{"id":25867,"date":"2018-08-15T10:19:38","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T14:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=25867"},"modified":"2018-08-15T10:38:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T14:38:00","slug":"alexandria-on-the-daily-show-the-moral-economy-and-modern-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2018\/08\/15\/alexandria-on-the-daily-show-the-moral-economy-and-modern-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexandria on the Daily Show: the Moral Economy and Modern Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Economic Perspectives<\/em> has the article Alexandria on the Daily Show: the Moral Economy and Modern Money<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nThat the US Treasury is authorized to sell Treasury bonds in the amount of the \u201cdeficit\u201d, the amount spent over the amount taxed, does not mean government spending is financed by the bond sales, though those bond sales might have a desirable inflation-dampening effect on the demand created by some government spending over tax receipts, as bond sales defer spending on goods and services. Inflation is also a concern of MMT economists but is not assumed to be the automatic result of net injections of more cash into the economy but rather on levels of actual demand for particular goods and services. The US federal government, as are governments like those of the UK, China, Norway, Sweden, India, Russia, or Japan, is in this \u201cmonetarily sovereign\u201d in that it doesn\u2019t get its currency from anywhere else other than its own fiscal operations.
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\nSearching for sources of money to tax puts her, Sanders, and other \u201cfind-the-tax-dollars-first\u201d progressives on a collision course with various interest groups that want to hold onto their money and gives those groups ultimate \u201cveto-power\u201d over spending, if they can lobby hard enough against raising taxes as a precondition for social or ecological spending. Taxation in general and higher levels of taxation are required to realize ambitious social visions and contain inflation but the \u201cpay for\u201d spending-to-match-taxation paradigm will put immediate brakes on those visions at the critical initial stages of developing the social and physical infrastructure we need for the 21st Century.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez may be following the lead of Bernie Sanders in accepting the deficit hawk, \u201cpay for\u201d paradigm. Though I have campaigned for and support most of what Bernie Sanders has done, he has continued to follow the \u201cpay for\u201d framework in his public utterances, despite an ongoing association with Stephanie Kelton, a leading MMT economist and the founding editor of New Economic Perspectives. I am fearful that Ocasio-Cortez will follow Sanders\u2019 path in contributing to deficit worry and \u201ctax as revenue source\u201d. Sanders, despite inhabiting the leftmost portion of the American public sphere before Ocasio-Cortez, is, in my view, too cautious in presenting a transformative vision for American society and physical infrastructure.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Watching an interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is always fun, but that isn’t necessarily the most important part of the article. So I urge you to read the article after watching the interview.<\/p>\n

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