Category Archives: L. Randall Wray

Pre-distribution or redistribution? The Piketty moment, the Democrats, and the oncoming elections (Guest Post)

Posted on May 24, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 44 comments

By L. Randall Wray

I’ve been blogging a series on the role of taxes. In the first piece, I argued that “taxes drive money”, in response to a silly claim that MMT argues we do not need taxes. In the second instalment I examined other uses for taxes—including to reduce excessive aggregate demand and to discourage “sin”. Most importantly, I argued that we do not need taxes to “pay for” sovereign government spending. In the third piece, I argued against the “Robin Hood” view that we need taxes to “take from the rich to give to the poor”. That should be obvious—we can spend on the poor without any tax increase, and indeed could spend on the poor while reducing everyone’s taxes.

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Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, redistribution, Robin Hood, Taxes

NEP’s Randy Wray on Thom Hartmann’s Show

Posted on May 23, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | Comments Off

Randy Wray is appearing live on Thom Hartmann’s show on Tuesday May 27th, 2014 from 3:00-4:00 ET.

Info on how to listen:

live on radio stations coast to coast…live on XM/Sirius satellite radio…simulcast LIVE on Free Speech TV on Dish Network, Direct TV, Comcast Cable, RCN, Cox Cable, Time Warner, Verizon Fios and over 200 independent community cable providers nationwide including Manhattan Neighborhood Network.

The audio and video are streamed LIVE on Thom’s website www.thomhartmann.com. Free Speech TV also streams the program LIVE on their website: https://www.freespeech.org/

FYI…the program is also streamed LIVE (audio and video) on The Thom Hartmann Program app available for iPhone and iPad (free of charge on iTunes)

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Tagged Thom Hartman

Forget Taxes for Redistribution: What to do about Inequality

Posted on May 19, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 31 comments

By L. Randall Wray

America has discovered inequality. But, as Jared Bernstein says, dealing with that will be expensive. He comes up with a nice wish list of policies to help the poor:

What will work here is a large, publicly funded infrastructure program to begin to repair our deteriorating public goods, with the jobs targeted at the working poor. All of the above — the expanded earned-income tax credit, universal preschool, job-creating infrastructure — will take more tax revenue, and much of that new revenue will need to come from those at the top of the wealth scale.

He wags his finger at those who think there’s some free lunch that would let us help the poor without soaking the rich. Nope, he claims. Uncle Sam needs those taxes. The rich will have to pay-up.

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Tagged 1%, banksters, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, one percent, redistribution, Taxes

WHAT ARE TAXES FOR? THE MMT APPROACH

Posted on May 15, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 39 comments

By L. Randall Wray

This is part of a series, following on from the last instalment that asked “Do We Need Taxes?”.

Previously we have argued that “taxes drive money” in the sense that imposition of a tax that is payable in the national government’s own currency will create demand for that currency. Sovereign government does not really need revenue in its own currency in order to spend.

This sounds shocking because we are so accustomed to thinking that “taxes pay for government spending”. This is true for local governments, provinces, and states that do not issue the currency. It is also not too far from the truth for nations that adopt a foreign currency or peg their own to gold or foreign currencies. When a nation pegs, it really does need the gold or foreign currency to which it promises to convert its currency on demand. Taxing removes its currency from circulation making it harder for anyone to present it for redemption in gold or foreign currency. Hence, a prudent practice would be to constrain spending to tax revenue.

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Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Taxes

DO WE NEED TAXES? THE MMT PERSPECTIVE

Posted on May 13, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 40 comments

By L. Randall Wray

What do you get when you drop taxes? Well, Bitcoins.

Sometimes the only appropriate response to critics is embarrassment. For them.

Witness the following exchange on twitter:

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Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Taxes

MMT Does Do Policy

Posted on April 23, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 39 comments

By L. Randall Wray

I’ve seen some pretty bizarre claims about MMTers. They are “tea partiers”, “barely left of center”, who “are not interested in policy”, who “ignore inequality”, who “are only interested in reducing taxes”. “MMTers ignore the fraud of the banksters.” They are at best “one issue” advocates for a particular view on money, taxes, and employment. I have no idea where critics get this stuff. I’m convinced they make it up. Ignorance or dishonesty; probably both.

