What if a third scale also placed in your exhibit shows a titanic imbalance between the assets of the wealthy and the general populace?
MMT, like every other economic and monetary theory, and amazingly, despite its wonderful insight about money being created with double entry bookkeeping, is generally unconscious of policy that directly benefits the individual and resolves the thorniest problems of modern economies.
That policy, a 50% Discount/Rebate (IOW equal debits and credits that sum to zero) at retail sale, and the rest of the policy program of Wisdomics-Gracenomics resolves those thorny problems, exposes Libertarian/Austrian economics as delusional and most of the framework of "free" market theoretics as a misnomer for unstable financially dominating chaos.
MMT is somewhat like the Copernican cosmological paradigm change in the following respect. At first helio-centrism was actually less accurate in predicting the motions of heavenly bodies. It took Kepler's observation that orbits were not perfect circles but ellipses to make it more accurate than Ptolemaic cosmology. And actually this is being too kind to MMT because it merely enlightened the current method for money creation not the actual key concept that strategically applied creates a thirdeness greater oneness of an unresolving duality AKA a paradigm change.
But it might be true that until an understanding and of the money-creation cycle filters into the minds of our politicians, bankers and establishment economists we go nowhere. And then they have to reach a recognition that acting in function of it will not be against their interests, (except where those are purely greed-based and rely on exploitation of the neoliberal mythology). And then they have to adopt policies based on that understanding and acquire empirical verification of their workability. Those seem to be prerequisites to moving to policy regimes that lead to individual equity in distribution.
Certainly, that seems to be the case in the UK, where the fiscal household budget and government piggybank mythologies drive economic policy.
Yes, but the key policy of the new paradigm program, the 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale resolves so many of the anomalies of the current paradigm, is so incredibly beneficial for the long neglected/ignored individual, integrates the self interests of the traditionally opposed relationship of merchant/consumer while helping to separate the merchant's interests from those of Finance...that if they look at it economists can easily see it and if politicians get a little spine and realize that the new paradigm's policies are such winners that the party that advocates for them will easily be able to establish a winning coalition probably greater than The New Deal was in America.
Build a mass socio-economic and political movement for the new monetary paradigm and that irresistible "idea whose time has come" could quickly become the new reality.
Thanks for the likes. I want to make clear that MMT was an important insight regarding the money creation mechanics, and that I am only critiquing MMT because its advocates fail to analyze the economy and the money system on a conceptual/paradigmatic level. That and because they fail to look at and follow through with their own insight that money creation is an accounting operation by not advocating for a 50% Discount (credit to the consumer)/Rebate (debit back to the merchant) policy at retail sale IOW equal debits and credits that sum to zero...which again is precisely what MMT says is the actual money creating procedure AND BECAUSE THOSE DEBITS AND CREDITS REPRESENT AND ARE IN FACT GIFTED MONEY...
1) THEY ARE NOT MORE DEBT AND YET DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY POTENTIALLY DOUBLE THE MONEY SUPPLY
2)THUS THEY RESOLVE INFLATION WHILE INVALIDATING THE QUANTITY THEORY OF MONEY,
3) ENABLE COST CUTS THAT THE IDIOT ORTHODOX LIBERTARIANS AND CONSERVATIVES ALSO WANT BUT CAN'T GET PAST THE IDEA OF DEBT IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH SUCH AND MOST IMPORTANTLY
4) TRANSFORMS (UNIVERSAL) PARTICIPATION IN THE ECONOMY FROM A FRUSTRATING EXPERIENCE INTO THE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY TO SELF ACTUALIZE GRATITUDE FOR A GIFT SINCE MEDITATION AND PRAYER.
5) THE LIST OF BENEFICIAL EFFECTS GOES ON AND ON IN MY EVOLVING BOOK HERE:
Who'da thunk it that bean counting and monetary gifting could be so powerfully beneficial? Only those who dare to analyze conceptually/paradigmatically and then find the best ways to apply that analysis. That is not only a paradigm change its a MEGA-paradigm change.
As soon as the UK government proposes expansive spending, as it appears to be about to on Wednesday, the cry always goes up ‘What has to be cut to pay for it?’ The prevailing view is that it will be welfare spending. But surely most of welfare payments are spent directly back into the economy, funding growth and GDP ie it is investment spending. In which case the debt to GDP ratio remains stable! Respected economist Mariana Mazzucuto is quoted as saying that such investment spending is not a fiscal problem. Is she wrong?
