Wray & Kelton — "With $300 Billion The President Can Reduce Unemployment to Zero"

Randy and Stephanie have a post up at truthdig. In contrast to Warren Mosler's more comprensive program that includes a FICA suspension, block grants to states and a job guarantee, they focus on employment assurance, aka job guarantee (JG) and employer of last resort (ELR), as a primary means of addressing demand deficiency. MMT-based policy recommendations are getting out there.

L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton, With $300 Billion The President Can Reduce Unemployment to Zero

UPDATE: Pavlina Tcherneva has a similar proposal up at Multiplier Effect, Creating Millions of Jobs on a Shoestring

UDATE: From the comments at truthdig (link)

“If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.”

“Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes… God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

“We need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted,” he wrote. “New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

(emphasis added)

Matt Rognlie on the Fallacies of MMT

Matt Rognlie posted on The Fallacies of MMT, where he concludes that there is a budget constraint.

"To sum up: MMT is wrong about money. Even supposing that it’s right, its impact is fiscally marginal. The government does have a budget constraint."

He is reasonably well informed about MMT and has presented an argument that has attracted Scott Fullwiler, Warren Mosler and JKH's comments, among others. Good discussion.

UPDATE: This is a good place to mention a previous post by Jack Sparrow at Seeking Alpha, The Trouble With Modern Monetary Theory. It is not as well argued as the post by Rognlie, who is familiar with the MMT literature while Sparrow is not. Scott Fullwiler, Warren Mosler, and Pavlina Tcherneva comment briefly. There are over 300 comments.