The problem is not "paying for it", but "resourcing it"
On the "magic money tree", unemployment and Giavazzi's repudiation of expansionary austerity
The topic of the moment is undoubtedly the green transition and how we can organise it effectively. It should be clear that the actual problem is not how to "pay for it". The real problem is how to "resource it".
Keynes once said "anything we can actually do we can afford". Adam Tooze has brilliantly explained what Keynes meant. The real problem is obtaining and organising real resources. In our situation of mass unemployment (especially in Europe), what is certainly not lacking is labour.
From a strictly economic point of view, unemployed workers = unused real resources. Unemployment, not public spending, is the big waste of our economy.
Neither can we neglect "the frustration and disruption that unemployment brings to human communities" (Federico Caffè, 1981).
In Italy the latest figures tell us that there are:
2.4 million unemployed
1.4 million discouraged workers, who do not appear in unemployment statistics because they have stopped looking for a job (more details here).
We need "concrete jobs", as Giorgio Lunghini put it: "Jobs intended immediately for the production of values in use... mainly caring jobs, in a broad sense, for people and nature" (L'età dello spreco, 1995). But the State needs to step in: the private sector will not do this by itself.
Of course, we need training and retraining of workers and many other things. But again: "Anything we can actually do we can afford". What we need is not only demand support, but also true "supply side progressivism", as Ezra Klein wrote on the New York Times.
Taboos are falling apart. Let me tell you a recent episode about Francesco Giavazzi, Draghi's top advisor and (former) 'expansionary austerity' supporter. A journalist asked Giavazzi about public debt. His answer was that "debt is a concept of the last century".
Giavazzi stressed that "if you don't have a good plan, you turn off the tap, but if you have a good project, you finance it". He sounds like Stephanie Kelton, doesn't he?
Once the "magic money tree" is not a taboo anymore, who is allowed to pluck its delicious fruit? Politics, pushed out the door, comes back through the window.
Taken and adapted from this thread.