From the River to the Sea: Ibaitik Itsasora (19)

Gaza BEFORE Israel showed up

Israel is a criminal state.

Peter Hitchens@ClarkeMicah

@amuse@amuse

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897972641136296201

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sarah@sahouraxo

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i

Sarah Wilkinson@swilkinsonbc

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897634143371972990

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ΛЦƧƬΣЯIƬY IƧ MЦЯDΣЯ@sdgrumbine

2020 urt. 31

Some basics.

The US Dollar is a tax credit.

It is a unit of measure.

You can’t run out of inches

You can’t run out of numbers

The government can’t run out of dollars... unless it purposely, politically chooses to.

Thread 1/x

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Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده@RamAbdu

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Sana Saeed@SanaSaeed

Jackson Hinkle @jacksonhinklle

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897634313526493465

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Wizard Bisan@Wizard__Bisan

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898286011106398598

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Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898209523971543168

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Translating Falasteen (Palestine)@translatingpal

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897741195516035382

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Mannie Quinn & The Mighty Hornets@MannieMighty1

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897812883825926377

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Kerry Burgess@KerryBurgess

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898097868625400249

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Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897636289500897628

(%.43)

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Alex Jones@RealAlexJones

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898006321456107994

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Jackson Hinkle @jacksonhinklle

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1897754058875978072

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@tobararbulu # mmt@tobararbulu

Eye on Palestine@EyeonPalestine

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898137329379794985

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Hadi@HadiNasrallah

Jackson Hinkle @jacksonhinklle

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898048498261803338

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Nour Jamaan from Gaza@an_jmy40244

Nada Palestinia @Nadanada1099

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1898110759894499745

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Going Underground@GUnderground_TV

Bideoa; https://x.com/i/status/1898386949309620470

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mar. 9

Not another penny to Ukraine x.com/nicksortor/sta…

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Vladimir Zhevnerov@VNZNY

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Warren B. Mosler@wbmosler

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MMT101.ORG@MMT101DotORG

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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATQ0Yf0Fhc)

Government deficits have gotten a bad rap, says economist Stephanie Kelton. In this groundbreaking talk, she makes the case to stop looking at government spending as a path towards frightening piles of debt, but rather as a financial contribution to the things that matter — like health care, education, infrastructure and beyond. “We have the resources we need to begin repairing our broken systems,” Kelton says. “But we have to believe it’s possible.”

Transkripzioa:

Intro

0:13

When things break, we have an opportunity.

0:17

We can pick up the pieces and put them back together the old way,

0:22

or we can look for better ways to build.

0:25

Covid broke everything.

0:28

It put a spotlight on the many deficits in our economy —

0:33

in employment, education, health care, housing —

0:39

and it showed how inequality made it all worse.

0:44

Here in the US and around the world, governments did some extraordinary things.

0:50

They sent money to people directly to help them buy food and pay rent.

0:56

They provided free Covid testing

0:59

and expanded health care to cover more of the population.

1:03

They gave money to businesses to help keep them afloat

1:07

while much of the economy was temporarily shut down.

1:12

They offered debt relief to millions of people

1:14

who borrowed money to go to college.

1:17

They did all of this and more without raising taxes

1:23

or having a prolonged battle

1:25

over the usual question of how to pay for it.

1:30

To me, this was exciting,

1:33

and I’m an economist, so I don’t say that a lot.

1:36

(Laughter)

1:39

But as someone who’s been trying to change the way we think

1:43

about deficits and government spending,

1:46

I saw this as an opportunity

1:49

to show why government budgets don’t work like household budgets.

1:54

Why all of their red ink is really our black ink.

1:59

And why our nation can afford to keep investing in the things we need

2:05

even after spending trillions to fight the pandemic.

2:09

For a while, it looked like the US and other countries

2:14

were starting to break the mold on the old way of thinking

2:18

about deficits and taxes.

2:20

But now here we are,

2:23

just a handful of months after all of that bold action,

2:28

and we’re sliding back into our old habits of thought.

2:32

Can we build affordable housing and fix crumbling infrastructure?

2:37

Can we expand Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing?

2:43

Can we tackle our climate crisis?

2:47

As Congress debates these questions, everyone is back to asking,

2:52

how will you pay for it?

