2023/02/17 Does MMT End the "Debt Ceiling" Debate? (w/ Stephanie Kelton) Bad Faith
2021/06 ヤーマス関連
0:00I could not be more excited for today's guest I've been wanting to get her on a podcast forever you know her as the
0:08leading expert on Modern monetary Theory officer author rather of the deficit myth Professor Stephanie Kelton welcome
0:16to bad faith podcast it's really nice to be with you thank you okay so the reason we're here today
0:23primarily is because I have gotten feedback apparently you have gotten some feedback as well about an episode I did
0:29recently with Professor wolf about the economy about the um uh deficit about
0:38the fiscal cliff and Republican threats to hold up the economy uh if under under
0:44a threat that they will not raise the debt ceiling unless they make some significant cuts at Social Security and
0:49other so-called entitlement programs and we had this hour-long conversation that
0:54felt substantive and interesting although it completely sidestepped the issue of modern monetary Theory and this
1:02idea that is very popular and broadly kind of embraced on the left that we it
1:08is wrong to treat our national deficit like a household budget and that engaging in that particular narrative is
1:16not only wrong but it particularly it is potentially harmful and so far as it
1:22furthers a kind of political approach that basically sets us up again and again to be threatened with cuts to
1:29significant social programs because people weaponize the idea that we have to just get the budget under control so
1:36first since this is the first time you've really gotten into mmt on this particular podcast maybe we should start
1:41with an orientation of what that is before we get into the specific discourse around the uh fiscal cliff as
1:48it were okay well first a couple of things I did
1:53not hear the conversation between you and Rick and I know Rick in fact he's going to speak to my class here in a in
1:58a couple of weeks two or three weeks yeah they are uh so I I know him and I
2:04like him a great deal I didn't hear the conversation but maybe like you I did hear uh from people who did hear the
2:11conversation and you know I I think that for all that Rick does really well I
2:19think this Lane is not where his strength lies let's say and so uh I hope
2:25that you know you might be able to tell me some of the things that he said that maybe I can correct from an mmt
2:32perspective you've talked with fatal kaboop is that right you've absolutely so maybe you know people can find that
2:39episode too when they go back and listen because I did hear that he was really terrific so you know let's start kind of
2:47at the beginning uh mmt is a huge project it's you know the brand name if
2:53you will for what's really a body of scholarship that's been produced over now almost three decades by you know
3:00economists uh mostly economists but working all over the world so it's big
3:05projects it's a lot to wrap your arms around I'm not going to be able to do all of it uh with you in just a short time but just to get to sort of the
3:13basics you you got there in your opening when you said we shouldn't think of the federal government's budget the way we
3:21think of our own personal household budget and almost everything follows from there once you understand what
3:27makes the federal government different from a household a business or state or local government then you're off and
3:33running so let's talk about what makes the federal government different and it's basically the distinction
3:39between being the issuer of the currency which the federal government is and
3:46being the user of the currency which you and I are and businesses are and cities and states are so think about what
3:53happened when covet hit us in March of 2020 right we were worried that tens of
4:00millions of people were going to lose their jobs we were worried about businesses and entire Industries going
4:05under we were worried that states weren't going to be able to maintain essential Services health and uh and you
4:13know transportation and all the rest of it everybody needed money and where did we turn well to Congress and to the U.S
4:20treasury why because that's where the money comes from and so with little hesitation Congress knocked out that
4:28first fiscal package remember the cares act that was 2.2 trillion dollars
4:33Congress didn't have to go around in hand and collect money from taxpayers and go to China or anything like that
4:39right because the federal government has something the rest of us don't have Congress has the power of the purse it
4:45can in a sense spend money it does not have it can commit to spending trillions and it didn't stop with 2.2 trillion it
4:53came back and did 900 billion in December of 2020. it came back and did 1.9 trillion in March of 2021 that's
5:01five trillion dollars in 12 months time saving households and businesses and
5:07entire Industries like the airlines helping state and local governments so the rest of us were in a real pickle and
5:14only Congress by virtue of the fact fact that it has this thing the rest of us don't have which is the ability to
5:21create and issue our currency just in a sense spend money it doesn't have if we could all do that we wouldn't have
5:28needed those stimulus checks we wouldn't have needed unemployed wouldn't have needed that extra 600 a week right State
5:34look we would have just made the money up ourselves but we can't do that and so mmt starts with that recognition and
5:41then from there lots of things follow about what we get wrong about deficits and debt and everything else
5:48so the average conservative or let's just say neoliberal person hears that
5:53and says okay well technically I know that the government can print money but if they do print money we'll have runaway inflation they'll be people
6:00burning wheelbarrows full of dollars you know as they have in all of these
6:06you know socialist countries that have gone under blah blah blah and so it's not that we can't but that we shouldn't
6:12and of course we know that for the last two years or so Republicans have been in some conservative Democrats have been
6:18beating that exact drum saying that the inflation that was the focus of so much media attention over the past year was
6:25the co was caused rather by that exact spending that you described so what do
6:30you say to those folks okay well we can do the entire conversation just around inflation but
6:37let's start with the idea that deficits are inherently inflationary okay we we
6:43can dismiss that pretty easily because you know I don't necessarily have to
6:48tell you how old I am but uh we have the federal government's budget has been in
6:53deficit in every year of my life except for okay so deficits are the norm now
7:00what do we mean when we say the government's budget is in deficit Brianna there's so much misunderstanding
7:06this word is such a has carries such a pejorative right because you hear the word deficit and what do you think of
7:12you think of a shortfall you think of um something that needs to be overcome it's a problem of some kind if we you
7:20know people watch the Super Bowl and you were cheering for one team and you know the announcer came on and said oh if the
7:26Eagles are going to come back and win this they're going to have to overcome a three-point deficit oh deficit right
7:31that that's how we um right right yeah so I'm sorry about your
7:38loss yeah I know it's fine I I spent 17 years living in the Kansas City area so I I all right all right well anyway we
7:46don't have to talk about it okay back to simple easy things like the deficit that word deficit sounds like a problem it's
7:53what you want to overcome but what it really is is just the difference between two numbers it's very benign it's a
8:00quite innocuous thing it's the difference between outlays and what the
8:05government takes back in that's all it is so make it really simple for people if the government spends a hundred
8:12dollars into the economy and it only taxes ninety dollars back out we label that a deficit and somewhere somebody
8:19writes down on The Ledger minus 10 for the government what they forget to do is
8:25to pay attention to the fact that balance sheets have two sides not just one so you have to look at what's
8:30happening on the other side of of that deficit I'll say so if the government
8:36puts 100 in it only takes 90 back out what it's really done is make a deposit of ten dollars into some other part of
8:43our economy now another way to think about the government's so-called deficit
8:48is just to call it the Surplus that arises in some other part of the economy
