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Hey Canada 👋 Apropos of nothing, here's a good book:

findingmoneyfilm.com/resources

There's a movie about it. Pretty good: findingmoneyfilm.com/

Or if you're into #mmt #manga , there's this. Taxpayers do not fund national governments who issue their own currency and have a high degree of monetary sovereignty, as Canada does...

mmted.org/smithfamily/

...as Canada's own data on its sources of borrowings show, 97.9 percent of borrowings are its own Treasury Bills or bonds, all of which are payable in Canadian currency.

canada.ca/en/department-financ

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇬🇧)

@jlepawsky @pluralistic

So MMT says governments and banks print to enrich the rich folks.

the billionaires like musk and bezos, but also the corrupt multimillionaire politicians and their lobbyost friends.

That causes inflation for all of us so we cant pay for houses and barely groceries and rent.

When there is too much noney in circulation, they tax us, taking it from everyone.

MMT sounds like justifying a scam to me 🤔

wasnt it taxes were meant to pay for stuff?

@jlepawsky @pluralistic but now its... now we print as much as we want to the capitalist class and when things get bad we take it away from everyone. ...brilliant

@serapath @jlepawsky

That is a completely unrecognizable account of what MMT says. Like, it's not the opposite of what MMT says; rather, it's completely unrelated to what MMT says.

If you have acquired this impression of what MMT says then you have either read unimaginably bad sources or interpreted them so incorrectly that it's almost inconceivable to me.

This is, as the physicists say, not even wrong.

@pluralistic @jlepawsky

Is it? Why?

VCs, (Investment) Banks, etc... the rich capitalists all have access to borrowing money and seeing never ending global debt expansion, money that essentially never gets paid back, thus essentially money printing, so they can pay us all employee salaraies to do what they want.
Nobody outside the capitalist class hs access to this. They can buy everything and outspend everyone using this and they do.
Governments can borrow too. Soon trumps goverment. ...

@pluralistic @jlepawsky

Now in the past, before MMT, the point was, that money get paid back with interest, not with money from new money printing loans given to other capitalists or the same... to pay to rhe one that needs to pay back some debt... expanding money supply faster and faster to keep up this ponzi.

Now MMT says... oh, that is fine and if it is ever not, lets use taxes to get money broadly from everyone, to make sure folks dont have too much money. its a bit ridiculous imho

@pluralistic @jlepawsky

I am not saying MMT is incorrect or wouldnt work, but also, what does MMT actually mean?

It means to acknowledge that money printing is accellerating and the loans being paid back cant really be used to reduce money supply by taking from those who got it printed... but rather money goes somewhere, so lets use taxes to take it from ppl, so they cant spend it, thus prices are stay more stable... less inflation, but ppl can afford less... yay! 🙃

good justifying marketing

@pluralistic @jlepawsky

Anyway. IF (only IF) the money is really directly printed as a universal basic income to the people. And not like in covid, where the homeless and self employed and unemployed with currently little to no income get little to nothing, but the rich fancy employees with big salaries get a lot (thats just the same injustice on ppl scale we usually have everywhere) ....AND THEN ...take it with (progressive) taxes or rich taxes only, then it would be alright.

But they wont

@pluralistic @jlepawsky

One thing she says in the TED talk is correct though, for government employees, their salaries is actually printed into their bank account - like a universal basic income.
Maybe we should all becoke government employees - i'd be up for it 🙂
I can work on open source 🙂 ...i do have q feeling though, they wont hire everyone and the rest of us wipl still be fucked.

Anyway, they'll do what they want anyway🤷‍♀️

@pluralistic @jlepawsky

Finally. All countries already run deficits and basically do MMT.

If i actually see free schools, free health care, and great infrastructure, maybe bike lanes, you name it, THEN i can agree with MMT.

I can only see a reality where public money goes to the amigos of whichever crony is in charge. And as l9ng aa that is the cae (basically its like that forever already), then lets talk MMT, but until that MMT is just propaganda to frame what happens as a good thing.

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky you betray the origin of your knowledge of MMT by using phrases such as "countries do MMT" and tie you acceptance of MMT to material outcomes of a political process. I suspect you are reading a lot of its opponents' bad faith attacks.

MMT is a description of how the money system works. You don't "do" it by running a deficit. You "do" it by having a fiat currency, everything else is outside the scope of MMT.

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky
MMT is what tells you that you don't have to have the cooperation of the capitalist class in order to have free universal healthcare and education or great infrastructure or zero unemployment. You simply decide to do it and mobilize the resources to do so - the latter of which may require taxes in order to reduce demand from elsewhere for the required resources.

