[roenxi]

It is hard to tell if you are supportive or resigned to the eventuality. Just in case it is supportive...

MMT relies heavily on the fact that tracing back who is paying for it is so convoluted that its backers can claim nobody is. That isn't true. At any moment there is a fixed pool of real resources that we have to divide up. It is pretty obvious that a lot of those resources should be given to people who will use them to create more real resources in the future. It is also obvious that everybody needs enough of a share to live.

A State entity can control the money supply and do strange things with the accounting identities, but in real terms it can only redistribute wealth. The government isn't going to turn to MMT to increase the claim of the makers and innovators to societies bounty; the truly inspired ones tend to be a bit eccentric and tend not to present very well on camera at a press conference. MMT will be a redistribution, by and large, to fast talking and charismatic charlatans or pork barrelling to political consituenties. The political process is not very good at assessing technical risk but excellent at pork barrelling. People will use the word 'fairness' a lot.

It is reasonable to say that MMT will do wonders for the accounting identities. GDP through the roof, measured real wages may rise, everyone can be a millionaire, banks will be saved and inflation will be mysteriously low no doubt. The median citizen will also have less actual stuff and a lower real quality of life.

[RobertoG]

But MMT it's not a policy, but a model, a description of how the system really already works.

For example, many people here is predicting hyperinflation, using the MMT model we can predict that's not going to happen. Many people here are predicting "slave grandsons by public debt", the MMT model tell us that doesn't make sense.

>>"MMT relies heavily on the fact that tracing back who is paying for it is so convoluted that its backers can claim nobody is"

I don't know what that means.

>>"At any moment there is a fixed pool of real resources that we have to divide up"

That sentence agrees totally with the MMT cannon.

[roenxi]

>> "MMT relies heavily on the fact that tracing back who is paying for it is so convoluted that its backers can claim nobody is" > I don't know what that means.

Lets jump over the the Wiki page on MMT where it has a helpful comparison to Keynesian economics [0]. First line in that table:

Keynesian: Advocates taxation and issuing bonds (debt) as preferred methods for funding government spending.

MMT: Emphasizes that taxation and debt issuance are not required to fund spending.

Under the Keynesian model I can tell who is paying for government activity - taxpayers and lenders. I can also work out how much, by comparing how much tax they pay or how much they lend. It is reasonably transparent about who the government is distributing resources away from (net taxpayers, current lenders) and towards (net tax receivers, people who are enjoying the latter stages of a bond where the interest is payed back). People could have claimed resources; then they were taxed/saved so they didn't.

How do I do that under the MMT model where neither of those things are necessary? Who is the government distributing resources away from? How do I figure that out? I know where they are going. Where do they come from? When we debate MMT inspired ideas, how will we figure out who will be worse off in real terms and in what proportion?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory#Compari...

PS.

> But MMT it's not a policy, but a model

People aren't interested in MMT because it is a neat model; but because if we use that model then it becomes very hard to explain that policies are wasteful uses of time and stuff. It is very easy to make a taxpayer understand why government waste is bad. Quite hard to make people take an interest when nobody knows if they are net givers or takers.

[RobertoG]

Well, first, I suspect that Keynes would be ashamed of what post-keynesians have made of his insights.

Anyway, you are implying that the current system is Keynesian, and that there are people advocating to change to a MMT system. But the current system is already MMT.

So, to answer your question, for accountability, you could just keep in place the current way of doing things (or find some alternative) but recognize that "taxation and debt issuance are not required to fund spending". Let's recognize that public debt is irrelevant for instance, and that, yes, deficits can be inflationary, if the economy is already in full utilization but could not be in the proper circumstances.

>>" People aren't interested in MMT because it is a neat model; but because if we use that model then it becomes very hard to explain that policies are wasteful uses of time and stuff. It is very easy to make a taxpayer understand why government waste is bad. Quite hard to make people take an interest when nobody knows if they are net givers or takers"

So, basically, what you are saying is "let's lie to people" so we can have a smaller government.

They say that naming is one of the hard things of computer science, maybe it's also true for economics. Let's change the name "public debt" for "public investment" and discuss then how much public investment can we afford.

[AnimalMuppet]

>>" People aren't interested in MMT because it is a neat model; but because if we use that model then it becomes very hard to explain that policies are wasteful uses of time and stuff. It is very easy to make a taxpayer understand why government waste is bad. Quite hard to make people take an interest when nobody knows if they are net givers or takers"

> So, basically, what you are saying is "let's lie to people" so we can have a smaller government.

That is not at all what roenxi is saying. That is what roenxi is saying MMT is saying, except for the "smaller government" part.

It also is you putting (incorrect) words in someone else's mouth, which is very much not cool.

It is also coming somewhat close to a personal attack (since many of us consider lying to be immoral), which is against site guidelines.

[RobertoG]

It was not my intention to attack anybody but, what roenxi is saying is that, people interested in MMT (like me), is not interested in understanding how the system work, but in lying to people. So, yes, very much not cool.