Richard D. Wolff

It seems highly relevant. SEe also this summary https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/22/behind-the-money-curtain-a-left-take-on-taxes-spending-and-modern-monetary-theory/

Aye, and I as well

I would like to hear about this also.

I came across a video of a conversation featuring Dr. Wolff & prominent MMTer Stephanie Kelton on YouTube: Radical Imagination: Imagining Economic Democracy (Richard Wolff/Stephanie Kelton) https://youtu.be/fogSw7U9y0w

I meant to say, “unlike in Bill Clinton’s 90s”

It also occurs to me that the lessons of MMT speak directly to how we can realize one of Dr. Wolff’s dearest objectievs—the government funding of worker buyouts of privately owned businesses. MMT explains why the government has much more freedom to create and spend money on grants/loans to workers (through “deficit spending”) than orthodox economics suggests: the government doesn’t need to “find” the money in raised taxes/cut expenditures before introducing the money into the economy. In fact the opposite seems to be true. If the economy is to grow without private debt increasing (Bill Clinton’s 90s), government spending must always precede be larger than any subsequent tax collection. And tax collection is not the government’s way to reclaim “needed” money, but rather a way to cool off the economy if/when demand side inflation becomes a serious issue. With official and hidden unemployment rates like this country has experienced in our lifetimes, we’re nowhere near maximum output where demand side inflation would become relevant. And when it did, we’d be living in a much better world.

I would also very much like to hear Dr. Wolff’s take on MMT!

Like the commenter Zach Haney, I also think there’s a good chance that people committed to moving beyond capitalism (such as Dr. Wolff is and many/most of us visitors to his blog are) might view the topic of MMT with suspicion—as reformist distraction or as an area of study that’s intrinsically bound up with the very capitalist system we’re trying to move beyond. But it might be a mistake to see MMT as a narrowly “capitalist” topic.

If I understand it correctly, MMT is an attempt to accurately describe the way any-and-all fiat currency systems actually work and, consequently, what policy options (often unperceived or misperceived) are available to government officials in their pursuit goals like full employment, equity, and price stability.

As such, I don’t see any reason why the insights of MMT wouldn’t be at least as exciting, valuable, and empowering, if not more so, to a person committed to an creating equitable, prosperous, and sustainable socialist economy socialism as it would be to anybody else.

I’m in 100% that I would like Prof. Wolff to discuss (perhaps at one of his Globalism Capitalism lectures in NYC? Or on Economic Update?) his views on MMT in the line of S. Kelton, W. Black, and Wray.
I get the feeling his view will be that this is really just an attempted fix of the capitalist system, still, but serious MMT even argues that taxes aren’t really necessary the way we conceive of them.

I’d like to learn about this too, though i don’t see it as a response to capitalism but more of a way of trying to make it work for many more people and a way of propping it and keeping it alive. So only cautiously would i think it as a tool of transition, otherwise it will only help perpetuate the stronghold of the few.