This is really good, and timely, too, in light of recent discussion in the comments here.
The problem with framing is the key issues involving framing are moral (normative, prescriptive) rather than factual (empirical, descriptive), as George Lakoff never ceases emphasizing. So much so that a presentation that focuses on fact may for that reason alone lose the argument before it is even mounted, due to poor framing of the issue.
Read it at New Economic Perspectives
The (Semantic) Problem with MMT: An Exercise in Framing
by J. D. Alt
A problem here is that most people presume incorrectly that the currency issuer must fund itself, which is a contradiction. The illogic is based on false metaphor of government as big household or firm. This leads to the wrong notion that one's taxes are funding specific spending, even though taxes go into a general fund and it is not possible to establish precisely where one's taxes go anyway. But let's just assume that people can look up the percentage distribution of the budget and figure how their taxes were spent overall.
The truth is that taxes do not fund the currency issuer, but rather they make currency issuance possible by creating demand for the government's currency, and there by allow government to provision itself with real resources through spending of the currency it issues, as well as to fund through transfers in which there is no exchange.
The question then becomes what metaphor to use to replace the erroneous currency issuer is like a currency user metaphor that is current and has moral appeal by leading to the question, "Am I getting my money's worth from the taxes I am paying in terms how the government is disbursing it."
The obvious way to think about this is in terms of taxes paying for specific programs by funding them, using the analogy of personal spending and household and firm budgets and accounting.
The reality is that taxes do pay for all programs by making them possible, even though the taxes are not used specifically for funding in the way people falsely believe. Is there an appropriate metaphor for this that can be substituted for the wrong thinking that solves the framing problem by resolving the moral issue?
