Kelton MMT is A LENS （ ケルトン2020/06/16 Stephanie Kelton: Debunking the Deficit Myth | Town Hall Seattle）
— 地域通貨花子１ (@TiikituukaHana) October 29, 2021
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元動画https://t.co/UEu3zEQwOu
6:00~
MMT IS A LENS. pic.twitter.com/PZEfR37Kno
Stephanie Kelton: Debunking the Deficit Myth | Town Hall Seattle2020/06/16(15))
59分Modern Monetary Theory Quick Look with Dr. Stephanie Kelton
断片
mmt is a lens okay well think about what a lens does right if you wear prescription lenses then the idea is that the lens improves your vision right it helps you see more clearly and with mmt a lot of what we're trying to do is just provide people with better vision right with a better picture of how the monetary system that we have today works and once we get a better understanding of our modern monetary system we can begin to ask questions like well how does that change the government's ability to run policy in the interest of the people you and i households we have to balance our budgets we have to live within our means we can't take on too much debt federal government is fundamentally different that it stands in a different relationship vis-a-vis the currency the dollar that the federal government of the united states of america is the issuer of our currency and everybody else is a user of the dollar so we categorize those you know for we compartmentalize households businesses state and local government put them in one category users of the currency the federal government is separate okay it's the issuer of the currency and it has the sole legal authority to issue our currency the us dollar the us dollar comes from the us government and it can't legally come from anywhere else so think about it this way the deficit is the difference between two numbers right when we say the government has run a fiscal deficit we are saying that the government has spent more dollars into the economy than it has subtracted away by taxing us okay that's the government's deficit spend 100 in tax 90 back out we label that a fiscal deficit and people get very nervous about that because we've been taught to think about the government's finances the way that we think of our own personal finances so we say wait you're spending more than you're taking in that's so irresponsible stop that you know cut it out and balance your budget but think about what happens if the government balances its budget so it spends 100 in to the economy and it taxes or removes 100 back out well now the government's budget is balanced but somebody lost out on 10 right when they were running a deficit they put a hundred in spend a hundred and tax 90 back out that leaves ten dollars somewhere in the economy so one of the most important points that mmt makes is that every deficit is good for someone right every deficit is good for someone because the government's deficit is nothing more than a financial contribution to some other part of the economy you
mmtはレンズです レンズが何をするか考えてみてください もしあなたが処方箋レンズを付けているならば、レンズはあなたの視力を向上させるということです よりはっきりと見えるようにするのです mmtで私たちがしようとしていることの多くは、人々に良い視力を与えることです 今日ある通貨制度がどのように機能しているか、より良いイメージを持ちましょう そして、私たちが現代の通貨制度をより良く理解することが出来れば、次のような質問を始めることが出来ます。現代の貨幣システムをよりよく理解すれば、国民の利益のために政策を実行する政府の能力はどう変わるのか、といった問いを立て始めることができます。 a- 連邦政府は通貨ドルに対して異なる関係にあります アメリカ連邦政府は通貨の発行者であり それ以外はドルの使用者です だから私たちは家庭や企業 州や地方政府を区分けしています それらを1つのカテゴリーにまとめています 通貨の使用者です 連邦政府は別です それは通貨の発行者で 通貨を発行する唯一の法的権限を持っています ドルです 米ドルは連邦政府のものであり、他のどこからも合法的に調達できません 赤字は2つの数字の差です 政府が財政赤字を出したと言うとき、私たちに課税して差し引いた金額よりも、政府が経済に支出した金額の方が多いと言っているのです これが政府の赤字です 100を支出し90を課税して戻す、これを財政赤字と呼んでいます。人々はこのことにとても神経質になります なぜなら私たちは政府の財政を私たち個人の財政を考えるのと同じように考えるように教えられてきたからです 待ってください、あなたは摂取するよりも多く使っています それはとても無責任です それをやめて、削って予算を均衡させてください しかし、もし政府が予算を均衡させ、経済に100を使って、税金や控除を100戻したらどうなるか考えてください 今政府の予算は均衡しています。政府の予算はバランスが取れていますが、誰かが10ドル損をしています。赤字のときに100ドルを投入し、100ドルを使い、90ドルを課税して、10ドルを経済のどこかに残しています。
Kelton MMT is A LENS （ ケルトン2020/06/16 Stephanie Kelton: Debunking the Deficit Myth | Town Hall Seattle）
https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSe2wqetD/
元動画
https://youtu.be/a9pAPIUYXxQ?t=6m
6:00~
MMT is a lens.
and with mmt a lot of what we're trying to do is just provide people with better vision.
the most pernicious myth i think is the myth that the government should run its budget the way that you and i operate our budget. so if you think of you know one of these things is not like the other. you and i households we have to balance our budget so one of these things is not like the other the federal government is not like the others. what makes the federal government different why are governors asking congress to send money because they don't have it if everybody's in a jam. what makes anybody think the federal government can write the check. and the answer is that the federal government is fundamentally different. that it stands in a different relationship vis-a-vis the currency the dollar that the federal government of the united states of america is the issuer of our currency.
MMTはレンズです。
MMTの場合、私たちがやろうとしていることの多くは、人々に優れた視覚を提供することです。
私が思うに、最も悪質な神話は、政府は私たちと同じように予算を運営すべきだという神話です。 あなたと私の家計は予算を均衡させなければなりません。
連邦政府は何が違うのでしょうか？なぜ知事たちは議会にお金を送ってくれと頼むのでしょうか？みんなが困っているのに、なぜ連邦政府が小切手を書けると思うのでしょうか？
その答えは、連邦政府は根本的に違うということです。連邦政府は通貨ドルとは異なる関係にあり、アメリカ合衆国連邦政府は通貨の発行者です。
love and theft: 2020/06/16 Stephanie Kelton: Debunking the Deficit Myth | Town Hall Seattle
Stephanie Kelton argues that full employment is possible while keeping i...
元動画の17:02
um I think big problems that mmt has with the current approach to macroeconomic policy making is that Congress has put responsibility on the Central Bank.okay these are not elected officials we didn't vote for the people who are at the Federal Reserve it's Federal Reserve has the ability to run monetary policy independently.
okay they get to decide how to change interest rates and so forth and they get to decide how much unemployment is enough or how much is too much.
and so what the FED does is basically try to find the right number of people to keep unemployed in order to fight inflation and mmt says there's a better way to do this we could actually use full employment genuine full employment where everybody who wants to work can have a job.
and it would be a better price anchor a better way to mitigate inflationary pressures than what we currently do today and that's a lot to go through.
and I don't have time but it may be in the Q a period we can talk a little bit more about the mechanics of how the job guarantee or buffer stock Employment Program or public service Employment Program whatever we want to call it how that would work.
but that's basically the idea is to use a federal job guarantee program to achieve genuine full employment while at the same time putting a lid on inflationary pressures or containing inflationary pressures so.
ステファニー・ケルトンは、完全雇用は可能であると主張する。
https://youtu.be/IKb-c-PHKkA
mmtが現在のマクロ経済政策立案のアプローチに抱えている大きな問題は、議会が中央銀行に責任を押し付けていることだと思います。
連邦準備制度理事会には、独立して金融政策を実行する能力があります。
金融政策を独自に実行することができます。金利の変更方法などを決定することができ、失業がどの程度なら十分か、どの程度なら多すぎるかを決定することができます。
連邦準備制度理事会は基本的に、インフレに対抗するために失業者を適切な数に抑えようとします。しかし、連邦準備制度理事会はもっと良い方法があると言います。
そうすれば、現在行っている方法よりも、より良いプライス・アンカーとなり、インフレ圧力を緩和することができるのですが、これは大変なことです。
時間がありませんが、質疑応答の時間に、雇用保証やバッファストック雇用プログラム、公共サービス雇用プログラムなど、どのように機能するかについてもう少し詳しくお話しできるかもしれません。
しかし、基本的には、連邦政府の雇用保証プログラムを使って真の完全雇用を達成すると同時に、インフレ圧力に蓋をする、あるいはインフレ圧力を抑制する、というのがその考え方です。
Stephanie Kelton explains the linkages between aggregate demand, inflati...
元動画の13:19
our economy runs on sales we have a capitalist economy businesses in a capitalist economy produce for profit right they don't businesses don't hire people because they want to be good samaritans they hire workers because they need them in order to help them produce the output that they can sell and make a profit.
on okay so the question is how much economic activity can our economy support at any one point in time businesses would love to be swamped with customers because when a business is swamped with customers means they have lots of sales means their revenues are high means they have a source of profits and profitability.
and they are viable customers start disappearing sales fall revenues decline profits fall businesses might not survive you got to be profitable to stay in business so the question is we've got all of these different sources of demand for goods and services that our economy can produce the private sector has households you and i right we go buy consumer goods and that creates demand for firms products.
they like that businesses buy from each other right they buy uh intermediate goods they place orders and so forth that's good that drives uh sales and supports jobs in the economy government makes purchases and hires and employs people.
and that provides some support for spending in the economy and then the rest of the world buys some goods and services from us as well so those are the four ways that demand enters the economy right household spending business spending government spending and spending from the rest of the world the question is at any point in time when you add up all of that spending is it generating enough demand to keep the economy running at full employment where everybody who wants to work can find a job.
and the economy is healthy and balanced in a way that you don't have runaway inflation that the demand is high enough to create enough jobs for people but not so high that you're outstripping your economy's productive capacity.
if demand is running faster than firms can keep up with then the result is going to be inflationary pressure.
資本主義経済の企業は利益を得るために生産する。
というのも、ビジネスが顧客で溢れかえっているということは、売上がたくさんあるということであり、収入が多いということは、利益と収益性の源泉があるということだからです。
そのため、このような問題が発生するのです。私たちは、経済が生み出すことができる商品やサービスに対するさまざまな需要源をすべて持っています。
企業は互いに買い合うのが好きで、中間財を買ったり、注文を出したりするのです。
そして経済における支出をある程度支え、世界の国々も同様に私たちから商品やサービスを購入します。つまり、需要が経済に入る方法は4つあります。家計支出、企業支出、政府支出、そして世界の国々からの支出です。問題は、どの時点においても、すべての支出を合計すると、働きたい人がすべて仕事を見つけられる完全雇用で経済を回すために十分な需要を生み出しているかどうかです。
経済が健全で、インフレが進行しないようにバランスが取れていて、人々のために十分な雇用を生み出すのに十分な需要があり、経済の生産能力を超えるほど高くないということです。
需要が企業の生産能力よりも速ければ、結果としてインフレ圧力が生じます。
3:30~
2020/06/16 Stephanie Kelton: Debunking the Deficit Myth | Town Hall Seattle
https://youtu.be/a9pAPIUYXxQ
if the bargaining intensifies so the question is could you somehow avoid that remember we don't have inflation accelerating could you avoid that with a guaranteed livable income I assume this person's asking about something like a universal basic income or something like that there are proposals right now to get cash payments to virtually everybody in the country and given the slack conditions in the economy there is scope there's definitely capacity to do some of that I would have to know more about how much and for whom and under what conditions but you know are the MMT preferred way to handle unemployment is just more targeted right so that the dollars go not to everyone in a blanket not targeted fashion but that you target the spending directly to the unemployed yet the dollars in the hands of people who are looking for jobs but locked out of employment and employ them put them to work doing socially useful things things that enhance the community enhance the planet caring for people caring for planet caring for our communities so I'm not where none of us I think are opposed to some form of basic income support especially for those who can't or shouldn't be in the workplace and that could include some homecare work as well so I think with that it's 10 o'clock and it I'll take one last question the the last one this is a great question is is GDP it jumped it is GDP a good way to measure I think okay is the GDP a useful measure of the economy great question norm it's it's useful in some respects but it definitely has its has its shortcomings there's an Australian economist who has developed an alternative indicator and he calls it the genuine progress indicator his name is Phil Phil lon I hope I'm getting that right Phillip lon I believe and his genuine progress indicator says look GDP has all these shortcomings there are lots of costs and lots of benefits that aren't captured in this measure of economic output or economic activity so we can improve upon that and we can get things in there that give us a better sense of our genuine economic well-being and he's just one example so it it's the dominant but I think that lots of economists are working on alternative measures of well-being so thank you all for for joining for this whole hour conversation I really really enjoyed it and I'll be doing more of these so if you didn't get your question answered tonight maybe there will be other forums and you can pop over and get your question answered there thank you very much well thank you for everybody tuning in this evening and I also want to thank professor kellton for being here if you enjoyed this event you can find many more just like it on our website townhall Seattle org we also hope that you'll consider making a donation to townhall Seattle as your support will continue to allow us to provide events just like this one if you're interested in making and purchasing a copy of the book the deficit myth modern monetary theory and the birth of the people's economy please use the link on this livestream page purchased through our friends at Elliott Bay book company finally I want to thank everybody again for being here tonight and I hope you have a great evening.
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dr. stephanie kelton is a professor of
economics and public policy at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook
and Bloomberg contributing column
columnist she's been called a prophetic
economist and a rock star of progressive
economics by the way I'm sure professor
kellton doesn't feel at all weird when
people say that in her introductions
formally that share of the economics
department at the University so what's
up at any rate formally the chair of the
economics department at the University
of Missouri Kansas City she was a
research scholar at the university's
center for full employment and price
stability as well as serving at the levy
economics Institute in upstate New York
Stephanie is the founder of the blog new
economic perspectives and a member of
the top wonks network of the nation's
best thinkers in 2016 Politico
recognized her as one of the 50 people
across the country most influencing the
political debate Kelton was the chief
economist on the US Senate Budget
Committee it probably goes without
saying staffing minority and an advisor
to the Bernie 2016 presidential campaign
she's a regular commentator on national
radio and television and her op DED's
have appeared in the New York Times The
Washington Post a Los Angeles Times in
blue bird mission to her many academic
articles and publications she is the
author of the deficit myth modern
monetary theory and the birth of the
peoples economy which of course is the
subject of tonight's talk please join me
in welcoming stephanie kelton thank you
very much and thank you to the people
who are joined here on this site and as
I understand it people who are also
watching on YouTube and other streaming
services so I'm very very delighted to
have so many of you interested in the
book and in the topic and I noticed in
the chat bar just a couple of seconds
ago somebody said I can't wait to find
out what mmt is so
I hope that I'm gonna be able to do a
lot of that here with you for the next.