8:54so every deficit is good for someone and you mentioned Republicans and they know
9:00this all too well because when they have the opportunity what do they do they increase the deficit why do they do that
9:06because it's a terrible thing and it's awful burdening next Generations and it's going to hyper-inflate us and all
9:11that no they do it because they understand that on the other side of the government's deficit lies a windfall for
9:17someone else a surplus a financial Surplus it's just that they want to direct that Surplus into the hands
9:25mostly of people who least need the help in this economy so you get things like the Republican tax cuts in 2017. a 1.9
9:34trillion dollar add to the deficit but Republicans understood we're not worried
9:40about the deficit we want to carry out our agenda if it means we add 1.9
9:45trillion to the deficit so be it because we know that on the other side of that lies this Surplus that's going where we
9:52want it to go corporations mostly people at the top of the income distribution and so forth was it inflationary no well
10:00it wasn't inflationary nor was it the jobs boom and the six percent growth that President Trump talked about so it
10:07didn't deliver on a lot of the economics it promised right the trickle down and all the rest of it but make no mistake
10:15the deficit was neither inflationary nor did it bankrupt the nation or lead to
10:20any of these other sorts of problems so can the deficit get too big yes and can
10:26it produce inflationary problems yes so I'm not saying because the government has the power of the purse and it can
10:32can commit to spending trillions of dollars you know if Congress passes the bill the spending will happen but it can
10:39it push it too far yes is the punishment for pushing spending too far over
10:45inflation yes it is so I'm glad you brought up the interview
10:51with Professor kabu because he did do I think a really excellent job of walking through the sectors that he says are
10:59driving inflation I think it's like Health Care housing education and energy
11:05energy thank you and talking about how we can we think about the
11:11growing expense of the in those sectors we don't really I mean I don't I don't think of
11:17it as College costs are going up because they're inflationary so much I mean I think about the things that are driving College costs there's like a reality
11:23that it is going up but I don't really I think the the common framing isn't that the fact of these sectors becoming more
11:31expensive is what is driving inflation in that kind of concrete way and I think that's really useful to think about at
11:37the same time as you just said there does seem to be a
11:42limit at some point spending too much or having too big a deficit does become a
11:48problem and the way the professor wolf framed it is that ultimately for whatever reason I hope you can help me
11:53understand this the government issues bonds sells its debt across the world this
11:59creates political relationships that disadvantage the United States potentially and makes us vulnerable
12:05geopolitically and for that reason alone there's an interest in keeping the debt
12:10deficit under control what do you what do you say to that framing all right well there's a lot there so
12:18let's start with where you ended so the federal government never needs to
12:25borrow its own currency from anyone think about it well I would it right so
12:30it is true that the current practice not just here in the U.S but in countries
12:35around the world the current practice is to match deficits with Bond issuance so
12:42in my simple example the government spends a hundred dollars into the economy and taxes 90 back out we say the
12:49government has run a deficit of 10. now the US government holds up U.S
12:54government bonds treasuries and says well I had this deficit and so I have to
12:59match my deficit by selling these treasuries it doesn't have to but that is the current practice so what happens
13:05the ten dollars come back out and they're replaced with these treasury bonds the same equivalent amount so 10
13:14right in U.S treasuries now treasuries pay interest and the cash I've pulled
13:20back out does not so when the governor government does this thing that we call borrowing it's replacing
13:26non-interest-bearing currency US dollars with an interest-bearing form of the
13:31dollar a U.S government Bond why does it do that well for lots of reasons one of
13:38which is that you know it's Habit in a sense we've been doing it this way for a very long time uh financial markets love
13:46these things because they're risk-free default risk-free but you get a reward
13:51you get a return you get interest now Professor wolf talks about other countries holding these things well
13:57where does China get U.S treasuries where does Japan get U.S treasuries where do these countries get them well
14:03the answer is mostly and they sell to the U.S far more than we buy then then
14:10we sell to them right they're exporting goods and services think of China to the
14:16us and we don't buy as many uh sell as many things to China as they sell to us
14:21so so we have trade deficits with China China has a trade surplus China accumulates all of these U.S dollars
14:28they can do what the rest of us can do which is trade those dollars in for an
14:33interest bearing U.S dollar called a Government Bond and so to to sell bonds
14:40to China we simply debit One account and the dollars go away and replace it with
14:46a different kind of dollar which is a U.S treasury is that inherently risky does that put us in danger are we you
14:53know playing some kind of scary game when we sell treasuries to other countries I think the answer is no
15:01um we we allow other countries to trade their dollars in for an interest bearing account at the FED called the U.S
15:08treasury you know interest on government bonds is is Ubi for rich people that's
15:14it's a universal bondholder income if you already have money you can give the
15:19government your money and take a bond instead which is just another type of government money but this one pays
15:26interest and so you know in a country like Australia in the 90s when Clinton was President we had budget surpluses
15:32they had budget surpluses in Australia too but for many more years and when you're running surpluses you're paying
15:39down debt so there were fewer and fewer government bonds out there to satisfy hedge funds and pensions and other
15:46investors people want them because they're not they're risk-free and you get a reward are you kidding me right so
15:53the government is paying down debt because it's got budget surplus year after year financial markets go crazy they go well
16:01what's happened to our risk-free reward where's our sweet sweet nectar and they go to the government and they say we
16:07want bonds so the government starts issuing more government bonds even
16:13though the budget is in Surplus just to satisfy financial markets so this idea that the government you know depends on
16:21investors and doesn't have money unless China and others will give us money it's they're they already have our money
16:27they're just trading it in for a like a better higher form of money they're not stupid you know what I mean
16:34I mean this line item 700 billion a year in interest we're going to be paying
16:40almost a trillion annually If the Fed keeps jacking up interest rates as the
16:46handout to the rich gets bigger and bigger in the form of interest income is it valuable is it actually good to be
16:53appeasing the financial markets in that way is there any benefit from the public or is it just fully corporate welfare
17:00you could make a case that it's fine in the book I came down sort of agnostic in
17:07this chapter on the debt because I made I made it clear that we don't have to have it we can get rid of it you don't
17:13like it stop issuing treasuries and by the time the very oldest one matures they'll all be gone or we could learn to
17:20live with it it was like do you you know love it or leave it sort of argument if if we could better understand it we
17:27there's nothing inherently wrong except a distributional question it does send
17:32you know interest payments disproportionately to people who are already really well off uh there are a
17:38lot of poor people with a portfolio that has a lot of treacheries in it yeah so um we have to understand the
17:45distributional question there's nothing inherently wrong with having a risk-free
17:51asset that people can put in their portfolios to diversify risks so that you know all of your investment isn't