2:55

It’s the wrong question.

2:57

In fact, the right questions don’t involve money at all.

3:02

Instead of worrying about where the financing will come from,

3:06

we should be asking, are these things worth doing

3:10

and do we have the real resources, the people, the equipment,

3:15

the raw materials and the technology to do them?

3:19

Well, they make society better off.

3:21

And do we have the political will to act?

3:26

I’m one of a handful of economists

3:28

who contributed to the body of academic scholarship

3:32

known as MMT or Modern Monetary Theory.

3:36

MMT provides an accurate description

3:39

of how a fiat currency like the US dollar or the British pound actually works.

3:47

It reminds us that we’re no longer on a gold standard,

3:51

so finding the money to pay for the things we need

3:55

is never an issue for countries like the US or the UK.

4:01

If we’re going to fix what’s broken in our economy,

4:05

we have to fix the way we think about the limits on government spending.

4:12

Let me give you an example

4:13

of the kind of broken gold standard thinking

4:17

that still permeates our discourse.

4:21

Back in 1983, the prime minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher,

4:26

said these words:

4:28

“If the state wishes to spend more,

4:31

it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more,

4:38

and it is no good thinking that someone else will pay.

4:42

That someone else is you.

4:45

There is no such thing as public money.

4:49

There is only taxpayers’ money.”

4:54

Maybe you’ve heard the contemporary version of Thatcher’s dictum.

4:59

“There is no magic money tree.”

5:02

It’s just another way of saying that everything must be paid for

5:07

and that the taxpayer is ultimately on the hook

5:10

for whatever the government spends.

5:14

It sounds worrying.

5:16

As individuals, we know that when we borrow money

5:20

to go to college, start a business or buy a home,

5:25

we’re personally saddled with that debt.

5:28

We have to find the money to pay it back.

5:31

Taking on too much personal debt can lead to all sorts of problems.

5:36

Even small businesses and large corporations

5:39

have to walk a fine line when it comes to debt.

5:43

But the federal government is fundamentally different.

5:48

Unlike the rest of us,

5:50

Congress never has to check the balance in its bank account

5:54

to figure out whether it can afford to spend more.

5:59

As the issuer of the currency,

6:02

the federal government can never run out of money.

6:06

It can afford to buy whatever is available and for sale in its own currency.

6:13

Now that might mean spending on roads and bridges,

6:17

a military arsenal or hospitals and schools.

6:22

Finding the votes to pass a spending bill can be hard,

6:28

but finding the money

6:30

is never a problem.

6:33

They just create it.

6:36

So here’s how it works.

6:38

Whenever Congress and the president agree to spend more,

6:43

the government’s bank, the Federal Reserve,

6:46

works with the rest of the financial system

6:49

to get that money into our accounts.

6:53

Everything’s done electronically,

6:55

so there’s no physical printing of money involved.

7:00

If you got a 1,400-dollar check from the federal government

7:03

earlier this year,

7:05

or if your company received money to help cover payroll and other expenses,

7:11

then you received some of the newly minted digital dollars

7:16

that were created to support our economy.

7:21

No taxpayers were involved in that process.

7:24

It was all done using nothing more than a computer keyboard.

7:30

So why are we hearing so much about the need to raise taxes

7:35

to pay for infrastructure and make other investments in our economy?

7:40

In a word,

7:42

deficits.

7:44

We’ve all been conditioned to worry about deficits,

7:48

so lawmakers are looking for ways to spend more

7:52

without adding to the deficit.

7:56

That’s what this whole pay-for game is about.

8:00

Unfortunately, deficits have gotten a bad rap.

8:05

They’re almost always seen in a negative light.

8:10

And I would like to change that.

8:12

When we hear the word “deficit,”

8:14

we probably think of a deficiency or shortfall.

8:19

A deficit always sounds ominous.

8:22

So when we hear that the federal government

8:25

just ran a three-trillion-dollar budget deficit,

8:29

it can sound worrying.

8:32

And it can even anger people.

8:35

But there’s another way to think about government deficits.

8:39

Just as a six becomes a nine when we view it from a different angle,

8:45

a government deficit becomes a financial surplus

8:49

when we look at it from another perspective.

