoliberalism which has been largely ignored by progressives

Over the weekend just gone I took some time to watch the latest Louis Theroux documentary – Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere – which relates how far we have gone in reverse with attitudes that men hold towards women. This blog post is not intended to be a review of that film but rather my thoughts on where it sits in the history of neoliberalism. The proposition is that neoliberalism creates voids where individuals are left behind and constructed as miserable failures. It also promotes an idea that an individual’s prosperity is a function of their own diligence and that the state fails to advance our well-being. Increasingly, these ideas are then embedded in misinformation and conspiracy theories and movements emerge to give voice to the anxieties that we face. The manosphere serves that purpose and allows young men to gain a sense of purpose and worth – notwithstanding that it is the world of scammers and oppressors. But it is another way in which neoliberalism is driving our societies into system-failure.

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New Green-linked report in Britain avoids the critical issue

I read a new Report this morning – Waste Not – that was published by a new unit in Britain called Verdant, which seems to have links to the England and Wales Green Party. The work is interesting and raises several issues that bear on how government fiscal policy should be assessed. The issues I have with the Report were not canvassed by the author to its detriment. It relates to the impact of government spending and the employment effects of cutting expenditure, regardless of whether we classify that expenditure as ‘waste’ or not.

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A structured approach for progressive political ambitions – Part 3

This is Part 3 of the short series of briefing notes that arose out of discussions I recently had in London about how a progressive political party might want to break out of the shackles that the Labour Party has bound itself in with its obsession with fiscal rules and an adherence to the fiscal fictions of mainstream macroeconomics. In the first part, I suggested a way forward was to shift the focus of what can be done with fiscal policy away from financial matters towards an emphasis on real resource constraints – that is, what productive resources are available for public use. In this sense, the discussion becomes focused on how much nominal spending growth is possible without sparking inflationary pressures as a result of nominal spending growth outstripping the productive capacity of the economy. In Part 2, I focused on aspects of the institutional structure that should be considered to support that shift in focus, including a planning network and a return to a public employment service. In Part 3, I examine the long debate about economic planning and demonstrate that most of the criticisms of it from free market advocates are no longer applicable in an age of rapid, networked communication systems.

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A structured approach for progressive political ambitions – Part 2

This is the second part of a short series of briefing notes that arose out of discussions I had in London the week before last about how a progressive political party might want to break out of the shackles that the Labour Party has bound itself in with its obsession with fiscal rules and an adherence to the fiscal fictions of mainstream macroeconomics. In the first part, I suggested a way forward was to shift the focus of what can be done with fiscal policy away from financial matters towards an emphasis on real resource constraints – that is, what productive resources are available for public use. In this sense, the discussion becomes focused on how much nominal spending growth is possible without sparking inflationary pressures as a result of nominal spending growth outstripping the productive capacity of the economy. In Part 2, I will focus on aspects of the institutional structure that should be considered to support that shift in focus.

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