For anyone who wants to disabuse herself of such nonsense, please go to www.levy.org, click on scholars, click on my name, and find right in front of your face a few hundred pieces on policy that I wrote. Yes, inequality. Yes, the explosion of incarceration. Yes, the War on Poverty’s failure. And so on. Stephanie Kelton just reminded me of an interview I gave in December to Travis Strawn–who happens to be a former student. He was writing for the Seven Pillars Institute (full disclosure: I’m not sure what it is). Judge for yourself if this is garden-variety “liberal”, let alone “tea party”.
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Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theroy, policy

The Reality of the Present and the Challenge of the Future: Fagg Foster for the 21st Century

Posted on April 18, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 9 comments

By L. Randall Wray

Here is a presentation that I’ll give today at the University of Denver at the annual J. Fagg Foster honors ceremony. Most of you will not know of Foster, but you should. While he did not publish much, he was the professor of a number of prominent institutionalists who attended DU in the early postwar period. I was lucky to have studied with his student, Marc Tool, and was introduced to Foster’s work at the very beginning of my studies of economics. My presentation below is based on two of Foster’s articles: J. Fagg Foster (1981) “Understandings and Misunderstandings of Keynesian Economics”, JEI, vol XV, No 4, p. 949-957.; and (1981) “The Reality of the Present and the Challenge of the Future”, JEI vol XV, No 4, p. 963-968. Both are from 1966, republished in a special issue of the Journal of Economic Issues, 1981. You should read them.

Is this the age of Keynes? That’s the question raised by Fagg Foster in 1966.

In the 1960s the answer seemed obvious. Keynes dominated economics—or, at least, macroeconomics—and Keynesianism dominated policy. And it worked! Or, so most thought.

Foster wasn’t sure. While he agreed that “[t]here probably has been no instance in history in which a pattern of ideas has had so much effect on the everyday life of everyone in so short a time”, he thought most of Keynes’s followers misunderstood his theory.

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Tagged Fagg Foster, keynes

MODERN MONEY IN SIX SHORT VIDEOS

Posted on March 31, 2014 by L. Randall Wray | 6 comments

By L. Randall Wray

I recently did an interview for Euro Truffa on six topics related to Modern Money – MMT.

They are transcribing my interview to Italian and putting up the videos (I think that only two are up so far). However, they have also posted all of the videos to YouTube.

As you can tell, I did not realize they were recording the video—I might have tried to sit still if I had known. Also, the coffee had not quite kicked in so I was not entirely awake. Here are the links with just a brief indication of the topic for each.

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Posted in L. Randall Wray

Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

NEP’s Randy Wray appears on Euro Truffa

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Devin Smith | 1 comment

Euro Truffa (eurotruffa.it) interviews Randy Wray about MMT in this video from March 13, 2014. After the Introduction which is presented in Italian, the questions are presented in English with Italian subtitles.

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Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

When Will They Ever Learn: Uncle Sam is not Robin Hood

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Devin Smith | 10 comments

By L. Randall Wray

Memo to Obama: Don’t tie progressive spending policy to progressive tax policy. Each can stand on its own.

Reported today in the Washington Post:

Obama proposes $600 billion in new spending to boost economy

President Obama on Tuesday unveiled an ambitious budget that promised more than $600 billion in fresh spending to boost economic growth over the next decade while also pledging to solve the nation’s borrowing problem by raising taxes on the wealthy, passing an overhaul of immigration laws and cutting health costs without compromising the quality of care. Obama seeks to raise more than $1 trillion – largely by limiting tax breaks that benefit the wealthy — to spend on building roads and bridges, early childhood education and tax credits for the poor.

Here’s the conceit: Uncle Sam is broke. He’s got a borrowing problem. He’s gone hat-in-hand to those who’s got, trying to borrow a few dimes off them. But they are ready to foreclose on his Whitehouse.

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