I
don't know 20 or 30 minutes before we
open it up to questions the book is in
an effort to lay out in much more
thoroughgoing fashion the answer to this
question about how how should I think
about mmt but let me start by saying
that I am a macro economist and that is
distinct from being a micro economist so
we look at the whole economy the big
functioning of the macro economy and mmt
is an approach a framework for
approaching the questions that are
related to the study of macroeconomics
so it is a macroeconomic framework a lot
of you probably know that in economics
there are lots of different schools of
thought and mmt has emerged I think it's
safe to say as a new paradigm in
economics or a new kind of approach or
school of thought so let me talk a
little bit about the book and why I
wanted to write this book if you happen
to already have a copy then you might
have gotten as far as chapter 1 where I
tell a little story and I lead with the
old television show Sesame Street ok
everybody is familiar with Sesame Street
I grew up watching it I say in the book
that I would sit with my sister and we
would watch that segment of Sesame
Street that they often did where you
know they have a 2 by 2 matrix and 4
images would start appearing on the
screen and they were trying to teach
young people to categorize things right
to take things that are similar and push
them to one side and then find the the
item that's different or dissimilar from
the others and and identify that one and
the game was called you know one of
these things is not like the other and
the song would go and so you know on the
screen would appear a truck and scooter
and a skateboard and a watermelon right
and so you say oh I've got three modes
of transportation and and I have this
piece of
so the watermelon that watermelons not
like the other and you holler it out and
play along with the television program
and so basically I never grew up is sort
of what's happening here.
and I just find
myself yelling back at my television
screen even though I'm no longer a child
you know but I get very frustrated at a
lot of the commentary especially around
questions that I take up in this book
and so the title of the book the deficit
myth it would be nice if there was just
one myth because we could just sort of
approach that myth explain what's wrong
and then fix it right the problem is
there isn't just one myth there is this
web of interrelated myths that get all
tangled up in our discourse and whether
it's our politicians or the people who
host maybe the shows that we watch on
Sunday morning and they interview the
politicians or it's the newspaper
articles or the magazine articles the
radio programs it's just pervasive the
the things that I think and I argue in
the book that so many people are just
getting fundamentally wrong when it
comes to questions of money and taxes
and debt and yes the deficits and so the
book is an attempt to sort of walk
readers through the big picture and to
kind of correct our thinking and
sometimes mmt economists will often say
mmm tea is a lens
okay well think about what a lens does
right if you wear prescription lenses
then the idea is that the lens improves
your vision right it helps you see more
clearly and with mmt a lot of what we're
trying to do is just provide people with
better vision right with a better
picture of how the monetary system that
we have today works and once we get a
better understanding of our modern
monetary system we can begin to ask
questions like well how does that change
the government's ability to run policy
in the interest of the people so the
subtitle to the book is modern monetary
theory and the birth of the people's
economy so let's just sort of start
chipping away at some of these myths I
say in the book I start with what I
think is the most pernicious of all of
the different myths I take up six in the
book the most pernicious myth I think is
the myth that the government should run
its budget the way that you and I
operate our budgets the government is
basically a big household and it should
really play by the same rules that you
and I play by okay we know that we have
to balance the checkbook every month we
know that we're supposed to watch the
amount of money that comes in and the
amount of money that goes out and we're
supposed to manage our finances
responsibly and that mostly means trying
to keep spending in check where we don't
spend everything that we make maybe we
put something aside and we save we try
to avoid borrowing and taking on too
much debt and the reason is that we know
that borrowing can get us into trouble
we start borrowing to finance spending
beyond what we can afford out of our
current income we have to pay that money
back and you know we don't want to sock
ourselves in with so much debt that we
get into a situation where we have bills
coming due and we don't have the money
to pay the bills okay because we could
end up missing payments defaulting on
some of our debt ruin our credit rating
end up you know filing for bankruptcy
it can happen it happens to people all
the time happens to businesses okay can
happen to corporations it can happen to
state and local governments.
so we're beginning now I want to circle
back to Sesame Street and in the book I
put the matrix up with the four pictures
and I ask readers to see that there's
something different about the federal
government's budget the federal
government's finances so if you think of
you know one of these things is not like
the other you and I households
you have to balance our budgets we have
to live within our means we can't take
on too much debt households businesses
and state and local governments if you
are you know paying attention to what's
going on in the country today in terms
of state budgets and you're listening to
governor's and mayors across this
country beg literally reaching out to
this administration to the White House
imploring the president to and Congress
to send aid because state budgets are
getting hammered and states are not like
the federal government they have to live
you know within their means they are
constrained by the amount of money that
they can raise in revenue and some
limited scope for borrowing so one of
these things is not like the other the
federal government is not like the
others what makes the federal government
different why are governors asking
Congress to send money because they
don't have it if everybody's in a jam
what makes anybody think the federal
government can write the check and the
answer is that the federal government is
fundamentally different that it stands
in a different relationship visa be the
currency the dollar that the federal
government of the United States of
America is the issuer of our currency
and everybody else is a user of the
dollar so we categorize those you know
for we compartmentalize households
businesses state and local government
put them in one category users of the
currency the federal government is
separate okay it's the issuer of the
currency and it has the sole legal
authority to issue our currency the US
dollar the US dollar comes from the US
government.
and it can't legally come
from anywhere else you and I can't
create it if we could we wouldn't worry
about going broke my businesses wouldn't
worry and if states could do it
governors wouldn't bother waiting around
for Congress they would just create the
money themselves but they can't only the
federal government can issue our
currency so that's obviously a big big
important point
once you recognize that a lot of other
things follow from there if you could
issue your own currency would you ever
worry that you were going to have debts
coming due bills that needed to be paid
that you couldn't afford to pay if the
bills were you know the payment was due
in the currency that you and only you
could create I think pretty clearly the
answer is no would you worry that there
were certain things you couldn't afford
if they were priced in dollars and you
have the patent essentially write the
copyright on the dollar would you worry
about not being able to come up with
enough money to meet expenditures to
fund programs I think the answer should
clearly be no now once we recognize the
federal government is the issue or the
currency people then immediately think
oh my god you see you just want the
government to to spend to infinity right
and the answer is no you can't do that
right it isn't that there are no limits
there are limits but the limits are not
in the government's ability to afford
programs to make payments to service
bonds and pay debt the limits are in our
real economy and so this is where I go
with chapter 2 in the book where we talk
about inflation because well what none
of us wants is to live in a country
where prices are spiraling out of
control ok nobody would want that
inflation is a continuous increase in
the price level and we work very hard to
manage inflationary pressure and avoid
allowing inflation to over time it Road
the value of the currency okay so in the
first chapter we make sure that we
understand government is not like a
household it is not constrained like
state and local governments it has
spending capacity well beyond the rest
of us by virtue of the fact that it
issues the currency but there are limits
and the limits are in our real economy.
13:19
so if you think about it our economy
runs on sales we have a capitalist
economy businesses in a capitalist
economy produce for profit right they
don't businesses don't hire people
because they want to be good Samaritans
they hire workers because they need them
in order to help them produce the output
that they can sell and make a profit on
okay so the question is how much
economic activity can our economy
support at any one point in time
businesses would love to be swamped with
customers because when a business is
swamped with customers means they have
lots of sales means their revenues are
high means they have a source of profits
and profitability and they are viable
customers start disappearing sales fall
revenues decline profits fall businesses
might not survive you got to be
profitable to stay in business so the
question is we've got all of these
different sources of demand for goods
and services that our economy can
produce the private sector has
households you and I right we go by
consumer goods and that creates demand
for firms products they like that
businesses buy from each other right
they buy intermediate goods they place
orders and so forth that's good that
drives sales and supports jobs in the
economy government makes purchases and
hires and employs people and that
provides some support for spending in
the economy and then the rest of the
world buys some goods and services from
us as well so those are the four ways
that demand enters the economy right
household spending business spending
government spending and spending from
the rest of the world the question is at
any point in time when you add up all of
that spending is it generating enough
demand to keep the economy running at
full employment where everybody who
wants to work can find a job and the
economy is healthy and balanced in a way
that you don't have runaway inflation
that the demand is high enough to create
enough jobs for people but not so high
that you're out stripping your economy's
productive capacity if demand is running
faster than firms can keep up with
then the result is going to be
inflationary pressure so it's not the
only way that you can generate inflation
okay inflation is kind of a complicated
phenomenon and economists work very hard
to try to study and understand inflation
and model inflation and think about ways
to attenuate inflationary pressures when
they arise but you know the reality is
that across the globe for a very long
period of time most countries have been
struggling to get their inflation rates
up right that inflation has not been a
problem except to the extent that in
places like Japan they believe that
inflation is far far too low and
governments have been actively trying to
stoke inflation most countries target
inflation at 2% and most countries put
the central bank in charge of basically
running macroeconomic policy so here in
the US Congress told the Federal Reserve
essentially it's your job you steer the
economy ok we're not going to worry too
much about it except in times of crisis
in normal times you use monetary policy
and you adjust interest rates and you
try to give us the 2% inflation rate
that most central banks are targeting
and give us the right amount of
unemployment this is more than I can go
into in this short talk but it's all
dealt with in the book.
17:00
and it's one of
the I think big problems that mmt has
with a current approach to macroeconomic
policy making is that Congress has put
responsibilities on the central bank ok
these are not elected officials we
didn't vote for the people who are at
the Federal Reserve its Federal Reserve
has the ability to run monetary policy
independently okay they get to decide
how to change interest rates and so
forth and they get to decide how much
unemployment is enough or how much is
too much
and so what the Fed does is basically
try to find the right number of people
to keep unemployed in order to fight
inflation and mmt says
there's a better way to do this we could
actually use full employment genuine
full employment where everybody who
wants to work can have a job and it
would be a better price anchor a better
way to mitigate inflationary pressures
than what we currently do today and
that's a lot to go through and I don't
have time but maybe in the Q&A period we
can talk a little bit more about the
mechanics of how the job guarantee or
buffer stock Employment Program or
public service employment program
whatever we want to call it how that
would work but that's basically the idea
is to use a federal job guarantee
program to achieve genuine full
employment while at the same time
putting a lid on inflationary pressures
or containing inflationary pressures so
running our economy at its full
potential the thing is it's almost
always going to require the government's
budget to be in deficit almost always
and the reason is this gets a little bit
macro wonky but there are demand
leakages you know every dollar that I
save and don't spend is a dollar that
some business can't capture as part of
their sales can't become part of their
revenue in their profits every dollar
that's taxed away from me is a dollar
that I can't use to buy goods and
services in the economy and every dollar
that I use buying goods and services
from abroad is a dollar that some US
producer can't capture as part of their
sales so those are three forms of demand
leakages where I'm not putting pressure
on the US economy's productive capacity
because that pressure is leaking away
okay and those leakages make room for
other kinds of spending to come into
place and to backstop or replace that
spending and one way to do that is
through fiscal policy the government can
use tax cuts to try to replace some of
the lost spending or it can spend on its
own and directly replace some of that
loss spending but the idea is to produce
a balanced economy where you have enough
total spending
to support jobs at full employment but
not so much spending that you're putting
too much strain on the productive
capacity of the economy and generating
inflationary pressures and what I'm
saying is because of the demand leakages
there is almost always a need for the
government through deficits to support
jobs and productive activity in the
economy to support the economy so if so
think about it this way the deficit is
the difference between two numbers right
when we say the government has run a
fiscal deficit we are saying that the
government has spent more dollars into
the economy then it has subtracted away
by taxing us okay that's the
government's deficit spend a hundred in
tax ninety back out we label that a
fiscal deficit and people have very
nervous about that because we've been
taught to think about the government's
finances the way that we think of our
own personal finances so we saying wait
you're spending more than you're taking
and that's so irresponsible stop that
you know cut it out and balance your
budget but think about what happens if
the government balances its budget so it
spends a hundred in to the economy and
it taxes or removes a hundred back out
well now the government's budget is
balanced but somebody lost out on ten
right when they were running a deficit
they put a hundred in spend a hundred in
tax ninety back out that leaves ten
dollars somewhere in the economy so one
of the most important points that mmt
makes is that every deficit is good for
someone right every deficit is good for
someone because the government's deficit
is nothing more than a financial
contribution to some other part of the
economy in my example it's a ten dollar
contribution to some other part of the
economy now a government surplus which
might sound like the best of all worlds
right not only do you balance the
government's budget but you put it into
surplus and we did this during Bill
Clinton's administration from 1998 to
2001
for four years the federal government's
budget moved into surplus so think about
what that means right it sounds fiscally
responsible you hear Democrats talk
about how they were the last party to
deliver not just balanced budgets but
surpluses and then it was that rotten
George Bush who came along and cut taxes
and you know funded Wars and all of a
sudden the surpluses disappeared okay so
let's think about whether we really want
the federal government's budget in
surplus so what does that mean well it
means the government is taxing more
dollars out of the economy then it
spends back into the economy so using
simple numbers let's say the government
tax is $100 out and it only spends $90
back in the government's budget is in
surplus we'll write a +10 on the
government's ledger but what happened to
the rest of the economy they took a
hundred away and only replaced ninety so
the non-government part of the economy
now on its ledger shows a minus ten so
government deficits I sometimes say work
like a blower
you know they blow dollars on two
somebodies balance sheet and a
government surplus works like a vacuum
you had Hoover's dollars off of people's
balance sheets so the next time you hear
a politician railing about fiscal
deficits and saying that if you vote for
them they will pledge to balance the
budget or put the budget in surplus I'm
talking about the federal government
next time you hear a federal elected
officials do this stop and say to
yourself wait a minute why is this guy
or gal pledging to reduce the surpluses
of the rest of the economy right is that
do we really want that now there may be
times that the government's budget ought
to be in surplus and it would make sense
if you think that the economy is getting
too much strength or putting too much
strain on the productive capacity then
it makes sense for the government to
scale back some of its own spending or
increase taxes or a combination of the
two right that's one way to temper
inflationary pressures but Mt
would never look at the budget outcome
itself surplus/deficit balance and say
we should be targeting that right you
don't know in advance where the
government's budget ought to be you just
know in advance what the state of the
economy ought to be right full
employment economy with managed you know
low inflationary pressures okay so
that's sort of the goal there in in
economics there's a chapter in the book
I'm not going to try to talk too much I
want to leave lots of time for Q&A but
the wonky a sort of myth that I get into
in the book is the myth that's known in
economics as crowding out and this one
is you know you don't hear this one
talked about so much if you turn on the
TV or listen to the Sunday morning talk
shows read the newspaper this one
doesn't get the sort of headlines that
some of the other myths get but it's
very very powerful in Washington DC and
this myth says that government deficits
are dangerous because when the
government runs a deficit spends more
than it taxes away from us it has to
make up for the shortfall somehow and it
makes up for the shortfall by borrowing
from somebody who has money so the
deficit requires the government to
borrow from savers and there's only so
much money available to be loaned out
and so when the government wants to
borrow more it leaves
fewer dollars available to others to
borrow it's primarily private companies
right and if the government's deficit
gets bigger then its borrowing needs
increase then it eats up part of the
supply of dollars that would have been
available to private businesses to
invest in our economy but the government
took those dollars and the competition
for that finite supply of dollars drives
interest rates up and as interest rates
get driven higher private firms will
borrow less because interest is the cost
of borrowing and as private businesses
borrow less we get a less dynamic
economy was private businesses are just
presumed to invest more efficiently and
have you know greater long-term benefits
for the economy driving productivity
growth and so forth
and so you get a slower growing less
dynamic economy in the long run as a
result of government deficits so in this
chapter I just basically say you know
this is like a stack of dominoes that
the crowding out myth tells you if the
government runs a deficit then it has to
borrow if it has to borrow then there
are fewer savings if there are fewer
savings then the interest rate goes up
because of competition if the interest
rate goes out then investment goes down
if investment goes down you get a slower
growing economy so you get that whole
string of offends and once you tap the
first domino the rest just obediently
give way and the reality is that the the
support the empirical support for this
kind of these assertions or this theory
is just not robust you can get crowding
in effects you could imagine the
government making investments in things
like education and R&D in infrastructure
and having that spending give rise to
higher economic activity that then
swamps businesses with customers that
then leads businesses to get excited
about investing to build more capacity
to satisfy higher demand so the point is
that a lot of the myths that we're told
even the more complicated economic myths
we can we can unpick them and find out
where the flaws in the arguments are so
so much of what we're told to fear about
deficits that governments are going to
go broke just like a household would or
I may wrap up on on this one or one
other one that that will end up like a
country like Greece ok many of you
probably remember after the financial
crisis in 2008 and the global economic
recession that followed that there were
there were debt crises across much of
southern Europe
that many countries got into deep
trouble and you know I could turn on the
nightly news here and I could hear who
let me think Brian Williams right I
would I could remember standing in the
kitchen and hearing the the scary music
come on like it's you know six o'clock
five o'clock news whatever I goes Don
John and Brian Brian Webb says the debt
crisis in America and I'm thinking wait
a minute what debt crisis do we have in
America but the ledian was what was
happening in Europe it was what was
happening in Greece and Italy and Spain
and Portugal and Ireland and these
countries were in trouble and here we
were sitting in the United States
looking across and convincing ourselves
that if we didn't get serious about
reining in deficits that we were gonna
end up just like the Greek government
you know that we were gonna have debt
payments do that we were not going to be
able to make and so forth and so on so
in the book I point out the difference
between let's say the Greek government
