2018, the year of Europe [feedly]

2018, the year of Europe
http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/01/16/2018-the-year-of-europe/

Ten years after the financial crisis, will the year 2018 see Europe making a great leap forward? Several factors contribute to this view, but the outcome is far from certain.

The crisis in 2008, which triggered the sharpest global recession since the 1929 crisis, clearly originated in the increasingly obvious weaknesses of the American system: excessive deregulation, an explosion in inequalities, indebtedness of the poorest. Supported by a more equalitarian and inclusive model of development, Europe could have seized the opportunity to promote a better system of regulating global capitalism. However, the lack of trust between the members of the European Union, confined within rigid rules applied inappropriately, led them to provoke a further recession in 2011-2013from which they are just recovering.

The coming into power of Trump in 2017 is indicative of further considerable shortcomings in the American model. This stimulates the demand for Europe, particularly as the development of the alternative models (China, Russia) is not reassuring, to say the least.

In response to these expectations, Europe will nevertheless have to overcome numerous challenges. To begin with, a general challenge: the global drift towards inequality. Europe will not reassure its citizens by explaining to them that they are better off than people in the United States or in Brazil. Inequality is rising in all countries, encouraged by exacerbated fiscal competiveness in favour of the most mobile, with Europe continuing to feed the flames. The risk of cultural isolationism and of scape-goating will only be successfully dealt with if we succeed in offering the working classes and the younger generations a genuine strategy for reducing inequality and investing in the future.

The second challenge is the North-South divide which has dramatically deepened in the Euro zone and which is based on contradictory versions of events. In Germany and in France, people continue to think that the E.U. helped the Greeks since it lent them money at a lower rate of interest than the rate they would have had to pay on the financial markets, but higher than the rate the EU paid to borrow on these same markets. In Greece, the version is quite different: they see it as a large financial profit. The truth is that the purge imposed on the countries in the Europe of the South, with the dramatic secessionist consequences in Catalonia, is the direct outcome of a short-sighted Franco-German self-centred vision.

The third challenge is the East-West divide. In Paris, Berlin or Brussels, people cannot understand the lack of gratitude on the part of countries which have benefited from huge public transfers. But in Warsaw or in Prague, events are interpreted quite differently. They point out that the rate of return on the private investment from the West was high and that the flows of profits paid today to the owners of the firms far exceeds the European transfers going in the other direction.

In fact, if we examine the figures, they do have a case. After the collapse of communism, Western investors (especially Germans) have gradually become the owners of a considerable proportion of the capital of the ex-Eastern European countries. This amounts to roughly a quarter if we consider the complete stock of fixed capital (including housing), and over half if we restrict ourselves to the ownership of firms (and even more for large firms). Filip Novokmet's research has demonstrated that while inequality has not risen as strongly in Eastern Europe as in Russia or the United States, it is simply because a considerable share of the higher incomes from the East European capital are paid abroad (which moreover resembles what happened before communism, with the owners of the capital who were already German or French and sometimes Austrians or from the Ottoman Empire).

Between 2010 and 2016, the annual outflow of profits and incomes from property (net of the corresponding inflows) thus represented on average 4.7% of the gross domestic product in Poland, 7.2% in Hungary, 7.6% in the Czech Republic and 4.2% in Slovakia, reducing commensurately the national income of these countries

By comparison, over the same period, the annual net transfers from the European Union, that is, the difference between the totality of expenditure received and the contributions paid to the EU budget, were appreciably lower: 2.7% of the GDP in Poland, 4.0% in Hungary, 1.9% in the Czech Republic and 2.2% in Slovakia (as a reminder, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are net contributors to the EU budget of an amount equivalent to 0.3% – 0.4% of their GDP.

Of course, one might reasonably argue that Western investment enabled the productivity of the economies concerned to increase and therefore everyone benefited. But the East European leaders never miss an opportunity to recall that investors take advantage of their position of strength to keep wages low and maintain excessive margins (see e.g. this recent interview with the Czech prime minister).

In the same way as with Greece, the leading economic powers tend on the contrary to consider inequality as natural. They work on the assumption that the market and 'free competition' contribute to a fair distribution of wealth and consider the transfers resulting from this 'natural' balance as an act of generosity on the part of the winners in the system. In reality, property relations are always complex, particularly within large-scale political communities like the EU, and cannot be regulated uniquely by the goodwill of the market.