17:58subject to the whims of you know Wall Street Stock Market and so forth you got some safe stuff in there pensions you
18:05know we want um corporations and pensions and others to have I think a safe investment
18:12vehicle but so it's hard Brianna because on the one
18:20hand it does disproportionately benefit the wealthy on the other hand it is
18:26useful for diversifying risk and keeping you know workers pensions safer to have
18:31some asset Holdings that are risk-free in there as well
18:37um I can't even remember what you asked me no no like is there an actual I mean in the Australia example like is is it
18:44good you know is there a social good in them deciding to issue bonds even though they didn't have to you know even though
18:51yeah that's what I was trying to get at yeah is there a social good in having a
18:58a safe asset available a waiter because you put your money in a bank and you
19:04have FDIC you know you keep what is it 250 000 or less and the bank goes under
19:10your made whole but if you've got you know millions of dollars that you need
19:15to put somewhere and you want to hold them in a safe place and not be subject to you know Bank risk in that sense then
19:24treasuries uh offer an alternative but for my
19:29I guess my where I've come down in the last couple of years is probably that
19:34they're more trouble than they're worth there are other ways you know we could let the FED issue Securities and and set
19:41interest rates across um the you know yield curve
19:47and have a risk-free yield curve you know a risk-free um curve with interest rates wherever
19:54the FED wants them um but because we call it the national debt because we say your share of the
20:01dead because we say we're borrowing from China it's more trouble than it's worth at this point yeah and and you know you
20:08got all these lawmakers who look at the interest expense on the line item on the
20:13federal budget and say we're going to be paying more in interest than we pay for defense so then we pay for this and so
20:19we have to cut education we have to cut this we have to cut that because of the interest well we
20:25don't you can pay the interest and fund other programs but they'll use it to
20:31justify cutting the budget yeah and so because are any of these younger members of Congress talking to you are they open
20:37to hearing I mean because none of them are doing it yeah so when when President
20:43Biden after the 2020 election you know the members of the Congressional Progressive caucus have a call like
20:51every Tuesday their members get on a call and the first call on the Tuesday
20:56after the election was with me so I did have a chance and you know I um have
21:03done presentations and talks and dinners and met with you know members so people
21:10know and we were I think that there was a lot of progress frankly
21:16being made and then the inflation came and I think that until lawmakers figure
21:24out that um you know the deficit did not produce
21:30the inflation and as long as they remain skittish and people like you know
21:35Senator manchin pointing to the inflation and saying this is why I won't do build back better this is why we
21:41can't spend more because you know we we produce this inflation problem until
21:46lawmakers get comfortable again with the idea that you can spend without fully
21:52offsetting the spending in other words that you don't have to keep everything deficit neutral they're going to find it
21:58very hard to pass anything because as you saw you know if once you get
22:04the first three big bills the 5 trillion wasn't offset at all there was no big fight over whose taxes have to go up or
22:11any of that Congress just said we're going to spend 2.2 trillion we're going to spend 900 billion we're going to spend 1.9 trillion they spend it then
22:18they pivoted to this deficit neutral stuff and President Biden we're not going to add a dime to the deficit and
22:23all that and once that happened that's when things got really hard because to keep it all deficit neutral
22:31you needed this revenue and that revenue and this tax and that tax and all of a sudden you start losing votes and now
22:38you know you can't pass anything yeah yeah I mean I I look kind of like that framing that a failure and unwillingness
22:45to embrace the reality of how budgets work and mmt basically damned Biden's
22:51entire agenda and so you're gonna pay consequences in the long term for not you know taking the hit and doing the
22:57hard work of explaining to the American public how they've been lied to for Generations yeah and you're going to be the one party that always you know comes
23:04back and says oh we always have to come clean up their mess because when the Republicans get their turn again they're
23:10going to do exactly what they always do they're going to use the deficit to achieve the things that they want to
23:16achieve and if Democrats response is well we're not like them we're fiscally
23:21responsible we pay for our priorities you're going to get a lot less of what
23:26it is that you say you want well that no his priority ever goes unfunded you can take that to them
23:33because right by definition if it was a priority it you would have you would have spent on it no priority ever goes
23:40which which makes the numbers around the child tax credit and the 50 of children pulled out of poverty and
23:47that that policy Choice especially Bleak so there's no risk that at some point
23:52the desk could be called in that we're basically as as it was framed in the Richard Wolf episode that we are
23:59lending out money that we have to pay interest on so it's causing the cost of our government programs to be inflated
24:06by this interest amount and ultimately if there is an economic crisis and the
24:11debts come due we won't be able to pay our debts and then there will be some massive and now not I'm paraphrasing and
24:17probably putting words into Richard's Wolf's mouth they didn't say but that there could be catastrophic economic
24:23Global implications if we were ever if we ever had to make good at all of those outstanding debts
24:29well we make good on them all the time every time a bond matures it's it's paid
24:34off right so there I I have trouble understanding the the sort of Doom
24:41scenario and it's not just ritual lots of people say this sort of stuff right what do they imagine these are not
24:46callable loans it's not like China can pick up the phone and say I'm holding 10-year U.S treasuries I've had them for
24:53two years uh I decided I want all of you know I want everything back now I want out of though there's a market if you
25:00want to you know get out of uh uh Bond Holdings then you sell them in the
25:05marketplace but you don't call up the federal government and say I want you know to be paid back now because I'm
25:12worried or whatever uh the case may be these are these are not dumb people okay
25:17they understand that the alternative to holding the dollars that they get when we buy goods and services from them is
25:25to hold an interest-bearing form of dollar so you know the bureaucrats in China are are not dumb so they're saying
25:32turn my turn my checking account into basically a savings account I want to hold my dollars in this form is it
25:39possible that over time countries will uh end up selling less to the US maybe
25:45they'll want to keep more of what they produce and consume it at home and there will be fewer goods and services
25:50available to Americans so we might have to start making more of our own things well that's what we're already trying to
25:57do right uh in in some cases but what's the problem where does the threat lie I
26:04guess I'm still well I guess I mean hypothetically I guess would be that in any given year
26:10um all of the debt all of the bonds that mature in that year would exceed the
26:16amount that America was able to pay and of course that ignores what the whole
26:22the whole first half of the conversation we've been having which is that American can always print its own money and can do whatever it wants but not can not Dan
26:29there's only one way there's only one way that the federal government spends it's not that it can print money it's
26:36that there's only one way for a currency currency issuing government to spend and
26:41that is by crediting the bank accounts of the recipients whether you're on
26:46Social Security whether you're a defense contractor whether you're a federal worker it's only one way for the
26:52government to pay anyone is to in a sense you know create new money new
26:58money is created in the act of spending every single time the government spends it's not that it can it's that there's
