Keeper of the flame

Some people who have no desire to understand modern monetary theory, like Ann Pettifor, for example, suggest this is what MMT proposes, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Only The Sage knows the proper and deeper truth, right?

Secondly, whilst some recipients of this money might prudently use it to pay off their debts, and others might save it, you can be fairly sure that many might decide to spend it almost immediately, but the inevitable consequence of that will be inflation because there will be no more goods and services to buy than there were before the money was created. On this issue, I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with Milton Friedman.

OK, so standard monetarism says it’s both possible and also a bad idea which will lead to inflation.

As MMT makes clear, creating money when there might not be anything to buy with it virtually guarantees inflation, and MMT is almost obsessed with preventing that, and yet this is what Trump is doing. MMT, in that case, provides the only economic framework that shows both how he can do this and why he should not.

It is time people took it seriously.

But only MMT says it’s both possible and also a bad idea.

For, if anyone were in any doubt, monetarism is neoliberal and so poo, right?

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