These contradictions can only be resolved by a full-scale intellectual and political 'refounding' of the European institutions along with their genuine democratisation. Let's hope that the year 2018 will make a contribution.

 

All computations and data sources used for the figures on outward and inward flows of property income and European transfers in Eastern Europe are available here. To go further, see the thesis of Filip Novokmet, « Between communism and capitalism. Essays on the evolution of income and wealth inequality in Eastern Europe 1890-2015 (Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Russia) » (2017). See also this article on Poland, and this other one on Russia.

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We Need a Working-Class Ranking System [feedly]

We Need a Working-Class Ranking System
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/we-need-a-working-class-ranking-system/

Lists that rank U.S. colleges are everywhere these days.  You can find images of the "most beautiful" or "safest" campuses on Facebook.  Every major news magazine seems to have its own rankings system.  All of this started with US News & World Report's "Best Colleges"ranking, first published in 1983 and used by generations of college-going students and their parents as the definitive guide.   Even as we are bombarded with these rankings, however, we also hear stories of their flaws.  And although colleges bemoan the distorting effects of the rankings, they willingly submit information to the major ones to be sure they're included.  And students keep looking at them.

As a sociologist, I've always found these lists troubling. There are literally dozens of reasons why. You can't really quantify the value of education, and the lists often ignore significant differences among types of institutions. Rankings reinforce a competitive urge — among both students and institutions — that is unhealthy, to say the least.  They too often reward schools with prestige. They also encourage colleges to spend money in ways that will improve their rankings but don't always align with the core educational mission. They are sticky, too – most institutions never move very far up (or down) the lists.

As a working-class academic, however, what rankles me the most is the distorting effectsthese rankings have on college admissions policies.  Level of 'selectivity' is a key metric in U.S. News's ranking, and this encourages schools to become more exclusive.  A school can lose its position if it is viewed as being too easy to get into.  This is why Princeton was crowing recently about its lowest acceptance rate ever (5.5%).  Similarly, some ranking systems consider average time to complete a degree, a metric that favors colleges with students who don't have to work, take care of their kids, or worry about debt.  This emphasis on efficiency may encourage schools not to accept lower-income students, who often take longer to graduate because of these concerns. For similar reasons, residential colleges will always outrank commuter colleges.

Now this wouldn't be quite so bad if policymakers, funders, and state governments were not beginning to use these very same rankings and the metrics they've developed to reward and punish colleges.  We should all worry about the impact this will have on schools that serve non-traditional students, low-income students, first-generation students, and students from the working class.  The current craze for rankings may directly impact only the handful of students attending selective colleges, but it is having severe downstream effects on all colleges, especially those struggling to fund higher education for the broader public.  This is why I argue that how we rank colleges is a working-class issue. The time for ignoring them and hoping they will go away has long passed.

We need to start, first, by collectively asking what we want our colleges to do.  Do we want to reward colleges for reproducing privilege (like the "Best Colleges" list), or do we want to reward colleges that transform students' lives?  And, if the latter, how do we measure such a thing?

A few groups have suggested alternative rankings systems that attempt to correct for some of these distortions.  The Washington Monthly ranks colleges based on their contribution to the public good, one measure of which is how many low-income students attend and graduate.  Others are focusing more on outcomes, such as Raj Chetty, whose approach has received a lot of well-deserved attention.  Using state-level tax records, Chetty and his colleagues compared the median incomes of graduates with their parents. This let them rank colleges by how well they promoted social mobility (for example, moving into the top 10% of earners from the bottom 60%).   And when you look at these rankings, you see that the "best colleges" don't always do a good job with this — a healthy corrective to U.S. News, which includes absolutely zero information on these issues.

While these alternatives move us in a better direction, I think we should demand a working-class friendly alternative ranking system. We can begin by asking what information working-class people who are interested in higher education need. We can also pursue a more complex scorecard system, like the one proposed by the Obama administration.