27:03no alternative to doing it that way I guess the fundamental question then is why why do the is dance with the bond
27:11issuance because I think it is doing this kind of is having the psychological effect on the public a feeling like it
27:17is it is it's necessary to do this balanced budget dance and moreover even
27:23if it's the case and it and I completely take your point that it's the only way this thing happens that America is going
27:29to continue to issue money currency to pay off its debts and do whatever it wants
27:34Etc then at what point does it actually become a problem because you said a few minutes ago that there is a moment there
27:41is a deficit size that would be an issue how do we know when we're approaching that
27:46all right look we the federal government sent those checks to most people through
27:52the pandemic right the first ones went out first two went out uh when Donald
27:57Trump was still in an office you saw that 1200 check and then a 600 check and
28:03then after President Biden was in office you got that last check and that was the fourteen hundred dollar check right so
28:09and some people say the government did too much put too much money into too many people's hands and that's part of
28:15why we got inflationary pressures and you brought this up and we can talk about the extent to which that has any
28:20basis in reality but imagine instead of a fourteen hundred dollar check it had
28:25been a hundred and forty thousand dollar check what do you think would have happened right I think there are there
28:32is basically no credible story that you could tell or anyone could tell that
28:39says that we could get away with sending 140 000 or checks to everybody in America and it wouldn't be inflationary
28:45so your question at what point well you can definitely push things too far but
28:52what I'm saying is we have seen the federal government's budget in deficit almost my entire lifetime and for the
28:59last you know 20 years or whatever we've had little inflation for the last decade
29:06prior to covid the problem was basically for the central bank and not just here but around the world they were trying to
29:12push inflation up to two percent right so we've had Decades of very low
29:18inflation low growth we haven't pushed deficits although we've had deficits
29:24countries like Japan have had large deficits for 30 years Japan hasn't been able to get inflation anywhere close to
29:31its two percent Target for three decades while running very large deficits and by
29:37the way carrying the largest debt in the entire world and the biggest GDP ratio
29:43some 240 percent and they've seen no inflation for 30 years so until covid
29:49and now they've got a little bit of inflation even over there but the the point is you can have very big deficits
29:55that persist for decades you can have the largest debt to GDP ratio in the entire world you can have that happening
30:01along very low inflation and interest rates sitting right around zero so
30:07you just can't go from if you run these deficits then it will produce all this
30:13terrible inflation it's just not borne out by the evidence the inflation that we're primarily wrestling with now is
30:20you know traceable in one way or another to a lot of things that don't have much
30:25to do if anything to the size of the deficit I think what's confusing from
30:31someone who has been fully persuaded and enraptured
30:37by your explanations of this in the past the sticking point that I encounter when I'm trying to make the case let's say on
30:44a less sympathetic platform like at the hill with the ideological diverse audience is that if there's this
30:50acknowledgment that at some point inflation is a problem there's something that does can be so big that it is
30:56inflate that they are inflationary there's something a little worrisome about saying well instinctively
31:03something you know checks as large as 140 000 would be a problem but fourteen
31:10hundred dollar checks aren't a problem so what are we saying three thousand dollar checks could work ten thousand
31:16dollar checks could work because I mean I don't know if it was Richard wolf now or Professor kabu but one of them was
31:22saying okay if you just think about inflation as people raising prices the people who can
31:27set the prices raise the prices I think this was Richard wolf if if that's the case then sure it's
31:33completely plausible that if you believe Americans have an extra two thousand dollars sitting on their bank account why not raise the price of eggs by a
31:41buck or two why not you know if you know that there's a you know a supply chain crisis why not hike up the the prices of
31:47cars and used vehicles why not raise the price of gas so given how sensitive
31:55basically um producers are you know the people who are setting prices are
32:01to trying to extract every nickel and dime from the public it is it does I don't know it does
32:07strain credulity to believe that even relatively minor increases in people's
32:14income or bank accounts wouldn't have an inflationary effect that's not an argument not to do it that's an argument
32:20for maybe as maybe Richard Wolff would argue price controls or something else
32:25but it it is a little difficult to believe okay you shouldn't be worried about it
32:30basically until we get to some outlandish thing like we're giving everybody fifty thousand dollars like it's Oprah sweepstakes
32:38okay I'm always worried about inflation it's this it's a central concern in the
32:43mmt framework you know if if you said maybe I should have done this earlier now give me mmt in like a single
32:50sentence I would have said okay mmt is about replacing a fake phony imaginary
32:58artificial budget constraint with a real resource constraint with an inflation
33:05constraint so you put inflation at the center that becomes the thing that
33:10you're on the watch for not oh will it add to the deficit oh how much will it
33:15add to the deficit what does CBO say it will do to the debt ratio over time these are not the critical questions
33:22because I I tell you what I can write legislation that's deficit neutral won't
33:28add that Penny to the deficit won't get anybody's you know fiscal hawkery uh uh
33:33you know feathers ruffled or anything it won't add to the deficit but I can make it massively inflationary so if all
33:40you're doing is worrying about lawmakers can I write a bill that the CBO the
33:46Congressional budget office will look at my proposed spending legislation and they'll give it a good score and say oh
33:52you've done a very fine job this doesn't add to the deficit now carry on and go vote for this and what I'm saying is
33:58it's easy to write a bill that doesn't add to the deficit but that invites lots of inflationary pressures so what we
34:05want to do is to change the way we think about the right size you said what's the
34:10right size of the check how do you know if it if it's safe to do 3 000 if it's safe to do you know less than three or
34:16more than three how do you do that and the part of the answer is you actually have to do rigorous analysis you need to
34:23try to get some sense of the inflation risk that proposed legislation like that
34:29carries and what I'm saying is Congress doesn't currently do that they don't ask CBO to score legislation for inflation
34:36risk they're only concerned about the deficit does it add to the deficit does it increase the debt over time uh and
34:42and so you can't know the answer to your question without trying to do some
34:49rigorous macro analysis to get at that so you're not going to get it perfectly
34:55right there are models they're imperfect but at least you can try to get a sense
35:00of how much can the economy safely absorb in additional spending before you start to
35:07get bottlenecks before you start to get pressures and even independent of that like you just said you know if if you
35:15have a lot of Corporations with pricing power and there's a narrative out there and this I think is important that
35:21narrative that we had inflation and all these companies could then pass on you
35:27know prices to Consumers that more than um compensate for the rising costs that
35:34they were facing in other words you know you call it price gouging whatever you want but their margins got really fat
35:40and when your margins are getting really fat it means you're raising prices by much more than your own Rising costs and
35:48we know that this happened right I mean we know so that there was a narrative out there that you know companies could
35:56point to and consumers sort of didn't push back because they thought well that's the inflation I keep hearing
