Capitalized money, austerity and the math of capitalism

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to the existing critical debates on money and debt by advancing three main arguments. First, largely due to such debates’ tendency for description, the article argues that in in the heterodox literature on money and debt there is no convincing critical theory of money creation. For this reason the authors introduce the theory of capital as power and how it can help us theorize the consequences of present money creation. Second, the authors demonstrate how the capitalization of money creation by a minority of investors not only leads to the political chase for unsustainable economic growth, but also how there is a differential distribution of interest upwards that helps generate greater economic inequality in the United States. Third, they argue that in an era of declining growth, dominant owners of capital seek to recapture their expected return on investments by extracting a greater share of the national income from the vast majority of citizens through a fiscal politics of austerity.

Neoliberal disease: COVID-19, co-pathogenesis and global health insecurities

“…These are: (i) precarious market supply systems for everything from food and water to housing and education; (ii) economic inequality and its intersection with racial inequalities in intensifying vulnerability; (iii) contingent labor and its exposure of essential workers in the post-Fordist ‘precariat’ to heightened risks of infection; and (iv) social alienation and the biopolitical abandonment of diverse sub-populations to experiences of extreme risk in so-called petri-dish spaces such as prisons, homeless camps, slums, and overcrowded farmworker housing. All four of these features of neoliberalized societies are themselves overshadowed by the disciplinary effects of debt and austerity, a form of financialized and disciplinary neoliberalism that repeatedly elevates the interests of investors over states, labour and state social services such as healthcare (DiMuzio & Robbins, 2020). We address the devastating impacts of this leech-like neoliberal medicine for neoliberal patients of the social state in Section 3 (cf Peck, 2013b).…”

Transitioning to Reduced Inequalities

“…These mark-ups are set by industry convention or the profit targets of major firms and often both. However, the worry for us here is the cost-plus-profit nature of capitalist accounting and what this means for debt and purchasing power (Di Muzio and Robbins 2020). To pry open Pandora's Box, let us imagine a simple but illustrative example of a firm that produces apple juice.…”