Interview: Paul Mattick Jr, "The Economic Crisis in Fact and Fiction"

[Kotze]

While an individual that ceases to work may be able to postpone a drop in their quality of life from not producing stuff anymore by means of savings or credit, this doesn't work for the economy as a whole, even for a very short period, like a year. So when Mattick Jr. says, The key idea in my book is that this crisis was put off by the creation of debt in all these forms blahblahblah, that doesn't make sense.

I've already demonstrated both theoretically ("beggar thy neighbor" as S. Artesian put it better than I could) and empirically (Yen revaluation, attempted Renimbi revaluation, Nazi Germany) how the exact opposite could and is sometimes the case.

I was referring to the economy as a whole (and I'm of course familiar with beggar thy neighbour, which is a common Keynesian term lol).

At no point does Mattick claim that nations are like families living on credit card debt after they lose their jobs. That's your fabrication.

Actually, I know a bit more about Mattick Jr. than that one interview, and yeah, that is his position. Here is an article by Mattick Jr. from May 2011. (As far as I know you have read that article as well.)

Nevertheless, the very weakness of the private property economy that has led to an increase in state economic activity has made it impossible to pay down the debt accumulated by non-stop stimulus spending since the late 1930s. This sets limits to the expansion of the state as an economic actor, as its expansion must be paid for by money borrowed and taxed from the private sector. [Emph. added.]

According to Mattick Jr. the state must receive income or borrow for what it spends and before it spends, like a private actor. He doesn't talk about a fiat-currency system, which is the world we live in.

is all you have this inverted Tea Partyism to call an "argument"?

What is that supposed to mean, that I disagree with the Tea Party? Are you willing to defend any of the following claims then, all made by Mattick Jr. in the interview (and all marked as wut-worthy in my first post in this thread):

1. The government is not an economic actor.
2. It does not own economic resources.
3. Government involvement in the economy can only be at the expense of the private economy.
4. It cannot be profit-creating.

Just how shitfaced do you have to be to say any of that. Imagine for a moment that it wasn't a celebrity — celebrity for being the son of someone — making those claims, but a newbie on this board. How would you react?