36:01about right so yeah I'm paying more for chicken and for eggs and for milk and
36:06for all these other things because that's the inflation that's happening so even if the economy
36:13had the capacity to safely absorb the additional spending without producing
36:19inflationary pressures that's not to say that you won't see prices rising anyway because if companies can raise prices
36:26then they're looking out for their shareholders and they will fatten their margins and and you know you even see it
36:33in the Wall Street Journal just this morning there's a big story about you know
36:39um companies are are reaping these huge profits and they continue to to widen
36:44margins even as their sales unit sales are flat people aren't buying more
36:51um but companies with pricing power are able to continue to raise prices even in the current environment
36:58so what then do you make of I mean there seem to be a legitimate panic and desire to address inflation
37:04because of the political costs that Democrats felt they were suffering last
37:11year leading up into midterms that was the stalking horse that all of the candidates had to dodge if they hope to
37:16be reelected but of course now nobody's talking about any more post midterms but never mind that and there seemed to be this
37:23legitimate struggle in the Biden Administration Janet Yellen coming on TV
37:28everyone trying to explain what was going on and how they were limited numbers of things that Biden could do
37:34and these things were allegedly out of control but there seemed to be this the struggle to at least appear to be doing
37:40something that was actually addressing the root of the problem and so when you say you know the CBO isn't scoring
37:46things for their inflationary effects it wouldn't presume that at a certain point because of the political implications there was an effort to get at the bottom
37:53of what was driving inflation over the last couple of years were they just
37:59unable to figure it out were they unwilling to do what needed to be done to actually address it like say doing
38:07um weight price price caps uh what what was going on in your from your
38:13perspective with the fight against inflation last year so they tried to do a lot of things you
38:18might remember that President Biden had an op-ed uh I think it was in the Wall
38:24Street Journal actually it was called my plan to fight inflation and it was a three-pronged plan right and the first
38:30one was leave the FED alone and let the Federal Reserve do its job like he just wanted to be on record as saying the
38:37independence of the fed and it's the fed's job to fight inflation and I'm not going to be like the the previous guy
38:44and you know get get all uh involved in what Jerome Powell and Company are trying to do so okay tick that box let
38:51the FED do what it can the other two pieces though were and I'm gonna do what I can and the second one on the list
38:58included doing things like you know trying to deal with some of the backlogs
39:04at the ports and using executive action where possible to try to make some uh
39:11improvements in the you know way that we move goods and services around transportation and Trucking and shipping
39:17and all of that kind of stuff so that was number two and then number three was he said I'm gonna reduce the deficit and
39:24he he said to the extent that you know you think some of the inflationary pressures are coming from uh the deficit
39:31well I'm gonna do my part to bring that down now we have a whole conversation just about that but you did see the
39:39legislation the so-called inflation reduction Act Right which was uh a
39:44commitment to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on climate related and other
39:49sorts of things some negotiating of prescription drug costs which I mean
39:54that's a good thing that that is disinflationary and that component uh of the Consumer Price Index the inflation
40:02um and beefing up uh enforcement of you know of the tax code and so forth so you
40:08know um they're trying to nibble around it and you know on energy did we do things like some other countries with price
40:15caps like you mentioned no we tried to beef up the supply of energy instead and
40:20so the Strategic petroleum reserve and and those releases to try to you know
40:25bring energy costs down for consumers but without putting you know a hand on
40:33the energy producers so a very different approach to what you know some European
40:38countries did so basically you know it wasn't that he was on the wrong track it was just that
40:45the interventions were too small for what the moment required would
40:51you say I mean it felt like I mean the the releasing the Strategic petroleum reserves seemed to cut both ways
40:57Republicans were mad at that at him for you're getting into our reserves and they used it as a stalking horse for asking why he wasn't opening up more
41:03drilling which wouldn't have solved the problem either because it had like a mini your time Horizon on getting any new wells to open blah blah blah but
41:10that that was the discourse around that there was some he did hint at the idea of price gouging being a problem but
41:17there didn't seem to be much in the way of policy to prevent it from happening and he seems kind of uncomfortable with
41:23the idea of going after corporations in that way so it's the issue then that those are the kinds of things that you
41:28would do if you wanted to have an effect of inflation but it just
41:35wasn't enough yeah I mean there was always that pushback and I think that you know
41:41within the administration there are some who are quite comfortable uh talking
41:48about price gouging and profiteering and others who are less comfortable and so
41:53you know in a country like Japan uh you know jaw boning the government will
41:59do this thing where it will essentially say to you know producers to companies we got our eye on you and we know that
42:07this is a moment where you could take advantage and push prices higher than they need to go to to You Know cover
42:12your Rising costs but don't do it and we're watching you and we'll call you out right you did hear the
42:18administration call for things like windfall profit taxes and so forth those aren't going anywhere we both know that
42:23you don't have the votes and you certainly don't have it now with the divided Congress but you didn't have the
42:30kind of support that you would have needed from within your own party to even um get it some of those things what he
42:37could have done is said all right my plan to fight inflation you know number one Medicare for all we have to move
42:44urgently to Medicare for all because that is massively if not deflationary
42:50massively distant that would have absolutely I mean that's that's probably the single biggest thing that you could
42:57do if you wanted to bring uh overall inflation down really rapidly uh would
43:04be to move to Medicare for all like right away would have had a huge impact
43:09and what about the kind of a free public education uh push you know it felt like
43:15he was in a bit of a tough spot where student debt cancellation was being framed as inflationary and maybe I don't
43:21know maybe it was but the whole point of the way Bernie framed it was to do that at the same time that you get at the root of the problem by making public
43:28colleges tuition free and so that people are no longer having
43:34to have these extremely exorbitantly uh High College costs going forward it
43:40actually gets at the root of the problem you know is that is that a is that a an argument that could have been made at the time sure I mean
43:47Consumer Price inflation CPI right this is what we're talking about the price is paid by consumers where the average
43:54bundle of goods that we buy you know on a monthly basis so housing and Health
43:59Care education Transportation making public transportation free I mean they
44:04did things like this or nearly free in Germany I think it was nine Euro a month and you could jump on uh public
44:11transportation go anywhere you want all month long you know anything that reduces outlays for the consumer uh and
44:18so affordable child care that would have been another one college expenses educational expenses there you go you're
44:25you got it yeah so narratively as you know there's this conversation about the
44:32debt ceiling what would you hope to hear Democrats
44:37saying that pushes back against the kind of household spending budget and you
44:42know Biden is bragging at the State of the Union about having gotten spending under control you know what what would
