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The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and…
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The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy (edition 2020)

by Stephanie Kelton (Author)

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4531754,500 (3.91)3
I mostly agree with Kelton's MMT economics, and with her liberal politics. Yet I found the combination to be wholly unconvincing, and by the end I was becoming convinced that both need rethinking.

The presentation of MMT here is far oversimplified, to the extent of being almost a caricature of MMT. It is also very repetitive. I read through the first superficial chapters quickly, looking forward to where she would delve into the details. Instead, she pivots completely to politics. Unlike on economics, on politics, she doesn't really have anything novel to say. It is completely derivative of hundreds of other books, articles, op-eds and speeches. I really don't need Kelton giving me cheesy anecdotes of a man she met in Ohio who needed Obamacare. Kelton is an economist, not a politician, and I want the economic perspective.

Her solution to every problem is to have the government either manage it or throw money at it. Perhaps we have the money to do anything (ignoring inflation, like she does throughout the book), but devoting real resources to efforts will still always involve tradeoffs. Except not in this book. (Even for health care, for which she notes that the US pays much more, for less, than other developed countries, her solution is to spend even more: "more primary care doctors, nurses, dentists, surgeons, medical equipment, hospital beds, and so on".)

She doesn't even properly explain inflation:

> economists worry because when there's little or no inflation, it's usually considered a reflection of weakness in the broader economy.

> There was a time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when many central banks, including the Federal Reserve, claimed that by directly controlling the growth of the money supply, they could control inflation. Today, virtually all central banks have adopted a different approach, targeting a key interest rate that is supposed to help them indirectly manage inflationary pressures.

> The federal government announces a wage (and benefit) package for anyone who is looking for work but unable to find suitable employment in the economy. Several MMT economists have recommended that the jobs be oriented around building a care economy.

> In November 2008, the Fed launched the first of three rounds of a massive bond-buying program called quantitative easing. Among other things, the Fed hoped its program would help stimulate the US economy by lowering long-term interest rates. By the time it was over, the Fed had gobbled up some $4.5 trillion in bonds, including nearly $3 trillion in US Treasuries. In addition to using quantitative easing to push longer-term interest rates lower, the Fed also changed the way it managed its short-term interest rate. Instead of buying and selling Treasuries to add and subtract reserves, the Fed switched to a "more direct and more efficient method of interest rate support." It simply started paying interest on reserve balances. Today, the Fed can adjust the short-term interest rate any time it chooses, simply by announcing that it will pay a new rate.

> The government is letting $100 dollars flow into our bucket and only siphoning $90 down the drain. The flow of red ink lamented by Jason Furman fills our bucket with dollars. Fiscal deficits don’t eat up our savings; they enlarge them!

> Some nations have weakened their monetary sovereignty, either by pegging their exchange rates (e.g., Bermuda, Venezuela, Niger), abandoning their national currencies (e.g., all nineteen countries in the eurozone, Ecuador, Panama), or by borrowing heavily in US dollars or other foreign currencies (e.g., Ukraine, Argentina, Turkey, Brazil).

> money, as MMT notes, is the one resource the federal government can't run out of. There's no reason every job—all the way down to retail clerk or fast food worker or janitor in a luxury Chicago hotel—can't be a good job, with dignified pay, hours, security, and benefits.

> the average borrower from the class of 2017 now owes $28,650. For Americans attending private not-for-profit colleges and universities, the average amount of debt is $32,300; for those attending for-profit institutions, the average is $39,950

> It's been called the forgotten leg of the New Deal. FDR had hoped that Congress would enshrine a job guarantee in the form of an Economic Bill of Rights, but his party never carried through with a formal commitment after his death

Way oversimplified:

> MMT teaches us that if we have the real resources we need—that is, if we have the building materials to fix our infrastructure, if we have people who want to become doctors, nurses, and teachers, if we can grow all the food we need—then the money can always be made available to accomplish our goals.

