This week, I have been mostly reading:

• MMT Responds to Brad DeLong’s Challenge — Randy Wray at New Economic Perspectives: As I said it is hard to think of a general pump-priming; except perhaps sending a $5000 check to every resident. But even this wouldn’t affect all sectors equally. Most Americans, suffering under huge debt loads, would probably pay down some debt. The comfortably well-off would splurge on fancy restaurants and expensive spas that already have long waiting lists. Or add a gold-plated toilet bowl to their third yacht. I’ve long argued that rising tides raise all yachts—not the little dinghies. here and here As Pavlina Tcherneva’s empirical work has proven here , that turns out to be true. More than all the gains from growth now go to the tippy top of the income distribution. No wonder the Neoliberals hate the JG approach and love the pump-priming approach. As Tom Palley complains, the JG would give income directly to the poor and they’d want food. Neoliberals love unemployment—it keeps the “help” hungry and cheap. They are our inflation-fighting force to keep the comfortable classes comfortable.
• MMT Takes Center Stage – and Orthodox Economists Freak — Bill Black at New Economic Perspectives: If neoliberals want to define as “socialism” an effective government that produces markets in which honest people prosper and we imprison or at least drive from the markets the elite cheaters, then we are all socialists. An economic system without an effective rule of law and with massive negative externalities such as global climate change is a suicidal kleptocracy. If neoliberals want to define that as “capitalism,” they should get used to the public rejecting it as an ideology that is as economically illiterate as it is inhumane and unethical. Kleptocracy and plutocracy invariably corrupt and ruin democracy. The truth is that honest markets and governments are complements and that the most effective economies are ‘mixed-economies.’ Using ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ as swear words is a pointless waste.
• The Truth About Dentistry — Ferris Jabr confirms what we've all long suspected in the Atlantic: Studies that explicitly focus on overtreatment in dentistry are rare, but a recent field experiment provides some clues about its pervasiveness. A team of researchers at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, asked a volunteer patient with three tiny, shallow cavities to visit 180 randomly selected dentists in Zurich. The Swiss Dental Guidelines state that such minor cavities do not require fillings; rather, the dentist should monitor the decay and encourage the patient to brush regularly, which can reverse the damage. Despite this, 50 of the 180 dentists suggested unnecessary treatment. Their recommendations were incongruous: Collectively, the overzealous dentists singled out 13 different teeth for drilling; each advised one to six fillings. Similarly, in an investigation for Reader’s Digest, the writer William Ecenbarger visited 50 dentists in 28 states in the U.S. and received prescriptions ranging from a single crown to a full-mouth reconstruction, with the price tag starting at about $500 and going up to nearly $30,000.
• The Reality Behind Trump’s Coalition for Regime Change in Venezuela — Mark Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR): Even if the Trump team had a global majority—which it doesn’t, with only 50 out of 195 countries worldwide backing Venezuelan regime change—their deadly economic sanctions, theft of assets, military threats, and other actions to topple Venezuela’s government would be no more legal or legitimate than George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, or the many U.S.-led regime change efforts that have taken place in this hemisphere. That’s unsurprising, given who’s at the wheel: perennial regime-change advocate John Bolton, for example, or special envoy Elliott Abrams, who supported what the UN later found to be genocide in Guatemala, as well as the US-sponsored atrocities in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s. The cast of characters supporting this regime-change effort, whether in Washington or among some of its closest allies, should underline what is already obvious: The United States’ attempt to oust Maduro has nothing to do with democracy or human rights.
• Let people look out of the window — Richard Murphy: There is an article in the FT this morning that asks how workplaces can foster creative people. […] The whole piece reminds me of the most paradoxical adverts I read. They ask for applicants from ‘original and innovative thinkers’ who are ‘team players’. I am not saying there is no overlap between the Venn diagrams for these two groups. I am saying they are small. […] A few years ago I was given an award for effective campaigning. In the minute or two I was given to note my thanks I gave praise to the Jospeh Rowntree Charitable Trust. They had the courage to fund me for five years to, as I put it, look out of the window. Which is what I did, and still do, quite often. Because inspiration comes from watching the world and wondering why it behaves as it does.
• “Speaking Truth to Power” Is No Substitute for Taking Power — Norman Solomon in Truthout: While noting that “power without love is reckless and abusive,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out that “love without power is sentimental and anemic.” All too often, progressive activists don’t realize their own potential power when they rely on ethical arguments to persuade authorities. Appealing to the hearts of people who run a heartless system is rarely effective. Humane principles are low priorities in the profit-driven scheme of things, as the devastating impacts of economic inequality and militarism attest. By and large, rapacious power already knows what it’s doing — from Wall Street and the boardrooms of mega-corporations to the Pentagon and the top echelons of the “national security” state.