Tag Archives: affordability

The correct question is, Can we not afford a GND? So when we look at the cost of the climate proposals out there against today’s macroeconomic background, the question should not be, are they too expensive? The question should be: Are they expensive enough? The purpose of policy is meeting policy goals effectively and efficiently. This means getting as close as possible in the design solution to "just right — not too much and not too little."But in the case of serious challenges...

To reiterate, we didn’t need people’s money to fund the war effort. And in case you don’t believe me, take the word of someone who was there. Beardsley Ruml, Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, published a piece in American Affairs in 1946 entitled “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete.” Guess what he says! John Harvey might also have pointed out that this how the US government self-funds the military now, and everything else it spends money on, including Social Security. FDR knew...

Not that affordability is relevant from the MMT POV, but it's worth looking at anyway. "They" view it conventionally in terms of the interest rate "r," that is, the policy rate, and the growth rate "g" measured as change in GDP.This is the ratio of r to g, or "r : g". As long as r is greater than g, "they" consider the increasing interest affordable. In fact, "r > g" has become a meme and entered the jargon since the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty–First...

On Stephanie Kelton and MMT.econintersect.comDocumentary Of The Week: But How Will We Pay For It? John LounsburySee also at econintersectEven The Statisticians Are Highly Dubious Of Applying Their Methods In Economics!Philip Pilkington

If the government is not as broke as some say it is, then the inability to invest in things like public education is due to a lack of political will and not some natural law written into the fabric of economic reality. SojournersCan We Afford Economic Justice In The United States? Daniel José Camacho | Associate Web Editor

Here is a quote from John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1933: If I had the power today I should surely set out to endow our capital cities with all the appurtenances of art and civilisation on the highest standards of which the citizens of each were individually capable, convinced that what I could create, I could afford – and believing that money thus spent would not only be better than any dole, but would make unnecessary any dole. For with what we have spent on the dole in England since the...

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...

This is an illustration of the political cost of Bernie not understanding and embracing MMT. He should have paid closer attention to MMT economist Stephanie Kelton when she was his economic adviser. 1. A currency sovereign cannot "go bankrupt." A currency issuer can always issue currency to cover its obligations in the currency of issue. In this case, default is a political choice rather than a financial necessity. 2. The only actual constraint on a currency soveriegn is the...