Core myth of austerity
POLITICS has become so degenerate that nowadays it is more about constructing and maintaining myths for self-sustaining causes. The need for austerity is one such core myth which oppresses many 100,000s of innocent people, making the poor pay for corporate greed. A comedian will expose this with all the wit of its absurdity – but then those same people who cheered the comedian will vote for more of the same. Its a power wrapped up in language so rigorously that during the first Labour leadership contest, supposed contenders of a radical movement actually rivalled one another to wrap up the oppression in more palatable forms. Every one of them was wrong and irrelevant!
None was fit to lead much more than a handbag party as people sensed in their gut and voted for Jeremy Corbyn. It remains an instinct that people are drawn to social justice and fairness.
The key lie around which the entire myth is founded is that the UK economy must be constrained by the same limitations as a business or household paying its creditors and watching its debts, when in reality we control the currency and can create as much of it as we want at any time and can pay for anything at any time.
The huge fiscal lie which underlines mainstream economics is magnified by personal pride: “We pay our bills so governments should look like us” – by fear of bankruptcy and by tunnel vision upon which themes its proponents play.
Certainly Labour even under Corbyn hasn’t got it right yet, being carried away by taxation and accordingly vulnerable to Tory accountants who revel in useless language. But under any of the other contenders, UK voters would always have been whistling dixie and remained unwitting slaves.
What he and the Shadow Chancellor have is a much more honest approach and the courage to find real answers. These can only come within economics by throwing out the main myth that somehow a fiat currency can ever resemble or have to behave like a business or a household, when in actuality its powers are unconstrained.
Austerity is actually an insult to democracy as indeed is the ignorance upon which it is founded. Bill Haymes Spon End