Well it has been a busy few weeks and I have managed to launch an MMT informed campaign for a union peak body and commence work on a workers journal. I’ve developed some decent graphic design and website building skills. Canva is unbelievable. I can take ideas and turn them into simple pictures. I’m most proud of the below image describing inflation as a conflict. If someone is paying more, someone else is receiving more.

As much as things change though, things stay the same. I read this in the guardian on an article advocating why we should scrap the stage 3 tax cuts.

Australia is one of the richest countries in the world; we are in the middle of an energy price boom; we have enormous opportunities in renewable energy; but decades of tax cuts have trained us to feel poor, that we can’t have nice things, and that the future is something to fear rather than embrace.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2022/oct/06/australians-on-120k-are-not-middle-income-earners-we-must-remake-australia-not-spend-243bn-on-the-rich

And I agree we should scrap those cuts from an equity perspective. Though insinuating ‘tax cuts’ have trained us to feel poor is illogical. More dollars in people’s pockets actually makes you wealthier in financial terms. We can argue about how that income has been distributed and I certainly would’ve liked to see more dollars flow to the bottom of the income spectrum. To bring about greater equity we need to be spending at the bottom, delivering universal public services and I’d argue guaranteeing a right to work.

None of that is possible without breaking the myths we hold around debt and deficits. Deficits are merely an outcome of the saving desires of the non-government sector. Where the government spends is important in terms of the society we’d like to live in. But it never has a revenue constraint.

I listened to some nonsense about needing tax Woodside because it’s profits increased by 44%. Woodside’s profits increased because we have been enduring years of wage suppression. Woodside’s profits increased because we allow the export of things we should be keeping in the ground. I don’t want to tax them. I want that industry to be shut down.

It’s pathetic the alleged progressives in Australia seem to be nothing but. Where is their advocacy of raising the unemployment benefit? Where is the advocacy for raising the aged pension? We’ve one of the highest rates of pensioner poverty in the OECD. Why are they not fighting for a guaranteed right to work? It is what the early labour movements fought for!

---

Anyway hopefully some of what I am working on will help change the narrative on economics. The message is out there and I feel regular everyday people grasp the basics. We needn’t worry about running out of dollars, inflation is about power. Now we need our collective voices saying that. I am in talks with some other organisations about getting them on board with the stronger together campaign and spreading the message on flawed economic frameworks – and how using a decent lens can have us enact on climate change. Hopefully, that will come to fruition. I’ve got a lot of writing to do between now and the end of the year.