and the US government and remember we
started off the conversation recognizing
that the federal government the United
States of America is the issuer of the
dollar problem in Greece and Spain in
Italy and others is that these countries
when they joined the economic and
monetary union gave up their sovereign
currencies and when they gave up their
sovereign currencies they adopted a
effectively a foreign currency hey these
countries are no longer issuers of their
own sovereign currency they are currency
users much like a state in the United
States so these countries were in the
same sort of position that Governor
Cuomo and governor Newsom and other
governors around the country are in in
that they cannot simply authorize
expenditures and know that the payments
will be made they don't issue the
currency so Greece got into trouble
countries around the world Venezuela
Argentina Russia the list is long over a
historical period countries that borrow
in foreign currencies can and do
encounter problems
respect to debt they can miss payments
they can be forced into default but a
country like the US like Australia like
the UK like Japan is a perfect example
these are all currency issuing
governments and their fiscal capacity is
just very different from governments
that give up sovereign currencies and
start borrowing in currencies that they
don't control countries that like
Ecuador or Panama that just outright
adopt the US dollar as their currency
and they can only operate to the extent
that they can earn enough US dollars to
keep the public services financed so it
is a big difference and I talk about all
of that in the book I need to talk about
one more topic and then I would like to
go open it up to Q&A but this topic is
really close to my heart because well
before I started working on the book I
wrote a number of papers on social
security and so I have a chapter in the
book where I take up Social Security and
I think it's really important especially
now because you you know we are already
hearing now with Congress passing multi
trillion dollar spending bills and the
deficit is increasing the national debt
is increasing and the hand wringing is
beginning to start and that's not good
we definitely do not want lawmakers
getting anxious about the impacts of the
current economic fallout and the
spending bills that they've put in place
so far to try to support the economy
giving them cold feet prematurely
because if fiscal support is withdrawn
prematurely or if not enough is done
then we as a nation are going to end up
with an economy that is struggling to
recover we could be looking at a period
of many many years where the
unemployment rate could be stuck in
double digit territory 10% 12% 15% who
knows
but we don't want Congress getting cold
feet and we're already beginning to hear
things like well now that we've
increased the deficits so much and now
that the debt has increased it's time to
start thinking about entitlement
programs Social Security and Medicare
and this is often it's often argued that
these are the real drivers of our
long-term debt crisis that you know our
short-term finances were okay before
coronavirus came now they're much worse
than they were but in the medium and
longer term we're gonna have to start
making some tough choices and figuring
out how we're going to change Social
Security or change Medicare so that the
government can spend less money because
the argument is that these programs are
unaffordable and you know again if you
just go back to the first chapter and
the first point I made federal
government of the United States of
America it's the issuer of the dollar
the issuer dog can never run out of
money it can never have bills coming due
that it can't afford to pay so think
about what that means for Social
Security
okay Social Security is a program that
provides financial benefits to not just
retirees but to their dependents in many
cases and to the disabled so the federal
government has created a program that is
an automatic entitlement program in the
sense that once you qualify for the
benefits you're in the program and the
benefit payments are supposed to be made
to you there are people who believe that
the federal government can't afford to
keep its promises that the system is
running out of money there are trust
funds that are set up think of that as a
sort of piggy bank or a savings account
where someone has stuffed dollars in
locked them into place with the
intention of releasing them in future
years to pay retirees as our aging
society the demographics are such that
workers are moving out of the workforce
and into retirement and as they go on to
Social Security we're supposed to make
that
payments to them people say we can't
afford to do it there's not enough cash
being paid into the system to allow the
federal government to meet its
obligations in full in perpetuity to
which I say it why would you worry about
trapping dollars in a trust fund like
locking up digital spreadsheet entries
and thinking that somehow that's what
makes you able to meet future
obligations that if we don't tie up
enough dollars trap them on a
spreadsheet somewhere then we won't be
able to mail benefit checks or send the
dollars out in the future to retirees
that's obviously very silly so the
federal government can afford to keep
its promise to every future retiree
their dependents and the disabled with
or without this thing called a trust
fund with her without dollars locked up
digital right they don't even exist in
physical form we're just numbers you
know typed into a computer keyboard that
show up in this thing we call the trust
fund the challenge is think again about
where the limits are it's our economy's
real productive capacity it's our real
resources inflation is the thing to
worry about so if we're looking into the
future and we see the demographic
changes taking place
we say the US workforce is shrinking
because we're an aging Society people
are moving out of the workforce and into
retirement once they retire they're no
longer working and producing goods and
services but they still consume goods
and services so they want to buy some of
what's produced the question then
becomes if we keep our promises if the
government keeps its promise to all
future beneficiaries sends those checks
out will people who receive those
benefit payments be able to turn around
and spend that money back into the
economy without creating undue
inflationary pressure unwanted
accelerating inflation that's the risk
to manage it's not we won't be able to
afford to keep promises of course we can
afford to keep promises the question is
and this is what politicians really
should be wrestling
if they want to have a fight have a good
fight have a meaningful fight right
figure out who's got the best ideas for
the kinds of investments that we need to
make in our economy today to make sure
than in 10 20 30 years the US economy is
productive enough that when those
benefit payments go out we are able to
produce enough stuff right the goods and
services so that the working population
and the retired population can all spend
money into an economy where it's able to
keep up with that demand where there's
enough productive capacity enough supply
so that we can have a full employment
economy everybody gets the output that
they want it can be produced without
inflationary pressure so you know if I
had to say in a nutshell and I want to
wind up so we can do QA what is the
point of mmm tea mmm tea is about
replacing artificial artificial phony
constraints with a real resource
constraint which is an inflation
constraint and by the way and it's also
in the book a real a natural resource
constraint right an ecological
constraint by Oh economic constraint
that we can't place excessive pressures
on our factories and machines and on our
planet and expect things to work out
well for us so it's about getting away
from an obsession with the stuff that
doesn't matter and turning our attention
to the things that do matter and so
chapter 10 chapter 10 I didn't write yet
ten chapters I wrote eight chapter 7 is
called the deficits that matter and
that's where I really hope that we can
start turning more of our attention to
the the legitimate deficits that are
pervasive in our economy so with that I
think I will stop and look to take some
of the questions that you all have
submitted hmm let me give a quick look
here
well Jeff Jeff asks how can the American
public be educated about mmt to build
political support I think that's a great
question Jeff and I'm not an organizer
but I know a lot of good ones and I know
how important that work is you know I
think that it has to be a multi-faceted
effort it can't be we're not going to
spread a better understanding as a
spread bad word we're not gonna achieve
a better understanding better public
discourse without you know journalists
playing an important role
they're the ones who sit down with
politicians and if the first question
out of their mouth is how are you going
to pay for it and then haranguing them
over the numbers and whether the math
adds up and whether it will add to the
deficit that's not helpful
we need journalists to start asking
better questions so if somebody says you
know I want Medicare for all don't say
how are you gonna pay for it say well
are you sure we have the doctors and
nurses the long-term care facilities
where we have mental health
professionals where we have the hospital
beds but we have the infrastructure the
real resources to produce and to make
good on that promise of Medicare for all
or whatever the case may be tuition free
college right you have to have people on
the ground you have to have I think
people like me you know we have to teach
better and we have to teach each other
and we have to have discourse on a whole
bunch of different fronts so I like that
question a lot it's just it's not easy
to get there I'm doing my part how much
debt is too much is one of the questions
and how do we know when we get there so
I didn't really get to I didn't get to
spend a lot of time on any one subject
but on the debt that the debt is is just
a misnomer in some respects it's got a
rotten
calling card and I say this in the book
you know because people think well
there's too much debt and this is what
this question is about the national debt
this thing we call the national debt is
nothing more than a historic record of
all the past instances where the
government spent more money more dollars
into the economy than it taxed back out
and those dollars are currently sitting
in the form of US Treasuries government
securities if that's the that's the name
we've given to it sucks frankly we call
it the national debt and it's just a
stock pile of Treasury securities that
you could think of as part of the u.s.
net money supply you can just think of
it as part of the money supply part of
our money supply is inter sparing and
part of it is non-interest bearing
Treasuries our interest bearing dollars
so if the question is how many interest
bearing dollars are too many interest
bearing dollars then my answer is well
it depends are they creating any kind of
problem okay are they creating
inflationary pressures if you've got
interest bearing dollars out there and
somebody's being paid interest income
I'm a bond holder right so suppose I
have fun and because I hold bonds I'm
being paid interest income and that
interest income then allows me to spend
more right so if all of the bondholders
are getting all of this interest income
and those dollars start going out and
chasing goods and services and the
economy's productive capacity is already
at its maximum then you could get
inflationary pressures so the answer to
the question how much debt is too much
is when the when the debt becomes a
problem is when it starts to give rise
to inflationary pressures and that's how
you know when you get there and you can
manage that okay
please elaborate on how the pandemic
response of funding oops the question
jumped the elites and corporations four
or five trillion
exposes the lie that deficits even
matter okay so that's a good question
so here's a here's what happened and I
know the person who asked the question
knows but just for everybody else to
make sure we're all on the same page you
know we just not too long ago got
through 2019 and for pretty much the
whole of that year we watched a very
crowded field of Democrats Democratic
hopefuls presidential hopefuls pitching
their platforms and saying you know vote
for me I'd like to be President and
these are the things I would like to do
and at every turn the question that
dogged candidates and those with more
ambitious platforms really got it right
but everybody got it was how're you
gonna pay for it how are you gonna pay
for how you gonna pay where is the money
going to come from how are you gonna
finance this stuff and people twisted
themselves in knots to try to say well
we can find revenue here and we can
raise taxes there and we can come up
with all the money we need and then roll
the clock forward to March of this year
and the corona virus pandemic begins and
all of a sudden dollars are
materializing out of Congress
legislation is being passed left and
right nobody paused for a second to say
how are we going to pay for it
whose taxes have to go up where is the
money going to come from Congress wrote
and passed bills left and right for in
in very short order and I think what
this question from David is about is
doesn't that just expose what a farce
this whole pay for game was all through
2019 listening to this question about
how there's no money for anything can't
afford to do any of these things and now
were Congress's authorizing trillions
and you know the house has passed a bill
for another three trillion which the
Senate has yet to show an appetite for
but the point is we can very quickly
come up with four or five six
and more trillion and is that in some
sense vindication of the sort of stuff
I've been talking about
that's the question here and I think the
answer is yes I think it's a very good
real
world real-time example of exactly how
Congress can and does pay for things
when they deem there to be a
sufficiently urgent need okay if there's
a priority they will fund it if they're
not funding something it's not because
there's no money it's because they've
decided it's not a sufficient ly high
priority okay just don't want to fund it
please talk about the ideology of
deficits I think I I think I might have
hit that one Martha threw out let's see
what is the need okay here's one what's
the need if any of having federal income
taxation under mmt so if what I've been
saying is that the government is the
issuer of the currency doesn't need to
get the dollar from anyone else in order
to spend doesn't rely on tax revenue
doesn't rely on savers to finance
borrowing a deficit spending then what's
the purpose of taxes why do we even have
them so this is more than I can do in
the time that remains but in the book I
go through this in a lot of detail but
one thing clearly is that if the
government was simply authorizing
spending bills and suspending taxes like
I'm not going to tax anything back I'm
only going to spend dollars into the
economy we'd pretty quickly run up
against that inflation constraint right
so the the spending creates new dollars
every time the government spends a
dollar it is new money creation those
dollars are newly created digitally
minted dollars and when the government
taxes its retiring those dollars okay so
the the question is about the push and
the pull how many are we pushing into
the economy and how many are being
pulled back out of the economy you need
to pull something back out and that's
for preventing accelerating inflationary
pressure how many need to be pulled back
out that's a function of the demand
leakages that I talked about earlier I
know it seems like it would be really
nice for all of us if we just didn't
have to pay income taxes at all but it
does help not just manage inflationary
pressures but because of the
progressivity of our income tax system
it also helps but not enough I would
argue with preventing the distribution
of income from being even more extreme
now what it already is today
[Music]
yeah so there's a question about climate
change and it jumps to because y'all are
typing and then things kind of skip
upwards yeah it can how can mmt function
Linna asks alongside or contribute to
calls to pursue D growth or you know a
growth in response to growth associated
climate change I I mean I spend a lot of
time in the book on climate change in
the chapter called the deficits that
matter and in the closing chapter to the
book I think this is critically
important climate change is an
existential threat that is my position
so I think it has to be dealt with when
I talk about the economy's productive
capacity remember I'm also talking about
the climate's capacity to handle it the
goal of mmt is not to maximize growth it
is in fact I think that so much of the
growth obsession is bound up in the debt
obsession because people often think
that the way to get yourself out of a
debt problem if you think the debt is a
problem which I toned if you think the
debt is a problem people often say well
the way to deal with it is to grow your
way out of debt see and so they look at
a ratio where the debt is in the
numerator and GDP is in the denominator
so it's the debt to GDP ratio and if you
want to bring the ratio down you just
juice the denominator you grow your
economy as fast as you can so that the
ratio will come down and then people say
oh we're growing our way out of debt but
if you don't view the debt as some sort
of existential threat then you don't you
can let go of that growth obsession
you don't view growth as the solution to
your debt crisis and you can start
recognizing I think which is what Lynne
is asking about that we can function
perfectly well with low growth or D
growth and have a healthy habitable
thriving economy and and planet and
society so anyway it's dealt with in
much more detail in the book what
metaphors that's an interesting question
and I don't see the name of the person
but what metaphors will help us
understand modern money and what old
metaphors should we jettison so I think
communication is is key I really do
I think framing matters a lot I think
that a lot of the damage that's been
done to all of us is accomplished
through clever turn of phrase through
framing you know when people say the
debt is gonna you know you're stealing
from your children and grandchildren
okay that's framing that those are
metaphors okay
borrowing from China those are little
phrases that very quickly tap into our
insecurities about you know the outside
world or fear of hurting our children
and grandchildren or something like that
so I try in the book to introduce new
different framing new metaphors one of
my favorites I think is trying to say
that you know the goal should not be to
force your economy to balance your
budget but instead to use the budget to
balance your economy and so there's a
figure in the book where I show the
scales you know sort of like the scales
of justice the scales and government
spending is heavier than taxes or you
have the government running a deficit.
but your economy is in balance you have
full employment and you have stable
prices so I want to call this a balanced
budget because it delivers the economic
outcome the balanced economy that I
think we should be after
so I I'm always playing with this
because I think it really does matter
and helping to give politicians new and
more constructive ways to carry on
discourse about government finances is
not sure I understand that question if
the Fed uses unemployment as a measure
for inflation it jumped again duck on it
I started to read and then it jumped hmm
I don't know what the question was I'm
so sorry it popped out of you there it
is
wouldn't a guaranteed live okay if the
Fed uses unemployment as a measure for
inflation wouldn't a guaranteed livable
income have kept inflation at a healthy
percentage so the Fed maintains a
certain amount of slack in the labor
market this is how they would describe
it and a certain number of people are
kept unemployed for the sake of
preventing the labor market from getting
too tight and the ideas when it becomes
too easy for people to find jobs when
the labor market gets too tight workers
have more bargaining power they can
negotiate higher wages and if wages
increase then employers might respond to
the increased wages by raising prices to
protect the profit margins and so higher
wages push prices higher and then you
get inflation and then you can even have a wage price spiral.
if the bargaining intensifies so the question is could you somehow avoid that remember we don't have inflation accelerating could you avoid that with a guaranteed livable income I assume this person's asking about something like a universal basic income or something like that there are proposals right now to get cash payments to virtually everybody in the country and given the slack conditions in the economy there is scope there's definitely capacity to do some of that I would have to know more about how much and for whom and under what conditions but you know are the MMT preferred way to handle unemployment is just more targeted right so that the dollars go not to everyone in a blanket not targeted fashion but that you target the spending directly to the unemployed yet the dollars in the hands of people who are looking for jobs but locked out of employment and employ them put them to work doing socially useful things things that enhance the community enhance the planet caring for people caring for planet caring for our communities so I'm not where none of us I think are opposed to some form of basic income support especially for those who can't or shouldn't be in the workplace and that could include some homecare work as well so I think with that it's 10 o'clock and it I'll take one last question the the last one this is a great question is is GDP it jumped it is GDP a good way to measure I think okay is the GDP a useful measure of the economy great question norm it's it's useful in some respects but it definitely has its has its shortcomings there's an Australian economist who has developed an alternative indicator and he calls it the genuine progress indicator his name is Phil Phil lon I hope I'm getting that right Phillip lon I believe and his genuine progress indicator says look GDP has all these shortcomings there are lots of costs and lots of benefits that aren't captured in this measure of economic output or economic activity so we can improve upon that and we can get things in there that give us a better sense of our genuine economic well-being and he's just one example so it it's the dominant but I think that lots of economists are working on alternative measures of well-being so thank you all for for joining for this whole hour conversation I really really enjoyed it and I'll be doing more of these so if you didn't get your question answered tonight maybe there will be other forums and you can pop over and get your question answered there thank you very much well thank you for everybody tuning in this evening and I also want to thank professor kellton for being here if you enjoyed this event you can find many more just like it on our website townhall Seattle org we also hope that you'll consider making a donation to townhall Seattle as your support will continue to allow us to provide events just like this one if you're interested in making and purchasing a copy of the book the deficit myth modern monetary theory and the birth of the people's economy please use the link on this livestream page purchased through our friends at Elliott Bay book company finally I want to thank everybody again for being here tonight and I hope you have a great evening.
