The Deeds of the Divine Augustus: Running the MMT 'Scoreboard'

MMT often uses an analogy of a "scoreboard" to describe a state currency system.  In the US, the USD balances that an entity may possess is maintained by the government, and the government "dosen't get the points from anywhere".

In my view, many who are made morons today think otherwise.

2,000 years ago, the historic record indicates that the Roman government was indeed doing this exact thing via their  "scoreboard" state currency system that was termed in Greek 'nomisma' .  Here are some "scores" excerpted from the ancient document "The Deeds of the Divine Augustus" c. 14 A.D.

I paid to the Roman plebs, HS 300 per man from my father's will and in my own name gave HS 400 from the spoils of war when I was consul for the fifth time (29 B.C.E.); furthermore I again paid out a public gift of HS 400 per man, in my tenth consulate (24 B.C.E.), from my own patrimony; and, when consul for the eleventh time (23 B.C.E.), twelve doles of grain personally bought were measured out; and in my twelfth year of tribunician power (12-11 B.C.E.) I gave HS 400 per man for the third time. And these public gifts of mine never reached fewer than 250,000 men.

In my eighteenth year of tribunician power, as consul for the twelfth time (5 B.C.E.), I gave to 320,000 plebs of the city HS 240 per man. And, when consul the fifth time (29 B.C.E.), I gave from my war-spoils to colonies of my soldiers each HS 1000 per man; about 120,000 men i the colonies received this triumphal public gift. Consul for the thirteenth time (2 B.C.E.), I gave HS 240 to the plebs who then received the public grain; they were a few more than 200,000.

I paid the towns money for the fields which I had assigned to soldiers in my fourth consulate (30 B.C.E.) and then when Marcus Crassus and Gnaeus Lentulus Augur were consuls (14 B.C.E.); the sum was about HS 600,000,000 which I paid out for Italian estates, and about HS 260,000,000 which I paid for provincial fields.

I paid out rewards in cash to the soldiers whom I had led into their towns when their service was completed, and in this venture I spent about HS 400,000,000

Four times I helped the senatorial treasury with my money, so that I offered HS 150,000,000 to those who were in charge of the treasury.

And when Marcus Lepidus and Luciu Arruntius were consuls (6 A.C.E.), I offered HS 170,000,000 from my patrimony to the military treasury, which was founded by my advice and from which rewards were given to soldiers who had served twenty or more times. when the taxes fell short, I gave out contributions of grain and money from my granary and patrimony, sometimes to 100,000 men, sometimes to many more.

Written after Augustus' death: All the expenditures which he gave either into the treasury or to the Roman plebs or to discharged soldiers: HS 2,400,000,000. .... The sum expended on theatrical spectacles and gladatorial games and athletes and hunts and mock naval battles and money given to colonies, cities, andtowns destroyed by earthquake and fire or per man to friends and senators, whom he raised to the senate rating: innumerable.

One can see from reading this how proud (ok, perhaps someone would say "braggadocious") both were Augustus and his subjects over the amount of government expenditures they promulgated during the period of his rule.

The system they were running was a giant "scoreboard" system whereby they could measure and record in quantitative or accounting terms, the magnitude of their human accomplishments, perhaps to be able to document this for posterity and/or to compare to the accomplishments of previous rule. To them, "money" was endogenous to their government authority, and their success was measured quantitatively by the amounts they issued towards public purpose.

What would this type of account read like today if our current morons running things commissioned the "Deeds of the Debt Doomsday Crowd"?

We cut spending by $1 Trillion, we eliminated nutrition assistance to the many, when we had floods and tornadoes we decided not to provide monetary balances to the victims because we didn't have the money, we did not burden our grandchildren with inter-generational debt, since we were out of money we withheld lifesaving treatments from the dying, for our disabled veterans we did the least we could afford, we raised taxes where politically possible for the government to get money, we maintained inadequate public pensions to our seniors, for our posterity we practiced inter-generational accounting, our infrastructure degraded substantially but at least we tried to balance the budget, we remained reliant on foreign sources for energy because we couldn't afford to develop alternatives due to lack of money, our military was often ill equipped due to lack of money, we had to seek public donations for our schools because we didn't have the money in the government, ..... 

Lately I'm longing for "the good old days" when the west had non-moron leadership.