I've been working on a model for this. The first thing is to look at outcomes relative to where students start. A college that admits students with an average 900 SAT score and graduates them to decent jobs is more successful than a school that admits students with an average 1300 SAT score and does the same.   In my model I created a "lack of privilege" index that considers the percentage of low-income students and students from underrepresented minority groups along with selectivity and test scores. This data factored against the economic returns for each college yields a raw "score" of the impact of each college.  When I run the numbers, Harvard ends up with a score of 21, while UT-El Paso, one of the highest scorers, earns a score of a 109.

Those are raw scores.  I also think it's important to include items of particular relevance to working-class people considering college.  For example, what percentage of a college's graduates are unable to repay student loan debt?  And how many students end up dropping out?  When I add these factors in, I end up with an overall score.  UT-El Paso still beats out Harvard.  By a lot.

At this point I make an acknowledgment to reality in that students who are seriously considering Harvard are probably going to be considering other equally selective colleges and not the most open access colleges.  So I decided to compare colleges, and score them, only against those in their own "bands of selectivity."  You can take a look at what three of these bands look like in included table.

It shouldn't surprise us that our most exclusive colleges have wealthier students than the most open colleges, but that is perhaps also why their graduates earn higher incomes.  In terms of scores, though, the higher scores are found as one moves down the chart to the most open colleges, and this is because I constructed the system to measure transformational impact rather than prestige.

In my system, MIT (not Harvard) ranks very high among the most exclusive colleges; Rutgers and Texas A&M score high among average colleges; and UT-EL Paso earns its top ranking among the most open colleges.  Within each category, graduates of these four colleges do much better than would be predicted by their test scores and social backgrounds.  I won't name the colleges here that earn failing grades, but their graduates often struggle to earn enough money to repay the cost of college.

This approach emphasizes where students start instead of just looking at how much money they earn after graduation. Given how important higher education is to the possibility of social mobility in the US today, why haven't we developed a way to identify which colleges actually contribute to the social mobility of their students?  Perhaps we have not wanted to look too closely, preferring the rosy forecasts of the "average" college graduate.  But we owe our students, especially those who are the first in their families stepping on this path, some real guidance.

Allison L. Hurst

Allison L. Hurst is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Oregon State University and the author of two books on the experiences and identity reformations of working-class college students, The Burden of Academic Success: Loyalists, Renegades, and Double Agents (2010) and College and the Working Class (2012).  She was one of the founders of the Association of Working-Class Academics, an organization composed of college faculty and staff who were the first in their families to graduate from college, for which she also served as president from 2008 to 2014.

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New skills for success in the age of artificial intelligence [feedly]

New skills for success in the age of artificial intelligence
https://www.seattletimes.com/sponsored/new-skills-for-success-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence/

In a matter of decades, computers and the internet revolutionized the business world in ways that few people predicted. Savvy professionals who recognized that shift as it was occurring had the opportunity to position themselves and their businesses for success, such as the garage-based book vendor turned mass online retailer — Amazon. The next wave of change is already underway, and the question is: who will be the next success stories?

"The disruption caused by artificial intelligence and augmented reality/virtual reality will be so drastic that it will overshadow the cloud disruption," says Dr. Payam Saadat, academic program director and designer of the Bachelor of Science in business administration at City University of Seattle. "This will be akin to the revolution of personal computing in the 1990s, and internet computing and cloud computing of the 2000s. It will disrupt every single industry and is, in fact, vital for other emerging technologies."

While the full impact of these advancements has yet to be felt, businesses today are already feeling the early waves of disruption.

"In the modern era, we are dealing with growing complexity and accelerating change," says Saadat. "Business decisions in today's era take place within a highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. The demands of the new market necessitate a shift from centralized into decentralized models of management to facilitate the creation of complex and timely solutions to problems."

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To thrive in the rapidly changing marketplace, businesses need professionals who are able to take advantage of new technology and adapt to changes.

"Success in modern business highly depends upon managers' ability to match the complexity of their companies with the complexity of the external environment and its fluctuating demands," says Saadat. "This justifies the importance of nurturing a new class of business-oriented talent and entrepreneurs who understand the potential of AI and its practical dimensions."

The skills that enable professionals to excel in the workforce have evolved. As opposed to learning and implementing standardized processes, today's leaders are constantly inventing and reinventing new strategies and operations. New business professionals and those who are looking to advance can position themselves for success by recognizing the shift that is taking place and becoming early adopters of changing technologies, Saadat says.

