[freeMoneySry]

This reminds me of how the Romans supposedly didn't know that printing money would create inflation.

We know MMT is bad long term policy, but politicians in the short term can create favorable economic conditions for the few.

[thomashobohm]

These things are not known, actually. There are people much smarter than you or me that would disagree with your sentiment that "we know MMT is a bad long term policy."

[ravenstine]

> There are people much smarter than you or me that would disagree with your sentiment that "we know MMT is a bad long term policy."

How is anyone supposed to argue against that? You can use that to try and defeat any argument, but it doesn't really demonstrate anything. What people? How do you know they are smarter? Are smart people always correct?

[cultus]

The grandparent made a blanket statement that "we know MMT is a bad long term policy" which the other poster was rightly pointing out is wrong. This is a ridiculous blanket statement, and clearly and obviously false. Such arguments don't deserve detailed rebuttals.

[ravenstine]

That's really not a good way to address blanket statements. Just referring to nebulous "smart people" adds nothing.

It doesn't need a detailed rebuttal.

Here are some examples of reasonable responses:

- How do you know that?

- When in history did that happen?

- Could you be more specific?

None of those require more than one sentence, or implying that the person is too stupid to have an opinion.

[thomashobohm]

Sorry, let me be clear: by "smart people" I mean economists who have spent their lives studying monetary and fiscal policy and analyzing how it can be used to make the world a better place.

Not sure why the onus is on me to be "reasonable" in my response when we all agree that the person I was replying to was making an entirely unreasonable assertion.

[logicchains]

>I mean economists who have spent their lives studying monetary and fiscal policy and analyzing how it can be used to make the world a better place.

This means nothing when they haven't been held accountable for bad predictions. I work in finance, and it's super easy to build a model that looks like it can predict the future, but fails completely when applied in practice, due to some statistical/modelling error. Predicting the future is damn hard; it's way easier for us to convince ourselves that a model is correct than to actuallly produce a correct model, so if somebody isn't subject to a constant process of feedback (a scientific process) it's very unlikely they're producing correct models. Crystal healers have also spent their lives trying to determine how crystals can be used to make the world a better place; it doesn't mean squat because they don't apply the scientific method in their research.

From an economic perspective, if these people really had models that could predict the future, they'd be traders, not economists. Because why settle for a meagre economist's salary when they could be making millions?

[cultus]

The nebulous "smart people" is a good thing to bring up when a tech person is Dunning-Krugering outside of their field.

[andreilys]

Except the field of economics is filled with Dunning Kruger’s, despite years and years of education.

I am yet to find a macro economist that is sensible and intelligent.