> Budgeting through an MMT lens would have us replace the artificial budget constraint that tells us to live within our financial means with inflation constraint that tells us to live within our biological and material means. ( )
  breic | Jul 31, 2020 |
Showing 17 of 17
too US centered for non US-readers ( )
  postsign | Dec 28, 2023 |
A brilliant book on economic policy, that introduces a strikingly different way of looking at how governments should manage expenditures and revenues(the Modern Monetary Theory). In a nutshell, the author states that sovereign economies (that issue their own currencies) are not bound to limit their public expenditures to the taxes and revenues they collect each year (i.e. limit their budget deficits), as they can create any amount of money they want simply by making appropriate entries in the credit side of selected entities (e.g. banks, financial corporations, industries, etc.). That is, sovereign entities can S-TAB (Spend first, find the revenue from taxes or borrowing subsequently), and need not be constrained to TAB-S (tax and borrow first, spend later only when finances are available). Such sovereign economies can run any amount of current budget deficits, as they can easily create the needed finances simply by making book entries. This is, of course, a revolutionary change in the way we see public expenditure and revenue, and those of us accustomed to balance our household finances, cannot be blamed for wondering whether there is some fatal flaw in the reasoning.. However, there are some limitations: the central suthority should monitor the level of inflation closely, and ease up the 'pump priming' when the real resources of the economy are being used to the maximum, and any further infusion of liquidity will only push up prices. Secondly, this reasoning applies only to what are called 'sovereign' economies, those which issue their own currencies, and which are not obliged to redeem their issues at any fixed rate (i.e. the value of the currency is not pegged to a specific quantity of gold or any other standard, but can freely float). The author included the USA, UK, Japan, China (?) and a few others in this hallowed group, but leaves out most developing countries, and surprisingly, the individual countries of the European Union, that have voluntarily given up their currency powers to the European Central Bank. I would also suggest that the thoings on which the expanded money supply is spent, also matters: if it is only or mainly on luxury yatches and golf courses in the desert, it may not result in the economic prosperity promised by the proponents of Modern Monetary Theory. The author stresses the need to get more income into the hands of the middle and poorer classes, rather than increasing the income of the richest 1% or 10%. ( )
  Dilip-Kumar | Dec 21, 2023 |
Seems almost dated at this point, and also tested in a way from the pandemic. She argues that fiscal policy uses the wrong lens through which to deal with economy. We do not need a balanced budget, we need a balanced economy. The deficit is a myth that has no bearing on the economy. Whatever the solutions, MMT aims to center humanity in the solution rather than the cold hearted proclivities of the idiot republican/libratarian “deficit hawks.”
1 vote BookyMaven | Dec 6, 2023 |
OK, so, it's an eye-opener. It's also very US-centric, although it does touch on similarities with the UK, Canada, Japan and differences with the Eurozone. Whilst it makes sense that it is US-centric (the author is American after all), I think it would help with the understanding of the topic as a whole to retain that wider perspective.

For example, if the premise is that the US has the natural resources and labour to spend a lot more than it does currently without increasing inflation, is that also true of other countries? How is that limit evaluated and determined? And how does MMT apply within the Eurozone, where countries aren't directly sovereign? ( )
  benmcfc | Jun 16, 2023 |
Well, this has gone and reshaped my entire view of the world. My complaint with this book is that it doesn't really address the criticisms of MMT, so now I'm off down a rabbit hole of learning what other people view as its problems and how to address them.

Also, surprised that a UBI never came up. ( )
  whakaora | Mar 5, 2023 |
Some interesting aspects, but some blinding fallacies as well. What happens on the world currency markets if we buy into the myth and (while keeping inflation in check) exponentially increase the deficit while no other major country follows the same policy? Where is the discussion on an upper band to servicing the debt? At what point does a denomination from a country that is a currency issuer become fools gold? No discussion on default of debt, what can lead to it and what MMT has to say about it. Has no currency issuing country ever defaulted on its debt? Would have liked to have brought into the discussion another country such as Argentina. The concept of the national job guarantee program is unfeasible -- you couldn't 'fire' anyone from it, so you end up paying people multiple amounts more for zero work than the benefits they are currently receiving and have a bloated governmental agency costing billions more to administer it. ( )
  skraft001 | Feb 17, 2023 |
This book should be required reading for all members of Congress. I always wondered how the New Deal was financed and since I was a child I wondered how World War II was financed. I now know and you will also if you read this book ( )
  cjneary | Jan 14, 2023 |
There is a lot to think about, and listening to it 20 minutes at a time was the way I absorbed all of the information. I think MMT is an interesting idea, and this book clearly explains the core tenets and concepts in a lucid way.

But MMT is a counter-intuitive concept and also a largely untested one, and once the book extends into broad public policy pronouncements it gets into psychological issues rather than economic ones (though obviously there is a lot of overlap there), particularly as the need for draconian estate taxes to ensure the success of this broad plan is unaddressed. Further, the freeloader problem is, more or less, ignored, with optimism that people are intrinsically good and want to work hard. I agree with those statement for most people, but there are plenty of historical lessons that point the other direction for significant populations.

If one has broad interest in economics, markets, and/or financial theory, I consider this a crucial read, but for general audiences I'm a bit concerned that the more persuasive aspects will not be examined thoroughly enough. ( )
  danieljensen | Oct 14, 2022 |
Until fairly recently, I would have found this book difficult to believe. It tells me that Governments do not tax their people because they need money and that a large deficit is not necessarily a bad thing.

If this is true, why do the economists not know this? The answer is that they do.