I am always amused by the truth exhibited by the graphic you and Prof Wray made showing the link between balanced budgets and recessions. As a psychologist, that graph suggests that the presence or absence of deficits has a psychological impact on investment behavior. Perhaps people become more reckless when they think the books balance or show surpluses, and more cautious in their investment behavior when deficits show a pattern of increasing over time.
The top 1% hold $50 Trillion in net wealth, same source.
So 1 in 100 could pay our $29 Trillion in treasury debt, if that was how it worked, and still have $21 Trillion left over, filthy rich.
And leave the 99 of us out of it.
And save the federal budget $1 Trillion per year. Fiscal triumph!
Let’s hear that from the floors of our Congress. We can negotiate from there.
No MMT needed. Could help sometime, fine.
What we need are facts and arithmetic, first.
Not hearing it. Last handed the facts to Jamie Raskin, by hand, on paper. Crickets. Jared Huffman, Jeff Merkley, Ari Melber, Ali Velshi, many more. Crickets.
We, the People, are not in debt. Not remotely. We are way rich.
Yes, wealth appropriation is the perfect, ideal solution to all our problems.
Incentives are irrelevant. Production of useful goods and services is irrelevant. There would be no issue at all killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
The "full employment" goal of MMT assumes people must labor to achieve health and happiness. But is that true? How much labor is required for Medicare for All, Free College for All (who want it), Good Housing For All, Food for All, etc.? Yes, someone (or something) has to provide the supply, but I look forward to the day when robots will do that. We are getting closer every day.
COVID showed us how much work can be done at home, so exactly what is "full employment"? Is the 8-hour, 5-day work week still "full" employment? I suggest that the goal of "full employment" is outmoded, and it should be changed to "Improving people's lives," however the people define "improve." Different strokes for different folks. Forcing people to work sounds way too much like a "MMT government knows best" dictatorship.
I don't work, and haven't worked for nearly 20 years. I am quite happy and have no desire to work. What exactly does full employment mean to me, so long as I am healthy, well fed, well housed, and entertained?
Why does MMT insist that people not retire at age 50? Or 40? Or 30? All would be possible with a government not hamstrung by a belief that work is a common goal.
Think of all the jobs that one day will be done by machines. What will "full employment" mean then? The goal of people is not to labor. The goal of people is happiness and safety.
And then there is inflation. Every inflation in history has been caused NOT by federal spending but by shortages of crucial goods and services -- most often energy and food. Cure the shortages and you cure the inflation. Federal deficit spending actually can cure shortages by acquiring the scarce
goods and/or by supplementing the producers of those goods. That is how the U.S. government got us out of the COVID inflation.
It's time for MMT to come into the 21st century and revise its goals to take into account the labor machines will do and the lives we want to live.
Thanks, Steph. I'm 90+. I have been living on passive income since 2008, and if the actuary tables are correct, I won't need much more.
But I pray that one day my children and grandchildren and you will benefit from the mantra that MMT and Monetary Sovereignty share: The federal government never can run short of dollars, and federal taxes don't fund federal spending.
Your book changed my geopolitical perspective, unveiled almost limitless opportunities and renewed my insufferable optimism. I remain optimistic that we’ll survive the authoritarian regime my American neighbors voted in. My continued MMT advocacy spurns me on daily to refine strategies to communicate more effectively the need for a Blue Revolution to demonstrate the people’s power lies in our fiat sovereign currency to influence fiscal policy and the possibility to make billionaires irrelevant. I’m grateful to you Stephanie.
Encourage all in this thread to visit the commentator Rodger Mitchell's blog. He linked it in his comment. We must do what we can to spread the good word.
People need to get comfortable with the idea that deficit spending at the federal level is something to be managed, not feared. So let's try this thought experiment. Suppose the U.S. Treasury/Federal Reserve has decided to create "out of thin air" $100 trillion dollars denominated in $100 dollar bills (so folks can visualize it) and stored it all in a secure warehouse. Congress could theoretically spend the whole kit and kaboodle this year. Instead, it chooses to release $2.4 trillion and leave $97.6 trillion safe and sound (that is, unspent). Would voters view this deficit spending of $2.4 trillion as just one more instance of Congressional profligacy, or would they instead decide that leaving $97.6 trillion unspent was an act of admirable responsibility and fiscal restraint?
