On Aug 18, 2014, at 11:07 AM, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I haven't clicked on the links, but I have been reading and listening to a lot about MMT in recent weeks. I think that its conceptual foundations regarding the nature of money/fiat currency offer important insights for the left from a non-Marxist, "heterodox" perspective. The basics are available at the website of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and on many other websites. There is a series of Youtube videos of forums at Columbia from (I believe) early 2012.
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> While Dean Baker is sympathetic to these perspectives, he has also claimed that he can't really see the difference with Keynesianism, with which he identifies. From my lay perspective, the differences have to do with being more honest about the idea that when there is labor to be employed, the government can print (not only tax or borrow) money to employ it. Whatever the political problems, there is no technical problem in doing that, as long as it's done responsibly.
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> Readers are probably familiar with Michael Hudson and Bill Black at the University of Missouri Kansas City. They are joined by very credible individuals like Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton. Central to MMT is the notion of a Job Guarantee (as opposed to a Guaranteed Income). The differences make for productive discussion. MMT isn't part of the left debate, obviously because it doesn't address labor/class/power in the manner of David Harvey, etc. But those on the left, I feel, should be incorporating an MMT understanding of money/finance/government into their strategies for political analysis and organizing.
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> Proponents of MMT are hoping that they have laid a theoretical foundation for significant political reform. But it's up to the left to actually incorporate their views, and others, into a strategy that has broadly popular rather than just technocratic legs. I would love to see Doug do an interview with one of MMT's proponents along these lines, if he already hasn't. I think that that would have the potential to be very enlightening.
Bill Mitchell in Australia is another prominent member of the school, one of its more left-wing (See, e.g., http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=15854). James Galbraith is perhaps its most widely known advocate. Yves Smith is clearly sympathetic and posts a lot of MMT inspired material on her naked capitalism blog. Both Marshall Auerback and Warren Mosler are Wall Street veterans who have seen the workings of the financial system up close, and are also worth reading. The big problem with MMT, as David points out, is that its adherents for the most part don’t sufficiently take into account class power and class interest and harbour illusions that the only reason their generally sound analysis and policy prescriptions aren’t accepted is because the ruling elite is ignorant (“If we can only make them understand how the system works and how counterproductive their policies are, we could clean up the present mess”)