What is going on? We now have credentialed economists saying we can just print money to pay for whatever might be on our wish list.

Tell me this is just a bad dream.

Gotta refresh my memory.

It’s being touted as how to pay for (sic) the Green New Deal.


https://mobile.twitter.com/Ste.../1093575469440618496


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...dern_Monetary_Theory

John Hawkins
@johnhawkinsrwn
Replying to
@StephanieKelton
As long as you're cool with bringing in a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread, this is sound thinking.
4:37 PM · Feb 7, 2019 · Twitter Web Client

Worked wonders for Eva Peron

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
Krugman on MMT

Best line:

quote:

Can you imagine John Galt admitting that he was wrong?

What shocks is that it has any professional support at all.

When you first started this thread, I didn't know what you were referring to so of course I went off on a search.

I found Robert Hockett.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...either/#babea314d7fe

Why is this such a shock? Even "professionals" can see evidence through an ideological prism. On the conservative side, Ricardian Equivalence enjoyed a lot of support.

Of course. The more I follow social sciences the more utility I see in the model of them as 'partisans with nicer charts'.

But you'd think there would be limits. Economist that say 'just print more money'?


I mean, I suspect there are wide disagreements between child development specialists, but I'd still be surprised if one recommends locking kids in a room and barking at them like a dog.


And I put this in the same category.

No matter what proposition you might think would enjoy 100% support, you'll always find a few people who think otherwise. Some of those can advance a logical counterargument or a reasonable quibble. Even "comparative advantage" isn't 100% supported (but close). Followers of MMT aren't all wacko, especially if you allow them to qualify "just print more money" to "within certain bounds dictated by ..."

Some natural scientists think up certain ideas that the majority think are pretty "out there" too:

"They're Here"

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

But you'd think there would be limits. Economist that say 'just print more money'?

Limits in what sense? We moved off commodity based hard currencies; most of our "money" are just ledger entries. There is no physical limit anymore for "money" creation. So (as P*D puts it) "just print more money within certain bounds dictated by ..." seems a sensible approach to define the limits for money creation.

Is hyperinflation your only concern for "printing more money" or are there other things that worry you about it?

The 'within certain bounds...' seems to be a strategic equivocation. It also seems to show up only in paragraph 12 of pieces with headlines like "'How we pay for it' isn't a thing and inflation isn't either".


I'd like to know what the true thought process is behind it, I mean from those academic economists that are promoting it. Do they really think there's a lot of room to fund trillion dollar ongoing programs through seigniorage without triggering inflation?


Or is it something more analogous to the GOP's 'starve the beast' strategy?

Like, maybe they know it can't work but they figure if it gets the programs passed it's worth it. Then the resulting debt crisis will make large scale tax increases politically doable?



eta: For those unfamiliar with the 'starve the beast' strategy, the logic goes like this:

- there is no political will to cut entitlements.
- but there is political will to cut taxes
- so keep cutting taxes while entitlements grow. Eventually there will be a crisis
- in the face of the crisis the political will to cut entitlements will emerge



My point above is that the thought behind MMT could be analogous. But the explosion of entitlements would create the crisis, and the hope would be that the crisis would create conditions for the necessary tax regime to be passed. (assuming a tax regime even exists that could support such a list)