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Comment by googlemike | Hacker News Reader

I found the article to be poorly written and confusing, at least in that it failed to answer the most simple question I had: "What is MMT?"

The Wikipedia article seems far more useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory

To quote the intro:

"MMT advocates argue that the government should use fiscal policy to achieve full employment, creating new money to fund government purchases. The primary risk once the economy reaches full employment is inflation, which can be addressed by raising taxes and issuing bonds, to remove excess money from the system.[3] MMT is controversial, with active debate[4] about its policy effectiveness and risks."

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This sounds exactly like how communist economy used to work in Poland before 1989: Governing communist party claimed to represent the common people, so we had government-mandated full employment - state-owned companies (the only kind there was) were employing people, whether they actually needed them or not. To finance that, government would print money, causing hyperinflation.

Net result was: everyone had a job, everyone had a high (in nominal value) salary, but the money we had was worthles - you couldn't actually buy anything with it, because the store shelves were empty. Government had to ration all consumer goods, by introducing stamps (similar to foods stamps in the US).

It is funny to see communism making its great comeback :)

This will be extremely interesting and fascinating to see, and as a student of economics I hope we get to see these policies in action.

Mainly because, I feel there are very few data points to draw conclusions on how this will turn out.

why downvotes? this is exactly how government-run economy works. i experienced it in USSR. if people think that by naming it MMT and dressing it in pseudo-theoretical jargon will somehow make it work - good luck with that. it is fascinating to watch how bastion of freedom is falling for this shit.

You don't have to worry about rich people if all money is worthless I guess.

The podcast Why is this Happening? had a great episode about MMT earlier this month: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/msnbc/why-is-this-happening...

Isn't MMT just a convenient way to make tax less progressive or more equal?

So, like, have government spend money on whatever programs it wants, and issue enough bonds and collect enough taxes to keep inflation in check? It’s what we’ve been doing all along. Where is the novelty?

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