The last few minutes are very telling. Each of us have a choice as to which path we choose. Cheers Markco2
This looks bad.....: Until you see this....: 35% of all US dollars in existence have been printed in 10 months.
Anyone have a rebuttal to Dr Robert Murphy's criticism of MMT? I can't say I'm fond of his IBC rubbish but he does a good job of explaining the pitfalls of MMT.
Not a good talk, Murphy is constantly misrepresenting things. First he spends a lot of time saying how things could be abused, yes any (system or tool) can be misused and is already talked about by MMT people. (Just because a knife can be used in a bad way doesn't mean we should never use it) Second he keeps claiming this is how they want the system to work, rather them just describing how the system mechanics really work. Two very different things. One of many example he misrepresented; He said MMT says taxation is needed for people to keep using the fiat currency. What was really described was taxation is needed to kick start a fiat monopoly currency. There is a big difference and someone like Murphy that has talked directly to Mosler should understand this by now. My advise to all, listen to Warren Mosler directly and then feel free to criticises anything. Don't listen to idiots like Robert Murphy ramble on what he thinks other people think.
Murphy does a really good job. Essentially it's a rebuttal of central planning by a free-market economist ie MMT is still the transfer of purchasing power from the people to the government so it's no different to Monetarist theory. And that it's been happening for centuries and that it's not a good thing eg creating fighter jets out of thin air means that the resources used to build those fighter jets have been taken from other areas. @66rounds do you mean Austrian Business Cycle when you mention IBC? Austrians argue that booms and busts are caused by the misallocation of capital and resources and that central planning greatly amplifies these booms and busts. On the topic of taxation I disagree with the comment by @leo25 , it has two functions, to compel people to work for government issued fiat and to control the amount of currency in circulation - Mosler himself has said the very same thing.
No by IBC I mean Infinite Banking Concept. It seems laughable at face value but he argues for personal finance one should take loans using a whole life insurance policy as collateral to essentially act as their own bank** That's my own flawed understanding anyway, I am an economic layman. I can see how Murphy has painted MMT as what people want rather than what is actually happening. To me the fatal flaw is the belief that there are sovereign currencies printed by sovereign governments. This is clearly not the case, with reserve banks being mostly private corporate entities. The true "sovereigns" of this world are hidden from plain sight.
I never said it only had a single function. I was correcting a single point Murphy made. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Currency today has become very messy and there is no clear definition of what money is anymore. Though only government in conjunction with CB can create physical currency, it's private banks that create most of the credit which today is used like money. So it's not really a flaw to think a sovereign currencies is created by sovereign governments. Just there are other means of money/credit creation today. Also although the FED for example consists of private banks, its inception was with permission and collaboration of government. That's why it's mandatory that the CB & primary dealer banks must make sure all government "debt" actions clear. So government has full control on how much new money it creates and therefore can't run out of money.
That's a new one to me. I must have missed that part. Banks can't create currencies. Reserve Banks are not private entities - they are an arm of government.
How? I never said he said it had a single function either. I got annoyed when he and the other guy went on a rant about how he things MMT people think if they stop taxation people will stop using an established currency. btw i agree with what you said "to compel people to work for government issued fiat and to control the amount of currency in circulation" If only Murphy summed it up that simply without all his rambling.
IBC is pushed heavily on Dr Murphy's own channel and books, not mentioned in the talk i linked. Is the Federal Reserve Bank (USA) a private or public entity? This is the crux of the issue, and is highly contested.
Quotes from Murphy Where does any MMT people say this? Because I've never heard it. No MMT person said this. They clearly say all Monopoly fiat currencies come from government first. Again he is completely misrepresenting things. The entire talk was like this and was painful to listen to.
It's highly contested because it's highly misunderstood and highly misrepresented. It's a private entity in name only, much the same as many of our own government departments are registered under the corporations act in order to smooth the transition of tax payments. Thanks for the info on IBC, I'll look into it.
It was in relation to the coercive nature of taxation. He was trying to expose what he considers was the flaw in Kelton's logic.
It almost seems as if Robert Murphy works for the government or banks. He is deliberately trying to discredit and misrepresent MMT so the average person remains baffled by the system, that way it can only benefit government and banks. They clearly don’t want the masses understanding this and Murphy is doing a good job to keep it that way.
To be honest i haven't listened to much of Kelton (I've mainly listened to Mosler), so i don't want to say for 100% she hasn't said this by mistake. But I'm more willing to bet he has misunderstood what she said.
I didn't get that from the video. I just got that central planning creates more faulty outcomes than the free-market. She's got exactly the same message as Mosler, just better on the eye. I think some of the things Murphy raised were really just side issues and of interest to economists as opposed to normal people like us.