Stephanie emphasizes the importance of understanding the goal of debt. I believe the real goal is further enrichment and empowerment of the plutocracy. The debt is a wealth conveyer from the taxpayer to the top 1%. Full employment (jobs) is incidental. Much of the job creation goes overseas.
Example #1: The trade deficit is financed with fiscal deficits, which facilitates exports of low-cost goods to the U.S. made in factories made possible by private investors. Part of the trade deficit includes services like "returns (profits) on IP. The cost (interest) is borne by the taxpayer, jobs are overseas, profits are repatriated back to the U.S. and tax havens. So, the conveyor works like this: Fiscal deficits --> Trade Deficits --> jobs overseas --> hard assets (factories) overseas --> private profits.
Example #2: Much of the Debt goes to the MIC and military hardware/software development. Much of this is developed via technology R&D from DARPA and piloted (pre-commercialization) by DOD. This includes GPS, mapping, search engines, AI, robotics, sensors, drones, etc. Once the bugs are worked out, the VC take the last and least risky step of commercialization. As with the previous example, many of the jobs in actual manufacturing go overseas. Many trillionaires were made possible by DOD. As Robert Reich pointed out, the DOD is U.S. style industrial policy. Jobs? Full employment? Not so much.
China is the fly in the ointment because increasingly, as IP rights expire, China's manufacturing margins get plowed back into China job creation and infrastructure, and undercutting privately owned firms elsewhere. The China model is looking increasingly attractive in Southeast and South Asia. Therefore, our plutocrats must make war on China! Also at taxpayers' expense.
Example #3: War against countries that don't threaten the U.S. militarily, but do threaten the plutocrats profiteering.
The implication of the above is that spending will be supported where it furthers private profit and reduced where it doesn't. Think Medicare Advantage Plans for the former, Medicaid for the latter. That's exactly what's happening, folks!
A corollary is that the deficits WILL continue, and continue to grow, until the fiscal dam breaks. This may take the form of hyper-inflation that no one can control, or WW III.
Hopefully anyone who read this and believes it - or wants to believe it, because gee, wouldn’t it be nice… - will read this excellent, (too polite for my taste) review of the book by Arnold Kling:
Just three of several great quotes from the review:
“Kelton seems to believe that in a fiat money regime inflation only appears when the economy is at full capacity, with no unemployment. But we know from the experience of the 1970s that this is not the case.”
“Because inflationary psychology is self-fulfilling, the belief in Modern Monetary Theory is inherently self-refuting. Once people believe that the government is not constrained by deficit concerns in its issuing of paper claims (low-interest bonds or money), they have to be alert to the possibility that the government will at any point drastically devalue the monetary unit. To protect themselves, people will raise the prices of what they sell. This will devalue the monetary unit.”
“Most economists believe that the government debt plus its unfunded obligations to future recipients of Social Security and Medicare make for a dire outlook. Kelton argues instead that the ability of the government to issue money to discharge these obligations means that there is no need to raise taxes, cut entitlements, or reduce other spending. … Put it this way: if money-printing were the solution for entitlements, then it would be feasible to lower the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare to 35 instead of 65.“
Kling is nicer to MMT and Kelton than I would be. It might be nice to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and that government can print money, run up enormous debts and never have to pay them with no meaningful consequences, but that is simply not reality.
In my opinion, this is the most important book today. This is a book that changed my entire outlook on economics and how government finances operate. And contrary to some, this reading is indeed compelling and worth your time. A must recommend and again its the most important reading material today.
Many congratulations, Stephanie, here's to next 5 years trying to convince UK Prime Minister.
BTW, no doubt you would see Elon Musk realising he had 14 Magic Money trees
What if a third scale also placed in your exhibit shows a titanic imbalance between the assets of the wealthy and the general populace?
MMT, like every other economic and monetary theory, and amazingly, despite its wonderful insight about money being created with double entry bookkeeping, is generally unconscious of policy that directly benefits the individual and resolves the thorniest problems of modern economies.
That policy, a 50% Discount/Rebate (IOW equal debits and credits that sum to zero) at retail sale, and the rest of the policy program of Wisdomics-Gracenomics resolves those thorny problems, exposes Libertarian/Austrian economics as delusional and most of the framework of "free" market theoretics as a misnomer for unstable financially dominating chaos.