44:49you prefer the Democratic line of attack to be on these issues just for me I I
44:55will always try to reframe because that again go back to this word deficit when
45:01people hear it and you start reinforcing it I think you start reinforcing uh a
45:07lot of the concerns and misconceptions about you know irresponsible government spending and so forth just call it net
45:13spending that's what it is every CBO report should you know be required to replace the word deficit with a more
45:20neutral term net spending so if net spending is positive it means the government added more than it subtracted
45:26if Net's been used Negative they subtracted more from us than they added make it neutral this word debt I think I
45:33don't like it I don't find it helpful when people hear the national debt they
45:39think that somehow they're on the hook for this because they've been told you know your share of the national debt is
45:45eighty thousand dollars or whatever and babies are born into the world with already owing you know all this money no
45:51this is part of our financial wealth this part of if you are lucky enough to
45:56own some of these treasuries and lots of us do then it's part of your savings it's part of your wealth so just let's
46:04stop viewing it from the perspective of you know the the federal government's
46:10balance sheet and start recognizing that every time we hear government deficit it's the Surplus to the non-government
46:17they talk about the national debt what they're talking about is our part of our savings part of our wealth you want to
46:22wipe that out you want to eliminate U.S treasuries eradicate the world of U.S treasuries so that there is no more U.S
46:29debt well you're just talking about you know wiping out those financial assets
46:36that are in our portfolios that are part of our savings they're a good thing they're the non-governments net
46:43Financial assets I mean do you do you worry about how
46:48much time it will take I mean there's these shorter Horizons like okay what are we going to do about the debt
46:54ceiling threats and there's obviously longer term Horizons that aren't so constrained
47:00but I'm thinking back to even during the Bernie campaign when some folks on the left criticized Bernie for not even
47:07leaning in to mmt language and saying some things about you know deficits and
47:13and basically buying into those kinds of narratives despite obviously you being one of his advisors and the general
47:20feeling that he knew better so so what do you what do you make of that is it just that on the shorter time Horizon of
47:26a political campaign there's not enough time to teach America mmt and if that's the case you know if not now if not then
47:32when
47:38well it it does take uh somebody who's willing to change the discourse who's
47:46willing to say things differently and I'll tell you who did it and who did it really well
47:52he was the chairman of the budget committee now I'm not talking about Senator Sanders I'm talking about the
47:58chairman of the house budget committee John Yarmouth who's a Democrat from Kentucky who actually if people are
48:06interested you know just Google John Yarmouth uh and um C-SPAN and put in mmt or my name or
48:14something and and find this video and watch this well why are people wrong about this and how should we be thinking
48:21about debt and deficits well I I I don't get any royalties from this but I would
48:27flog a book called the deficit myth by Stephanie Kelton an economist and
48:32professor and it's become quite a bestseller actually and what she says is
48:38that if you look at the the total national debt 28 trillion dollars right now is the what we we think of as a
48:43national debt she said don't think of it as debt think of it as all the money that the federal government has invested
48:49in the country over our history minus taxes and that's really what it is I mean
48:55those 28 trillion dollars didn't exist uh before the federal government issued
49:00them and so the federal government has the ability to create uh create money
49:06create uh financing and that's what we've been doing will continue to do it is a model for how to do this and
49:14every member of Congress who is interested or open to you know breaking
49:19out of this mold of always reinforcing oh yes the deficit is such a bad thing in the national debt yep we're really in
49:27trouble and uh we've got to work to reduce deficits and all that because it does constrain the progressive agenda
49:33not only constrain it it hamstrings it I mean you're you're really not going to go where you want to go as long as
49:40you're perpetuating these sorts of myths and John Yarmouth went on C-Span for 30 minutes long and
49:48he held Court the the it was as good as it could be I mean it was it was near
49:54Flawless and Brianna I'm telling you in a very patient and deliberate and calm
50:00way he just took question after question and he just reframed it oh wait you want to say deficit but remember that's not
50:08the thing you think it is oh you want to talk about the debt wait a minute that's not the thing you think it is and so I
50:15think that you know the at a minimum everyone in the Congressional Progressive caucus should cue that up
50:21and sit as a group and watch that 30 minutes and see if they can't find a way
50:26that they can get comfortable talking about these things differently because he showed him how to do it
50:33how are you aware of any kind of discussion about how
50:39Biden Or democrats generally speaking should be addressing the threats over the the debt ceiling I mean specifically
50:46there are these questions about the um the viability of Social Security
50:52let's say and people say well I I do want to protect it people have paid into it it's an entitlement that they're
50:58entitled to however we have to make it solvent we still have to solve this fundamental problem and you know many I
51:04think good faith people are still caught up in that and that narrative you know what would what would you prefer people
51:10to say or what would you offer to folks who are concerned about those kind of solvency issues we're just gonna you
51:15know should we just just
51:25um keep your promises to beneficiaries present and future uh and make the
51:31payments the same way you paid for everything including the military right there's no different way to pay
51:37for things so we just pay for things one way and we'll pay for Social Security and we do pay for Social Security the
51:43same way that we pay for everything else we just have this earmark tax called a payroll tax withholding that we pretend
51:51pretend is the place where the money comes from that allows us to make the
51:56payments to Social Security recipients and to pay for Medicare and so forth it is not how it works it isn't it it just
52:04isn't how it works and this is a debate that's been going on for so many decades and if you're leaning into this story
52:11that it's you know the payroll tax withholdings that go into the trust fund
52:16and this is what allows us you know through a combination of of taxing people today and some earnings on the
52:23trust fund this is where the money comes from that allows us to pay for Social Security and the problem is we're told
52:30that the trust funds are going to be depleted we have an aging pop population so every day about 10 000 people turn 65
52:38in this country we got people who move out of the workforce and into retirement they stop helping us to work and produce
52:45the goods and services but they don't stop consuming they still need things and so we want people to have a decent
52:51standard of living in retirement we don't want our seniors falling into poverty we want to care for the disabled then dependents of people and so forth
52:58so we have this program and it's brilliant and we could build on it and expand Social Security but we have this
53:06idea that we can't afford to do it because we have you know the demographic changes
53:12and there's not going to be enough money coming in to make good on all those payments going out and so then Democrats
53:18start saying things like well maybe we could find a way to bring more in or maybe we could make some small tweaks
53:24and make sure that the benefits are there for people who really rely on them and when you hear somebody say that get
53:30nervous because when Democrats talk about protecting social security for those who really need it that starts to
53:38feel a lot like means testing that program and so what I want that what I would love to hear people do is to just
