Category Archives: MMP

By L. Randall Wray

The main objection to MMT is the belief that adoption of a fiat money necessarily leads to high inflation if not to hyperinflation. Those who adopt this critique usually see MMT as a proposal, although some (like Paul Samuelson) recognize that MMT actually describes the system we already have. The latter group fears that if we tell the truth about the existing monetary system, then elected officials will “run the printing presses” to create high inflation. Hence, best to adopt what Samuelson described as the “old time religion” of lies about the fiscal options open to sovereign government to keep the inflation goblins at bay. Continue reading →

By L. Randall Wray

As I said I am not going to provide responses to comments on the final blogs of the primer. In any case, the commentary has degenerated into a chat room utilized largely by aging retirees who do not understand that we’ve got at least 25 million people in the US who want full-time jobs but cannot obtain them. The JG is a program designed to offer jobs to those who want to work. If our aged retirees are correct, we’ll offer the JG at and no one will show up to claim the job. I cannot see what all the fuss is about. Continue reading →

By L. Randall Wray

Sorry for the hiatus, but a family emergency is consuming all of my time. I hope to be able to post something next week—to move to finish up the MMP blog. Meanwhile I offer the following.

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By L. Randall Wray

Ok we had a huge number of responses. I can see we will need a Blog 49 on this topic and that there are way too many comments for me to deal with tonight. I will just hit seven themes—commentators should be able to see which of these themes their comments fall under. And I will be brief. I will deal in more detail next week with a few of these.

1. Attention Deficit Disorder: A couple of comments here, and from what I can tell a huge number of comments on other “Modern Money” blogs that are not called MMT, suffer from ADD. Some people cannot read past a single sentence. I think there are now drugs that help. Try them.

So apparently a lot of bloggers (especially those who accept MMT, but without the taxes or the JG—go figure!) latched onto a sentence, plus one word. I said: “So, can we have MMT without a JG? Certainly!” Now that followed a long discussion, including an analogy to a theory of disease and a policy to fight the disease (more in a minute), and followed by the statement by me: “I believe it is a policy mistake to operate a modern money system without a JG—but that is what almost all countries do. MMT allows us to analyze them, and to offer policy recommendations. But if we leave out the JG in our recommendations, we are seriously remiss in our advice.”

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By L. Randall Wray

Before we get underway, I have two appeals.

Appeal #1: About twenty years ago Don Roper and Ric Holt created the PKT (Post Keynesian Theory) internet discussion group. It was the first such group I’d ever come across. All the “top” heterodox economists participated. The discussions were interesting and important. You might still be able to access some of them.

However, the list was destroyed by frackers.

I won’t go into all the details but here is the basic problem. Every couple of weeks some pseudo Austrian would come along with the free market /anti government ideology posts. That was not really the problem—which was two-fold. First these people had no understanding of heterodox economics—they never read previous posts and were congenitally lazy (and, it appears, dense).

Further, they had no interest in learning anything. They were selling, not buying. They were self-appointed evangelists for the Austrian cause. Now, in truth they had no understanding of Austrian economics, either—which is why they were pseudo. I gather they spent most of their time in their mothers’ basements alternating between (how shall we put this?—as delicately as possible!) fracking themselves and fracking progressive discussion groups.

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