Frank wrote on Feb 24
th, 2023 at 6:03pm:
MMT is silly bollocks.
...though Mosler's work has received meritorious recognition at tertiary level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Mosler Quote:Money - shells, coins, banknotes, electronic ledger entries, etc, etc - has to stand for something besides itself.
It does: it "stands for"
real resources, but money (which is always created
ex nihilo - unlike (say) sea shells which nevertheless are presumably numerous enough to be useful as a medium of exchange in primitive societies - is NOT itself a real resource).
Quote:It is a symbol of ACTUAL things.
More accurately, money is a MEASURE of the 'value' of actual things - however 'value' is determined (in a market, or by government decree).
Quote:That's what money is - a symbol of the value of things BESIDES the symbol itself.
Yes; but as noted above, money is created ex nihilo, and therefore has NO VALUE in itself, the 'value' lays in the real resource.
Note: a glass of water in a desert is worth more than a $1 million note, in a desert.....
Quote:In short, money is NOT about money.
Oh dear, I suggest you rewrite that sentence, so that the jarring contradiction isn't so obvious....
Quote:That's why governments cant save themselves just by printing more of it.
Indeed, governments "can't save themselves just by printing more of it", but that has nothing to do with "money not being about money", it has everything to do with
money not being a real resource like food and housing which governments DO require eg, to distribute to low income families, or to educate the populace.
Quote:Money is NOT about any government's ability to print symbols. But MMT IS.
MMT is about a currency-issuing government's ability to maximize the economy's productive capacity.
Note: it is possible to conceive of a government maximizing the nation's productive capacity without using money at all, by simply allocating different labour inputs of individuals a certain quantity/quality of resources as reward.
Quote:Silly, magic pudding nonsense. The fantasy of the undepleatable government coffers.
Note: the treasury and central bank of a currency-issuing government can, by definition, NEVER run out of money (ie, IS "undepleatable"); what the government CAN run out of is real resources, goods and services, if the government fails to support the nation's productive capacity, especially when the private sector runs amok (eg, the GFC and before it the Great Depression).