MMT is somewhat like the Copernican cosmological paradigm change in the following respect. At first helio-centrism was actually less accurate in predicting the motions of heavenly bodies. It took Kepler's observation that orbits were not perfect circles but ellipses to make it more accurate than Ptolemaic cosmology. And actually this is being too kind to MMT because it merely enlightened the current method for money creation not the actual key concept that strategically applied creates a thirdeness greater oneness of an unresolving duality AKA a paradigm change.
But it might be true that until an understanding and of the money-creation cycle filters into the minds of our politicians, bankers and establishment economists we go nowhere. And then they have to reach a recognition that acting in function of it will not be against their interests, (except where those are purely greed-based and rely on exploitation of the neoliberal mythology). And then they have to adopt policies based on that understanding and acquire empirical verification of their workability. Those seem to be prerequisites to moving to policy regimes that lead to individual equity in distribution.
Certainly, that seems to be the case in the UK, where the fiscal household budget and government piggybank mythologies drive economic policy.
Yes, but the key policy of the new paradigm program, the 50% Discount/Rebate at retail sale resolves so many of the anomalies of the current paradigm, is so incredibly beneficial for the long neglected/ignored individual, integrates the self interests of the traditionally opposed relationship of merchant/consumer while helping to separate the merchant's interests from those of Finance...that if they look at it economists can easily see it and if politicians get a little spine and realize that the new paradigm's policies are such winners that the party that advocates for them will easily be able to establish a winning coalition probably greater than The New Deal was in America.
Build a mass socio-economic and political movement for the new monetary paradigm and that irresistible "idea whose time has come" could quickly become the new reality.
Thanks for the likes. I want to make clear that MMT was an important insight regarding the money creation mechanics, and that I am only critiquing MMT because its advocates fail to analyze the economy and the money system on a conceptual/paradigmatic level. That and because they fail to look at and follow through with their own insight that money creation is an accounting operation by not advocating for a 50% Discount (credit to the consumer)/Rebate (debit back to the merchant) policy at retail sale IOW equal debits and credits that sum to zero...which again is precisely what MMT says is the actual money creating procedure AND BECAUSE THOSE DEBITS AND CREDITS REPRESENT AND ARE IN FACT GIFTED MONEY...
1) THEY ARE NOT MORE DEBT AND YET DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY POTENTIALLY DOUBLE THE MONEY SUPPLY
2)THUS THEY RESOLVE INFLATION WHILE INVALIDATING THE QUANTITY THEORY OF MONEY,
3) ENABLE COST CUTS THAT THE IDIOT ORTHODOX LIBERTARIANS AND CONSERVATIVES ALSO WANT BUT CAN'T GET PAST THE IDEA OF DEBT IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH SUCH AND MOST IMPORTANTLY
4) TRANSFORMS (UNIVERSAL) PARTICIPATION IN THE ECONOMY FROM A FRUSTRATING EXPERIENCE INTO THE GREATEST OPPORTUNITY TO SELF ACTUALIZE GRATITUDE FOR A GIFT SINCE MEDITATION AND PRAYER.
5) THE LIST OF BENEFICIAL EFFECTS GOES ON AND ON IN MY EVOLVING BOOK HERE:
https://www.amazon.com/Wisdomics-Gracenomics-New-Monetary-Paradigm-Policies-ebook/dp/B0C49B9PX7/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1552358772&sr=1-1-catcorr
Who'da thunk it that bean counting and monetary gifting could be so powerfully beneficial? Only those who dare to analyze conceptually/paradigmatically and then find the best ways to apply that analysis. That is not only a paradigm change its a MEGA-paradigm change.
As soon as the UK government proposes expansive spending, as it appears to be about to on Wednesday, the cry always goes up ‘What has to be cut to pay for it?’ The prevailing view is that it will be welfare spending. But surely most of welfare payments are spent directly back into the economy, funding growth and GDP ie it is investment spending. In which case the debt to GDP ratio remains stable! Respected economist Mariana Mazzucuto is quoted as saying that such investment spending is not a fiscal problem. Is she wrong?