関連して、コピーを購入して地元の独立した書店を支援することに興味がある場合は、タウンホールにタウンホールという言葉を番号4 4 3 2 1にテキストで送信してください。ケルトンの本です。正直に言うと、私たちが今夜グレート ホールに集まっていたら、ほとんどの人がその本を手に取っていたでしょう。このライブ ストリーム ページのリンクを使用して、ラ ベ ブック カンパニーから本を購入してください。それでは博士。ステファニー・ケルトンは、ニューヨーク州立大学ストーニーブルック校の経済学と公共政策の教授であり、ブルームバーグに寄稿しているコラムニストであり、彼女は予言的経済学者および進歩的経済学のロックスターと呼ばれています。
この本は、mmt についてどのように考えるべきかというこの質問に対する答えを、より徹底した方法で提示しようとしていますが、質問に答える前に 20 分または 30 分かかるかどうかはわかりませんが、まずは次のことから始めさせてください。私はマクロ経済学者であり、それはミクロ経済学者であることとは異なるため、マクロ経済の大きな機能である経済全体を見ており、mmt はマクロ経済学の研究に関連する問題にアプローチするためのフレームワークです。マクロ経済の枠組み 経済学にはさまざまな学派があり、mmt が出現したことは、おそらく多くの人が知っていると思います。経済学の新しいパラダイム、新しい種類のアプローチ、または考え方の学校と言って間違いないので、この本について少しお話しさせてください。第 1 章までは、ちょっとした話をして、昔のテレビ番組のセサミ ストリートを紹介しました。わかりました。みんなセサミ ストリートに精通しています。セサミストリートのそのセグメントは、2 x 2 のマトリックスと 4 つの画像が画面に表示され始めたことを知っている場所でよく行われ、若者に物事を正しく分類して似ているものを取り上げてプッシュするように教えようとしていました。片側にあるアイテムを見つけてください。他のものとは異なるか、または似ていないことを確認し、ゲームが呼び出されたことを特定します。これらの 1 つが他のものとは異なり、歌が流れ、画面にトラックとスクーターとスケートボードが表示され、スイカは正しいとあなたは言います 私は3つの交通手段を持っていますそして私はこのスイカを持っています スイカは他のスイカが好きではありません そしてあなたはそれを大声で叫び、テレビ番組と一緒に遊ぶので、基本的に私は成長しませんでしたアップは、ここで起こっていることのようなものです。私には 3 つの交通手段があり、私はこのスイカを持っているので、スイカは他のスイカが好きではなく、大声で叫び、テレビ番組と一緒に遊んでいます。私には 3 つの交通手段があり、私はこのスイカを持っているので、スイカは他のスイカが好きではなく、大声で叫び、テレビ番組と一緒に遊んでいます。
私はもう子供ではありませんが、テレビの画面に向かって怒鳴り返していることに気づきましたが、特にこの本で取り上げた質問や本のタイトルに関する多くの解説に非常に不満を感じています.赤字の神話 神話が 1 つだけあればいいのですが、神話が何が悪いのかを説明し、それを正しく修正するようなアプローチができるからです。問題は、神話が 1 つだけではないということです。私たちの言説に絡み合っていて、それが私たちの政治家なのか、それとも私たちが日曜の朝に見ている番組をホストしている人たちなのか、彼らは政治家にインタビューするのか、それとも新聞記事やラジオ番組の雑誌記事なのか.私が考えていることは蔓延しているだけであり、本の中で、お金、税金、負債、そして赤字の問題に関しては、非常に多くの人々が根本的に間違っていると主張しています。読者が全体像を見て、私たちの考え方を修正するために、mmt のエコノミストはしばしば、うーん、紅茶はレンズであると言うことがよくあります。処方レンズを着用している場合、レンズが正しく機能することを考えてみてください。レンズは視力を改善するという考えですmmt を使用すると、多くのことをより明確に見ることができます。私たちがやろうとしているのは、今日の通貨システムがどのように機能するかをよりよく理解して、より良いビジョンを人々に提供することです。現代の通貨システムをよりよく理解したら、それがどのように変化するかなどの質問を始めることができます国民の利益のために政策を実行する政府の能力なので、本の副題は現代の貨幣理論と人民経済の誕生です。私が本で述べているこれらの神話のいくつかを少しずつ削り始めているようなものです 私は、さまざまな神話のすべての中で最も有害だと思うものから始めます 本で取り上げる6つの最も有害な神話 私が思う最も有害な神話は、政府は、あなたと私が予算を運用するのと同じ方法で予算を運用する必要があります 政府は基本的に大家族であり、あなたと私が行うのと同じルールで実際に運用する必要があります。入ってくる金額と出ていく金額を監視し、責任を持って財政を管理する必要があることを知っています。これは、ほとんどの場合、支出を抑制しようとすることを意味します稼いだものをすべて使う たぶん、何かを脇に置いて貯蓄する 借り入れを避け、多額の借金を負うことを避けようとします。その理由は、借りることでトラブルに巻き込まれる可能性があることを知っているからです。私たちは現在の収入からそのお金を返済しなければなりませんが、あまりにも多くの借金を抱えて、請求書の期限が迫っていて支払うお金がないという状況に陥りたくはありません。請求書は問題ありません。なぜなら、支払いが滞る可能性があるからです。債務の一部が不履行になる可能性があります。信用格付けが台無しになる可能性があります。破産申請を行うことはよく知られています。と地方自治体。
セサミストリートに戻りたいと思います.本では4つの写真を使ったマトリックスを掲載しています.連邦政府の予算と連邦政府の財政には何か違うものがあることを読者に見てもらいます.これらのことの 1 つが他のものとは異なることを知っているあなたと私の家庭は、予算のバランスを取らなければなりません。州予算に関して今日この国で何が起こっているかに注意を払い、知事の話を聞いています。」この国中の州と市長は文字通りこの政権にホワイトハウスに手を差し伸べ、大統領と議会に援助を送ってくれるよう懇願している。歳入で調達できる金額と借り入れの限られた範囲によって制約されるため、これらの1つは他のものとは異なります連邦政府は他のものとは異なります連邦政府の違いは何ですかなぜ知事は議会に送金を要求する誰もがお金を持っていないからです。連邦政府が小切手を書くことができると誰もが思うようになるのは渋滞であり、その答えは、連邦政府は根本的に異なっているということです。それは、異なる関係にあるということです。私たちの通貨の発行者であり、他のすべての人はドルのユーザーであるため、私たちはあなたが知っている人を分類します 家計 ビジネス 州と地方政府はそれらを1つのカテゴリに分類します 通貨のユーザー 連邦政府は別です わかりました 通貨の発行者ですそして、それは私たちの通貨を発行する唯一の法的権限を持っています。米ドルは米国政府からのものです。
法的には他のどこからも来ることはできません あなたと私はそれを作成することはできません もしできれば私たちは破産することを心配しません 私のビジネスは心配しません そして州がそれを行うことができれば知事はわざわざ議会を待つことはありません彼らは自分たちでお金を作るだけですが、連邦政府だけが私たちの通貨を発行できるわけではないので、独自の通貨を発行できれば、そこから他の多くのことが続くことを認識すると、これは明らかに非常に重要なポイントです。債務の期日が来るのではないかと心配する 支払う必要のある請求書を支払う余裕がない 請求書が、あなたとあなただけが作成できる通貨で支払われることを知っていた場合、私はかなり明確に答えを考えていますいいえ、あなたができなかった特定のことがあったことを心配しますか？それらがドルで価格設定されていて、特許が本質的にドルに著作権を書いている場合、プログラムに資金を提供するための支出を満たすのに十分なお金を考え出すことができないことを心配しますか？連邦政府が問題または通貨であることを認識し、人々はすぐに考えます。政府に無限に支出してもらいたいだけだと思います。答えはノーです。それはできません。制限はありますが、制限は政府にはありません」債券を返済し、債務を支払うためのプログラムを提供する能力 限界は私たちの実体経済にあるので、これが私が本書の第2章でインフレについて話しているところです。物価が制御不能になっている国では、インフレが物価水準の継続的な上昇を望んでいるわけではありません。私たちはインフレ圧力を管理し、インフレが時間の経過とともに進むのを防ぐために非常に懸命に取り組んでいます。最初の章では、政府は家庭のようなものではないことを理解していることを確認します。州政府や地方政府のように制約されていません。通貨を発行しているという事実により、政府は私たちの残りの部分をはるかに超える支出能力を持っていますが、制限と制限があります。私たちの実体経済にあります。
13:19
考えてみれば 私たちの経済は売り上げで成り立っている 資本主義経済がある 資本主義経済の企業は 利益のために生産する 権利を持っている 企業は人を雇うのではなく 善良なサマリア人になりたがっているから 労働者を雇うのは 彼らが彼らを必要としているからである彼らが売って利益を上げることができるアウトプットを生み出すのを助けるために、問題は、私たちの経済がどの時点でどれだけの経済活動をサポートできるかということです。顧客とは、売上が多いことを意味する 収益が高いことを意味する 利益と収益性の源泉があり、存続可能であることを意味する私たちですか？私たちは、私たちの経済が生み出すことができる商品やサービスに対するこれらのさまざまな需要源をすべて持っています.民間部門は家計を持っています.彼らが発注する中間財など」販売を促進し、経済の雇用を支える財 政府が購入し、人々を雇用し、雇用し、経済の支出をいくらか支援し、その後、世界の他の地域も私たちからいくつかの商品やサービスを購入します。需要が経済に入る方法 適切な家計支出 ビジネス支出 政府支出とその他の世界からの支出 問題は、そのすべての支出を合計すると、経済を完全雇用で運営し続けるのに十分な需要を生み出しているかどうかです。働きたい人は誰でも仕事を見つけることができ、経済は健全でバランスが取れており、暴走するインフレがなく、人々に十分な仕事を生み出すのに十分な需要があるが、脱ぎ捨てるほど高くはありません。あなたの経済」需要が企業が追いつくよりも速く動いている場合、その生産能力は低下し、結果はインフレ圧力になるので、インフレを生み出す唯一の方法ではありません インフレは一種の複雑な現象であり、エコノミストはインフレを研究して理解し、インフレをモデル化し、インフレ圧力が発生したときにそれを弱める方法を考えようと懸命に取り組んでいますが、現実は世界中で、非常に長い間、ほとんどの国がインフレ率を適切に上げるのに苦労してきたこと 日本のような場所ではインフレ率が低すぎると信じており、政府がほとんどの国はインフレ率を 2% に設定しており、ほとんどの国は基本的にマクロ経済政策の運営を中央銀行に任せているため、ここ米国議会は連邦準備制度理事会に対し、本質的に経済を操縦するのはあなたの仕事であると述べました。通常の危機時に金融政策を使用し、金利を調整し、ほとんどの中央銀行が目標とする2％のインフレ率を私たちに与えようとする場合を除いて、それについてあまり心配することはありません。失業 これについては、この短い話では説明しきれませんが、すべてこの本で扱われています。
17:00
これは、mmt が現在のマクロ経済政策決定へのアプローチで抱えている大きな問題の 1 つであると思いますが、議会が中央銀行に責任を負わせていることです。連邦準備制度理事会は独立して金融政策を運営する能力を持っています。彼らは金利などを変更する方法を決定し、失業率がどれだけ十分か、またはどれだけ多すぎるかを決定します。インフレと戦うために失業を維持するのに適切な数の人々を見つけると、mmtはそこにいると言います.これを行うためのより良い方法として、完全雇用を実際に使用することができます。働きたい人は誰でも仕事を得ることができ、現在よりもインフレ圧力を緩和するためのより良い方法であり、
それは多くのことです。時間はありませんが、Q&A の時間に、雇用保証または緩衝在庫雇用プログラムまたは公共サービス雇用プログラムがどのように呼ばれるかについて、もう少し詳しく話すことができます。働きますが、それは基本的に、連邦雇用保証プログラムを使用して真の完全雇用を達成すると同時に、インフレ圧力に蓋をするか、インフレ圧力を封じ込めて、経済を最大限の可能性で運営することです.ほとんどの場合、政府の予算を赤字にする必要があります。その理由は、これが少しマクロ的に不安定になるためですが、需要の漏れがあります。彼らの売り上げの一部として捉えないでください 彼らの利益の収益の一部にすることはできません 私から課税されるすべてのドルは、経済で商品やサービスを購入するために使用できないドルであり、私が使用するすべてのドルは購入に使用できます海外からの商品やサービスは、一部の米国の生産者が売上高の一部として獲得できないドルであるため、これらは 3 つの形態の需要の漏出であり、私が米国経済に圧力をかけているわけではありません。」なぜなら、その圧力は漏れ出ており、それらの漏れは、他の種類の支出が発生し、その支出を後押しまたは置き換
えるための余地を作るからです。そのための1つの方法は、財政政策を通じて、政府が減税を使用して失われた支出の一部を置き換えるか、それ自体で支出してその損失支出の一部を直接置き換えることができますが、アイデアは、完全雇用での仕事をサポートするのに十分な総支出があるが、それほど多くの支出がないバランスの取れた経済を生み出すことです.経済の生産能力に過度の負担をかけ、インフレ圧力を生み出しています。私が言っているのは、需要の漏れのため、ほとんどの場合、政府が赤字を通じて雇用を支え、経済の生産活動が経済を支える必要があるため、このように考えると、赤字は2つの数字の差です私たちは、政府が財政赤字を抱えていると言っています。政府は経済により多くのドルを費やし、それから私たちに課税することで控除したと言っています。私たちは政府の財政について、私たち自身の財政について考えるのと同じように考えるように教えられてきたので、人々はそれについて非常に神経質になっています。あまりにも無責任なストップで、あなたはそれを切り捨てて予算のバランスをとることを知っていますが、政府が予算のバランスを取り、経済に100を費やし、政府の予算がバランスが取れた今、政府が課税したり、100を撤去したりするとどうなるかを考えてみてください。しかし、誰かが赤字を抱えていたときに 10 で損をした場合、彼らは 100 を税金に 100 を費やし、90 を取り戻すと、経済のどこかに 10 ドルが残るため、mmt が行う最も重要なポイントの 1 つは、すべての赤字は良いものであるということです。私の例では、政府の赤字は経済の他の部分への財政的貢献にすぎないため、すべての赤字は誰かにとって正しいものです。経済の他の部分への 10 ドルの拠出は、今では政府の黒字であり、これはすべての世界で最高のように聞こえるかもしれません.政府の予算を均衡させるだけでなく、それを黒字にします.1998 年から2001 年の 4 年間、連邦政府の予算は黒字に転じたので、それが何を意味するのか考えてみてください。民主党が、バランスの取れた予算だけでなく黒字を実現した最後の政党であると話しているのを聞くと、財政的に責任があるように聞こえます。来て、税金を削減し、戦争に資金を提供し、突然黒字が消えたので、連邦政府が本当に必要かどうかを考えてみましょう.つまり、政府は経済からより多くのドルを課税し、それを経済に支出していることを意味するので、単純な数字を使用して、政府の税金が 100 ドルで、政府の予算に 90 ドルしか支出していないとしましょう。予算が余っている政府の台帳に+10を書きますが、経済の残りの部分に何が起こったのか、彼らは100を奪い、90を置き換えただけなので、現在の台帳にある経済の非政府部分はマイナス10を示しています私は時々、政府の赤字は送風機のように機能すると言います.彼らは2人の誰かのバランスシートにドルを吹き飛ばし、政府の黒字は人々からフーバーのドルを奪った真空のように機能します.次に政治家が財政赤字について罵倒し、あなたが彼らに投票すれば、予算を均衡させるか、予算を黒字にすることを誓約するだろうと言うのをあなたが次に聞くとき、私は連邦政府について話しているのです。選出された役人はこれをやめて、ちょっと待って、なぜこの男やギャルが残りの経済の黒字を削減することを約束しているのか、政府の予算が必要な時期があるかもしれないことを本当に望んでいるのだろうかと自分に言い聞かせます。経済が過度に力を入れている、または生産能力に過度の負担をかけていると考える場合、政府が支出の一部を縮小するか、増税するか、またはその 2 つを組み合わせることは理にかなっています。そうです」これはインフレ圧力を和らげる方法の 1 つですが、Mt は決して予算の結果自体の黒字と赤字のバランスを見て、政府の予算がどこにあるべきかを事前に知ることはできません。経済の状態は正しいはずです 管理された完全雇用経済 低インフレ圧力はわかります 経済学の目標のようなものです 本には章があります 私はあまり多くを語ろうとはしません 私は去りたいです質疑応答の時間はたっぷりありますが、この本の中で私が入り込んでいる一種の風変わりな神話は、経済学ではクラウディング アウトとして知られている神話です。テレビを見たり、日曜日の朝のトークショーを聞いたり、新聞を読んだり、これは読んだりしません。他のいくつかの神話が得るような見出しを得るが、それはワシントンDCで非常に強力であり、この神話は、政府が赤字を運営するとき、私たちから課税する以上の支出をするため、政府の赤字は危険であると言います。何らかの形で不足分を補い、お金を持っている人から借りることで不足分を補うので、赤字は政府が貯蓄者から借りる必要があり、貸し出すことができるお金は非常に限られているため、政府がさらに借りたいと思うと、政府は去ります。他の人が借りるために利用できるドルが少なくなるのは、主に民間企業の権利であり、政府が赤字が大きくなり、借り入れの必要性が高まり、民間企業が経済に投資するために利用できたであろうドルの供給の一部を食い尽くしますが、政府はそれらのドルを受け取り、その限られたドルの供給をめぐる競争が金利を動かします金利が上昇し、金利が上昇すると、民間企業は借り入れのコストが低下するため、民間企業の借入コストが低下し、民間企業の借入が少なくなると、経済のダイナミクスが低下します。生産性の向上などを促進する経済へのメリット 政府の赤字の結果として、長期的には経済の成長が鈍化し、ダイナミックではない経済になります。アウト神話によると、政府が赤字を出している場合、借りる必要がある場合は借りなければならず、貯蓄が少なくなっている場合は貯蓄が少なくなり、金利が低下した場合は競争のために金利が上昇し、投資が発生した場合は投資が低下します。落ち込むと経済の成長が遅くなり、一連の犯罪が発生し、最初のドミノをタップすると、残りは素直に道を譲ります。現実には、この種の主張またはこの理論のサポート、経験的サポートは堅牢ではないだけでなく、政府が教育や研究開発などに投資していることを想像できるほどの影響を受ける可能性があります。インフラストラクチャの D とその支出は、より高い経済活動を引き起こし、ビジネスを顧客で圧倒し、より高い需要を満たすためにより多くのキャパシティを構築するための投資に興奮するようにビジネスを導きます。より複雑な経済神話でさえ、それらを解きほぐし、議論の欠陥がどこにあるのかを見つけることができると語った.政府が家計と同じように破綻するという赤字を恐れるように言われました.そうしないと、ギリシャのような国のようになってしまうこの1つまたは別の1つをまとめるかもしれません. 2008 年の経済危機とそれに続く世界的な景気後退により、南ヨーロッパの多くの国で債務危機が発生し、多くの国が深刻な問題に陥りました。ご存知のとおり、ここで毎晩のニュースをオンにすると、誰が私に考えさせたかを聞くことができました。ブライアン・ウィリアムズキッチンに立って、怖い音楽が流れてくるのを聞いたことを覚えているだろう 6時5時のニュースを知っているかのように ドン・ジョンとブライアン ブライアン・ウェッブはアメリカの債務危機について言っている そして私はちょっと待って、アメリカでどんな債務危機が起きているのか考えてみましたが、最初はヨーロッパで起こっていたことでした。ギリシャ、イタリア、スペイン、ポルトガル、アイルランドで起こっていたことでした。これらの国は困っていました。米国は、財政赤字の抑制に真剣に取り組まなければ、ギリシャ政府のように終わるだろうと自分たちに言い聞かせています。などなど 本の中で私は let' の違いを指摘している.ギリシャ政府と米国政府は、米国連邦政府がギリシャとスペインのドル問題の発行者であることを認識して会話を開始したことを覚えています。そして通貨同盟は彼らの主権通貨を放棄し、彼らが彼らの主権通貨を放棄したとき、彼らは効果的に外貨を採用しました.これらの国はもはや独自の主権通貨の発行者ではなく、米国の州と同じように通貨の使用者です.クオモ知事、ニューソム知事、および全国の他の知事と同じような立場にあり、単に支出を承認することはできず、支払いが行われることを知っている.通貨を発行することでギリシャがトラブルに巻き込まれた 世界中の国々 ベネズエラ アルゼンチン ロシア このリストは長い歴史を経て、外貨で借り入れた国は債務に関して問題に直面する可能性があり、実際に問題に直面する可能性があり、実際に債務不履行を余儀なくされる可能性があります米国のような国、オーストラリアのような英国、日本のような国は完璧な例です。これらはすべて通貨を発行する政府であり、その財政能力は、主権通貨を放棄し、通貨を借り始めた政府とはまったく異なります。エクアドルやパナマのように米ドルを通貨として完全に採用し、公共サービスの資金を維持するのに十分な米ドルを獲得できる範囲でしか運営できない国を管理することはできないため、それは大きな違いであり、私はすべてについて話しますこの本では、もう 1 つのトピックについて話す必要があります。それから Q&A に進みたいと思いますが、このトピックは私の心に非常に近いものです。なぜなら、この本に取り組み始めるずっと前に、私はいくつかの論文を書いていたからです。私は社会保障を取り上げる本の章を持っています。これは特に重要だと思います。議会が数兆ドルの歳出法案を可決し、赤字が国の債務を増やしていることをすでに聞いているからです。増加し、手絞りが開始され始めているとこれはよくないことであり、現在の経済への影響や、財政支援が時期尚早に撤回された場合、議会が時期尚早に冷静になって経済を支えようとしてこれまでに実施した歳出法案の影響について議員に不安を抱かせてほしくないことは間違いありません。または、十分な対策が講じられていない場合、国としての経済は回復に苦戦することになるでしょう。失業率が 2 桁の領域にとどまる可能性がある期間が何年も続く可能性があります。10% 12% 15% は知っていますが、議会が冷静になることを望んでおらず、赤字が大幅に増加し、債務が増加した今、資格プログラムについて考え始める時が来ているということをすでによく耳にし始めています。社会保障とメディケア、そしてこれはしばしばそれです.コロナウイルスが発生する前は短期的な財政は大丈夫だったが、現在は以前よりもはるかに悪化しているが、中期的および長期的にはいくつかの難しい選択をし始め、社会保障やメディケアをどのように変更して政府がより少ないお金を使うことができるようにするかを考え始めますこの章と私が最初に指摘したのは、アメリカ合衆国の連邦政府です。それはドルの発行者です。発行者の犬は決してお金がなくなることはありません。請求書が来ることは決してありません。支払う余裕がないので、それが社会保障にとって何を意味するかを考えてみてください 社会保障は、退職者だけでなく、多くの場合その扶養家族や障害者にも経済的利益を提供するプログラムであるため、連邦政府は自動化されたプログラムを作成しました受給資格を取得すると、プログラムに参加し、給付の支払いが行われることになっているという意味で、連邦政府ができると信じている人々がいるという意味でシステムがお金を使い果たしているという約束を守る余裕はない 設定された信託基金があり、それは一種の貯金箱または貯蓄口座のように考えられ、誰かがドルを所定の位置にロックして解放するつもりです私たちの高齢化社会として、労働者が労働力を離れて退職するような人口統計があり、彼らが社会保障に進むにつれて、私たちは彼らに支払いをすることになっています人々は私たちができないと言いますそれを行う余裕がある 連邦政府がその義務を永続的に完全に果たすことができるように、システムに十分な現金が支払われていない.デジタルスプレッドシートのエントリをロックして考えることのような信託基金にドルを閉じ込めることについてなぜあなたは心配するのでしょうか.それがなんとなく」将来の義務を果たすことができるのは、十分な金額をスプレッドシートに閉じ込めないと、給付金の小切手を郵送したり、将来退職者にドルを送金したりすることができなくなるということです。これは明らかに非常にばかげていますそのため、連邦政府は、将来のすべての退職者の扶養家族と障害者への約束を守る余裕があります 信託基金と呼ばれるものの有無にかかわらず ドルはロックされていません デジタル権利 彼らは物理的な形でさえ存在しません 私たちはただの数字です私たちがトラストファンドと呼んでいるものに表示されるコンピューターのキーボードに入力したことをご存知でしょう。課題は、限界がどこにあるのかをもう一度考えることです。将来を見据えると、人口動態の変化が起こっていることがわかります。高齢化が進んでいるため、米国の労働力は減少しています。社会の人々は労働力を失い、退職すると退職します。彼らはもはや働いておらず、商品を生産していません。サービスを消費しますが、彼らはまだ商品やサービスを消費しているので、生成されたものの一部を購入したいと考えています。好転し、過度のインフレ圧力を生み出すことなく、その資金を経済に再投資する 望ましくないインフレの加速 これを管理するリスクは、私たちにはありません」約束を守る余裕はない もちろん約束を守る余裕はある10年、20年、30年後に米国経済が十分に生産的であることを確認するために、今日の経済に必要な種類の投資についてのアイデア。労働人口と退職人口はすべて、その需要に追いつくことができる経済にお金を使うことができます.十分な生産能力 完全雇用経済を実現するための十分な供給 誰もが望む産出量を得ることができる インフレ圧力なしで生産できるQA mmm tea のポイントは何ですか mmm tea は、人為的な偽の人工的な制約を、インフレ制約である実際の資源の制約に置き換えることです。ちなみに、本には、天然資源の制約、生態系の制約、ああ経済による現実の制約もあります工場や機械、地球に過剰な圧力をかけたり、物事がうまくいくことを期待したりしてはならないという制約。第 10 章 第 10 章 私はまだ書いていない 10 章を書きました 8 章を書きました 第 7 章は重要な赤字と呼ばれています。私たちの経済に蔓延している正当な赤字への私たちの注意.政治的支持を得るために、MMT について一般の人々に知ってもらう必要があります。それは素晴らしい質問だと思います。 -多面的な努力をすることはできません。私たちは悪い言葉を広めるように、より良い理解を広めるつもりはありません。ジャーナリストが重要な役割を果たしていることを知らずに、公共の言説をよりよく理解することはできません。数字と計算が合算されるかどうか、それが赤字に追加されるかどうかは役に立たないかどうか、ジャーナリストはより良い質問をし始める必要があります。どのようにそれを支払うつもりなのかはわかりませんが、長期ケア施設には医師と看護師がいて、精神保健の専門家がいて、病院のベッドがありますが、生産するための実際のリソースとインフラストラクチャがあります。メディケアの約束をすべて、または何にせよ、授業料無料の大学の権利を守らなければなりません。現場に人を配置する必要があります。そして、私たちはさまざまな面で議論をしなければならないので、私はその質問がとても好きです.そこにたどり着くのは簡単ではありません.私は自分の役割を果たしています.どれだけの借金が多すぎるかは質問の1つであり、どうすればわかりますか.私たちがそこに着いたとき、私は本当に行きませんでしたいずれかの主題に多くの時間を費やすことができますが、借金はいくつかの点で誤解されているだけです。それは腐ったコーリングカードを持っています。私はあなたが知っている本でこれを言います.これが国家債務に関するこの問題です 私たちが国家債務と呼んでいるものは 政府が税金を払い戻すよりも 多くのお金を経済に費やした 過去のすべての事例の 歴史的記録にすぎません現在、米国財務省の政府証券の形で座っています。それが私たちが付けた名前である場合、率直に言って、私たちはそれを国債と呼んでおり、米国の一部と考えることができる財務省証券の山にすぎません。ネット マネー サプライは、マネー サプライの一部と考えることができます。私たちのマネー サプライの一部はインター スペアリングであり、その一部は無利子です。 国庫 利子付きのドルです。利付ドルの場合、私の答えはまあ、それは依存します。彼らは何らかの問題を引き起こしているのでしょうか。もしあなたがそこに利付ドルを持っていて、誰かが利子収入を受け取っている場合、彼らはインフレ圧力を生み出しているのでしょうか。私は債券保有者です。楽しいし、私は債券を持っているので、利息収入が支払われ、その利息収入により、より多くの適切な支出が可能になります。したがって、すべての債券保有者がこの利息収入とそれらのドルのすべてを取得し、それらのドルが外に出て、商品やサービスを追跡し始め、経済'国の生産能力がすでに最大に達している場合、インフレ圧力が発生する可能性があるため、負債がどれだけ多すぎるかという質問への答えは、いつ負債が問題になるかということです。それは、いつ負債がインフレ圧力を引き起こし始めるかということです。あなたがそこに着き、それを管理できるようになったら、資金調達のパンデミックへの対応がどのように行われたかについて詳しく説明してください。おっと、エリートや企業の 4 兆から 5 兆が、赤字でさえ問題であるという嘘を暴露しています。それは良い質問です。質問をした人が知っていることは知っていますが、他のすべての人が私たちを確認するためだけです.私たちが2019年を乗り切ったのはつい最近のことであり、その年のほぼ全体で、非常に混雑した民主党候補の大統領候補がプラットフォームを売り込み、私に投票することを知っていると言っているのを見ました。私は大統領になりたいと思っています。これらは私がやりたいことです。あらゆる場面で、頑固な候補者とより野心的なプラットフォームを持っている候補者は本当にそれを正しく理解しましたが、誰もがそれをどのように理解したかという質問がありました.どうやってお金を払うの？ お金はどこから来るの？ どうやってこのようなものに資金を提供するの？そこで増税し、必要なすべての資金を調達し、時計を今年の 3 月に進めます。コロナ ウイルスのパンデミックが始まり、突然ドルが議会から姿を現します。議会からのお金はどこから来るのか、非常に短い順序で左右に法案を書いて通過させたのですが、デビッドからのこの質問は何だと思いますか？についてです2019年を通して、このゲームのすべての支払いがどのような茶番劇であったかを明らかにするだけで、これらのことを行う余裕がないものにはお金がないというこの質問を聞いて、今では議会が数兆ドルを承認しており、家が通過したことを知っています上院がまだ意欲を示していない別の 3 兆の法案ですが、要点は、4 つか 5 つの 6 兆、さらに多くの兆をすぐに思いつくことができるということです。それについて話しているのがここでの質問であり、答えは「はい」だと思います。これは、議会が十分に緊急の必要性があると判断した場合に、議会がどのように支払いを行うことができるか、また実際にどのように支払いを行うかを示す非常に優れた実世界のリアルタイムの例だと思います。何かに資金を提供していない場合、彼らはそれに資金を提供します。お金がないからではありません 優先度が十分ではないと彼らが判断したからです 資金を提供したくないだけです 赤字のイデオロギーについて話してください マーサが投げ出したものを打ったかもしれないと思います 見てみましょう必要なものは何ですか 連邦所得税が mmt の下にある場合、私が言っていることは、政府が通貨の発行者であり、他の誰かからドルを取得する必要がないということである場合、その必要性は何ですか。支出は税収に依存しない 貯蓄者に依存しない 借り入れの資金調達 赤字の支出それは税金の目的であり、なぜ私たちはそれらを持っているので、これは残りの時間でできることではありませんが、本ではこれを詳細に説明していますが、明らかに1つのことは、政府が単に支出を承認していた場合.私は何も税金を返還しないように法案と税金を一時停止します 私は経済にドルを使うつもりです 私たちはすぐにそのインフレ制約に直面するでしょう 政府が支出するたびに支出は新しいドルを生み出しますドルは新しい通貨の作成です。これらのドルは新しく作成されたデジタルで作成されたドルであり、政府が課税すると、それらのドルは廃止されます。問題はプッシュとプルについてです。どれだけが経済に押し込まれ、どれだけが引き戻されているかです。経済から何かを引き出す必要があり、それは」加速するインフレ圧力を防ぐためにどれだけ引き戻す必要があるか それは先ほどお話しした需要の漏れの関数です 収入を支払う必要がなければ、私たち全員にとって本当にいいことだと思います税金はまったくありませんが、インフレ圧力を管理するのに役立つだけでなく、所得税制度の累進性のためにも役立ちますが、十分ではありませんが、今日のように所得の分配がさらに極端になるのを防ぐことについて議論します[音楽] ええ、気候変動についての質問があります。すべてが入力され、その後、物事は一種の上にスキップします ええ、それはどのように機能することができますリンナが一緒に尋ねたり、D成長を追求するための呼びかけに貢献したり、または気候変動に関連する成長に応じた成長を知っているIIは、私が気候変動に関する本 重要な赤字と呼ばれる章と本の最後の章 これは非常に重要だと思います 気候変動は私の立場である実存的な脅威であるため、気候変動について話すときは対処する必要があると思います経済の生産能力は気候についても話していることを思い出してください」それを処理する能力 mmt の目標は、成長を最大化することではありません。実際には、成長への強迫観念の多くは、借金への執着に結びついていると思います。あなたは借金が問題だと思うなら、私は調子を整えました 借金が問題だと思うなら、人々はしばしば、それに対処する方法は借金から抜け出す方法を成長させることだとよく言います。分子とGDPは分母にあるので、GDPに対する負債の比率です。比率を下げたい場合は、分母を絞り込むだけで、比率が下がるように経済をできるだけ速く成長させることができます。 「借金から抜け出す方法を成長させていますが、借金を何らかの実存的脅威と見なさないのであれば、そうではありません」成長への強迫観念を手放すことができれば、成長を債務危機の解決策とは見なさず、低成長でも D 成長でも完全に機能し、健全で住みやすく繁栄している経済と惑星と社会 とにかく、この本ではどのような比喩が興味深い質問であるかについてより詳細に扱われています。その人の名前はわかりませんが、どのような比喩が現代のお金と何を理解するのに役立ちますか.古い比喩は捨てる必要があるので、コミュニケーションが重要だと思います 私は本当にそう思います フレーミングは非常に重要だと思います 私たち全員に与えられた多くの損害は、フレーミングによる巧妙な言い回しによって達成されていると思います借金はあなたが知っているだろうあなたの子供や孫から盗むことは大丈夫 中国からの借用は大丈夫 中国からの借り物 これらはあなたが外の世界を知っているか、私たちの子供や孫を傷つけることへの恐れなどについての私たちの不安を非常に迅速に利用する小さなフレーズですので、私は試してみます新しい異なるフレーミングの新しいメタファーを紹介する本の中で、私のお気に入りの 1 つは、目標は経済に予算のバランスを強制することではなく、予算を使用して経済のバランスをとることであることを知っていると言おうとしていると思います。あなたが知っているスケールを示す本の図は、正義のスケールのようなものです。スケールと政府支出は税金よりも重いか、政府が赤字を抱えています。中国から借りてきた隠喩であるというフレーミング これらは、あなたが外の世界を知っていることや、子供や孫を傷つけることへの恐れなどについての私たちの不安を非常に迅速に利用する小さなフレーズです。私のお気に入りの新しい比喩の 1 つは、目標は、経済に予算のバランスをとらせることではなく、予算を使用して経済のバランスを取ることであることを知っていることを伝えようとしていると思います。あなたが知っているスケールは、正義のスケールのようなもので、スケールと政府支出は税金よりも重いか、政府が赤字を抱えています。中国から借りてきた隠喩であるというフレーミング これらは、あなたが外の世界を知っていることや、子供や孫を傷つけることへの恐れなどについての私たちの不安を非常に迅速に利用する小さなフレーズです。私のお気に入りの新しい比喩の 1 つは、目標は、経済に予算のバランスをとらせることではなく、予算を使用して経済のバランスを取ることであることを知っていることを伝えようとしていると思います。あなたが知っているスケールは、正義のスケールのようなもので、スケールと政府支出は税金よりも重いか、政府が赤字を抱えています。
