Daily Archives: March 15, 2019

William K. Black
March 14, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Fifth Article in a Series on MMT

Something extraordinary happened yesterday.  Orthodox economists, frustrated by their inability to intimidate progressive elected officials, have launched a coordinated assault on MMT in hopes of making it politically dangerous for elected officials to embrace MMT.  Yesterday brought three remarkable revelations about orthodox economists’ willingness to engage in naked intellectual dishonesty in their desperation to find something to discredit MMT.

The orthodox economic attack on MMT should be a ‘slam dunk’ – if orthodox economists were correct about MMT.  There are two obvious ways to deliver the ‘slam dunk.’  First, orthodox economists preach that a theory’s predictive ability is the test of its validity.  MMT scholars have been making predictions for decades, so orthodox economists should be able to produce a large number of falsified predictions by MMT scholars and declare victory.  There is only one problem with this option – MMT scholars have an exceptionally fine predictive record and orthodox macro scholars have such a terrible predictive record that prominent economists deride “modern macro” as the “dark ages” (Paul Krugman) and a religion unsuccessfully posing as a pseudo-science (Paul Romer).  .

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William K. Black
March 13, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Fourth article in the Series on MMT

1. Honest debaters do not create strawmen arguments about opposing theories and then claim victory by attacking their own strawmen.

When Krugman and a bevy of the “Very Serious People” (VSP) Krugman used to ridicule created and then attacked strawman MMT positions (e.g., using Roche’s rant), they were unintentionally revealing their knowledge that they did not believe they could dispute successfully MMT scholars’ real positions.

2. Honest orthodox economists and journalist do not spread “myths” they know to be “obvious falsehood[s]” in order to deny MMT insights the orthodox economists and journalist know to be “obviously true.” The second “tell” that the VSPs know they cannot win an honest debate is this deliberate strategy of deceiving the public and elected officials through the VSPs’ myths about nations with fully sovereign currencies. 

My first article quoted the “Very Serious People’s” admissions that MMT is “obviously true” and that the VSPs spread “myths,” quasi-religious “superstition,” and “obvious falsehood[s]” to deceive the voters and elected officials to reject MMT.  VSPs are openly admitting that the reason they lie is that they believe that the voters and elected officials would agree with MMT scholars’ if there were an honest debate.  You do not lie to win a debate when the facts are on your side. Continue reading →