Re: MMT Has No Clothes
a clear sign of desperation
Yeah, desperation to stop wasting time going over the same unproductive ground ad nauseum.
"No country uses MMT" is the equivalent of saying "no country uses gravity." It's validity either can or cannot be demonstrated. I'd say
every country with a sovereign currency "uses MMT."
"Increasing the money supply causes inflation." This completely ignores the level of real output.
"MMT says there's only one kind of inflation." Utter nonsense.
""MMT says national debt does not matter because it is not real debt and, in fact, that we should just spend, spend, spend, into oblivion." Somewhat hyperbolic, if ya ask me. My understanding is that MMT is merely expanding Keynesian analysis in arguing that public debt cannot be fully understood without taking into account the fact that it's not debt for the bondholders, but rather
wealth, and that the interest payments are in fact private
income. How can that be denied?
I am 100% confident that MMT does
NOT say that deficits don't matter, that they can get bigger and bigger no matter what and all will be good. MMT says that deficits should be big enough to use up all of the available productive capacity. If you don't like deficits, you should advocate policies that will employ all our resources, like the unemployed and the underemployed. Let's improve the operation of the labor market and we won't be in a position to benefit from deficit spending.
In years past,
Keynesian theory was held by the Right to be the product of communist ideology, a collection of subversive lies that were quickly destroying America's system of free-market capitalism. But the country did very well for a few decades, so that nonsense died down. Then MMT came along and dispelled some Keynesian myths related to banking and inflation and crowding out, etc, and so now it's the new threat to civilization. Reactionaries have always been rather simple-minded and easily frightened. I'm thinking we'll be OK if we can keep them out of power politically.