しかし、あなたの経済はバランスが取れており、完全雇用があり、物価が安定しているので、これをバランスの取れた予算と呼びたいと思います。なぜなら、それは私たちが目指すべきバランスの取れた経済という経済的成果をもたらすからです。私はいつもこれで遊んでいます。私はそれが本当に重要であり、政府財政についての議論を続けるための新しい、より建設的な方法を政治家に与えるのを助けることを助けることは確信が持てないそれから飛び上がった うーん、質問が何だったのかわかりません。申し訳ありませんが、FRBがインフレの尺度として失業率を使用している場合、保証された生活は大丈夫ではありません。生活に耐えうる収入が保証されているため、インフレ率が健全な割合で維持されているため、FRB は労働市場に一定の余裕を維持しています。労働市場が逼迫しすぎたときに人々が仕事を見つけるのが簡単になりすぎたときの考え方 労働者はより高い交渉力を持っている 賃金の引き上げについて交渉できる利益率と賃金の上昇が価格を押し上げ、インフレになり、賃金価格のスパイラルが発生することさえあります.
交渉が激化して問題は、インフレが加速していないことをどうにかして回避できるかということです。生活に耐えうる収入が保証されているので、回避できるでしょうか。現在、国内の事実上すべての人に現金支払いを受け取ることができ、経済の緩慢な状況を考えると、そこに余地があります。」どれだけ、誰のために、どのような状況下で行われるかについてもっと知る必要がありますが、失業に対処するためのMMTの好ましい方法は、より的を絞った正しい方法であるため、ドルがすべての人に分配されるわけではありません。ターゲットを絞ったファッションではなく、失業者に直接支出を向け、仕事を探しているが雇用から締め出され、彼らを雇用して社会的に役立つことをする人々の手にドルを与えることは、コミュニティを強化するものです。私は、特に職場にいることができない、またはすべきではない人々のための何らかの形のベーシックインカム支援に反対している人は誰もいないとは思いません。ホームケアの仕事もあるので、それでいいと思います」10 時です。最後にもう 1 つ質問します。最後の質問です。これは素晴らしい質問です。GDP は急上昇しました。GDP を測定する良い方法です。GDP は経済の有用な尺度です標準 それはいくつかの点で有用ですが、それには間違いなく欠点があります 代替指標を開発したオーストラリアのエコノミストがいて、彼はそれを本物の進捗指標と呼んでいます 彼の名前はフィル・フィル・ロン 私がそれを正しく理解していることを願っています フィリップ・ロン I彼の真の進歩指標は、GDPにはこれらすべての欠点があるように見えますが、経済生産や経済活動のこの尺度では捉えられない多くのコストと多くの利益があるため、それを改善し、そこに何かを得ることができます私たちの本当の経済的幸福をよりよく理解してください。これはほんの一例であり、これが主流ですが、多くのエコノミストが幸福の代替手段に取り組んでいると思います。この 1 時間にわたる会話に参加していただき、ありがとうございます。今夜あなたの質問に答えられなかった場合は、おそらく他のフォーラムがあり、そこに飛び込んで質問に答えてもらうことができます.このイベントを楽しんでいただけたなら、私たちのウェブサイトで同様のイベントを多数見つけることができます タウンホール シアトル org また、タウンホール シアトルへの寄付をご検討いただければ幸いです。皆様のご支援により、このようなイベントを提供し続けることができます。あなたなら1つ本のコピーを作成して購入することに興味があります 赤字神話 現代の通貨理論と人民経済の誕生 エリオットベイブックカンパニーの友人を通じて購入したこのライブストリームページのリンクを使用してください今夜ここにいます。素晴らしい夜をお過ごしください。
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by texting Town Hall the words Town Hall to the number 4 4 3 2 1 relatedly if
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you're interested in supporting local independent bookstores by purchasing a copy say of dr. Kelton's book and let's
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be honest if we were gathered together tonight in the Great Hall nearly everyone would be picking up their copy please use the link on this livestream
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page to purchase through la baie book company to buy the book and we do buy at local all right then
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dr. stephanie kelton is a professor of economics and public policy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook
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and Bloomberg contributing column columnist she's been called a prophetic economist and a rock star of progressive
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economics by the way I'm sure professor kellton doesn't feel at all weird when people say that in her introductions
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formally that share of the economics department at the University so what's up at any rate formally the chair of the
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economics department at the University of Missouri Kansas City she was a research scholar at the university's center for full employment and price
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stability as well as serving at the levy economics Institute in upstate New York
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Stephanie is the founder of the blog new economic perspectives and a member of the top wonks network of the nation's
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best thinkers in 2016 Politico recognized her as one of the 50 people across the country most influencing the
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political debate Kelton was the chief economist on the US Senate Budget Committee it probably goes without saying staffing minority and an advisor
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to the Bernie 2016 presidential campaign she's a regular commentator on national radio and television and her op DED's
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have appeared in the New York Times The Washington Post a Los Angeles Times in blue bird mission to her many academic
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articles and publications she is the author of the deficit myth modern monetary theory and the birth of the
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peoples economy which of course is the subject of tonight's talk please join me in welcoming stephanie kelton thank you
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very much and thank you to the people who are joined here on this site and as
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I understand it people who are also watching on YouTube and other streaming
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services so I'm very very delighted to have so many of you interested in the
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book and in the topic and I noticed in the chat bar just a couple of seconds ago somebody said I can't wait to find
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out what mmt is so I hope that I'm gonna be able to do a lot of that here with you for the next I
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don't know 20 or 30 minutes before we open it up to questions the book is in
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an effort to lay out in much more thoroughgoing fashion the answer to this
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question about how how should I think about mmt but let me start by saying that I am a macro economist and that is
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distinct from being a micro economist so we look at the whole economy the big functioning of the macro economy and mmt
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is an approach a framework for approaching the questions that are
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related to the study of macroeconomics so it is a macroeconomic framework a lot of you probably know that in economics
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there are lots of different schools of thought and mmt has emerged I think it's
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safe to say as a new paradigm in economics or a new kind of approach or
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school of thought so let me talk a little bit about the book and why I
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wanted to write this book if you happen to already have a copy then you might
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have gotten as far as chapter 1 where I tell a little story and I lead with the
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old television show Sesame Street ok everybody is familiar with Sesame Street
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I grew up watching it I say in the book that I would sit with my sister and we
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would watch that segment of Sesame Street that they often did where you
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know they have a 2 by 2 matrix and 4 images would start appearing on the screen and they were trying to teach
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young people to categorize things right to take things that are similar and push
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them to one side and then find the the item that's different or dissimilar from the others and and identify that one and
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the game was called you know one of these things is not like the other and the song would go and so you know on the
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screen would appear a truck and scooter and a skateboard and a watermelon right
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and so you say oh I've got three modes of transportation and and I have this piece of so the watermelon that watermelons not
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like the other and you holler it out and play along with the television program
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and so basically I never grew up is sort of what's happening here and I just find
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myself yelling back at my television screen even though I'm no longer a child
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you know but I get very frustrated at a lot of the commentary especially around
4:53
questions that I take up in this book and so the title of the book the deficit
4:58
myth it would be nice if there was just one myth because we could just sort of approach that myth explain what's wrong
5:05
and then fix it right the problem is there isn't just one myth there is this web of interrelated myths that get all
5:14
tangled up in our discourse and whether it's our politicians or the people who
5:20
host maybe the shows that we watch on Sunday morning and they interview the politicians or it's the newspaper
5:27
articles or the magazine articles the radio programs it's just pervasive the
5:34
the things that I think and I argue in the book that so many people are just getting fundamentally wrong when it
5:41
comes to questions of money and taxes and debt and yes the deficits and so the
5:48
book is an attempt to sort of walk readers through the big picture and to
5:55
kind of correct our thinking and sometimes mmt economists will often say
6:01
mmm tea is a lens okay well think about what a lens does right if you wear prescription lenses
6:07
then the idea is that the lens improves your vision right it helps you see more clearly and with mmt a lot of what we're
6:16
trying to do is just provide people with better vision right with a better
6:21
picture of how the monetary system that we have today works and once we get a
6:28
better understanding of our modern monetary system we can begin to ask
6:33
questions like well how does that change the government's ability to run policy
6:41
in the interest of the people so the subtitle to the book is modern monetary theory and the birth of the people's
6:47
economy so let's just sort of start chipping away at some of these myths I
6:54
say in the book I start with what I think is the most pernicious of all of
7:00
the different myths I take up six in the book the most pernicious myth I think is
7:05
the myth that the government should run its budget the way that you and I
7:11
operate our budgets the government is basically a big household and it should
7:16
really play by the same rules that you and I play by okay we know that we have
7:22
to balance the checkbook every month we know that we're supposed to watch the amount of money that comes in and the
7:28
amount of money that goes out and we're supposed to manage our finances responsibly and that mostly means trying
7:35
to keep spending in check where we don't spend everything that we make maybe we put something aside and we save we try
7:43
to avoid borrowing and taking on too much debt and the reason is that we know
7:48
that borrowing can get us into trouble we start borrowing to finance spending
7:54
beyond what we can afford out of our current income we have to pay that money back and you know we don't want to sock
8:03
ourselves in with so much debt that we get into a situation where we have bills coming due and we don't have the money
8:09
to pay the bills okay because we could end up missing payments defaulting on
8:14
some of our debt ruin our credit rating end up you know filing for bankruptcy
8:20
it can happen it happens to people all the time happens to businesses okay can
8:25
happen to corporations it can happen to state and local governments so we're beginning now I want to circle
8:32
back to Sesame Street and in the book I put the matrix up with the four pictures
8:38
and I ask readers to see that there's something different about the federal
8:44
government's budget the federal government's finances so if you think of you know one of these things is not like
8:51
the other you and I households you have to balance our budgets we have
8:57
to live within our means we can't take on too much debt households businesses
9:02
and state and local governments if you are you know paying attention to what's
9:09
going on in the country today in terms of state budgets and you're listening to governor's and mayors across this
9:14
country beg literally reaching out to this administration to the White House
9:21
imploring the president to and Congress to send aid because state budgets are
9:28
getting hammered and states are not like the federal government they have to live
9:33
you know within their means they are constrained by the amount of money that they can raise in revenue and some
9:41
limited scope for borrowing so one of these things is not like the other the
