Aurrerazaleak?

Bill Mitchell-en artikulua: When one false starting premise leads to progressive confusion1

Mitchell ari da Jacobin Magazine agertutako artikulu batez: Why Leftists Should Be Deficit Hawks.

Berak dioenez, “…if one starts from a wrong premise the conclusions will lead one astray no matter how noble the intentions are.”

Izan ere, aurrerazaleek makroekonomiaren oinarriak argi eduki behar dituzte, edozein aldarrikapen egin baino lehen. Izan ere, neoliberalen diskurtso bera erabili ohi dute, batez ere, gobernuaren finantza mugarriez aritu direnean.

Kasu, hona hemen funtsik gabeko, eta oso hedatua den lelo bat: “aberatsak zergapetu behar ditugu, txiroentzako zerbitzuak ordaintzearren,” zeina noski zentzugabekoa den. Badaude, egon, irtenbide dotoreagoak praktikan jartzeko2.

Hasierako premisa okerra ondokoa da: gobernu subirano bat errenta mugatua da, nahiz eta monetaren monopolio jaulkitzailea izan.

Hortik atertzen diren ondorio ‘logikoak’ hauexek dira, (ortodoxoek oso ‘ongi’ dakiten bezala):

  1. Gobernuek zorra jaulki behar dute, baldin eta haien gastuak zerga errenta baino handiagoa bada, hasierako premisa faltsua kontuan hartuz.

  1. Oraingo Krisi Fiskal Handiko denbora honetan defizit fiskalak handitu direnez, “OECD-ko herrialdeetan zor publikoek lorturiko mailak Mundu Gerletatik kanpo historikoki aurrekorik gabekoak dira.”

(Ezagutzen ez badira zor publikoen eraketak, orduan, noski, aberastasunaren eta boterearen banaketa atzerakoia baztertzen da3.)

  1. AEBko gobernua ez da gai berak gastatzen duen beste diru biltzeko. Herrialdeak kapitalerako lehian daude, korporazio zerga tasak jaitsiz. Gastu publikoa aldatu da ongizatetik aldenduz, gizartearen goiko %1erako aberastasun eta boterearen banaketa atzerakoia bultzatuz4.

  2. Autorearen ondorioaren arabera, Altxor Publikoa zorretan dago, nazioarteko inbertitzaile pribatuei bonoak salduz5.

Mitchell-ek dioenez, autorearen azken ondorioarekin ados dago, Because the wealthiest people and institutions in society overwhelmingly hold these bonds, there is no plausible argument that it operates in the general interests of Americans”.

Baina horretarako, ez da behar inongo zor publikorik jaulkitzea, DTM-koek eta Mitchell-ek bereziki, dakiten moduan6.

Mitchell-ek argi dauka afera: “I have long advocated ending this source of corporate welfare – ‘dole for the rich’! Bond issuance serves no useful purpose and is totally unnecessary from a financial perspective.”

Artikuluaren autoreak ez: haren premisa (“bonoek gobernu gastua finantzatzen dute: bonds fund government spending) erabat faltsua delako.

Autoreak zergen helburua ez du ezagutzen7. Zergak ez dira biltzen gobernuaren gastuak finantzatzeko, baliabide errealerako erosteko ahalmena eta agintea galtzeko baizik8.

Autoreak nahastu egiten ditu moneta jaulkitzaileko eta moneta erabiltzaileko herrialdeak9.

Autoreak, AEB eta Grezia nahasiz, autoritate gisa aipatzen du AEBko “the neo-liberal Congressional Budget Office and quotes them as saying that the rising public debt in the US will “ultimately be unsustainable.””

Mitchell-en erantzuna: “… nonsense. The US government will always be able to service its outstanding liabilities.”

Autorearen ondorioa: Ezkerrak kapitala zergapetzetik alde ez egiteko ardura hartu behar du eta gain zergapetzea erabili10.

Beraz, Mitchell-ek, autorearen proposamena laburbilduz, dioenez, “… the government should only spend what it can raise in taxes and the taxation should be progressive to increase the spending power of the workers.”

Mitchell-en ondorioa: aurreko konklusioa erabat okerra da, zeren “...we don’t have to invoke progressive values to declare that the conclusion is wrong per se.”

Hori esateko, Mitchell-ek ondoko oharrean aipatzen ditu argudioak11, jadanik blog honetan, behin eta berriz ikusitakoak. Ikusi, halaber, goian eta oharretan aipatutako Mitchell-en lanak.


