Modern Monetary Theory – A Debate: Gerald Epstein Responds (Pt 4/4)

1. The federal government borrows the money from the people who prints the money and pays a interest rate to them . Am I right ?

2. I think Congress should spend a shit-ton every year on anti-poverty programs, green new deal outlays, and so forth. The spending causes inflation thing I don't buy for a hot second I just don't. They never seem to apply that logic when they spend 1 trillion on billionaire welfare or Wall Street welfare or an immoral military machine that goes around the world breaking countries for fun and profit. If the political will was there we could fix all of the economic problems in this country overnight, I fully believe that. The ready supply of workers and tangible materials in this country is extremely high. We should definitely start with UBI and mandates to redistribute the excess from food to clothing to housing. I have other reforms in mind as well.

3. I am not a genius but my gut feeling is this guy is somewhat wrong. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so. I just think the dude's wrong.

4. The implications? The US Congress already has a yearly budget of something like 5T does it not? So how much more would the Green New Deal be on average per year? More than this? Less?? Why should we be afraid of government spending, isn't that what the fuck the government is there for? Look if the government went out and spent five trillion tomorrow and most of that was directed towards positive programs like creating the Green New Deal, work would commence immediately and it would only halt when there was a hold up in physical goods available or when full employment was reached. Well that's no big deal because the goal IS full employment and as far as physical goods available that will resolve itself shortly. Physical goods are being constantly manufactured, processed, and replenished every minute so it is unlikely barring another pandemic that there would be any serious hold up in the ready supply of tangible physical materials needed in order to do building projects.

5. I can’t believe he actually used the word “misleading“after strawmanning Randall. MMT advocates almost universally believe that spending is limited by the real, slack/misappropriated resources in the economy. There is not one single paper, book, interview, or debate which features Randall making the argument that the government simply can print its way into or out of any situation. Nonsense. This tells me that he didn’t even read Randall‘s book before agreeing to critique his work. Embarrassing for an academic…

   Edit: The alternative, of course, is that he is intentionally smearing MMT, without engaging at all with its fundamental tenets. Doesn’t exactly scream “I’m confident in my ability to defend my beliefs against criticism”.

6. I am from the future. Mr. Epstein seems to be unaware that MMT is not some new economic policy. MMT describes the current economic system for a sovereign government that issues and collects taxes in its own currency. I appreciate where Epstein is coming from,. However, I do not think he knows much about MMT and I think once he read The Deficit Myth (which had yet to be released), his opinions would likely change because his concerns are addressed.

7. We dont need MMT to tell us that :facepalm:

   MMT is what started a paradigm shift in the way we look at money & economy. But for these insiders, it has nothing to say 😀

8. The channel program needed to push back on Epstein. I was hoping for so much more out of this, the first two video parts were good.

9. Wow. Randall Wray for the win. One thing I've noticed about the main crew of MMT advocates is that their thinking is much clearer and they are more intellectually honest. Thanks for the series Real News. I'm curious as to why this debate was done separately instead of in person in real time.

10. For Gerald Epstein 'it doesn't talk about' means 'I haven't read'. Intellectual hubris to so stridently criticise while not even being familiar with the subject of your critique. If I can know as much as I do about MMT as a non-academic, he has no excuse.

11. Epstein is so tone deaf.

12. I can't see what should be "modern" on MMT when they claim the government can spend as much as it want's (this seems to be a core argument) it just has to watch inflation. It seems they have never heard about Galiani or the quantity theory of money from Riccardo or even about the empirical case of the Weimar hyperinflaiton. Otherwise these people would know that this is â very old monetary theory.

13. Mr. Epstein, you have good points, but you underestimate the average simple minded people's stupidity, and by David Krakauer that is the most common state of mind out there. Sir, You are wrong on that point. MMT is the most important news since the creation of IKEA furniture.. :)… Without MMT evolution would be halted. Warren Mosler will be CANONIZED by bankers, for his speech in Zürich Hyatt. Davad Krakauer warns academics: Just the fact that complexity, complex study rewarded, you are not making life better…for humanity, you just enriching yourself by other academics (peer-revue) and deceive most people since most social experiment can not be reproduced and/or verified. "We computed the R-Index for studies cited in Chapter 4 of Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow.” This chapter focuses on priming studies, starting with John Bargh’s study that led to Kahneman’s open email. The results are eye-opening and jaw-dropping. The chapter cites 12 articles and 11 of the 12 articles have an R-Index below 50. The combined analysis of 31 studies reported in the 12 articles shows 100% significant results with average (median) observed power of 57% and an inflation rate of 43%. The R-Index is 14. This result confirms Kahneman’s prediction that priming research is a train wreck and readers of his book “Thinking Fast and Slow” should not consider the presented studies as scientific evidence that subtle cues in their environment can have strong effects on their behavior outside their awareness."

