By Michael Hoexter
In a previous post, I outlined how leaders in positions of political power, especially at the national level, are chosen to fulfill a unique ethical role, that differs from that which is appropriate for private individuals and business leaders. Because of the power that accrues to political leaders and the hopes attached to them by their constituents, politicians’ actions in office have much greater repercussions than, for the most part, the actions of individuals and individual businesses in the private sector. Once elected or appointed, political leaders have choices to make, often with room for their own discretion, which draw upon values they hold, values that are in part conditioned by, though not entirely reducible to their political and political-economic ideology. These decisions most often are concerned with policymaking, budgeting, and legislation that impact an entire nation or the international system of nations. Continue reading
One of the strangest things to understand about Modern Money Theory is why, if government doesn’t need your tax dollars in order to spend, does government tax at all? Here is an attempt at a new and “better” explanation. It is based on the insight that the government DOES, in fact, need to collect taxes, but the “taxes” it collects are not your “tax dollars.” This may sound like gibberish, but stick with me a moment and see if the following doesn’t make sense—and cast a new light on OTHER things as well (like, for example, the “national debt”).
FROM the latest cuts to the economic forecasts to the Italian elections to the gathering debate about how George Osborne should play this year’s Budget, all discussions about the financial system now lead swiftly back to the world’s sovereign debt problem. It towers over every effort to get back to prosperity, threatening to take decades at best before it can be resolved, very possibly with an almighty crash along the way.
