[marcosdumay]

As somebody already pointed, you should always ignore the Austrians.

Now, keep in mind that "business as usual" is different from "not an issue". The MMT folks will be able to tell you exactly what the consequences are (a hint, they are not very different from when it was 95% of the GDP), while the Keynesians will rush to tell you that the stuff the MMT people are talking about isn't as important as other stuff the government could be doing. Notice that both can be correct at the same time.

Empirically, at some level of inflation the Keynesians become just wrong. Most people usually stop being Keynesian at that level.

[bryanlarsen]

What's the difference between MMT & Keynes? Keynes is the one who gave the "what you can do you can afford" speech. IMO (some) MMT folks are more Keynesian than many modern "Keynesians".

[marcosdumay]

"Keynesians" are not people that talk about the ideas Keynes had. It's quite common for most "ians" or "ists" to not push the ideas their name implies.

Yes, MMT is largely based on Keynes ideas, so they will say a lot of the same that Keynes actually said.

At the same time, "Keynesianism" is more of a political movement than a scientific school (although, it's a well informed one). That's why they can be right or wrong independently from MMT. "Monetarism" is also a political movement, that people often confuse or try to claim to be the same as MMT.

[throw0101a]

> What's the difference between MMT & Keynes?

MMT seems to be 'always "print"' and then tax. Keynes is more about induce demand by government when it's needed:

> I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:

> 1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.

> 2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.

> 3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down.

> 4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses.

* https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/0...

Now most governments run deficits in the modern world, and that is "fine" as long as borrowing costs/rates are lower than inflation and/or economic growth. And that you should generally be spending on things that helps raise productivity or induce economic growth.

Things like tax cuts generally don't do this:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment

Unfocused military 'forays' also tend not to do this.

[nyeah]

Keynes was aware of the inflation problem.

[throw0101a]

And deflation (he published his General Theory in 1936).