“Thank you for sending me Richard Murphy’s paper on Modern Monetary Theory. It’s detailed and very interesting. You may send this email (and its attachment) to other people, should you wish.
1. Early on, there is a surprise — Richard says MMT has not been discussed before.
However, (Major Douglas) Social Credit has a long history, and has been much discussed before and has a lot in common with MMT.
2. Richard says that all economic theory is a model of reality. and its consequences can, and should be, tested against reality. (Exactly! At last somebody is getting to the core of the matter! The underlying assumptions have to be identified and brought into the light!))
3. Richard is correct to say that:-
MMT would spend the money into existence and then (to stop inflation) tax it back.
MMT means the government can command the economy.
4 However, Richard well understands the weaknesses of MMT:-
in practice, the taxation would be inadequate to restrain the inflation
MMT money is not related to the real economy.
MMT money is not related to the spreading of the real economy to every person in society.
MMT is really only about government expenditure
MMT proposes lots of make-work jobs
Richard well understands that there should be a balance between government and private sector.
All in all, a very interesting paper.
Rodney
See also attached a Paper for the Journal of Critical Realism and Socio-Economics
The JOCRISE Paradigm