2 Blog honetan hamaika biderrez aritu gara horretaz. Soilik sarrera bat jartzearren, ikus Beharrezkoak al dira zergak?: https://www.unibertsitatea.net/blogak/heterodoxia/2014/05/14/beharrezkoak-al-dira-zergak/.

3 Izan ere, autoreak honela dio, ingelesez: “Public debt issuance allows “a substantial class of super-rich rentiers” to develop who can “enrich themselves simply by collecting annuities on their bonds from the public purse”. This, in part, “is likely contributing to growing wealth inequality, returning us to the same situation of mass poverty and concentrated wealth that characterized the nineteenth century in both Britain and the US.””

4 Baita hauxe ere, Ingelesez: “… the US government now faces a “structural inability to raise as much money as it spends”. Presumably, this conclusion applies to all governments. Governments are “less willing to tax capital” and funds are so liquid that they move across borders to evade tax jurisdictions. Further, countries “compete for capital by consistently lowering their corporate tax rates”. And, while public spending has shifted away from advancing well-being (education, health, public housing, etc) to spending on prisons and the like, corporate tax subsidies have seen the tax structure “become more and more regressive, giving major breaks to the wealthy and extracting greater sums from working people in exchange for fewer and fewer services.” So we get “a permanent crisis of wealth and power redistribution towards the top 1 percent of society” as the deficits continue and the public debt accumulates in the hands of the few.”

5 Mitchell-ek dioenez, “… and as a result of adopting the false starting premise, the author says the upshot has been that:

To cover these funding gaps, the Treasury goes into debt by selling bonds to private and international investors. In 2007, the total value of this debt was equal to 35 percent of the US’s GDP. Today it is equal to 73 percent of GDP, or $13 trillion.” (Amerikar trilioi bat: Europako bilioi bat)

7 Ingelesez: “Another manifestion of that false premise is that he claims that the income payments accruing to public debt holders are “paid in tax dollars”. The related false premise is that tax payers fund government spending rather than simply lose purchasing power and command over real resources.

8 Irakur Mitchell-en Taxpayers do not fund anything.

9 Ingelesez: “While the discussion is ostensibly about the US, a currency-issuing nation, the author feels compelled to use Greece and Ireland of examples of the political manipulation of the bond markets on governments, which forces them into austerity. A basic rule of thumb in deciding whether an author understand the workings of the monetary system is whether they conflate currency-issuing states with non-currency issuing states. If they do, then you know their knowledge is awry.” Irakur, Bill Mitchell-en Who is in charge?

10 Ingelesez: “A major task for the Left in the coming years therefore will be to challenge the institutions and the rhetoric that have allowed capital to evade taxation so effectively, while simultaneously recognizing the legitimacy of popular complaints about overtaxation. In doing so, the Left could begin to build a strong basis of unity across the working class.”

11 Ingelesez: Here is the skeleton rejection:

  1. A sovereign government is never revenue constrained because it is the monopoly issuer of the currency.

  2. Therefore it does not have to issue debt to cover the excess of its spending over taxation.

  3. Issuing debt is unnecessary and should be abandoned for many of the reasons the author notes which I summarise under the heading ‘corporate welfare’.

  4. Taxation is only functional if it deprives groups of purchasing power. It does not raise revenue in order to all the government to spend.

  5. Equity considerations matter and guide us on which groups to deprive of purchasing power via taxation and in what magnitude.

  6. Government deficits (surpluses) are equal (dollar for dollar) to non-government surpluses (deficits).

(Please read the followingDeficit spending 101 – Part 1Deficit spending 101 – Part 2Deficit spending 101 – Part 3 – for basic Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) concepts.)

  1. If there are external deficits and the government continues to balance its fiscal position (only spends what it raises in taxes) then the private domestic sector will run continuous deficits equal to the external deficit and thus incur ever increasing levels of debt. That is an unsustainable state.

  1. Continuous government deficits are likely to be required if the non-government sector desires to save overall and maintain sustainable levels of private debt.

  2. Running a fiscal balance as a rule can never be sensible economic policy and can never be a position that the ‘left’ should take in the economic debate.

  3. The ‘left’ should espouse full employment, decent wages, equity in income distribution, public goods, environmental sustainability, regulation to advance well-being, etc and understand that continuous public deficits will likely be required to advance those aspirations.

You can see that if you start of with a false premise with respect to the constraints facing a currency-issuing government how quickly one descends into a flawed analysis no matter how admirable the overall values of the author might be.”

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