Commentaries (some of them cheeky or provocative) on economic topics by Ralph Musgrave. This site is dedicated to Abba Lerner. I disagree with several claims made by Lerner, and made by his intellectual descendants, that is advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But I regard MMT on balance as being a breath of fresh air for economics.
Thursday, 31 January 2019
James Pethokoukis criticises MMT.
That’s in an article in “The Week” entitled “Why Modern Monetary Theory is an unserious idea for an unserious time.”
Pethokoukis deals with an MMT idea namely that the state (government and central bank) can fund public spending simply by printing money, and then collect whatever amount of tax is needed to counteract the inflationary effect of that “print and spend” policy. He claims that idea is fine, except for one flaw, namely that politicians cannot be relied on to collect sufficient tax.
Actually that criticism is exactly the same as the criticism made by Matt O’Brien in the Washington Post, and which I dealt with here a few days ago.
So that’s the Pethokoukis criticism dealt with.
Here endeth the lesson.
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