53:45reject the premise Social Security is not running out of money it's not going broke it's not going to be insolvent
53:51there is nothing to prevent the federal government from keeping every promise it
53:56has made to retirees their beneficiaries disabled today tomorrow and into the
54:02indefinite future it's a political choice we just have to commit to making those those payments let me just say one
54:08more thing Medicare and Social Security two programs right huge Federal programs
54:14each one has two trust funds the Social Security trust fund we call old age
54:19survivors and disability insurance there's an oasi trust fund and a Didi is
54:25a disability oasi is old age and survivors those two are social security Medicare
54:32has Hospital Insurance and something called supplemental medical insurance
54:37part of that is George W Bush's expanded program that covers prescription drugs
54:43okay so you got four trust funds three of them are believed to be going broke
54:50running out of money got to do something because after year X we're not going to
54:55be able to maintain payments as promised and there's going to be a shortfall and we've got a crisis on our hands the
55:02supplemental medical insurance trust fund faces No financial problem
55:07whatsoever it gets a clean bill of health from the Social Security administrators of the trust fund into
55:14the indefinite future meaning forever it is never ever ever in trouble the other
55:20three are why because the other three have dedicated payroll taxes attached to them that say
55:28in the event that you're not collecting enough from these dedicated payroll
55:34taxes to completely cover the promised payments uh you have a problem
55:40supplemental medical insurance says you can never have a problem because it will always be paid by the federal government
55:48out of General Revenue so one one sentence one line if that
55:55line were attached to the other three to the other program to Social Security the whole problem quote unquote would go
56:02away the whole problem because it's a political choice not a financial here's the thing that I that did appeal
56:09to me about Professor Wolf's argument is that absent a meaningful push to educate
56:15the public on mmt by people in in Congress now obviously you've been doing
56:21the Lord's work but you know the you know by the people who actually are sincerely are leading us and who are
56:28being listened to at the highest level of politics it does feel like on a certain level
56:34we gotta engage with where folks are so if if we're living in a world where
56:39let's say obviously you're I completely agree with you that the Democrats sorry that that that conservatives
56:46um and neither and both parties make arguments about raising the retirement age and you know means testing the
56:51program in all these various ways that are non-starter for the left but there are also people like Bernie Sanders who
56:57say well why is the income cap on Social Security payroll taxes at 160 000 or
57:03whatever it is why aren't the very very rich continuing to pay their share into the program and it's like well what what
57:10do you think is going to happen more quickly getting rid of that line that requires three out of the four uh
57:19trusts to have a pay pay for requirement a tax-based paid for
57:24requirement or a modification that it's
57:29kind of easy to understand by the public that says oh wow I'm paying a bigger percentage my income into Social
57:34Security than Elon Musk that doesn't feel right and and do you do you think it's fundamentally just
57:41wrong-headed to embrace any of those political arguments in the short term do
57:47you think it just does more harm than good yeah I do I do I know it feels if
57:53it feels so how could it be wrong when it feels so right it is wrong and we're
57:59never going to break out it because we'll always be living in the short run and we'll always be leaning into what's
58:05perceived as you know pragmatic in the moment and easier and people understand
58:11and I'm not even disagreeing with you that uh if you're going to have a dedicated
58:17um earmark and pretend that it pays for Social Security then it it is uh wrong
58:24to exempt from that tax the vast majority of income for people who are
58:31making millions or billions of dollars right so I there's an equity issue and I
58:36totally get that um but what I'm saying the bigger thing for me is that it is really important to
58:43reject false premises and if somebody tells you we can't afford Social Security unless you know we make all of
58:52these adjustments to this trust fund which is just an accounting it it is literally just
58:58an accounting gimmick that's what it is and we pretend that we can't take care
59:04of people we pretend that you know that this thing is in crisis and I'm telling you what will happen before the you know
59:12lifting the cap and doing all this other stuff my concern is what will come first for the cuts because that's what's
59:18happened in the past right the green you're hearing people call now we need a commission so as part of you know
59:24leveraging uh you know the debt ceiling Republicans say well we're not going to
59:30touch Social Security and Medicare right now but we need a commission because we got to start getting a handle on
59:36entitlements and all this sort of stuff and it was the Greenspan Commission in 1983 after all that made a whole bunch
59:43of a whole series of changes to Social Security including phasing in a raising of the retirement age and other Cuts so
59:51I would get very nervous about continuing to perpetuate this idea that
59:57the the pro program itself is in financial trouble and just say no it
1:00:04isn't this is a political choice and if we can choose to increase funding for the military every year we can choose to
1:00:11make the payments to Social Security beneficiaries independent of you know whether the trust fund balance registers
1:00:18a positive number or not and I guess I I don't mean to beat a dead horse but then
1:00:23there's no argument that says okay well if Social Security is solvent maybe even
1:00:30expanded and seniors are able to
1:00:36survive and and Thrive even because of this old age retirement benefit
1:00:43then that is going to have an inflationary effect because they will have more spending power and Corp you
1:00:49know corporations will raise their great let's have that debate let's I welcome
1:00:55in fact I beg for that debate that's the debate I want to have let me um let me
1:01:01tell you what Alan Greenspan now Alan Greenspan is a republican right was the
1:01:07chairman of the Federal Reserve for many years had to go before Congress and testify routinely uh and it was I
1:01:14mentioned the Greenspan commission right that made these changes to Social Security Now Alan Greenspan when he was
1:01:20chairman of the Federal Reserve goes before Congress routine testimony and
1:01:25he's sitting in front of Paul Ryan Congressman Paul Ryan who has wanted to cut Social Security his entire time in
1:01:33Congress like that was a dream of his right so Paul Ryan has Greenspan sitting
1:01:38there and Ryan says to him so having personal retirement accounts is another way of making a future
1:01:45retiree benefits more secure for their retirement and also do you believe that
1:01:51personal retirement accounts as a component to a system of solvency does help improve solvency because when you
1:01:57have a personal retirement account policy it's a company with a benefit offset with that feature in place do you
1:02:02believe that personal retirement accounts can help us achieve solvency for the system and make those future retiree benefits more secure well I I
1:02:10wouldn't say that the pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure in
1:02:16the sense that oh there's nothing to prevent the federal
1:02:21government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody the question is
1:02:27how do you set up a system which assures that the real assets
1:02:32are created which those benefits are employed to purchase
1:02:39so it's not a question of security it's a question of the structure of a
1:02:45financial system which assures that the real resources are created for retirement
1:02:51as distinct from the cash the cash itself is nice to have but it's got to be in the context of the
1:03:00real resources being created at the time
1:03:06those benefits are paid so that you can purchase real Resources with the
1:03:11benefits which of course are cash I write about this in my book and I tell
1:03:17the story all the time uh Paul Ryan Congressman Ryan says listen don't you agree with me that social security is in
