• Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    20 days ago

    Once got into an argument on discord with someone that really wanted me to entertain MMT and I just could not be bothered and kept telling them it was just a liberal attempt at replacing Marxism with some pedantic sophistry and refusing to examine the material reality that gives rise to neoliberal economic practices in the first place.

    I really hate MMT.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      19 days ago

      I don’t hate it, i’m just deeply indifferent to it. It’s just Keynesianism with a modern coat of paint. It has the same problems that such theories have always had. They attempt to solve the problems inherent to liberalism through a fundamentally liberal framework. That is never going to work no matter how many smart sounding words you use.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      18 days ago

      MMT is just a description of how fiat monetary sovereignty works. It’s not prescriptive, and it’s not comprehensive. For instance, it says nothing about international trade / international balance of payments / currency exchange.

      Liberals, being liberals, take this description, expand it in liberal ways, add liberal prescriptions, and then call that mess—which can’t work—MMT as well.

      Michael Hudson: The Use and Abuse of MMT

      J.T. does a decent job toward the end of his video to explain to the liberal audience how the bourgeoisie will severely limit what they naïvely & over-exuberantly imagine can be done with money printer go brrr: Why The Government Has Infinite Money

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        16 days ago

        I think this is a good summary of my position as well. MMT as a description of how it works is far better than the dominant ideological description of how it works. Reasoning from that to prescriptions must always, inherently, be experimental and that means until MMT theorists get control of monetary policy, all prescriptions are going to be suspect.

        Unfortunately, liberals and conservatives alike have no interest in scientific politics.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          16 days ago

          The Chinese state has control, and I try a little to see what they do with it, holding MMT in the back of my mind, to see how well it holds up.