I'm not talking about the chancellor of the Exchequer, or the shadow chancellor: they are often people with no economic training and indeed, if they show too much understanding of their post, the party leader will feel threatened and remove the clever dick.

It seems to be the done thing to complain about Zoom meetings; I have found this a wonderful way to be in a room (albeit virtual) with people with whom I would not normally find myself. I have managed a brief interchange with several people far more advanced in the economic sphere than I will ever be, and they often agree that our love affair with GDP is daft. I have also found small 'c' conservatives who are not in the least fazed with the sort of concepts expounded by Stephanie Kelton.

I am not going to pretend that I understood ever detail; I really am as far from an economist as it is possible to be, but the effort was well worthwhile. I would recommend it to everyone - it is a real eye-opener! ( )
1 vote the.ken.petersen | Dec 2, 2021 |
This book is way longer than it needed to be based on the amount of information that is being presented. Much repetition of concepts and arguments, like readers aren't going to get it when it's really quite simple, particularly when you bear in mind that money is an artificial construct and only works because (or when) enough people believe it has value. It's value is ultimately tied to the body (usually a government) that issued it. ( )
  fionaanne | Nov 11, 2021 |
Like Mark Carney's recent book, Value(s), this book argues for measuring what matters; in this case, outcomes. Basically, the author is asking: “How can the economy morph into a system that optimizes for human development rather than one that depends upon exploitation of people and nature?” Given the many challenges facing our society, including growing wealth inequality, and climate change, there is a case ti be made for examining how how we think about and design our economic systems.

My main complaint with the book is that I didn’t find enough detail on the non-budgetary constraints to over-spending. As one politician told the author, there’s no way he could sell MMT. I’m sure it would be the same here. So the "checks and balance" on spending have to be very well detailed.

I'm not convinced that monetary sovereignty is absolute in a world so linked by trade. I can't imagine how a federal job guarantee would be administered at the sub-national level!

I take the main message of this book to be a call to set priorities based on people; on human needs. I'm not sure this necessarily requires a change in monetary policy.

A very thought-provoking book! ( )
  LynnB | Nov 2, 2021 |
An outstanding explanation of modern monetary theory. After reading this, you will no longer be able to listen to discussions of the national debt in the same way. ( )
  M_Clark | Mar 15, 2021 |
This book is a fascinating look into whether or not it is possible, responsible, or wise to have a government deficit. Perhaps you've been raised to think it's a bad thing, that it means we're in debt to countries like China, or just shows our country as being irresponsible spenders. The economic theory, MMT, outlined in this book demonstrates that because the United States issues currency, we literally cannot run out of it. While the book does list the repercussions of printing too much money (see: the Weimar Republic), it balances that discussion with other benefits of using our deficit wisely.

I found the book to be an interesting economics primer; the last time I took an economics class was about 17 years ago in college because I needed a social science credit. I found all of the basics (rational, informed spenders) to be complete BS, so I've probably shied away from economics talk since then. However, I would have appreciated I guess a more objective view of MMT... because my economics background is so weak I worry that a book like this might sway my opinion largely just because I don't have enough knowledge to counterbalance any of the points given in the book.

However, I think that even if we could convince the entire U.S. that MMT is solid and sound, a certain political party will still obstruct its use as much as possible. Yes this country needs a sound economic policy that benefits the population, environment, and our neighboring countries. But we more importantly need to solve the problem of close to 50% of the voting population believing that human beings aren't entitled to things like healthcare, a guaranteed income, retirement pensions, or even food. ( )
1 vote lemontwist | Dec 31, 2020 |
A fascinating topic, maybe even an important topic. I'm not quite sure how much I accept the ideas and arguments, but they are certainly interesting. Love the idea of national guaranteed service work as an alternative to unemployment insurance, an effective minimum wage, and as a form of basic universal income. ( )
1 vote RandyRasa | Oct 25, 2020 |
Monetary theory, the study of money, is a key aspect of economics. It enables economists to analyze money and consider its function. As an economic theory, the technical literature on the subject generally concerns itself with traditional economic indicators: jobs, inflation, etc. However, these sometimes fail to adequately address the primary purpose of economics: people.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a specific branch of monetary theory that evolved as a result of a century-old inquiry into chartalism, functional finance, and the medium-of-exchange nature of money. It is characterized by a view that currency is a public monopoly, and should be managed for the public benefit. Although MMT has been around for generations, it is recently gaining prominence in mainstream economic discourse as a compelling approach for retooling our currently-ailing economic system.

This article is part of a body of larger work being developed by The Regenerative Economy Collaborative to demonstrate the application of the Seven First Principles of Regeneration (as articulated by regenerative paradigm educator Carol Sanford) to the domain of economics. Taken as a whole, this effort is directed toward answering the question, “How can the economy metamorphose into a system that optimizes for human development rather than one that depends upon exploitation of people and nature?” The thesis of this article is that MMT, if reconceptualized within a framework of regenerative principles, is well-suited to helping bring about this transformation.