1:03:24real trouble because we all know it's running out of money wouldn't now be a good time to begin to transition to a
1:03:30system of personal retirement accounts you know what that means that means privatize Social Security personal
1:03:37retirement accounts and and Congressman Ryan is just reeling him in right I'm giving you this question it's a nice
1:03:44softball I just want you to knock it out of the part tell me you agree with me so he tees up this question and Alan
1:03:50Greenspan leans into the microphone and to his great credit he dismisses the premise he says no to
1:03:58Paul Ryan I'll tell you exactly what he said he said uh there's nothing wrong with Social Security
1:04:05solvency the way that the program is set up today because his exact words there's
1:04:11nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to someone
1:04:17full stop Alan Greenspan just took the crisis and affordability question off
1:04:24the table said no there's no problem there but then Brandon he goes on to say the really important thing which is the
1:04:30debate you want to have us engage in which is inflation he said the question
1:04:35is I'm still quoting the question is how do you set up a system that assures that
1:04:42the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase now what does he mean he means you can send
1:04:49the checks to seniors and dependents and disabled people there's nothing to prevent you from making good on all
1:04:56those promised payments go for it but the question is how do you make sure
1:05:01that they can turn around and spend those benefits into the economy getting
1:05:07the goods and services that they need the health care and the food and the energy and everything that they need
1:05:13when we have a shrinking Workforce there are fewer and fewer people working and
1:05:19producing stuff and you got all these people who've moved into for retirement so what Alan Greenspan is saying there
1:05:24is how do we know that we're going to be a productive enough economy in 10 20 30
1:05:29years that when those benefit payments go out that people are going to be able to turn around and spend them into the
1:05:36economy without causing an inflation problem and I'm telling you if that's the debate we were having in this
1:05:43country then Democrats and Republicans could still fight with each other but they would fight with each other over
1:05:49who has the best economic program to make sure that we're as productive in
1:05:55economy as we can be in 10 20 30 years time so that we can keep our promises to
1:06:01seniors have a productive economy with enough stuff being produced to meet the
1:06:06needs of every American that's the debate Republicans would still say tax cuts and deregulation is the way to make
1:06:14sure that we're productive and and we have a strong economy Democrats would say we need r d and investments in child
1:06:21care and education and and health care and infrastructure and that kind of stuff so a lot of the policy debate
1:06:28would sound the same but at least we wouldn't be distracted by and those
1:06:34things wouldn't be weaponized to try to take those programs away from us
1:06:39all right look I I I'm I'm obviously still that I was sold before coming into all of this and I appreciate you
1:06:47answering what I'm sure are the kind of questions you get all the time and are probably a little tired of answering
1:06:52them but I do think it's important to mute some of it out because this is the kind of stuff that I hear back and back
1:06:58to me all the time like in a rising context on the hill and frankly I you know that is that is the toughest
1:07:05audience and I want to make sure that there is a good argument being made to them because it's so easy frankly I
1:07:12think to just miss the idea that after being told your entire life and for Generations that there are these
1:07:18cataclysmic effects that come from spending at all it's hard to dislodge people from that that mindset it feels
1:07:26you though it's people like you and I know that you said you know that Congress has like and members of
1:07:32Congress have to change the way that they talk about this or the public uh understanding won't change I actually
1:07:38think it's the media it's the Press it's people who do what you do you know when
1:07:44when Senator Sanders if he had been on television or if congresswoman ocasio-cortez or anybody else gets that
1:07:52question you know how are you going to pay for it takes them right to that place where you start giving an answer
1:07:57that's sensitive to concerns about the deficit and so forth people like you stop up asking that question because
1:08:05that just reinforces all that stuff and I'm not picking on you you don't need that but you know lots of people do and
1:08:10say how are you going to Resource that you want Medicare for all you want to make public colleges and universities
1:08:15tuition free you want to blanket the country with solar panels and EV charging stations or whatever it is how
1:08:22are you going to Resource it do you have the construction workers The Architects the engineers do you have the heavy
1:08:28machines and Equipment cranes can you can you do this do you have the nurses and the doctors and the Mental Health
1:08:34Care Professionals do you have faculty and and Laboratories and dorms and can
1:08:40you actually because that's what matters the money is the easy part that's the
1:08:46that's the simple part and we pretend that's the challenge and and so we've got it all backwards yeah we can still
1:08:54hold our politicians accountable we can ask them to explain their plans and so forth but let's stop with the you know
1:09:00starting every question with the money piece and let's move to the the real
1:09:06things that matter did Bernie didn't you still lean in were you
1:09:12frustrated by his kind of choice in 2020 not to you want to get me in trouble I
1:09:17really don't I mean we I think all of us here at bad faith really appreciate and obviously I we all gave our time and
1:09:24lives to it that effort for a year plus but I think we could also reckon
1:09:30truthfully with what might be done differently what might could have been done differently what we maybe should do
1:09:35differently going forward but I think it obviously it's
1:09:41frustrating if you hear somebody doing the very things that you think are
1:09:46reinforcing a lot of misunderstandings and and myths as I call it in the book
1:09:52um that's frustrating on the other hand you know can one can understand that you
1:09:58know politicians very much like their talking points they they sort of Pride themselves on message consistency and if
1:10:04you've been saying something for 35 years uh it's it's hard to to stop doing
1:10:10that now I I mentioned John Yarmouth he found a way and he he's someone you know he's been on a number of podcasts and
1:10:18I've heard him talk about this and he said look I was a deficit Hawk I mean my time in Congress for almost the entire
1:10:24time I was there I considered myself a deficit Hawk and then I changed my mind and that is rare uh I I wish it wasn't
1:10:34so rare but you know if if he can do it then I think others can too and I hope
1:10:40and expect that it will be the younger generation of people who enter Congress
1:10:45who you know don't feel so hemmed in by you know Decades of having said one
1:10:51thing maybe that's where we start to see some real progress well from your lips to God's ears thank you so much
1:10:57Professor Kelton for joining me here today can you let the public know where they can find your extraordinary book
1:11:04and anything else you're working on right now sure well I write a sub stack so you can
1:11:10just you know if you want to Google my name you can find the sub stack I call it the lens the book is available anywhere you can order a book
1:11:16um so that's easy to find it's called the deficit myth so if you just punch that in and you're interested uh you can
1:11:24find that um yeah all right working on working on the next project so maybe we'll we'll be
1:11:31able to talk about that when it's done I'm looking forward to it I'm already looking forward to it thank you all as always for listening I'll see you
1:11:37tonight on Colin if you want an extra episode of bad faith you know you can get it on Mondays at patreon.com
1:11:43badfaith podcast as always take care of yourselves and keep the faith okay
1:11:48YouTube thanks for watching just a reminder that this is a podcast you can catch an extra premium episode every
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1:12:16foreign [Music]
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