land of no horizon

mybeingthere:

Max Ernst (1891-1976) — “Its terrible love song bursts between two beds of ice” Microbes [gouache and decal on paperboard, 1951].

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#art #50s

theancientwayoflife:

~ Painted Drum.
Date: A.D. 500–1000
Place of origin: Central Andes, Middle Horizon, North Coast
Medium: Animal hide, gesso, wooden slats, pigment.

(Source: clevelandart.org)

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#art #anthro

probablyasocialecologist:

“We Can’t Afford It” – Is that True? - 99%
Our government claims to want strong public services, but refuses to fund them adequately on the grounds that to do so would be “financial
99%
For most of the time, politicians have ostensibly retreated into the pre-Keynesian view that governments should run like households and seek to ‘balance their books.’ And most of the media has tended to endorse this fallacy.

But when it was obviously necessary to act to save the economy, for example after the Global Financial Crisis or during the height of the pandemic when much of the economy had to be shut down, governments suddenly remembered that they have the extraordinary power to create money.

After the Global Financial Crisis, the government – via the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing programme – created around £445 billion of new money to prevent a collapse in the banking system.

During COVID, the government created around £450 billion more to prevent a collapse in household finances when people would otherwise have had no income.

In total, during the 21st century, the government has created £895 billion of new money – when it had the will to do so.

And the view from economists is supportive. The argument for government spending to pay for healthcare, save businesses from bankruptcy, create new jobs and prevent a climate apocalypse has been made by the proponents of Modern Monetary Theory, for example Stephanie Kelton in her book The Deficit Myth. This book explains in detail how money is created and shows that the idea that governments should – or even responsibly could – budget in the same way as a normal household is no more than (admittedly compelling) rhetoric.

But politicians and the media have – by and large – reverted to the notion that the government finances constitute a brake on what can be done for the public good. And our government continues to rein-in public spending even though it is clear that most public services are struggling badly.