The Conservative Commie's Guide to the Economy

So this avowed commie publishes a list of five policies to fix the economy - calling them the "left wing of the possible," and conservative apologist Josh effing Barro calls all five "sound conservative ideas."

How embarassing.

Kathleen Geier at Political Animal:

Can I tell you how much I love this Rolling Stone piece by Jesse Myerson? It’s called “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For.” Myerson’s reforms are the following:

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody

2. Social Security for All

3. Take Back The Land

4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody

5. A Public Bank in Every State

All right, settle down, these proposals are hardly as far-out as they may sound on first hearing. Number one is a public works program, number two is a universal basic income, the third is a land value tax, the fourth is collectivizing wealth ownership by having the government buy up private sector assets and paying a dividend to all citizens (Alaska has a program similar to this in place), and the fifth is pretty much what it says: i.e., a public bank that doesn’t rip off its customers or rape the country.

As Digby points out, the wingnuts are having a meltdown over Myerson’s article — that’s how you know it’s having an effect. Conservatives tend to be made seriously uncomfortable when someone on the left dispenses with the tired script pundits have been reading from for the last 30 years and throws out some ideas that threaten to unsettle the terms of the debate.

Myerson’s program may or may not be, in the words of Michael Harrington, “the left wing of the possible” — at least not yet. They are too visionary for that. But that’s not to say that what he envisions does not exist in the world, and could never exist here. The reforms he outlines are your basic social democracy — you know, society as it exists in uncivilized hellholes like Denmark and Sweden — spiced with some classic American populism. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or in the next five years. But I think it’s important for progressives to have a long-term plan that is truly aspirational and idealistic — in other words, something other than fending off further cuts and praying the Republicans don’t get re-elected in the next two or four years. Without boldness and imagination, a political movement will fail. It will lose its power to inspire, and it will end up at best barely holding steady, and at worst, seriously losing ground.

 But the best part is the discussion with Myerson and Barro on All In With Chris Hayes Tuesday night, in which  Barro basically calls out Myerson for cloaking conservative ideas in commie clothing, and Myerson doesn't deny it.

Yes, MSNBC still has the WORST embed codes on the entire Internet.

Debt: 5,000 Years Is Enough

The biggest reason why even the most liberal prescriptions for economic growth inevitably succumb to vulture capitalism is the inability of policymakers to imagine a system not enslaved to "market" imperatives.

No, the Almighty Market is neither natural nor inevitable, and David Graeber's "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" explains why.

The book looks and sounds dull, but is anything but. Graeber convincingly explains early non-money credit systems that supported rather than exploited families and communities; explodes pernicious myths about bartering, markets and capitalism; and connects the debt system with the rise of slavery, misogyny and violence.

At the end, Graeber proposes the kind of universal debt forgiveness that was common in societies before the Greek Empire.

"... one that would affect both international debt and consumer debt. It would be salutary not just because it would relieve so much genuine human suffering, but also because it would be our way of reminding ourselves that money is not ineffable, that paying one's debts is not the essence of morality, that all these things are human arrangements and that if democracy is to mean anything, it is the ability to all agree to arrange things in a different way."

Instead, empires from Athens to Washington D.C. have "softened the edges" of debt without eliminating the burden.

"... never allowing anyone to question the sacred principle that we must all pay our debts. At this point, however, the principle has been exposed as a flagrant lie. As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us (the poor, the workers, the non-rich) do. Nothing would be more important than to wipe the slate clean for everyone, mark a break with our accustomed morality, and start again."

Fascinating and illuminating, "Debt" opens the door to economic ideas free of the artificial and destructive strictures of a capitalistic market.

Ideas like the ones proposed by Gar Alperovitz and Thomas M. Hanna in The Nation:

It’s time to put the taboo subject of public ownership back on the progressive agenda. It is the only way to solve some of the most serious problems facing the nation. We contend that it is possible not only to talk about this once forbidden subject but to begin to build a serious politics that can do what needs to be done in key sectors.


Elsewhere we have urged a “new economy,” a community-sustaining vision of the next stage of American development—one made up of public enterprises where necessary, private corporations in numerous sectors, and a powerful and growing mix of small businesses and firms that in general aim to democratize the ownership of capital in a nation where a mere 1 percent at the top owns just under half of all investment wealth (see Alperovitz, “The New Economy Movement,” June 13, 2011; Alperovitz et al., “The Cleveland Model,” March 1, 2010; and community-wealth.org).

Rebuilding the spirit and drive of the next progressive politics calls for developing economic ideas that make sense at every level and scale. The Tea Party, for all its inane posturing, teaches a useful lesson—namely, that saying clearly what you want has a compelling force. When progressives are being called “socialists” no matter what, there is little to lose and much to gain by clearly making the case for a long-term plan that confronts—and ultimately overcomes—the centrality of corporate power.

Read the whole thing.