This piece is structured around three pillars: money (section III), people (section VI), and the emergence of a regenerative economy (section IX). These pillars are linked with interstitial segments expounding on the thesis of this piece: I) grounding our discussion of money within the context of personal and national sovereignty, II) introducing MMT and linking it to human development, IV) considering the spectrum of participatory governance of money, V) interrogating the aims of work and livelihood, VII) dispelling the myth that fiat funds are created through debt, and VIII) interrogating the phase shift between employment and vocation.

I. SOVEREIGNTY
What is it to be sovereign? When used to describe a national currency, the descriptor means that a country has independent control over its monetary supply. Countries with a high degree of monetary sovereignty include countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Countries with a low degree of monetary sovereignty include countries like Niger, Venezuela, and Greece. If a country has the ability to “borrow” exclusively with its own currency, and it has the ability to control the supply of that currency, it is sovereign.

Who or what directs this control? What in the nature of money changes in accordance with degree of sovereignty?

On the personal end of the sovereignty spectrum, agency is the key term. Agency refers to the will of an entity to exercise its participation in a larger system. This is relevant because unleashing the creative contributions of every member of society is what activates a regenerative economy. Just as at the national level, increased sovereignty builds the ability for a country to fully participate in the active evolution of society and the planet, so at the individual level, increased agency builds the capacity to engage in dynamic community- and movement-based development.

II. CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
From a regenerative perspective, economies are a means by which communities and nations become increasingly wealth-generating. In this context, wealth is a dynamic term relating to the ability of living systems to sustain and grow their own vitality, viability, and readiness to evolve. In this way they become able to respond to emergent needs, not only for themselves but for a larger world.

This description of economies will naturally prompt us to ask, “What is money for? Can it serve to actualize society rather than inhibit it?” For insight into these questions, the work of economist Stephanie Kelton is helpful, especially as outlined in her 2020 book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy. She posits that using the dysphemism “national debt” to describe the net balance between federal expenditures and federal taxes confuses economists, policymakers, and the public to busy them with anxiety over irrelevant indicators.

There is another option; that of MMT.

III. MONEY
What is money? Unlike the material universe, which operates according to the laws of physics, money is a social construct, and is therefore limitlessly plastic. Money wears an extensive wardrobe of metaphoric cloaks: water, energy, gold. And yet, as with any metaphor, money is not actually any of these things.

Increasingly, money is how we mediate our relationship with each other and the more-than-human world. On an individual level, money pays for most of our food, most of our housing, most of our transportation, and a substantial portion of our education and medical care. Nevertheless, it should be noted that a large chunk of the economy lives outside of the financial economy—we generally don’t get paid to parent, to learn an artform, to clean up a stream, or to run a marathon.

Money isn’t an indicator of meaning. Corporate lawyers may make more money than school teachers, but does that mean they lead more meaningful lives?

Money is traditionally defined as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. These qualities are in tension with one another; low levels of inflation enhance the medium-of-exchange nature while degrading its utility as a store of value, and vice versa. For example, the Federal Reserve targets an inflation rate of 2%, so that the dollar is used rather than held. Conversely, gold has gone up in price in comparison to dominant currencies, making it a good store of value but a poor medium of exchange.

The value of money is collectively generated. To take an extreme example, if only one person held all of a specific currency, it would be entirely worthless. Conversely, the more people find use for a currency, the more valuable it becomes.

On a societal scale, budgetary allocations reflect a certain subset of moral priorities. In fiscal year 2020, the federal budget has authorized $636 billion for defense, and $162.5 million for the arts, a roughly 4,000-fold differential. In considering how such large discrepancies in allocations occur, we can now turn our attention to the question of oversight.

IV. OVERSIGHT
What is the process used to allocate funding? In the United States, we’ve vested fiscal authority to Congress and monetary authority to the Federal Reserve. In other words, both entities have the ability to create and destroy money, each in their own way. Congress has the ability to create money through federal spending and destroy money through federal taxes. The Federal Reserve has the ability to issue treasury bonds, set interest rates on these bonds and other reserves, and purchase securities as a form of debt relief.

Within this breakdown, some fiscal programs overseen by Congress are mandatory while others are discretionary. Social Security, Medicare, and student loans are mandatory (issuance has some degree of automation). Defense and bailout packages, on the other hand, are discretionary. One advantage of mandatory spending is that it generally doesn’t require authorization and therefore can be more responsive to emerging needs than discretionary spending, which is frequently held up in lengthy deliberations.

