Monday, February 27, 2012

Stephanie Kelton addresses MMT conference in Italy



Stephanie Bell-Kelton @ Summit MMT Italia (Palasport 105 Stadium @ Rimini)
(h/t Clonal in the comments)

4 comments:

xan said...

Unfortunately my Italian isn't that good. Does this exist without the translation overdub?

wilwon32 said...

If you check:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/michael-hudson-2181-italians-pack-a-sports-arena-to-learn-modern-monetary-theory-%E2%80%93-the-economy-doesn%E2%80%99t-need-to-suffer-neoliberal-austerity.html

There is a comment by Michael Hudson:

'michael hudson says:
February 28, 2012 at 6:03 am
Thanks for your supportive comments. We had a Pacifica reporter there, Bonnie Faulkner, who will be editing the sound tapes and providing a set of follow-up interviews.
Also, I believe that Stephanie Kelton will be repeating her wonderful presentation on her site. All that is needed is to verbalize her power point presentation.

And by the way, we DID take separate planes!'

There does not appear to be anything new at NEP.

Geoff Gardiner said...

Michael Hudson says Stephanie's lecture was one of the best he has ever heard.

The charts show that government borrowing balances private saving. Does that reflect 1. An unwillingness of the public to agree to income taxes, or 2. That contractual saving via pension and insurance funds is very high and needs balancing assets?

All government expenditure is an allocation of the income of the nation, so all taxes bear on income whatever they are assessed on. The income rich should prefer anything to income tax, as all other taxes hit the poor harder.

Geoffrey Gardiner

Tom Hickey said...

@ Geoff Gardiner

Since taxes don't fund a national government that is sovereign in its currency, taxes have two major purposes. First, to withdraw non-government net financial assets previously injected through deficit expenditure in order to maintain price stability, and secondly, to increase the disincentive on negative behavior. Thus, the ideal tax is on economic rent and negative externality, as Michael Hudson never tires of pointing out, rather than inhibiting production, with a consequent loss of employment.

BTW, the taxes that the wealthy hate as much as progressive income taxes are capital gains and inheritance taxes. The extremely wealthy don't even mind income taxes that much, since they can shape the tax code to avoid them with complicated tax shelters which only they have the $ to afford use of.