Tag Archives: MMT

"Socialism." Cato Institute, what to expect? At the same time, Ryan Bourne's objection that the GND goes way past what is needed to address climate change and that its true agenda is broadly imposing progressive policy needs to be addressed. Ryan Bourne also brings up a point I often make myself. Economics is fundamentally about choice involving tradeoffs and opportunity cost. Rational choice is ruled by effectiveness and efficiency in doing so. Effectiveness is about setting goals,...

By J.D. ALT I know nothing about motorcycles, and not much more about the U.S. Federal Reserve system—yet I feel compelled to dismantle, pick apart, and understand the latter for the simple reason that it seems to be a machine I’ve been riding on (and vaguely writing essays about) for some time now. So, it stands to reason I shouldn’t be ignorant of it. Not that I would get much help in this effort from American economists. Indeed, they seem intent on keeping the mechanism under wraps—as...

Finally, some constructive criticism of MMT.  Civil engineer and manager Sig Silber suggests many points that he feels need to be addressed in debate. They are well taken. No doubt many encountering MMT will have similar questions. MMT economists have anticipated a number of them and addressed them already. Some just disappear on correct understanding of MMT. The remaining one are generally political issues as much as economic, which MMT also admits. Such issues have to be decided...

More bloviating. Every one of the scores of known cases of hyperinflation dating back over 700 years bears witness to a reckless, breakneck campaign of money creation preceding it. Post hoc, propter hoc fallacy.All hyperinflations can be traced to scarcity of real resources for different reasons preceding money creation. Weimar was the result of war reparations. Zimbabwe was the result of fall in production. Venezuela was the result of pegging its currency to the dollar, thereby abandoning...

At least the author tried to understand MMT, but he didn't quite make it. In addition, the "argument" is dismissive rather than substantive. Back to the drawing board. Manila Times The Dangerous Appeal Of MMT Ben Kritz, TMT

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) offers an understanding of sovereign (and non-sovereign) currencies that is applicable to a wide range of economic systems, including capitalist and socialist ones. Irrespective of the personal political preferences of its proponents, the theoretical framework in itself is neutral on the appropriate balance between public sector and private sector activity, or the relative merits of capitalism and socialism. In contrast to neoclassical theory, which starts from...

Which brings us to the common ground that Trump shares with Ocasio-Cortez: Neither one believes in budgets. Central to the Green New Deal is a formulation known as modern monetary theory, which holds that the spending power of a sovereign government is limited only by its productive resources. Trump's fiscal insanity - massive spending along with pleas for lower interest rates - is modern monetary theory in all but name, and his trillion-dollar deficits are inspirational for the authors of...

The question of how to pay for the Green New Deal is pretty silly when you take a step back and look at the larger issue at hand. Scientists are nearly in unanimous agreement that unless we do something unprecedented in the next twelve years, the Earth will become irreversibly hostile to human life in twenty years, with an estimated cost of $69 trillion to deal with this apocalyptic future. Given that the global GDP for 2017 was $75 trillion, it doesn’t matter what economic theory you...

Physician Ted Noel first admits that AOC went though rigorous math training to obtain her undergrad degree in International Relations and Economics, and then accuses her of making trivial math mistakes.  He then shoots from the hip himself, cooking up an off the cuff model of why AOC is clearly wrong.  Dr. Nolan  thinks he can just extemporize a response off the top of his head based on his undergrad math degree as part of his pre-med training when we are talking about launching another...

You can tell a lot about an idea from who likes it. You can tell even more about it by who doesn’t like it. And some of America’s most obtuse pundits do not like the Green New Deal.... SplinterThe Awful Takes on the Green New Deal Are Already Rolling In Paul Blest