I am always amused by the truth exhibited by the graphic you and Prof Wray made showing the link between balanced budgets and recessions. As a psychologist, that graph suggests that the presence or absence of deficits has a psychological impact on investment behavior. Perhaps people become more reckless when they think the books balance or show surpluses, and more cautious in their investment behavior when deficits show a pattern of increasing over time.
We had $160 Trillion in net personal wealth at the end of 2024. Net. Net household wealth.
<uswealthclock.com> US Fed numbers, links
The top 1% hold $50 Trillion in net wealth, same source.
So 1 in 100 could pay our $29 Trillion in treasury debt, if that was how it worked, and still have $21 Trillion left over, filthy rich.
And leave the 99 of us out of it.
And save the federal budget $1 Trillion per year. Fiscal triumph!
Let’s hear that from the floors of our Congress. We can negotiate from there.
No MMT needed. Could help sometime, fine.
What we need are facts and arithmetic, first.
Not hearing it. Last handed the facts to Jamie Raskin, by hand, on paper. Crickets. Jared Huffman, Jeff Merkley, Ari Melber, Ali Velshi, many more. Crickets.
We, the People, are not in debt. Not remotely. We are way rich.
We need to hear it — b.rad
Is that net personal wealth in currency and/or liquid assets?
It’s mostly stocks and bonds, as I read the tables. Some property.
The tables are in the Z.1 Fed report, quarterly.
Those reports are linked at the Fed web site linked above — b.rad
Yes, wealth appropriation is the perfect, ideal solution to all our problems.
Incentives are irrelevant. Production of useful goods and services is irrelevant. There would be no issue at all killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
🙄🙄🙄
I’m curious about the richest amongst us and their hoards of money accumulated relative to the average bloke’s Velocity of Money.
The "full employment" goal of MMT assumes people must labor to achieve health and happiness. But is that true? How much labor is required for Medicare for All, Free College for All (who want it), Good Housing For All, Food for All, etc.? Yes, someone (or something) has to provide the supply, but I look forward to the day when robots will do that. We are getting closer every day.
COVID showed us how much work can be done at home, so exactly what is "full employment"? Is the 8-hour, 5-day work week still "full" employment? I suggest that the goal of "full employment" is outmoded, and it should be changed to "Improving people's lives," however the people define "improve." Different strokes for different folks. Forcing people to work sounds way too much like a "MMT government knows best" dictatorship.
I don't work, and haven't worked for nearly 20 years. I am quite happy and have no desire to work. What exactly does full employment mean to me, so long as I am healthy, well fed, well housed, and entertained?
Why does MMT insist that people not retire at age 50? Or 40? Or 30? All would be possible with a government not hamstrung by a belief that work is a common goal.
Think of all the jobs that one day will be done by machines. What will "full employment" mean then? The goal of people is not to labor. The goal of people is happiness and safety.
And then there is inflation. Every inflation in history has been caused NOT by federal spending but by shortages of crucial goods and services -- most often energy and food. Cure the shortages and you cure the inflation. Federal deficit spending actually can cure shortages by acquiring the scarce
goods and/or by supplementing the producers of those goods. That is how the U.S. government got us out of the COVID inflation.
It's time for MMT to come into the 21st century and revise its goals to take into account the labor machines will do and the lives we want to live.
Thanks, Steph. I'm 90+. I have been living on passive income since 2008, and if the actuary tables are correct, I won't need much more.
But I pray that one day my children and grandchildren and you will benefit from the mantra that MMT and Monetary Sovereignty share: The federal government never can run short of dollars, and federal taxes don't fund federal spending.
Much good luck to you.
Cause of inflation discussed here: https://mythfighter.com/2025/04/08/at-long-last-lets-put-this-inflation-question-to-bed/
Your book changed my geopolitical perspective, unveiled almost limitless opportunities and renewed my insufferable optimism. I remain optimistic that we’ll survive the authoritarian regime my American neighbors voted in. My continued MMT advocacy spurns me on daily to refine strategies to communicate more effectively the need for a Blue Revolution to demonstrate the people’s power lies in our fiat sovereign currency to influence fiscal policy and the possibility to make billionaires irrelevant. I’m grateful to you Stephanie.
The Deficit Myth was the most important idea I discovered in ten years. Completely changed my thinking, also. So much is possible...
Encourage all in this thread to visit the commentator Rodger Mitchell's blog. He linked it in his comment. We must do what we can to spread the good word.