City University of Seattle is offering a redesigned Bachelor of Science in business administration with artificial intelligence courses that are among the first ever developed for undergraduate business students. Learn more about CityU programs at www.cityu.edu or by calling 888-422-4898.

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Stiglitz: How Costa Rica Gets It Right

How Costa Rica Gets It Right

May 8, 2018 JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

How has a country of under five million people become a world leader in developing holistic policies that promote democratic, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth? The answer lies in its people's belief that focusing on the welfare of all citizens not only enhances wellbeing, but also increases productivity.

SAN JOSÉ – With authoritarianism and proto-fascism on the rise in so many corners of the world, it is heartening to see a country where citizens are still deeply committed to democratic principles. And now its people are in the midst of trying to redefine their politics for the twenty-first century.

HOW COSTA RICA GETS IT RIGHT

May 8, 2018 JOSEPH E. STIGLITZpraises the country as a beacon of Enlightenment values in an increasingly troubled world.

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Over the years, Costa Rica, a country of fewer than five million people, has gained attention worldwide for its progressive leadership. In 1948, after a short civil war, President José Figueres Ferrer abolished the military. Since then, Costa Rica has made itself a center for the study of conflict resolution and prevention, hosting the United Nations-mandated University for Peace. With its rich biodiversity, Costa Rica has also demonstrated far-sighted environmental leadership by pursuing reforestation, designating a third of the country protected natural reserves, and deriving almost all of its electricity from clean hydro power.

Costa Ricans show no signs of abandoning their progressive legacy. In the recent presidential election, a large turnout carried Carlos Alvarado Quesada to victory with more than 60% of the vote, against an opponent who would have rolled back longstanding commitments to human rights by restricting gay marriage.

Costa Rica has joined a small group of countries in the so-called Wellbeing Alliance, which is implementing ideas, highlighted by the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, for constructing better welfare metrics. Recognizing the shortcomings of GDP that the Commission emphasized, the Alliance seeks to ensure that public policy advances citizens' wellbeing in the broadest sense, by promoting democracy, sustainability, and inclusive growth.

An important part of this effort has been to broaden the scope for the country's cooperatives and social enterprises, which are already strong, embracing in one way or another a fifth of the population. These institutions represent a viable alternative to the extremes of capitalism that have given rise to morally reprehensible practices, from predatory lending and market manipulation in the financial sector to tech companies' abuse of personal data and emissions cheating in the automobile industry. They are based on building trust and cooperation, and on the belief that focusing on the welfare of their members not only enhances wellbeing, but also increases productivity.

Like citizens of a few other countries, Costa Ricans have made clear that inequality is a choice, and that public policies can ensure a greater degree of economic equality and equality of opportunity than the market alone would provide. Even with limited resources, they boast about the quality of their free public health-care and education systems. Life expectancy is now higher than in the United States, and is increasing, while Americans, having chosen not to take the steps needed to improve the wellbeing of ordinary citizens, are dying sooner.


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But for all of its successes, Costa Rica faces two critical problems: a persistent, structural fiscal deficit and a gridlocked political system. The economics of fiscal deficits are easy: boost economic growth, raise taxes, or lower expenditures. But the politics are not easy at all: While every political leader wants economic growth to solve the problem, there is no magic formula to achieve it. No one loves the two remaining options.

Most governments in such circumstances cut items like infrastructure, because the costs go unseen for decades. That would be an even graver mistake for Costa Rica, where infrastructure has not fully kept up with economic growth and, if improved, could itself be important in promoting growth. Of course, government could always be more efficient, but after years of retrenchment, further rationalization is unlikely to deliver much. Almost surely, the best way forward would be to raise taxes.

To reconcile taxation with an overall economic strategy that seeks to maximize all citizens' wellbeing, the tax system should adhere to three central principles: tax bad things (like pollution), rather than good things (like work); design taxes to cause the least possible distortion in the economy; and maintain a progressive rate structure, with richer individuals paying a larger share of their income.1

Because Costa Rica is already so green, a carbon tax would not raise as much money as elsewhere. But, because virtually all of the country's electricity is clean, a shift to electric cars would be more effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Such a tax could help Costa Rica become the first country where electric cars dominate, moving it still closer to the goal of achieving a carbon-neutral economy.1

With inequality still a problem (though nowhere near as acute as elsewhere in Latin America), more progressive and comprehensive income, capital gains, and property taxes are essential. The rich receive a disproportionately large share of their income through capital gains, and to tax capital gains at rates lower than other forms of income exacerbates inequality and leads to distortions. While economists differ on many matters, one thing they can agree on is that taxing the revenues or capital gains derived from Costa Rica's land won't cause the land to move away. That's one reason why the great nineteenth-century economist Henry George argued that the best taxes are land taxes.