14. Really disappointing rebuttal. Does Mr. Epstein know how a $750B military budget comes to life? Congress passes money bills, and the Fed creates the money into existence. Must still believe federal taxes fund social programs SMH…

15. As we are all born with a different level of intelligence, should the money theory be how best to pass money up to those more intelligent, as it has always been, or how best to pass wealth down to the 50% laboring-class who have always been the 50% working poor? In short, should we love money more than people, or love our self above all things?

    For since the beginning of civilization, most everyone has strived to enrich themselves upon the misery of those with less education, less wealth or less whiteness of skin.

    For always has the more intelligent upper-half of society hoarded all the land, wealth and political power, a thing impossible to happen unless by intelligent design, all to prove the harm in it.

16. The constraints are secondary to spending. We can deal with each "constraint" individually with economic policy. This man is living in his own little economic bubble of academia, which is in a panic about MMT because the current model of economics does not teach the fundamental economic reality that the US does in fact have the ability to pay all it's debts and more before any kind of inflation will hit, this has already been proven in 2008 QE by the Fed, which poured $4.5 Trillion dollars into the economy and inflation did not even move, in fact, at one point it went down. Here is a short video about that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9OylEb4dvo

17. He's right about the difficult policy discussions and decisions we make about issues. Policy discussions are significantly different from what MMT actually describes as it relates to our monetary system.

18. He's regurgitating what he incorrectly said in the first part of his comments. He's repeating the same straw man arguments he did, before. The constraints are always real resources and never money. MMT is clear about it. I'd like to see Jerry stop mischaracterizing what MMT says, and actually study it and actually say what MMT economists are saying. Listen to Jerry with his old non-sense tax and spend, gold-standard logic, and you cannot and will not realize a true Progressive agenda. Less than 12 years–that's what we have to get our shit together. Wake up, Jerry.

19. Money is a utility that serves the public therefore should be issued, created and insured by the government and it's citizens. If Finance wants to create money out of thin air by an opaque private institution do it with Bonds and hire a private military to guarantee its value. Reckless money creation and a corrupt government is leading to a reality where the US Dollar will have to have a collateral like Gold and/or Oil in international trade. If we need more money dial back the military; they also are the major contributor's to pollution. Our society lacks integrity; our love of money has us at the edge of extinction; I recommend people watch Chris Martenson's latest off the cuff podcast "Living with Integrity" because we have to move beyond the money Capital paradigm.

20. U.S. doesn't HAVE any money. It can print currency; that's the problem.

21. George Bush senior called supplyside economics – voodoo economics. MMT is another voodoo economics because it is pure short-termism. When all this money works into the global economy it will suck up all existing capital raising inflation rates globally and forcing those nations to reduce currency growth and raise taxes. This is a begger thy neighbor approach that would boomerang back and require substantial tax increases in the US. In the end, that is the progressive goal so by playing on politicians instincts to take the easy way out, progressives will get a future Congress to raise taxes back to the levels of the 1950s. And that may be alright.

22. These guys should debate live.

23. Epstein, it's been VERY clear to me what the limits to MMT are, and I'm not an economist! You just haven't researched the MMT thinking enough. Go and do some more reading/listening, and then get back to us!

24. The elephant in the room is, there is no usury without jubilee fact number one. Fact two, this is all just mumbo jumbo to supply free money to the bankers and the rich 1% to keep the system of oppression going. There won't be any relief for others to do this also, in places like Canada. No we'll just have to suck it up and endure austerity. They'll quickly tell the American masses in order to control inflation we'll need to endure some VAT/ carbon/World goodness/who knows tax . Net result austerity in the world will sky rocket, Americans will end up with 15 new taxes, and the above the law rich will be laughing their way back to their socialist life styles.

25. If MMT doesn't have much to contribute then why are so many very wealthy people paying, through think tanks, to have it shut out of the narrative? The constraints conversation comes after the public understands enough to be included in the narrative and to imply that the orthodox economists are the only people that need to understand this. That they, the economists, already do understand it simply says that they are as corrupt as those who are actually making the windfalls from the current austerity policy. They have not come forward to the public, the CBO or other government agencies with those facts that disclose the poor economic policy choices.

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