Neither of these institutions could appropriately be described as “democratic,” and would be better classified as plutocracies because they are characterized, on the whole, by the seat of governance being occupied by a wealthy elite. There are other ways of controlling fiscal authority, one example being that of participatory budgeting, where an informed citizenry engages in a facilitated budgetary process together, a method that fosters the development of citizens.

V. JOBBING TO VOCATION
While systems of oversight operate at a macro-economic level, their influence is felt in multiple micro-economic ways with regard to the lives of people and their work. Although the term work can be used to describe both a job and a vocation, the latter implies meaning while the former only requires livelihood.

As currently configured, the economy assumes that provisioning occurs through jobbing. In other words, if you don’t have a job, you won’t be able to provide for yourself or your family. This arrangement overlooks the facet of livelihood associated with meaning; even if you have the good fortune to procure a position, there is a good chance it won’t be meaningful. As anthropologist David Graeber documents in his 2018 book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, a large portion of employees and contractors self-identify their positions as meaningless.

What can work be? What would it be like if people were able to spend a majority of their waking hours dedicated to meaningful work? What capacities would be required in the populations to fulfill such potential? What capacity would be required in the economy?

There are many real limits in the economy: natural resources, human hours, the wellbeing of humans and their environments, the technology available, the education available. Unlike these natural limits, the money supply of sovereign nations and its distribution is within the realm of human agency. Its rules are contrived and can be regenerated.

In The One-Straw Revolution, agroecologist Masanobu Fukuoka states, “The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” By its nature, economics regularly points us to the functional results of work: food, housing, healthcare, etc. At this point in our inquiry, it is worth calling out a second result of work: the effect it has on the worker. Overall, low-skill work does not require much of the worker. As living beings, without a context that demands dynamism, our psyches can atrophy. Conversely, when each of us find our calling or vocation (which, necessarily is non-generic, and which arises uniquely out of the relationship between our essence and our context) we enter into a process where we ourselves are being developed.

In some places, it seems as though there’s an assumption that the jobs an economy creates of its own volition are the right jobs, jobs that are good for people. But this is self-evidently false. MMT separates the ideas of money and debt and opens the space for a different conceptualization of work. Regenerative thinkers employing MMT return agency to workers by introducing the idea that the quality and variety of jobs that are available can be determined by a living economic system that builds human agency rather than a mechanical economic automatism. What would it be like if all jobs could be developmental?

VI. PEOPLE
We often use idioms of speech that suggest that money exists independently and that there is some kind of inherent relationship between money and the things it can be used to acquire, e.g. “the price of oil”. However, money is a purely social construct. People are the only place to which money flows, and the only place from which it originates. Although we have accounting methods that list items such as land, resources, infrastructure, food, machinery, etc.—all of these things only cost money because people were involved in their identification, processing, distribution, and celebration.

More importantly, people, and the development of their potential, are the purpose of an economy and therefore of money. Yes, the economy has massive impacts on the more-than-human sphere. Yet we mislead ourselves if we pretend that the economy has a primary focus other than us. If this is the case, why does the economy fail so many people? What would an economy look like if it were in service to all? For one thing, it would shift its focus to enabling capacity development.

VII. DEBT TO MONEY
What are the hurdles blocking this evolution in the purpose of the economy? The myth of the fiat sovereign debt crisis is one. When we use terms like “the national debt” and “taxpayer money” to reference money created by the federal budget, we obscure the reality that, without federal government “debt,” there would be no money. All dominant currencies today are self-sovereign and fait-issued. Although it is true that the vast majority of the quantity of money is created through bank debt, banks are able to extend this credit based on their relationship with the federal government, which is the ultimate source of these funds.

Another way to think of it is that the economy is composed of two money circuits, the private money circuit (which ultimately has public origins), and the public money circuit. When the economy has a recession, the “supply” of private money shrinks (through a lower velocity, through defaults, etc.). For the economy to stay the same size, this difference must be made up by the public money circuit. We call this rebalancing a “federal deficit.”

From the perspective of MMT, sovereign money moves from being a liability (a debt) to an asset (a tool we can use to further develop the capacity of our people). What could we do, what could we build, what could we become, if only we chose to recognize that we have the money? How would this shift in perspective change the ways people spend their time and attention?

VIII. FULL EMPLOYMENT & VOCATION
Unemployment hit historic lows in December 2019, with U-3 (people actively seeking jobs) at 3.5% and U-6 (U-3 plus underemployed people and people that don’t have a job and have given up looking for one) at 6.7%, and historic highs in April of 2020 at 14.7% and 22.8% respectively. With a 2019 labor force of 166 million according to the World Bank, during the period in which we supposedly had arrived at the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU—the Fed’s metric for “full employment), we still had 5.8 million American in U-3, and 11.1 million American in U-6. In other words, under the conventional approach to managing our currency supply, it is taken for granted that there will be a chronically unemployed class of millions of Americans. To use an oft-cited metaphor, it is a game of musical chairs; mathematically, if you’re one of those in over the NAIRU limit, it is literally impossible for you to find a job, because they don’t exist. If that’s the best we can do, isn’t it time to consider other monetary and fiscal instruments rather than sacrificing a significant proportion of the population?