8:52

A deficit hawk might look at this picture

8:55

and see nothing but a sea of worrying red ink.

9:00

That’s not how I look at it.

9:02

Here’s what I see.

9:04

I see what’s happening

9:05

on the other side of the government’s ledger.

9:09

When the government spends more than it taxes away from us,

9:13

it makes a financial contribution to some other part of the economy.

9:19

Their red ink is our black ink.

9:23

When you look at it this way,

9:25

it becomes clear that every deficit is good for someone.

9:31

The question is for whom

9:35

and what are those deficits being used to accomplish?

9:39

It matters how the money is spent

9:42

and who ends up with the resulting surplus.

9:46

Tax cuts that deliver huge windfalls for those at the top

9:51

without sparking investment and opportunity

9:54

for the rest of the population

9:56

don’t make good use of deficits.

9:59

On the other hand,

10:01

spending trillions to support the economy during the pandemic

10:06

put the deficit to good use.

10:09

We just had the shortest recession in US history.

10:14

To me, that was fiscally responsible.

10:18

Being responsible shouldn’t mean running the government’s finances

10:22

like a household.

10:25

Instead of trying to keep the deficit in check,

10:28

Congress should be focused on keeping inflation in check.

10:33

That’s the real limit on spending

10:36

and it’s the thing to watch out for

10:39

if you’re thinking about spending trillions

10:41

on things like infrastructure, health care and free college.

10:46

Instead of asking, “How will we pay for it?,”

10:50

Congress should be asking, “How will we resource it?”

10:55

To answer that question,

10:58

think of people, factories, equipment and raw materials like wood and iron.

11:05

If we’re going to build high-speed rail,

11:08

fix crumbling infrastructure and green our economy,

11:13

then we’ll need concrete, steel and lumber.

11:16

We’ll need construction workers, architects and engineers.

11:21

We’ll need companies that can fill thousands of orders for solar panels,

11:26

EV charging stations and electric school buses.

11:30

If our economy has the productive capacity to quickly supply all of those things,

11:37

then we can easily resource it.

11:40

Or take health care or free college.

11:44

Paying the bills to expand Medicare,

11:47

to include dental, vision and hearing is easy.

11:52

The challenge is making sure

11:55

we have enough dentists, optometrists and audiologists

11:59

to treat everyone who needs care.

12:03

And if you want to resource free college,

12:05

then you need the faculty,

12:07

the classrooms and the dormitories to teach and house more students.

12:13

In a full-employment economy,

12:16

all of the resources you need are, well,

12:20

fully employed.

12:22

There’s no spare capacity anywhere in the system.

12:26

So if the government suddenly tried to make all of these investments at once,

12:31

it would quickly discover that it doesn’t have the people

12:34

or the building materials to do the work.

12:38

To get the resources it needs,

12:40

it would have to compete with the private sector,

12:43

bidding up wages and prices.

12:46

That would be inflationary and it would be fiscally irresponsible.

12:54

We are a long way from full employment.

12:58

We have the resources we need to begin repairing our broken systems.

13:05

But we have to believe it’s possible.

13:08

We can’t let words like debt and deficits hold us back.

13:13

With a better understanding of public money,

13:16

where it comes from and how it works

13:19

we can take aim at the many real deficits that are bearing down on us.

13:26

In every crisis lies an opportunity.

13:30

We can pick up the pieces

13:32

and try to reassemble the fragile systems that were in place before the pandemic

13:38

or we can build anew,

13:40

shaping our bountiful resources into the kind of world we want to live in,

13:46

one that cares for our people and our planet.

13:51

I truly hope we choose to be bold.

13:54

Thank you.

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Geure herriari, Euskal Herriari dagokionez, hona hemen gure apustu bakarra:

We Basques do need a real Basque independent State in the Western Pyrenees, just a democratic lay or secular state, with all the formal characteristics of any independent State: Central Bank, Treasury, proper currency¹, out of the European Distopia and faraway from NATO, maybe being a BRICS partner…

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1 This way, our new Basque government will have infinite money to deal with. (Gogoratzekoa: Moneta jaulkitzaileko kasu guztietan, Gobernuak infinitu diru dauka.)