From Prof. Steve Keen:

https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/troll-wars-in-economics?utm_source=post-ema...

Troll Wars in Economics
Mainstream economists are professional trolls.

By this, I don't mean that mainstream economists work in troll farms and are being paid by Putin—though it would be better for humanity if they were: they'd do far less damage. I mean that, almost to a person, they behave as trolls when debating critics of economics, and when discussing issues that, to their mindset, can only be solved by economic theory. They ridicule their opponents rather than engaging with them, because, like trolls, they are smugly confident that their critics couldn't possibly be right.

Philip N Cohen (@familyunequal) used this insight to come up with the perfect collective name for a group of economists: A "smug" of Economists.

They are smug because they believe that mainstream, "Neoclassical" economics is an accurate model of the real world, and therefore anyone who criticises it must be wrong.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/corporate-profits-heat-up-inflation-o...

Corporate profits heat up inflation: OECD

Refuted by Philip Lowe, who gets paid a million bucks a year to force people into poverty.

Mainstream madness.

"No-one a saw the GFC coming"... but some heterodox economists did, including MMT economists named in this article; eg Keen, Wray, and Wynne Godley  whose work informed MMT economists.

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/no-one-saw-coming-or-did-they?utm_source=substack...

'No one saw this coming' – or did they?
Dirk Bezemer / 30 Sep 2009

"So far, however, monetary (and other) policymakers have resisted inclusion of balance sheets and the flow of funds in their models and policy responses. Greenspan famously preferred to “mitigate the fallout when it occurs and, hopefully, ease the transition to the next expansion”. But the underestimation of the severity of the fallout (global recession) throws the desirability of the transition to the next expansion into doubt if it is to be driven by (private) debt accumulation. Also, the argument that bubbles cannot be timely identified nor their effects reliably anticipated is rebutted by the analysts reviewed in my paper who did both.

Conclusions
While the jury is still out on the question whether the mainstream CGE (Computable General Equilibrium models) and “Flow of Funds” (MMT) models can be married, exploring these avenues is now urgent. Benjamin Friedman recently noted that, “what is sorely missing in the discussion is attention to what function the financial system is supposed to perform in the economy and how well it has been doing it”. “Flow of Funds” models provide just that. If the crisis and recession teach us one thing, it is that the financial sector is just as real as the “real economy”. We economists – and the policymakers who rely on us – ignore balance sheets and the flow of funds at our peril.

.....

And whereas  private debt 'can't grow forever', public debt can - so long as resource utilization in the real economy is sustainable - requiring Treasury departments to keep a tab on the nation's available resources and productive capacity.

So what do we know?

In a post gold-standard world:

1. The legal currency-issuer (part of a sovereign government with its own treasury and central bank)  can issue debt-free money to fund particular public sector spending, so long as the necessary resources are available for purchase in the nation's own currency.

2. The convention requiring governments to borrow, via bond issuance to the private sector, is damaging to the nation's sustainable development including fair distribution of resources, because public policy will always be restricted according to orthodox 'balanced budget' terminology. 
Note: only the private sector needs to balance its budgets, because they are users, (not issuers) of the currency.

3. Given the vagaries of production and supply, rationing and price controls may sometimes be required to control inflation, in a scenario of mandated full employment and near zero interest rate monetary policy (ZIRP).

4. A fairer economy can be achieved by allocating first call on a proportion of the nation's  available resources** (as decided by the electorate) to the public sector, to ensure provision of the essentials for all.

**A reformed Treasury's job will be to keep a full account of the nation's resources and productive capacity. 

Thereafter private sector players can then compete for personal enrichment using the remaining available resources (including public sector infrastructure of course). 

The insanity of mainstream economic orthodoxy:

https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/other/australia-may-employment-blows-past-expect...

Australia May employment blows past expectations, piling pressure on RBA

.........

ie, because unemployment is falling - a good thing - the RBA must reverse it.....the 'Reverse Bank', indeed....

The politics of 'majoritarianism': government by 50% + 1, in the context of "independent" central banks with their  'debt-money' orthodoxy......leads to this statement heard on radio today: " faith in our democratic institutions is at an all time low...".

More on the Reverse Bank of Oz (aka RBA)

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2023/06/21/michael-pascoe-rba-wrong-wages-gro...

Michael Pascoe: Speech shows RBA clueless on employment

In short order Michele Bullock said the infamous NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) wasn’t what the RBA is really on about in trying to achieve full employment, before finishing up with the clear message that the NAIRU was indeed the elusive beast the bank was hunting as it seeks to drive unemployment up to 4.5 per cent.

The RBA has demonstrated for many years now that it is clueless when it comes to the labour market and wages. It’s a very safe bet that whatever the RBA (ditto Treasury) forecasts for wages will be wrong.

That’s partly the result of a mindset apparently locked in 1960s economics textbooks and oblivious to the ground that is always shifting beneath it.

After initially downplaying the NAIRU and saying nice things about “maintaining full employment” being just as important to the RBA as getting inflation down, Ms Bullock concluded it was the RBA’s ambition to get unemployment back up to 4.5 per cent by late next year and that would be a job well done.