The intention of a perpetually unemployed class doesn’t just affect the segment of the population in the unemployed demographic—a large portion of the remaining population is in constant fear of falling into the bottom class, and this focuses their attention on survival earning. Conversely, if we were to eliminate this class, that segment of the population could refocus their attention from jobs that give them the purchasing power to fund their survival to endeavors from which they can derive meaning. This would also result in an evolution of the economic paradigm, moving from an accounting based on jobs to one based on potential.

IX. CAPACITY TO ADDRESS TRUE PROBLEMS
MMT is an instrument that can refocus the economy away from a zero-sum game where chronic employment is a given towards an economy refocused on the development of people towards the aim of an evolving and dynamic society. Through a shift from monetary to fiscal measures, from discretionary to mandatory spending, and from financial development to human development, MMT better equips nations with the appropriate instruments to build a regenerative economy.

* * *

In conclusion, given the convergent crises of wealth inequality, climate change, and joblessness due to Covid-19, there is a growing need for fundamental shifts in how we think about and design our economic systems. In setting out on this path, economists and policymakers would do well to consider the purpose of the economy, and the way in which it can provide not just jobs, but meaningful work that develops the people performing this work. By opening up space in our thinking about how money works and how it might be used, Modern Monetary Theory provides a compelling and pragmatic alternative to the status quo. ( )
3 vote willszal | Aug 18, 2020 |
I mostly agree with Kelton's MMT economics, and with her liberal politics. Yet I found the combination to be wholly unconvincing, and by the end I was becoming convinced that both need rethinking.

The presentation of MMT here is far oversimplified, to the extent of being almost a caricature of MMT. It is also very repetitive. I read through the first superficial chapters quickly, looking forward to where she would delve into the details. Instead, she pivots completely to politics. Unlike on economics, on politics, she doesn't really have anything novel to say. It is completely derivative of hundreds of other books, articles, op-eds and speeches. I really don't need Kelton giving me cheesy anecdotes of a man she met in Ohio who needed Obamacare. Kelton is an economist, not a politician, and I want the economic perspective.

Her solution to every problem is to have the government either manage it or throw money at it. Perhaps we have the money to do anything (ignoring inflation, like she does throughout the book), but devoting real resources to efforts will still always involve tradeoffs. Except not in this book. (Even for health care, for which she notes that the US pays much more, for less, than other developed countries, her solution is to spend even more: "more primary care doctors, nurses, dentists, surgeons, medical equipment, hospital beds, and so on".)

She doesn't even properly explain inflation:

> economists worry because when there's little or no inflation, it's usually considered a reflection of weakness in the broader economy.

> There was a time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when many central banks, including the Federal Reserve, claimed that by directly controlling the growth of the money supply, they could control inflation. Today, virtually all central banks have adopted a different approach, targeting a key interest rate that is supposed to help them indirectly manage inflationary pressures.

> The federal government announces a wage (and benefit) package for anyone who is looking for work but unable to find suitable employment in the economy. Several MMT economists have recommended that the jobs be oriented around building a care economy.

> In November 2008, the Fed launched the first of three rounds of a massive bond-buying program called quantitative easing. Among other things, the Fed hoped its program would help stimulate the US economy by lowering long-term interest rates. By the time it was over, the Fed had gobbled up some $4.5 trillion in bonds, including nearly $3 trillion in US Treasuries. In addition to using quantitative easing to push longer-term interest rates lower, the Fed also changed the way it managed its short-term interest rate. Instead of buying and selling Treasuries to add and subtract reserves, the Fed switched to a "more direct and more efficient method of interest rate support." It simply started paying interest on reserve balances. Today, the Fed can adjust the short-term interest rate any time it chooses, simply by announcing that it will pay a new rate.

> The government is letting $100 dollars flow into our bucket and only siphoning $90 down the drain. The flow of red ink lamented by Jason Furman fills our bucket with dollars. Fiscal deficits don’t eat up our savings; they enlarge them!

> Some nations have weakened their monetary sovereignty, either by pegging their exchange rates (e.g., Bermuda, Venezuela, Niger), abandoning their national currencies (e.g., all nineteen countries in the eurozone, Ecuador, Panama), or by borrowing heavily in US dollars or other foreign currencies (e.g., Ukraine, Argentina, Turkey, Brazil).

> money, as MMT notes, is the one resource the federal government can't run out of. There's no reason every job—all the way down to retail clerk or fast food worker or janitor in a luxury Chicago hotel—can't be a good job, with dignified pay, hours, security, and benefits.

