Revealed: Americans care more about social needs than deficits — John Duda
A recent poll from the Democracy Collaborative and YouGov reveals that most Americans are ready to spend more for social needs, even if it raises the deficit.
The debate around modern monetary theory (“MMT”) is picking up steam – with its partisans pushing the model further into the public sphere than one might expect, and the old guard of establishment economics, together with some more interesting critical voices, pushing back.
The questions at stake can make the average person’s head spin: can a government with sovereign control over its currency create money at will to meet social needs, or would this create out of control inflationary spirals? Does tax income precede government spending, or does spending create the money that’s then taxed back to tweak the distribution of incomes and rein in inflation?
To most Americans, this is all probably a bit opaque and abstract – the inner workings of our money supply and its deep connections to the banking sector are, after all, as Bill Greider memorably put it, “the secrets of the temple.” But when we look at the core issue, we find that more Americans than not agree with the basic political judgement that MMT tries to justify theoretically – namely, that deficits shouldn’t matter if social needs are not being met....
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