People need to get comfortable with the idea that deficit spending at the federal level is something to be managed, not feared. So let's try this thought experiment. Suppose the U.S. Treasury/Federal Reserve has decided to create "out of thin air" $100 trillion dollars denominated in $100 dollar bills (so folks can visualize it) and stored it all in a secure warehouse. Congress could theoretically spend the whole kit and kaboodle this year. Instead, it chooses to release $2.4 trillion and leave $97.6 trillion safe and sound (that is, unspent). Would voters view this deficit spending of $2.4 trillion as just one more instance of Congressional profligacy, or would they instead decide that leaving $97.6 trillion unspent was an act of admirable responsibility and fiscal restraint?
BTW, The Deficit Myth's Chapter 3 is an absolute tour de force.
Stephanie emphasizes the importance of understanding the goal of debt. I believe the real goal is further enrichment and empowerment of the plutocracy. The debt is a wealth conveyer from the taxpayer to the top 1%. Full employment (jobs) is incidental. Much of the job creation goes overseas.
Example #1: The trade deficit is financed with fiscal deficits, which facilitates exports of low-cost goods to the U.S. made in factories made possible by private investors. Part of the trade deficit includes services like "returns (profits) on IP. The cost (interest) is borne by the taxpayer, jobs are overseas, profits are repatriated back to the U.S. and tax havens. So, the conveyor works like this: Fiscal deficits --> Trade Deficits --> jobs overseas --> hard assets (factories) overseas --> private profits.
Example #2: Much of the Debt goes to the MIC and military hardware/software development. Much of this is developed via technology R&D from DARPA and piloted (pre-commercialization) by DOD. This includes GPS, mapping, search engines, AI, robotics, sensors, drones, etc. Once the bugs are worked out, the VC take the last and least risky step of commercialization. As with the previous example, many of the jobs in actual manufacturing go overseas. Many trillionaires were made possible by DOD. As Robert Reich pointed out, the DOD is U.S. style industrial policy. Jobs? Full employment? Not so much.
China is the fly in the ointment because increasingly, as IP rights expire, China's manufacturing margins get plowed back into China job creation and infrastructure, and undercutting privately owned firms elsewhere. The China model is looking increasingly attractive in Southeast and South Asia. Therefore, our plutocrats must make war on China! Also at taxpayers' expense.
Example #3: War against countries that don't threaten the U.S. militarily, but do threaten the plutocrats profiteering.
The implication of the above is that spending will be supported where it furthers private profit and reduced where it doesn't. Think Medicare Advantage Plans for the former, Medicaid for the latter. That's exactly what's happening, folks!
A corollary is that the deficits WILL continue, and continue to grow, until the fiscal dam breaks. This may take the form of hyper-inflation that no one can control, or WW III.
Hopefully anyone who read this and believes it - or wants to believe it, because gee, wouldn’t it be nice… - will read this excellent, (too polite for my taste) review of the book by Arnold Kling:
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/deficits-budgetary-and-conceptual/
Just three of several great quotes from the review:
“Kelton seems to believe that in a fiat money regime inflation only appears when the economy is at full capacity, with no unemployment. But we know from the experience of the 1970s that this is not the case.”
“Because inflationary psychology is self-fulfilling, the belief in Modern Monetary Theory is inherently self-refuting. Once people believe that the government is not constrained by deficit concerns in its issuing of paper claims (low-interest bonds or money), they have to be alert to the possibility that the government will at any point drastically devalue the monetary unit. To protect themselves, people will raise the prices of what they sell. This will devalue the monetary unit.”
“Most economists believe that the government debt plus its unfunded obligations to future recipients of Social Security and Medicare make for a dire outlook. Kelton argues instead that the ability of the government to issue money to discharge these obligations means that there is no need to raise taxes, cut entitlements, or reduce other spending. … Put it this way: if money-printing were the solution for entitlements, then it would be feasible to lower the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare to 35 instead of 65.“
Kling is nicer to MMT and Kelton than I would be. It might be nice to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and that government can print money, run up enormous debts and never have to pay them with no meaningful consequences, but that is simply not reality.
In my opinion, this is the most important book today. This is a book that changed my entire outlook on economics and how government finances operate. And contrary to some, this reading is indeed compelling and worth your time. A must recommend and again its the most important reading material today.