9:46
federal government is not like the others what makes the federal government different why are governors asking
9:52
Congress to send money because they don't have it if everybody's in a jam
9:58
what makes anybody think the federal government can write the check and the answer is that the federal government is
10:04
fundamentally different that it stands in a different relationship visa be the currency the dollar that the federal
10:11
government of the United States of America is the issuer of our currency and everybody else is a user of the
10:19
dollar so we categorize those you know for we compartmentalize households
10:26
businesses state and local government put them in one category users of the currency the federal government is
10:33
separate okay it's the issuer of the currency and it has the sole legal
10:38
authority to issue our currency the US dollar the US dollar comes from the US
10:44
government and it can't legally come from anywhere else you and I can't create it if we could we wouldn't worry
10:50
about going broke my businesses wouldn't worry and if states could do it governors wouldn't bother waiting around
10:55
for Congress they would just create the money themselves but they can't only the
11:00
federal government can issue our currency so that's obviously a big big
11:07
important point once you recognize that a lot of other things follow from there if you could
11:13
issue your own currency would you ever worry that you were going to have debts coming due bills that needed to be paid
11:20
that you couldn't afford to pay if the bills were you know the payment was due
11:26
in the currency that you and only you could create I think pretty clearly the answer is no would you worry that there
11:32
were certain things you couldn't afford if they were priced in dollars and you have the patent essentially write the
11:40
copyright on the dollar would you worry about not being able to come up with enough money to meet expenditures to
11:47
fund programs I think the answer should clearly be no now once we recognize the
11:53
federal government is the issue or the currency people then immediately think oh my god you see you just want the
11:59
government to to spend to infinity right and the answer is no you can't do that right it isn't that there are no limits
12:06
there are limits but the limits are not in the government's ability to afford
12:11
programs to make payments to service bonds and pay debt the limits are in our
12:19
real economy and so this is where I go with chapter 2 in the book where we talk
12:24
about inflation because well what none of us wants is to live in a country
12:30
where prices are spiraling out of control ok nobody would want that inflation is a continuous increase in
12:37
the price level and we work very hard to manage inflationary pressure and avoid
12:44
allowing inflation to over time it Road the value of the currency okay so in the
12:50
first chapter we make sure that we understand government is not like a household it is not constrained like
12:56
state and local governments it has spending capacity well beyond the rest
13:02
of us by virtue of the fact that it issues the currency but there are limits and the limits are in our real economy
13:09
so if you think about it our economy runs on sales we have a capitalist
13:15
economy businesses in a capitalist economy produce for profit right they don't businesses don't hire people
13:22
because they want to be good Samaritans they hire workers because they need them
13:27
in order to help them produce the output that they can sell and make a profit on okay so the question is how much
13:36
economic activity can our economy support at any one point in time
13:41
businesses would love to be swamped with customers because when a business is swamped with customers means they have
13:48
lots of sales means their revenues are high means they have a source of profits and profitability and they are viable
13:54
customers start disappearing sales fall revenues decline profits fall businesses
14:00
might not survive you got to be profitable to stay in business so the
14:06
question is we've got all of these different sources of demand for goods
14:11
and services that our economy can produce the private sector has households you and I right we go by
14:19
consumer goods and that creates demand for firms products they like that businesses buy from each other right
14:26
they buy intermediate goods they place orders and so forth that's good that
14:32
drives sales and supports jobs in the economy government makes purchases and
14:38
hires and employs people and that provides some support for spending in
14:44
the economy and then the rest of the world buys some goods and services from us as well so those are the four ways
14:51
that demand enters the economy right household spending business spending
14:56
government spending and spending from the rest of the world the question is at
15:01
any point in time when you add up all of that spending is it generating enough
15:07
demand to keep the economy running at full employment where everybody who
15:12
wants to work can find a job and the economy is healthy and balanced in a way
15:19
that you don't have runaway inflation that the demand is high enough to create
15:24
enough jobs for people but not so high that you're out stripping your economy's
15:30
productive capacity if demand is running faster than firms can keep up with
15:36
then the result is going to be inflationary pressure so it's not the only way that you can generate inflation
15:42
okay inflation is kind of a complicated phenomenon and economists work very hard
15:47
to try to study and understand inflation and model inflation and think about ways
15:53
to attenuate inflationary pressures when they arise but you know the reality is
15:58
that across the globe for a very long period of time most countries have been
16:04
struggling to get their inflation rates up right that inflation has not been a problem except to the extent that in
16:12
places like Japan they believe that inflation is far far too low and governments have been actively trying to
16:18
stoke inflation most countries target inflation at 2% and most countries put
16:24
the central bank in charge of basically running macroeconomic policy so here in
16:30
the US Congress told the Federal Reserve essentially it's your job you steer the economy ok we're not going to worry too
16:38
much about it except in times of crisis in normal times you use monetary policy
16:44
and you adjust interest rates and you try to give us the 2% inflation rate
16:50
that most central banks are targeting and give us the right amount of unemployment this is more than I can go
16:57
into in this short talk but it's all dealt with in the book and it's one of
17:02
the I think big problems that mmt has with a current approach to macroeconomic
17:09
policy making is that Congress has put responsibilities on the central bank ok
17:16
these are not elected officials we didn't vote for the people who are at the Federal Reserve its Federal Reserve
17:22
has the ability to run monetary policy independently okay they get to decide
17:28
how to change interest rates and so forth and they get to decide how much
17:34
unemployment is enough or how much is too much and so what the Fed does is basically
17:41
try to find the right number of people to keep unemployed in order to fight
17:47
inflation and mmt says there's a better way to do this we could actually use full employment genuine
17:54
full employment where everybody who wants to work can have a job and it
18:00
would be a better price anchor a better way to mitigate inflationary pressures than what we currently do today and
18:06
that's a lot to go through and I don't have time but maybe in the Q&A period we
18:11
can talk a little bit more about the mechanics of how the job guarantee or buffer stock Employment Program or
18:19
public service employment program whatever we want to call it how that would work but that's basically the idea
18:25
is to use a federal job guarantee program to achieve genuine full
18:30
employment while at the same time putting a lid on inflationary pressures
18:36
or containing inflationary pressures so running our economy at its full potential the thing is it's almost
18:46
always going to require the government's budget to be in deficit almost always
18:51
and the reason is this gets a little bit macro wonky but there are demand
18:57
leakages you know every dollar that I save and don't spend is a dollar that some business can't capture as part of
19:04
their sales can't become part of their revenue in their profits every dollar that's taxed away from me is a dollar
19:10
that I can't use to buy goods and services in the economy and every dollar that I use buying goods and services
19:16
from abroad is a dollar that some US producer can't capture as part of their
19:22
sales so those are three forms of demand leakages where I'm not putting pressure
19:28
on the US economy's productive capacity because that pressure is leaking away
19:34
okay and those leakages make room for other kinds of spending to come into
19:40
place and to backstop or replace that spending and one way to do that is
19:45
through fiscal policy the government can use tax cuts to try to replace some of the lost spending or it can spend on its
19:53
own and directly replace some of that loss spending but the idea is to produce
19:58
a balanced economy where you have enough total spending to support jobs at full employment but
20:06
not so much spending that you're putting too much strain on the productive capacity of the economy and generating
20:13
inflationary pressures and what I'm saying is because of the demand leakages there is almost always a need for the
20:21
government through deficits to support jobs and productive activity in the
20:28
economy to support the economy so if so think about it this way the deficit is
20:34
the difference between two numbers right when we say the government has run a
20:39
fiscal deficit we are saying that the government has spent more dollars into
20:44
the economy then it has subtracted away by taxing us okay that's the
20:50
government's deficit spend a hundred in tax ninety back out we label that a
20:55
fiscal deficit and people have very nervous about that because we've been taught to think about the government's
21:01
finances the way that we think of our own personal finances so we saying wait you're spending more than you're taking
21:07
and that's so irresponsible stop that you know cut it out and balance your budget but think about what happens if
21:14
the government balances its budget so it spends a hundred in to the economy and it taxes or removes a hundred back out
21:23
well now the government's budget is balanced but somebody lost out on ten right when they were running a deficit
21:30
they put a hundred in spend a hundred in tax ninety back out that leaves ten
21:36
dollars somewhere in the economy so one of the most important points that mmt
21:41
makes is that every deficit is good for someone right every deficit is good for
21:47
someone because the government's deficit is nothing more than a financial contribution to some other part of the
21:54
economy in my example it's a ten dollar contribution to some other part of the economy now a government surplus which
22:03
might sound like the best of all worlds right not only do you balance the government's budget but you put it into
22:10
surplus and we did this during Bill Clinton's administration from 1998 to
22:15
2001 for four years the federal government's budget moved into surplus so think about
22:22
what that means right it sounds fiscally responsible you hear Democrats talk
22:27
about how they were the last party to deliver not just balanced budgets but surpluses and then it was that rotten
22:33
George Bush who came along and cut taxes and you know funded Wars and all of a
22:39
sudden the surpluses disappeared okay so let's think about whether we really want the federal government's budget in
22:46
surplus so what does that mean well it means the government is taxing more dollars out of the economy then it
22:53
spends back into the economy so using simple numbers let's say the government
22:58
tax is $100 out and it only spends $90 back in the government's budget is in
23:04
surplus we'll write a +10 on the government's ledger but what happened to the rest of the economy they took a
23:12
hundred away and only replaced ninety so the non-government part of the economy
23:17
now on its ledger shows a minus ten so government deficits I sometimes say work
23:24
like a blower you know they blow dollars on two somebodies balance sheet and a
23:30
government surplus works like a vacuum you had Hoover's dollars off of people's
23:35
balance sheets so the next time you hear a politician railing about fiscal
23:40
deficits and saying that if you vote for them they will pledge to balance the budget or put the budget in surplus I'm
23:47
talking about the federal government next time you hear a federal elected officials do this stop and say to
23:53
yourself wait a minute why is this guy or gal pledging to reduce the surpluses of the rest of the economy right is that
24:01
do we really want that now there may be times that the government's budget ought
24:07
to be in surplus and it would make sense if you think that the economy is getting
24:13
too much strength or putting too much strain on the productive capacity then it makes sense for the government to
24:19
scale back some of its own spending or increase taxes or a combination of the
24:24
two right that's one way to temper inflationary pressures but Mt
24:30
would never look at the budget outcome itself surplus/deficit balance and say
24:36
we should be targeting that right you don't know in advance where the government's budget ought to be you just
24:42
know in advance what the state of the economy ought to be right full
24:48
employment economy with managed you know low inflationary pressures okay so
24:53
that's sort of the goal there in in economics there's a chapter in the book
24:59
I'm not going to try to talk too much I want to leave lots of time for Q&A but the wonky a sort of myth that I get into
25:06
in the book is the myth that's known in economics as crowding out and this one
25:13
is you know you don't hear this one talked about so much if you turn on the
25:19
TV or listen to the Sunday morning talk shows read the newspaper this one doesn't get the sort of headlines that
25:25
some of the other myths get but it's very very powerful in Washington DC and
25:33
this myth says that government deficits are dangerous because when the
25:40
government runs a deficit spends more than it taxes away from us it has to
