Saturday, April 2, 2022

Stephanie Kelton — A Free Lunch for Me, but Not for Thee—An ill-reasoned take on MMT

Last week, I stumbled across an episode of a podcast that was advertised as the “Voice of Reason on MMT.” The show’s host turned to David Kelly—the Chief Global Strategist and Head of the Global Market Insights Strategy Team for J.P. Morgan Asset Management—for insight into Modern Monetary Theory. Apparently, the conversation was inspired by something Kelly had written on MMT. I searched around for something recent but was only able to find this short note from September 2020.

In the note, Kelly says things like, “MMT exploits the trust that people have in fiat currency.” The problem, he says, is that “trust in money is like trust in marital fidelity.” You know, once you lose it, it’s probably gone forever....
The Lens
A Free Lunch for Me, but Not for Thee—An ill-reasoned take on MMT
Stephanie Kelton | Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University, formerly Democrats' chief economist on the staff of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and an economic adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders
https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/a-free-lunch-for-me-but-not-for-thee

4 comments:

Matt Franko said...

The problem with the Covid spending is is was given to everybody even retired people who never lost any income from the lockdowns.., even to people who were financially benefiting from the Covid policies…

NeilW said...

It's been a mistake not to critique the stimulus packages. Too much was given to people too far up the income earning tree, and that has caused inflationary pressures.

Just as MMT always said - prior to many of the players getting in bed with the Democrat party.

The stimulus package should have been at the living wage - paid as gardening leave during the pandemic to those put on short time and furloughed.

Matt Franko said...

The Trump “stimmies” never caused “inflation”… it was more compensatory…

The big stimulus Democrats did in March 2021 did…

Peter Pan said...

Wasn't the US stimulus paltry when compared with other wealthy countries?