Sunday, August 21, 2022

Can We Still Afford Social Security and Medicare? Breaking it down with MMT economist Scott Fullwiler — Stephanie Kelton

What follows is a series of tweets from MMT economist Scott Fullwiler. Scott is no longer on Twitter, but he sent me an archive of this thread so that I could share it with all of you. If you read it carefully, you’ll notice a sharp departure from the usual focus on Trust Fund balances and financial shortfalls. I wish everyone involved in covering these debates and crafting legislation would take the time to think through what Scott says below. It would lead to a much more productive debate.…
The Lens
Can We Still Afford Social Security and Medicare? Breaking it down with MMT economist Scott Fullwiler.
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
Scott T. Fullwiler | Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Missouri - Kansas City
https://stephaniekelton.substack.com/p/can-we-still-afford-social-security

1 comment:

Konrad said...

Claiming that the US government cannot “afford” Medicare and Social Security is like claiming that an electronic scoreboard cannot “afford” to have points created by changing the scoreboard numbers.

When politicians want to spend money for any reason, the US government creates money out of thin air by crediting accounts. For example in March 2020 the government created $2.2 trillion out of thin air for the CARES Act.

When politicians do not want to spend money, they claim that the US government is “broke.”

In has always been this way.

Randall Wray documents in his books how the US government went on and off the gold standard at will many times. When politicians wanted to create federal dollars for any reason (e.g. war), politicians ignored the “gold standard.” When politicians did not want to spend money, politicians claimed that the US government was limited by the “gold standard.”

This scam is so old that you’d think people would have caught on by now.