25:46
make up for the shortfall somehow and it makes up for the shortfall by borrowing from somebody who has money so the
25:54
deficit requires the government to borrow from savers and there's only so much money available to be loaned out
26:00
and so when the government wants to borrow more it leaves fewer dollars available to others to
26:07
borrow it's primarily private companies right and if the government's deficit
26:13
gets bigger then its borrowing needs increase then it eats up part of the
26:18
supply of dollars that would have been available to private businesses to invest in our economy but the government
26:25
took those dollars and the competition for that finite supply of dollars drives
26:31
interest rates up and as interest rates get driven higher private firms will
26:37
borrow less because interest is the cost of borrowing and as private businesses borrow less we get a less dynamic
26:44
economy was private businesses are just presumed to invest more efficiently and
26:51
have you know greater long-term benefits for the economy driving productivity growth and so forth
26:57
and so you get a slower growing less dynamic economy in the long run as a
27:03
result of government deficits so in this chapter I just basically say you know
27:09
this is like a stack of dominoes that the crowding out myth tells you if the
27:15
government runs a deficit then it has to borrow if it has to borrow then there are fewer savings if there are fewer
27:21
savings then the interest rate goes up because of competition if the interest rate goes out then investment goes down
27:27
if investment goes down you get a slower growing economy so you get that whole string of offends and once you tap the
27:33
first domino the rest just obediently give way and the reality is that the the
27:41
support the empirical support for this kind of these assertions or this theory
27:49
is just not robust you can get crowding in effects you could imagine the
27:54
government making investments in things like education and R&D in infrastructure
27:59
and having that spending give rise to higher economic activity that then
28:06
swamps businesses with customers that then leads businesses to get excited about investing to build more capacity
28:12
to satisfy higher demand so the point is that a lot of the myths that we're told
28:19
even the more complicated economic myths we can we can unpick them and find out
28:27
where the flaws in the arguments are so so much of what we're told to fear about deficits that governments are going to
28:34
go broke just like a household would or I may wrap up on on this one or one
28:40
other one that that will end up like a country like Greece ok many of you probably remember after the financial
28:46
crisis in 2008 and the global economic recession that followed that there were
28:54
there were debt crises across much of southern Europe that many countries got into deep
29:00
trouble and you know I could turn on the nightly news here and I could hear who
29:07
let me think Brian Williams right I would I could remember standing in the kitchen and hearing the the scary music
29:14
come on like it's you know six o'clock five o'clock news whatever I goes Don John and Brian Brian Webb says the debt
29:21
crisis in America and I'm thinking wait a minute what debt crisis do we have in America but the ledian was what was
29:29
happening in Europe it was what was happening in Greece and Italy and Spain and Portugal and Ireland and these
29:35
countries were in trouble and here we were sitting in the United States looking across and convincing ourselves
29:43
that if we didn't get serious about reining in deficits that we were gonna
29:49
end up just like the Greek government you know that we were gonna have debt payments do that we were not going to be
29:55
able to make and so forth and so on so in the book I point out the difference between let's say the Greek government
30:03
and the US government and remember we started off the conversation recognizing
30:08
that the federal government the United States of America is the issuer of the dollar problem in Greece and Spain in
30:14
Italy and others is that these countries when they joined the economic and
30:20
monetary union gave up their sovereign currencies and when they gave up their sovereign currencies they adopted a
30:27
effectively a foreign currency hey these countries are no longer issuers of their own sovereign currency they are currency
30:35
users much like a state in the United States so these countries were in the
30:40
same sort of position that Governor Cuomo and governor Newsom and other governors around the country are in in
30:46
that they cannot simply authorize expenditures and know that the payments
30:53
will be made they don't issue the currency so Greece got into trouble countries around the world Venezuela
30:59
Argentina Russia the list is long over a
31:05
historical period countries that borrow in foreign currencies can and do
31:10
encounter problems respect to debt they can miss payments they can be forced into default but a
31:16
country like the US like Australia like the UK like Japan is a perfect example
31:24
these are all currency issuing governments and their fiscal capacity is
31:29
just very different from governments that give up sovereign currencies and
31:34
start borrowing in currencies that they don't control countries that like
31:40
Ecuador or Panama that just outright adopt the US dollar as their currency and they can only operate to the extent
31:47
that they can earn enough US dollars to keep the public services financed so it
31:54
is a big difference and I talk about all of that in the book I need to talk about
32:00
one more topic and then I would like to go open it up to Q&A but this topic is
32:06
really close to my heart because well before I started working on the book I wrote a number of papers on social
32:13
security and so I have a chapter in the book where I take up Social Security and
32:18
I think it's really important especially now because you you know we are already
32:25
hearing now with Congress passing multi trillion dollar spending bills and the
32:32
deficit is increasing the national debt is increasing and the hand wringing is
32:37
beginning to start and that's not good we definitely do not want lawmakers
32:42
getting anxious about the impacts of the current economic fallout and the
32:50
spending bills that they've put in place so far to try to support the economy giving them cold feet prematurely
32:56
because if fiscal support is withdrawn prematurely or if not enough is done
33:03
then we as a nation are going to end up with an economy that is struggling to
33:11
recover we could be looking at a period of many many years where the
33:16
unemployment rate could be stuck in double digit territory 10% 12% 15% who
33:22
knows but we don't want Congress getting cold feet and we're already beginning to hear
33:28
things like well now that we've increased the deficits so much and now
33:33
that the debt has increased it's time to start thinking about entitlement programs Social Security and Medicare
33:40
and this is often it's often argued that these are the real drivers of our
33:46
long-term debt crisis that you know our short-term finances were okay before
33:52
coronavirus came now they're much worse than they were but in the medium and
33:59
longer term we're gonna have to start making some tough choices and figuring
34:04
out how we're going to change Social Security or change Medicare so that the
34:10
government can spend less money because the argument is that these programs are unaffordable and you know again if you
34:18
just go back to the first chapter and the first point I made federal government of the United States of
34:23
America it's the issuer of the dollar the issuer dog can never run out of money it can never have bills coming due
34:30
that it can't afford to pay so think about what that means for Social
34:35
Security okay Social Security is a program that provides financial benefits to not just
34:43
retirees but to their dependents in many cases and to the disabled so the federal
34:50
government has created a program that is an automatic entitlement program in the
34:56
sense that once you qualify for the benefits you're in the program and the benefit payments are supposed to be made
35:02
to you there are people who believe that the federal government can't afford to
35:07
keep its promises that the system is running out of money there are trust funds that are set up think of that as a
35:14
sort of piggy bank or a savings account where someone has stuffed dollars in locked them into place with the
35:21
intention of releasing them in future years to pay retirees as our aging
35:27
society the demographics are such that workers are moving out of the workforce and into retirement and as they go on to
35:35
Social Security we're supposed to make that payments to them people say we can't afford to do it there's not enough cash
35:41
being paid into the system to allow the federal government to meet its obligations in full in perpetuity to
35:50
which I say it why would you worry about trapping dollars in a trust fund like
35:56
locking up digital spreadsheet entries and thinking that somehow that's what
36:01
makes you able to meet future obligations that if we don't tie up enough dollars trap them on a
36:07
spreadsheet somewhere then we won't be able to mail benefit checks or send the dollars out in the future to retirees
36:14
that's obviously very silly so the federal government can afford to keep its promise to every future retiree
36:20
their dependents and the disabled with or without this thing called a trust
36:26
fund with her without dollars locked up digital right they don't even exist in
36:31
physical form we're just numbers you know typed into a computer keyboard that show up in this thing we call the trust
36:37
fund the challenge is think again about where the limits are it's our economy's
36:43
real productive capacity it's our real resources inflation is the thing to worry about so if we're looking into the
36:51
future and we see the demographic changes taking place we say the US workforce is shrinking
36:58
because we're an aging Society people are moving out of the workforce and into retirement once they retire they're no
37:05
longer working and producing goods and services but they still consume goods and services so they want to buy some of
37:11
what's produced the question then becomes if we keep our promises if the
37:17
government keeps its promise to all future beneficiaries sends those checks
37:22
out will people who receive those benefit payments be able to turn around
37:29
and spend that money back into the economy without creating undue
37:35
inflationary pressure unwanted accelerating inflation that's the risk
37:40
to manage it's not we won't be able to afford to keep promises of course we can afford to keep promises the question is
37:47
and this is what politicians really should be wrestling if they want to have a fight have a good
37:52
fight have a meaningful fight right figure out who's got the best ideas for
37:58
the kinds of investments that we need to make in our economy today to make sure than in 10 20 30 years the US economy is
38:07
productive enough that when those benefit payments go out we are able to
38:13
produce enough stuff right the goods and services so that the working population
38:18
and the retired population can all spend money into an economy where it's able to
38:26
keep up with that demand where there's enough productive capacity enough supply so that we can have a full employment
38:32
economy everybody gets the output that they want it can be produced without inflationary pressure so you know if I
38:40
had to say in a nutshell and I want to wind up so we can do QA what is the
38:46
point of mmm tea mmm tea is about replacing artificial artificial phony
38:53
constraints with a real resource constraint which is an inflation
38:59
constraint and by the way and it's also in the book a real a natural resource
39:05
constraint right an ecological constraint by Oh economic constraint
39:10
that we can't place excessive pressures on our factories and machines and on our
39:15
planet and expect things to work out well for us so it's about getting away
39:21
from an obsession with the stuff that doesn't matter and turning our attention to the things that do matter and so
39:28
chapter 10 chapter 10 I didn't write yet ten chapters I wrote eight chapter 7 is called the deficits that matter and
39:35
that's where I really hope that we can start turning more of our attention to
39:40
the the legitimate deficits that are pervasive in our economy so with that I
39:47
think I will stop and look to take some of the questions that you all have
39:53
submitted hmm let me give a quick look here
40:04
well Jeff Jeff asks how can the American
40:10
public be educated about mmt to build political support I think that's a great
40:17
question Jeff and I'm not an organizer but I know a lot of good ones and I know
40:23
how important that work is you know I think that it has to be a multi-faceted
40:31
effort it can't be we're not going to spread a better understanding as a
40:38
spread bad word we're not gonna achieve a better understanding better public
40:43
discourse without you know journalists playing an important role
40:48
they're the ones who sit down with politicians and if the first question out of their mouth is how are you going
40:53
to pay for it and then haranguing them over the numbers and whether the math adds up and whether it will add to the
40:59
deficit that's not helpful we need journalists to start asking better questions so if somebody says you
41:05
know I want Medicare for all don't say how are you gonna pay for it say well are you sure we have the doctors and
41:12
nurses the long-term care facilities where we have mental health professionals where we have the hospital
41:18
beds but we have the infrastructure the real resources to produce and to make
41:24
good on that promise of Medicare for all or whatever the case may be tuition free college right you have to have people on
41:31
the ground you have to have I think people like me you know we have to teach
41:37
better and we have to teach each other and we have to have discourse on a whole bunch of different fronts so I like that
41:44
question a lot it's just it's not easy to get there I'm doing my part how much
41:53
debt is too much is one of the questions and how do we know when we get there so
41:58
I didn't really get to I didn't get to spend a lot of time on any one subject
42:03
but on the debt that the debt is is just a misnomer in some respects it's got a
