Political positioning

Thanks for the thoughtful post oscargoullet

I hear what you're saying about "splitting the progressive vote".

In fact that was why I chose a name and an angle that was more Labor than Greens.

I know Labor is technically progressive but I feel like the Greens have come to dominate the progressive brand ... I wanted to avoid being "just another greens".

I also wanted to avoid being too confusing.

By energising and hopefully gaining some of the Labor base my thinking was that we'd get a long way but wouldn't present a confusing message.

People are very emotionally attached to their political tribes. As soon as people are tax cuts they think toffee nosed Liberal.

Since I settled on the concept of full employment rather than MMT as the focus and since Labor is the only party to form government that has ever had a stated policy of full I employment (up until 1975) I figured it was the best bet.

I am always interested in rewording things though to better convey the message though.

I'll cross post this to the FB group to see if we can get some more comments in here on that topic.

Re: MMT economists, timothymarkjones and I went to see Bill Mitchell again a couple of weeks ago (it was Bill who introduced me to Tim initially) and he said he needs to remain independent. Steven Hail (who is a member of the FB group) has said the same and so has Phil Lawn, but they're all willing to help.

In particular Phil gave me some pointers about some of the wording on the site, Steven has been generous with his time in the FB group and Bill has said he's willing to work with us on producing some videos for the YouTube channel.

Phil has also said he's happy to come into the podcast/YouTube channel.

I've also had good feedback from Stephanie Kelton who helped me finalise the wording for the deficit owl t-shirt and Randall Wray who has given me some pointers on some of the MMT explainers I've been posting.

Interestingly it seems that Steve Keen is the economist most interested in a formal endorsement and it was you that pinged him successfully so thanks very much for that!

I have setup a meeting with him this Thursday evening to discuss things further.

Welcome to the party, looking forward to your contributions.

I think we have a long journey ahead, but it'll be worth it

Thanks again,
Iain

I agree with Oscar, we want to take voters away from the LNP and pick up the swinging vote as there aren't enough votes left to take from rusted on ALP/Greens.

There are lot of people disaffected with the 2 party system with progressives just being neoliberal lites.
AEP can offer a new economic/social platform to attract voters and if Steve Keen is correct about the next credit crash then JG and MMT can be the "New Deal" to get Australia out of the recession/secular stagnation.














 

Currently the Greens have close to an MMT economic platform, its not MMT but its close. If you then remove a lot of the international stuff from the Greens - as important as the issues are - like refugees, climate change, etc and focus on the domestic stuff, they fit squarely in traditional labor territory. In the recent election campaign, the regional leaders debate was the best debate. As it currently stands I consider both Liberal-National and Labor to fall to the Right on the political spectrum (I don't like the left/right binary paradigm)

I'm already reasonably informed on MMT and perhaps that influences my view but I see employment as labour (note the spelling) anyway. I think it is implicit in the name. Need to get the party out there before the current greybeards that remember the last of the full employment era die out.

Also love the fact that you've been in touch with the major MMT proponents in Australia and that they are willing to provide assistance.

Several people in the Facebook Group this week also discussed the statement that the AEP is an "alternative to Labor".

My initial instinct when setting this up was that if we had to choose Left or Right, better to choose Left.

The sentiment amongst members of the FB group seems to be that we should not "join a side" of politics, but rather blaze a new trail entirely.

That is, rather than aligning ourselves with any existing party just come right out and be as left/right as MMT will allow us.

The outcomes of this are that the AEP *may* confuse people -- MMT can have policy outcomes that would traditionally be considered "left" and those that would traditionally be considered "right" (such as lowering or abolishing income and company taxes).

I'll have a bit of a hack at some new wording for the site at some point, and this thread will serve as a reminder to me to do so, thanks everyone.

Hi all, please take a look at the the wording on this new flyer that I have prepared for Phil Lawn to hand out at a seminar he is speaking out in October.

I have played around with the wording a bit based on your feedback and I'm thinking of updating the website with this.

What do y'all think?