> the average borrower from the class of 2017 now owes $28,650. For Americans attending private not-for-profit colleges and universities, the average amount of debt is $32,300; for those attending for-profit institutions, the average is $39,950

> It's been called the forgotten leg of the New Deal. FDR had hoped that Congress would enshrine a job guarantee in the form of an Economic Bill of Rights, but his party never carried through with a formal commitment after his death

Way oversimplified:

> MMT teaches us that if we have the real resources we need—that is, if we have the building materials to fix our infrastructure, if we have people who want to become doctors, nurses, and teachers, if we can grow all the food we need—then the money can always be made available to accomplish our goals.

> Budgeting through an MMT lens would have us replace the artificial budget constraint that tells us to live within our financial means with inflation constraint that tells us to live within our biological and material means. ( )
  breic | Jul 31, 2020 |
We’ve wasted a century looking at government as if it were a family or a business. It isn’t. As the monopolist controlling American currency, the government doesn’t ever have to worry about running out of money. It can always fund social security and Medicare, and many other programs besides. Instead of fiscal deficits, we should be looking at the deficits in society, because we can do everything to alleviate them with our currency power and expanded deficits. This is the essence of the powerfully shocking The Deficit Myth, economist Stephanie Kelton’s book on Modern Monetary Theory.

Written without a mathematical formula or spreadsheets to bamboozle the reader, this most readable book lays out how America came to this point, and how very much more it could do for itself if it would just open its eyes to it.

Kelton is a proponent of Modern Monetarist Theory, MMT. She learned from Warren Mosler, who pieced it together over a lifetime of observations. She has been researching and speaking about it for decades, with little evidence of success.

Kelton says America does not use and does not need taxes to fund its operations. Taxes simply create demand for the sovereign currency. All Americans need dollars to pay taxes at all levels. Without that necessity, no one would care for American money. Taxes do allow governments to provision themselves without the use of force, she says. But if the government manufactures the currency, it doesn’t need the tax money to operate day to day. It just creates dollars as it goes. That’s how it works today, and taking things to the next level would create wealth and comfort for all.

Here’s the part that requires rewiring brains: Fiscal surpluses suck money out of the economy. If surpluses persist for too long, eventually the economy will hit a wall, she says. Less money circulating means slower business, and added debt for non-government entities, which they can’t pay off. In six major recessions, each was preceded by a period of balanced budgets.

If surpluses take money out of taxpayers’ hands, fiscal deficits spread the wealth outside the government to the private sector and to other countries. (Instead, current wisdom says government sending crowds out other investment.) Deficits naturally drive interest rates to zero, she says. While not an MMT economist, I learned this the hard way (is there any other) in the 2008 financial crisis. When the Fed pumped a then incredible seven trillion dollars into the economy by magically creating new dollars it handed out to banks, I reasonably figured this would dilute the currency and cause it to fall. Interest rates should therefore rise dramatically, because US money would be worth so much less. You can’t suddenly print seven trillion additional dollars without it affecting the currency, I believed.

History shows the dollar has gone only one way – up, and interest rates have gone only one way – down. This is Alice in Wonderland, unfathomable and upside down. But it’s the way things really work, not the way things are taught. Our lying eyes are all that keep us from the safety, security and prosperity that the world’s most powerful currency provides in the form of expandable deficits.

It didn’t always work this way. History demonstrates how constrained the country was under the gold standard, when money could only be issued if there was gold stored somewhere to back it. It made growth minimal, and recessions frequent. (It’s why kings of olde had to borrow from international financiers to fund their wars.) American banks used to issue their own dollars, and when they failed, the money disappeared. FDR broke away from the gold standard and Nixon killed it, freeing the Fed, which was only invented in 1913, to manipulate the dollar and interest rates as needed. The Fed was given the monopoly.

The Fed has since learned it can inflate its own balance sheet without damaging the economy, which seems to have never occurred to anyone before. Or they would have used it instead of struggling with outdated tools in every recession. Monetarists claimed to be able to manage the economy and deficits by throttling or increasing the money supply. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan thought unfettered capitalism would allow him to sit on the sidelines and watch the economy grow controllably forever. This creeping evolution of fiscality also incorporates monopoly power over the currency, but pathetically, no government has taken advantage of that power except in crisis.

It’s not just the budget deficit, Kelton says. The trade deficit is only a negative factor if the government’s fiscal deficit is smaller than the trade deficit. Otherwise it is harmless. The business of the trade deficit shrinking the economy is a leftover from the gold standard constraints. The trade deficit not only loudly proclaims the wealth of the USA, but provides US dollars to exporting partners, raising their standard of living as well as America’s. Focusing on reducing the trade deficit is not only a waste of time, it is harmful, as tariffs hurt American exporters, importers, producers and consumers alike. It is tariffs that shrink economies, not trade deficits.