42:11
rotten calling card and I say this in the book you know because people think well
42:17
there's too much debt and this is what this question is about the national debt this thing we call the national debt is
42:23
nothing more than a historic record of all the past instances where the
42:30
government spent more money more dollars into the economy than it taxed back out
42:35
and those dollars are currently sitting in the form of US Treasuries government
42:41
securities if that's the that's the name we've given to it sucks frankly we call
42:47
it the national debt and it's just a stock pile of Treasury securities that
42:53
you could think of as part of the u.s. net money supply you can just think of
42:59
it as part of the money supply part of our money supply is inter sparing and part of it is non-interest bearing
43:05
Treasuries our interest bearing dollars so if the question is how many interest
43:10
bearing dollars are too many interest bearing dollars then my answer is well
43:16
it depends are they creating any kind of problem okay are they creating inflationary pressures if you've got
43:23
interest bearing dollars out there and somebody's being paid interest income I'm a bond holder right so suppose I
43:30
have fun and because I hold bonds I'm being paid interest income and that
43:35
interest income then allows me to spend more right so if all of the bondholders
43:41
are getting all of this interest income and those dollars start going out and chasing goods and services and the
43:47
economy's productive capacity is already at its maximum then you could get inflationary pressures so the answer to
43:54
the question how much debt is too much is when the when the debt becomes a
43:59
problem is when it starts to give rise to inflationary pressures and that's how you know when you get there and you can
44:06
manage that okay please elaborate on how the pandemic
44:11
response of funding oops the question jumped the elites and corporations four
44:19
or five trillion exposes the lie that deficits even matter okay so that's a good question
44:26
so here's a here's what happened and I know the person who asked the question knows but just for everybody else to
44:32
make sure we're all on the same page you know we just not too long ago got
44:38
through 2019 and for pretty much the
44:43
whole of that year we watched a very crowded field of Democrats Democratic
44:50
hopefuls presidential hopefuls pitching their platforms and saying you know vote
44:57
for me I'd like to be President and these are the things I would like to do and at every turn the question that
45:02
dogged candidates and those with more ambitious platforms really got it right
45:08
but everybody got it was how're you gonna pay for it how are you gonna pay for how you gonna pay where is the money going to come from how are you gonna
45:14
finance this stuff and people twisted themselves in knots to try to say well
45:19
we can find revenue here and we can raise taxes there and we can come up with all the money we need and then roll
45:27
the clock forward to March of this year and the corona virus pandemic begins and
45:33
all of a sudden dollars are materializing out of Congress
45:39
legislation is being passed left and right nobody paused for a second to say
45:44
how are we going to pay for it whose taxes have to go up where is the money going to come from Congress wrote
45:50
and passed bills left and right for in in very short order and I think what
45:55
this question from David is about is doesn't that just expose what a farce
46:03
this whole pay for game was all through 2019 listening to this question about
46:08
how there's no money for anything can't afford to do any of these things and now were Congress's authorizing trillions
46:15
and you know the house has passed a bill for another three trillion which the Senate has yet to show an appetite for
46:23
but the point is we can very quickly come up with four or five six and more trillion and is that in some
46:31
sense vindication of the sort of stuff I've been talking about that's the question here and I think the
46:36
answer is yes I think it's a very good real world real-time example of exactly how
46:43
Congress can and does pay for things when they deem there to be a
46:49
sufficiently urgent need okay if there's a priority they will fund it if they're not funding something it's not because
46:55
there's no money it's because they've decided it's not a sufficient ly high priority okay just don't want to fund it
47:03
please talk about the ideology of deficits I think I I think I might have
47:08
hit that one Martha threw out let's see what is the need okay here's one what's
47:15
the need if any of having federal income taxation under mmt so if what I've been
47:22
saying is that the government is the issuer of the currency doesn't need to
47:27
get the dollar from anyone else in order to spend doesn't rely on tax revenue
47:32
doesn't rely on savers to finance borrowing a deficit spending then what's
47:41
the purpose of taxes why do we even have them so this is more than I can do in the time that remains but in the book I
47:47
go through this in a lot of detail but one thing clearly is that if the
47:54
government was simply authorizing spending bills and suspending taxes like
48:00
I'm not going to tax anything back I'm only going to spend dollars into the economy we'd pretty quickly run up
48:06
against that inflation constraint right so the the spending creates new dollars
48:13
every time the government spends a dollar it is new money creation those dollars are newly created digitally
48:21
minted dollars and when the government taxes its retiring those dollars okay so
48:27
the the question is about the push and the pull how many are we pushing into
48:33
the economy and how many are being pulled back out of the economy you need to pull something back out and that's
48:39
for preventing accelerating inflationary pressure how many need to be pulled back
48:44
out that's a function of the demand leakages that I talked about earlier I
48:50
know it seems like it would be really nice for all of us if we just didn't have to pay income taxes at all but it
48:56
does help not just manage inflationary pressures but because of the progressivity of our income tax system
49:03
it also helps but not enough I would argue with preventing the distribution
49:10
of income from being even more extreme now what it already is today
49:16
[Music] yeah so there's a question about climate
49:22
change and it jumps to because y'all are typing and then things kind of skip upwards yeah it can how can mmt function
49:32
Linna asks alongside or contribute to calls to pursue D growth or you know a
49:38
growth in response to growth associated climate change I I mean I spend a lot of time in the book on climate change in
49:45
the chapter called the deficits that matter and in the closing chapter to the book I think this is critically
49:52
important climate change is an existential threat that is my position
49:58
so I think it has to be dealt with when I talk about the economy's productive
50:03
capacity remember I'm also talking about the climate's capacity to handle it the
50:09
goal of mmt is not to maximize growth it is in fact I think that so much of the
50:17
growth obsession is bound up in the debt obsession because people often think
50:24
that the way to get yourself out of a debt problem if you think the debt is a problem which I toned if you think the
50:32
debt is a problem people often say well the way to deal with it is to grow your way out of debt see and so they look at
50:40
a ratio where the debt is in the numerator and GDP is in the denominator so it's the debt to GDP ratio and if you
50:47
want to bring the ratio down you just juice the denominator you grow your economy as fast as you can so that the
50:55
ratio will come down and then people say oh we're growing our way out of debt but if you don't view the debt as some sort
51:02
of existential threat then you don't you can let go of that growth obsession
51:07
you don't view growth as the solution to your debt crisis and you can start
51:13
recognizing I think which is what Lynne is asking about that we can function
51:18
perfectly well with low growth or D growth and have a healthy habitable
51:25
thriving economy and and planet and society so anyway it's dealt with in
51:32
much more detail in the book what
51:38
metaphors that's an interesting question and I don't see the name of the person but what metaphors will help us
51:46
understand modern money and what old metaphors should we jettison so I think
51:51
communication is is key I really do I think framing matters a lot I think
51:56
that a lot of the damage that's been done to all of us is accomplished
52:02
through clever turn of phrase through framing you know when people say the
52:10
debt is gonna you know you're stealing from your children and grandchildren okay that's framing that those are
52:17
metaphors okay borrowing from China those are little phrases that very quickly tap into our
52:24
insecurities about you know the outside world or fear of hurting our children
52:31
and grandchildren or something like that so I try in the book to introduce new
52:37
different framing new metaphors one of my favorites I think is trying to say
52:43
that you know the goal should not be to force your economy to balance your budget but instead to use the budget to
52:50
balance your economy and so there's a figure in the book where I show the
52:57
scales you know sort of like the scales of justice the scales and government spending is heavier than taxes or you
53:04
have the government running a deficit but your economy is in balance you have full employment and you have stable
53:10
prices so I want to call this a balanced budget because it delivers the economic
53:18
outcome the balanced economy that I think we should be after so I I'm always playing with this
53:23
because I think it really does matter and helping to give politicians new and more constructive ways to carry on
53:31
discourse about government finances is
53:37
not sure I understand that question if
53:44
the Fed uses unemployment as a measure for inflation it jumped again duck on it
53:50
I started to read and then it jumped hmm
53:56
I don't know what the question was I'm so sorry it popped out of you there it
54:04
is wouldn't a guaranteed live okay if the Fed uses unemployment as a measure for
54:10
inflation wouldn't a guaranteed livable income have kept inflation at a healthy
54:17
percentage so the Fed maintains a certain amount of slack in the labor
54:23
market this is how they would describe it and a certain number of people are kept unemployed for the sake of
54:32
preventing the labor market from getting too tight and the ideas when it becomes
54:37
too easy for people to find jobs when the labor market gets too tight workers have more bargaining power they can
54:44
negotiate higher wages and if wages increase then employers might respond to
54:49
the increased wages by raising prices to protect the profit margins and so higher
54:55
wages push prices higher and then you get inflation and then you can even have a wage price spiral if the bargaining
55:02
intensifies so the question is could you somehow avoid that remember we don't
55:08
have inflation accelerating could you avoid that with a guaranteed livable
55:14
income I assume this person's asking about something like a universal basic income or something like that there are
55:20
proposals right now to get cash payments to virtually everybody in the country
55:26
and given the slack conditions in the economy there is scope there's
55:32
definitely capacity to do some of that I would have to know more about how much
55:38
and for whom and under what conditions but you know are the MMT preferred way
55:46
to handle unemployment is just more targeted right so that the dollars go
55:52
not to everyone in a blanket not targeted fashion but that you target the spending directly to the unemployed yet
55:59
the dollars in the hands of people who are looking for jobs but locked out of employment and employ them put them to
56:06
work doing socially useful things things that enhance the community enhance the
56:13
planet caring for people caring for planet caring for our communities so I'm
56:21
not where none of us I think are opposed to some form of basic income support especially for those who can't or
56:28
shouldn't be in the workplace and that could include some homecare work as well so I think with that it's 10 o'clock and
56:41
it I'll take one last question the the last one this is a great question is is
56:46
GDP it jumped it is GDP a good way to
56:53
measure I think okay is the GDP a useful measure of the economy great question
56:59
norm it's it's useful in some respects
57:05
but it definitely has its has its shortcomings there's an Australian
57:11
economist who has developed an alternative indicator and he calls it
57:16
the genuine progress indicator his name is Phil Phil lon I hope I'm getting that
57:24
right Phillip lon I believe and his genuine progress indicator says look GDP
57:31
has all these shortcomings there are lots of costs and lots of benefits that aren't captured in this measure of
57:39
economic output or economic activity so we can improve upon that and we can get things in there that give us a better
57:47
sense of our genuine economic well-being and he's just one example so it it's the dominant
57:54
but I think that lots of economists are working on alternative measures of well-being so thank you all for for
58:03
joining for this whole hour conversation I really really enjoyed it and I'll be
58:09
doing more of these so if you didn't get your question answered tonight maybe there will be other forums and you can
58:15
pop over and get your question answered there thank you very much well thank you
58:21
for everybody tuning in this evening and I also want to thank professor kellton for being
58:27
here if you enjoyed this event you can find many more just like it on our website townhall Seattle org we also
58:34
hope that you'll consider making a donation to townhall Seattle as your support will continue to allow us to
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provide events just like this one if you're interested in making and purchasing a copy of the book the
58:47
deficit myth modern monetary theory and the birth of the people's economy please use the link on this livestream page
58:53
purchased through our friends at Elliott Bay book company finally I want to thank everybody again for being here tonight
59:00
and I hope you have a great evening
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