by Summary:
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) continues to make inroads into the mainstream discourse with the appearance of an article by Youssef El-Gingihy in The Independent Online. The article features MMT in connection with the new book by Bill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi, Reclaiming the State. At its recent rate of dissemination, MMT may transition from heterodox to mainstream ahead of expectations.Although the finer points of MMT can get quite involved, the most basic takeaway is very simple. For societies with currency-issuing governments:If something can be done, it is “affordable”. If we have access to the raw materials, the labor power, the skills, the equipment and the facilities needed to produce something, then we can afford to produce it. The cost of doing so is not financial. The cost is a
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: affordability, availability of real resources, currency issuer v. users, MMT
This could be interesting, too:
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) continues to make inroads into the mainstream discourse with the appearance of an article by Youssef El-Gingihy in The Independent Online. The article features MMT in connection with the new book by Bill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi, Reclaiming the State. At its recent rate of dissemination, MMT may transition from heterodox to mainstream ahead of expectations.Although the finer points of MMT can get quite involved, the most basic takeaway is very simple. For societies with currency-issuing governments:If something can be done, it is “affordable”. If we have access to the raw materials, the labor power, the skills, the equipment and the facilities needed to produce something, then we can afford to produce it. The cost of doing so is not financial. The cost is a
Topics:
Mike Norman considers the following as important: affordability, availability of real resources, currency issuer v. users, MMT
This could be interesting, too:
Mike Norman writes Jared Bernstein, total idiot. You have to see this to believe it.
Steve Roth writes MMT and the Wealth of Nations, Revisited
Matias Vernengo writes On central bank independence, and Brazilian monetary policy
Michael Hudson writes International Trade and MMT with Keen, Hudson
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) continues to make inroads into the mainstream discourse with the appearance of an article by Youssef El-Gingihy in The Independent Online. The article features MMT in connection with the new book by Bill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi, Reclaiming the State. At its recent rate of dissemination, MMT may transition from heterodox to mainstream ahead of expectations.
Although the finer points of MMT can get quite involved, the most basic takeaway is very simple. For societies with currency-issuing governments:
If something can be done, it is “affordable”.
If we have access to the raw materials, the labor power, the skills, the equipment and the facilities needed to produce something, then we can afford to produce it. The cost of doing so is not financial. The cost is a real cost: the exertion of human effort and know-how, the wear and tear on facilities and equipment, and the depletion of natural resources.
On one level, it is bizarre that this basic takeaway of MMT is not already mainstream. If the idea is heterodox, it is only because we are currently living in a very topsy-turvy world, in which up is presented to us as down, black as white, with everything reversed. In reality, it should be much harder to believe the opposite: that what we are capable of is impossible.
heteconomist
If it’s Doable, it’s Affordable
Peter Cooper