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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

9.
Okun gaps show how much an economy is losing in potential output and jobs when it operates below full employment.

Read on: tinyurl.com/bddy6xj5

Bill & Warren's Excellent MMT Adventure and the 1990s Post Keynesian Thought Discussion Group

Join me as I paddle in the birthing pool of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

tinyurl.com

MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

8.
Explanatory notes:

Harberger triangles show how much potential wealth or benefit is lost to society when markets are distorted by things like taxes, monopolies, or price controls.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

7.
No. 7 – left to its own devices the private capitalist economy will generate low wages and high unemployment and large profits.

No 8 – the government can condition this outcome because it controls the issue of money which is required by the private sector. (p. 69).

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

6.
No. 5 – the government can never spend beyond its means as long as there is involuntary un. [unemployment]

No. 6 – the private capitalist economy pursues aims that are not in the best interests of the natural environment or the ordinary citizen.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

5.
No. 4 – this has allowed governments to fool us into believing that a budget deficit means spending beyond your means. then you borrow and, of course, borrowing is financing the profligacy.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

4.
No. 3 – Monetarist economists have successfully propagated the myth that the government finances are like the finances of the family. They are not but the reason is too obscure for the average (voting) citizen.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

3.
No. 1 – unemployment arises because the government spending is not large enough.

No. 2 – the governments are not spending enough b/c they confuse Harberger triangles with big and Okun gaps with small.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

2.
I will finish this short post by quoting a list of points posted to the PKT group by Mitchell on January 28, 1997 as a summary of a seminar paper he was about to publish. As is noted in the book: many of what we now regard as MMT fundamentals are contained in this list.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 9h

1.
8 pertinent points from Bill Mitchell - written in 1997 - that have stood the test of time

This is an extract from my latest Substack post: 'Bill & Warren's Excellent MMT Adventure and the 1990s Post Keynesian Thought Discussion Group'.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 1d

5. ‘buffer stock of jobs’ idea (a pool of employed people in the Job Guarantee program) and how similar it is to Warren’s idea of the ‘employer of last resort’.

Read on: mmt101.substack.com/p/bill-and-w...

Bill & Warren's Excellent MMT Adventure and the 1990s Post Keynesian Thought Discussion Group

Join me as I paddle in the birthing pool of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

mmt101.substack.com

1

MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 1d

4. theoretical views of many academic economists. (Warren worked in the finance industry)

The central importance of the Job Guarantee as a founding principle within MMT. Much of the content taken from the PKT, and repurposed in this section of the book, is about Mitchell’s

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 1d

3. back in the mid-1990s.

There are a number of things that I found particularly interesting - however the first though I had was about:

* The importance of the ‘practitioners’ view’ in understanding how processes within the economy work as a corrective to the purely abstract

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 1d

2. of the book that describes the point at which Mosler joins the PKT and the subsequent interaction between himself, Bill, and the rest of the group. I found it fascinating to read the original posts and to discover that so much of what we know about MMT was already in place

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 1d

1. It’s January 29, 1996 Warren Mosler (the 'father' of Modern Monetary Theory) joins the Post Keynesian Thought (PKT) discussion group

I'm currently reading Modern Monetary Theory - Bill and Warren's Excellent Adventure - by Bill Mitchell and Warren Moser and I'm at the section

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 2d

New on MMT101: Bill & Warren's Excellent MMT Adventure and the 1990s Post Keynesian Thought Discussion Group

tinyurl.com/bddy6xj5

Bill & Warren's Excellent MMT Adventure and the 1990s Post Keynesian Thought Discussion Group

Join me as I paddle in the birthing pool of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

tinyurl.com

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 2d

People voting for austerity parties tells me that they don’t know what it means. Governments enacting austerity tells me they don’t know what it means. Economists advising governments to enact austerity tells me that they don’t know what it means. A pyramid of ignorance got us to where we are today.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

9. to describe and predict the behaviour of the economy.
This approach is problematic.

Read on to find out why:
tinyurl.com/2cd4xddd

Why can’t orthodox economists ‘get their heads around MMT’?

And why can’t they see what is obvious to MMT’s leading advocates: Warren Mosler, Stephanie Kelton, Steven Hail, L. Randall Wray, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, and Bill Mitchell?

tinyurl.com

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

8. that have - apparently - led to the best way to distribute resources and to meet our human needs, that is, modern markets. This, along with other related ideas - are the assumptions that underlie the models that economists build -

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

7. Buyers are assumed to have all the information they need to set their buying expectations, i.e. they are assumed to have perfect knowledge about markets and about how markets and government policies work. It is this supposed knowledge, along with their default human traits,

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

6. If there is too much of something and not enough buyers want it, prices will fall, which decreases production. It’s this constant push and pull, based on individual decisions, that is supposed to keep the market in balance.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

5. behaviours: when prices rise individuals buy less and when prices fall they buy more. Equally, if too many people want something and there isn’t enough of it, prices rise, which makes businesses produce more of that thing.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

4. a price they are happy to pay) and an efficient allocation of resources, where nothing is wasted and everyone acts in their own best interest. How is that connected to the human nature? Well, because the state of the market is always a natural outcome of the sum of individual

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

3. That is, supply and demand are equal, prices are stable, and all resources (including labour) are fully and efficiently employed without government interference. In other words, markets tend towards full employment, fully satiated humans (the market produces what they want at

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

2. incentives. And, it is these human attributes that shape and dictate the behaviour of markets. It is these beliefs that lead to a set of assumptions about how markets behave; the principal belief being that markets are self-balancing.

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MMT101.ORG @learnmmt101.bsky.social · 6d

1. Orthodox economics starts with a set of beliefs about ‘what it is to be human’

The orthodox approach to economics starts with assumptions about human behaviour. Those assumptions are that people are essentially rational, self-interested individuals who respond predictably to

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