All federal spending is done the same way – the Fed credits the appropriate bank accounts. Gold is not shipped, nor are hundred dollar bills. It’s all done on a keyboard at the New York Federal Reserve. Nobody waits for taxes to be paid first. It’s the same in most countries that have their own currencies. So Japan and the UK operate the same way, and could use their currencies to boost everyone if they chose to.

Countries that are users don’t have that power. The most notable mess that creates can be seen in Europe, where euro nations cannot print their own money. Ironically, the euro itself is a solid candidate for enlarging fiscal deficits for the good of all, but the European Central Bank is totally unwilling, so the power goes unused, and all the countries suffer the austerity of trying to keep their deficits within 3% of GDP. With the coronavirus pandemic, they are desperate to spread some wealth, but they can’t. And America is afraid to do more than send a small check to everyone – one time only.

Finally in 2015, Kelton was invited to be the chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee. She was invited, almost of course, by Bernie Sanders, one of the few who gets it. Deficit spending has the power to change government completely, and by extension, the lives of all its citizens. And all at no additional cost. It is, or should be, the privilege of being American. But Democrats are as hard a sell as Republicans.

Kelton knew she would have a hard time on the Senate Budget Committee, and she was right. Getting this message through the skulls of senators who were elected on budget slashing and deficit reduction platforms is no small task. Kelton and Mosler demonstrated the near impossibility with a Congressman.

She and Mosler called in a favor and met for an hour with a member of Congress. He squirmed uncomfortably at the facts they presented, until 45 minutes in, when the light suddenly came on. He got it. But he said he could never say it himself. He couldn’t be the voice of reason, the man with the solution, who stood out from the consensus (even if the consensus was clearly taking the country in the wrong direction). He would rather fit in and live the lie. Is there anything else voters need to know about their political parties?

Kelton says: balance the economy, not the budget. The fiscal deficit is not nearly as critical as the welfare deficit, the healthcare deficit, the education deficit, the infrastructure deficit…. Medicare for all would not bankrupt the country, it would free up trillions to be spent on other things, saving many individuals from personal bankruptcy and others from death. It would boost the economy.

There is risk in spending more freely. The biggest risk is inflation. The economy must be monitored to ensure the spending doesn’t exceed the country’s capacity to produce. That would create an inflationary spiral, cheapening the currency and causing interest rates to rise.

So leaving the spending part in the hands of the politicians is not viable. Kelton calls for an automated response, like unemployment insurance, which expands in hard times and contracts in good times, without interference from Capitol Hill. She prescribes a guaranteed federal job. Anyone who wants a job could work for the government at a livable wage, with benefits. This allows them to keep looking for other work while gainfully employed, a huge advantage. It lets the government build out infrastructure, community works, hospitals – anything that needs people power. And it keeps everyone employed. Because one of the more idiotic aspects of they way things run now is the NEED for unemployed people.

The Fed maintains there is a natural level of unemployment which varies with inflation. In order to maintain proper inflation, the Fed wants to see a certain percentage unemployed. So America has never had real full employment, because it thinks that is bad. Some Americans need to suffer if the country is to prosper, is their modus operandum. Kelton says an “automatic stabilizer” of a guaranteed federal job will do far more for the economy and keep it going right, producing at full capacity.

I was surprised she didn’t go farther and discuss a universal basic income, which has not only shown to stimulate business and lower poverty, but is also profitable to the government because all the entitlement programs would go away, with all of their applications, interviews, investigations, denials, prosecutions, appeals and bureaucracies. Maybe next book.

The USA will stay mired in the doom and gloom of the current recession only because its leaders want to, not because it has to. There should be some advantage to being an American, and not have to suffer to the same extent as countries that don’t have powerful currencies. Expanding the budget deficit costs nothing and grows the economy positively. For all the decades of crying that deficits hamstring our children, no one is suffering from the record of deficits of World War II or Vietnam or the Reagan ballooning. The truth is federal deficits are not only good, they are important tools, and yet, we fight to avoid them.

I can’t imagine a more exquisitely timed book. Just when the coronavirus pandemic has destroyed much of the economy, as unemployment soars, millions are behind on rent or mortgages, the government is fumbling around with squirts of help here and there, and mostly for giant corporations (again). Now is clearly the time for MMT to shine. A universal basic income will clearly not only not hurt the economy, it will demonstrably rev it up. A guaranteed federal job would do the same for working age Americans. Not using this no-cost advantage is criminal.

The Deficit Myth is about the most hopeful book you can read right now. The more people who understand this, the sooner America can regain its world-beating stature.

David Wineberg ( )
1 vote DavidWineberg | Apr 9, 2020 |
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