The biggest challenges are political: a presidential system like Costa Rica's works well in a polity divided into two main parties, with rules designed to ensure that minority views are adequately respected. But such a system can quickly lead to political gridlock when the electorate becomes more fractured. And in a fast-changing world, political gridlock can be costly. Deficits and debts can explode, with no path towards resolution.

Alvarado, who is just 38, is attempting to create a new presidential model for Costa Rica, without changing the constitution, by drawing ministers from a range of parties. One hopes that the spirit of cooperation fostered by the cooperative movement, and ingrained in so much of Costa Rican culture, will make it work. If it does, Costa Rica, despite its small size, will be a beacon of hope for the future, showing that another world is possible, one where Enlightenment values – reason, rational discourse, science, and freedom – flourish, to the benefit of all.

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John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

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Gabrielle Coppola : Trump’s TPP Pullout May Have Cost Missouri Its Harley Factory : "Harley-Davidson Inc.’s chief execu... [feedly]

Gabrielle Coppola : Trump's TPP Pullout May Have Cost Missouri Its Harley Factory : "Harley-Davidson Inc.'s chief execu...
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/05/gabrielle-coppola-trumps-tpp-pullout-may-have-cost-missouri-its-harley-factory-2018-04-24-155625157-gmt-by-blo.html

Gabrielle Coppola: Trump's TPP Pullout May Have Cost Missouri Its Harley Factory: "Harley-Davidson Inc.'s chief executive officer said he may have kept a plant open in Missouri if the U.S. had stayed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that President Donald Trump withdrew from last year...

...The motorcycle maker's decision to shutter its factory in Kansas City and build a plant in Thailand was the "Plan B" that Harley turned to after the U.S. abandoned a trade pact with a bloc of 11 countries mostly in Asia, CEO Matt Levatich said in a phone interview. "We would rather not make the investment in that facility, but that's what's necessary to access a very important market. It is a direct example of how trade policies could help this company, but we have to get on with our work to grow the business by any means possible, and that's what we're doing." Harley will cut about 260 jobs as it shifts production from Missouri to its factory in York, Pennsylvania, amid a deepening U.S. demand slump...

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10 Weekend Reads [feedly]

10 Weekend Reads
http://ritholtz.com/2018/05/weekend-reads-320/

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Blue Bottle coffee, grab a seat under the big umbrella, and get ready for our longer form weekend reads: • The Next Bond Crash: An ETF Story (ETF.com) • The spectacular power of Big Lens (The Guardian) • Apple, Influence, and Ive: The greatest designer of our generation talks watches for the very…

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The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

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Job Guarantee: Marxist or Keynesian? [feedly]

Job Guarantee: Marxist or Keynesian?
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2018/05/job-guarantee-marxist-or-keynesian.html

For decades there has been a debate about the differences and similarities between Marx and Keynes. The question of whether we should introduce a job guarantee highlights this debate: is it a means of supporting capitalism, or a challenge to it?

A job guarantee is the offer by the government of a job at a living wage to anybody that wants one. This would, in effect, eliminate involuntary unemployment. Pavlina Tcherneva has a nice paper (pdf) describing the details. Other advocates of it are Randy Wray (pdf)  and colleagues, FitzRoy and Jin (pdf), Paul, Darity and Hamilton and Wisman and Pacitti.

The case for such a policy seems obvious. Although official unemployment seems low, there are a further 2.1 million people out of the labour force who want to work. This means there are almost 3.5 million unemployed – 8.5% of the working age population. And for some groups – the young, unskilled, some ethnic minorities, the disabled or unwell – the jobless rate is far higher.

This matters because unemployment is a massive cause of misery. It is associated with (pdf)  unhappiness, suicide, and lower wages (pdf) and worse job prospects even for those who return to work: Danny Blanchflower and David Bell summarize (pdf) its many ill-effects. As Jeff Spross says:

A job is not merely a delivery mechanism for income that can be replaced by an alternative source. It's a fundamental way that people assert their dignity, stake their claim in society, and understand their mutual obligations to one another. There's pretty clear evidence that losing this social identity matters as much as the loss of financial security. 

What's more, there seems an obvious Keynesian* case for a JG. It would act as an automatic stabilizer, boosting aggregate demand in bad times but shrinking in good. By offering companies the prospect of high and stable demand, it should encourage capital spending.

It could then encourage a form of wage-led (pdf) growth. The JG would act as a floor for both wages and working conditions. In knowing that they couldn't drive these down, employers would have to raise productivity and try to economize on labour by investing in new technology. In this sense, a JG could do in the 21^st century what strong unions and full employment did in the 1950s and 60s.

What, then, could possibly be said against the idea?

There are big practical problems. Do local governments really have the management expertise to identify necessary work and manage those projects? And there's a danger that under right-wing governments a JG will become not a way to offer dignity to the unemployed but rather a form of workfare. It's partly for this reason that I agree with Stevethat a JG must be accompanied by a citizens' income.

There are, however, other issues here. Which is why I say a JG might be a Marxian policy rather than a Keynesian one.

Simon describes one:

Suppose we start with an economy with stable inflation, implying unemployment was at the NAIRU, and introduce JG. As this puts upward pressure on inflation because the costs of losing a job are reduced. the only way of keeping inflation stable is to deflate demand, which of course would reduce output.

Of course, you might claim – reasonably I think – that the NAIRU is low. And you could well argue that in bringing people into work a JG would improve skills and so help reduce the NAIRU in the longer run. But would the NAIRU then really be 0%? I suspect not, and that there'll be some point at which Simon's point holds.

When it does, a JG will crowd out capitalistic employment.

To some, such as Kate Aronoff, this is a feature not a bug. "What feeds a profit margin and what makes for a good society don't often overlap" she says:

From coastal remediation to oral history projects to avant-garde theatre [as the WPA used – CD], there's plenty of valuable and low-carbon work to be done that simply isn't valued by the private sector. It's hard to imagine any company, for instance, being able to make a profit off of building playgrounds or keeping elderly people company to help ward off loneliness, which has been linked in several studies to premature death. 

This is one sense in which a JG challenges capitalism. It poses the question: what is economic value? Does it consist only in profitable activity, or instead in non-market work in reducing loneliness, and shoring up society and the environment?  

There is, of course, another sense in which the JG opposes capitalism. As Jeff says, echoing Kalecki:

With full employment, the capitalists lose their leverage to depress workers' wages and must give up more profits. But, more than that, when it comes to running endeavours that are ostensibly "theirs," the capitalists are forced to bargain with and bend to the will of workers "below" them. Their position as the demigods of the economy—granting employment when they are appeased, and taking it away when they are angered—is undone.

How will capitalists respond to this? The benign possibility is that they do so by improving working conditions and thereby productivity: we've good evidence that more cooperative forms of capitalism are more efficient. The less benign possibility is that they simply close up or stop investing, as they fear that lower profit margins will do more damage to profit rates than higher aggregate demand does good. History warns us that both responses are possible: in the 50s and 60s we saw the former, but in the 70s the latter.

And then there's a third challenge to capitalism. A worthwhile JG will fit jobs to workers' needs: it'll design them around people's needs to care for family members and will provide jobs suitable for those with health problems. This is the opposite of much of what the capitalist state has tried to do, which has been to change people to suit the needs of capitalists – to, in William Beveridge's words "make and keep men fit for service."

What we have there, then, are two different conceptions of a JG. On the one hand, it might be a policy which helps capitalism function better. But on the other, it might be a form of transitional demand – a policy which whilst fulfilling human needs is one that cannot actually be sustainably adopted by capitalism and is instead a stepping stone towards socialism.

I'm honestly not sure which it is.

* Yes, I know a JG has been more associated with MMT than with Keynesianism. I'm using "Keynesian" in the sense of policies designed to support capitalism by increasing employment. I'll leave the differences between Keynesians and MMTers for another time.

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