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

yes. and in "you simply do it" .. its not literally you or me.. its them.
...in the US its now trump.
after trump its another group of privileged folks, like for the last ... many decades since... forever 🙃

So eh, before discussing calling something MMT, the bigger question is, WHY give power to the cronies or how to ensure cronies are gone?

i dont see the incentives.
with that kind of privilege it attracts endless cronies and populists and makes it worse

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

yes. MMT describes the cronyism we have.
It legitimises it. The system we have - in theory - like in the TED talk, would be good if it was used to get people funded and cover basics and so on.

It doesnt happen.
Even during the pandemic, only the employed folks and especially the ones with high income were covered. Gig workers, unemployed, low income got almost nothing, job center folks neither.

Its always more for the alreadt privileges ones

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

The government might use their powers - call it MMT to fund stuff, but they will again mostly give it to their friends. to their personal sociap network. To the usual suspects. To everyone in and close to government. To the lobbyist belt living around washington DC and so on.

Also, the private sector will continue money printing as well, silicon valley, VCs, invetment banks, also to the rich and usual suspects.

Nothing changes, but MMT makes it sound legit

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

You can argue from a purely scientific perapectice its an interesting take, but applying the narrative in practice means fiving it to the cronyism and capitalists like what is already happening. Why would anyone support that over e.g. bitcoin to end all money printing.

End the colonialists or capitalist class privipege of printing and put us all into the same class instead?

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky I'm sorry, describing the functioning of something is not at all the same as legitimizing the outcomes of how people choose to exercise the system. That's absolute nonsense.

As you say, the bad guys full well know how this works and use it to the fullest, while the less bad guys cower behind deficit fears. Describing the functioning is a step at correcting it.

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky
Okay, i agree with that

TED talk though did not sound as a neutral description, but was using very opinionated language to glorify how MMT works

Its not "deficit" and "bad", its "surplus" and "good". She literally says: Their deficit is our surplus 😆

Of course she meant what ppl think of bad and deficit should be thought of as surplus. But given politics and reality its them printing for their amigos, private banks and public politicians and not for the ppl

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky you have to understand in its context: massive scaremongering about deficits as "a burden on our kids" meant to poison the public against investing in any kind of public service.

You don't stop cronyism by taking the option of public investment off the table. You don't fight the power of the capitalist class by insisting that we need to take from them in order to spend on the rest of us (we should also do that, but it's not a prerequisite).

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky MMT is the tool that counters the "we need to ensure profits for businesses in order to fund public spending" and that is huge! We are not using that nearly enough.

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

Both are nonsensical.

David Graebers book - Bullshit Jobs.

Private companies often stay in business because they just get their money from the VCs, the Banks, the private money printers.

Governments crony politicians tell weird stories the public wants to hear - ne of which is "we need to ensure profits for businesses in order to fund public spending" ...because that might buy them votes, but they also just print monies for their amigos.

All capitalists do

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

I have applied for public funding in the past.
I have personally helped refugees and saw all the money go to the professional applying folks who are already known by the folks they apply to.
It always goes to the same folks.

The unspoken rule is - you have to know the ones responsible for handing out that public money. It never goes to somebody unknown, because maybe they dont have the skills or cant deliver.

Minimizing the risk means giving it to the same

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

Now, the same is true for private funding - for Venture Capital, Investment Banks, Funds, and so on

Since 2008, but technically since forever and especially now, that money also always goes to the same circles

In fact - the leaders in politics are always well connected to big old money, and in essence its the capitalist class and their kids

Sure, the general public gets peanuts as well, but we are all better off ending the capitalist money printer privilege

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky That's terrible, but do you see how MMT is talking about the system, Kelton is talking about how the right weaponizes myths about how the system works to prevent people from using it for good, while you are talking about how people are using said system now - misunderstandings and all?

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

i am talking how ppl use the system now.
i agree that MMT is "more true" than anything else...
..but i fail to see how there will ever be any politicians who will use the power of the systrm which MMT describes well, for good

More than that. MMT is a vision, because it does not cover private banking system and their ability to print money just like governments

So unless that is changed, all that changes is an MMT narrative, but prqctically all stays the same

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky

Now more than that.
I am not convinced politicians in power are able to dostribute funds to everyone. We talk billions of people.
They cant. It will be cronyism even involuntarily, because they work through their social networks and that literally cant include billions of ppl.

so who is close friends with politics will get money. who is far away will suffer.

same with the private sector

destroying all money printing makes all of us equal

i can see BTC here

@serapath @pluralistic @jlepawsky with a non-fiat currency (like BTC tries to be) governments are forced to operate at the behest of the capital class. Today they do so willingly, but they don't have to. With non-fiat they have no other option. They need the money from the wealthy in order to provide services.
They can bankrupt the government ending democracy even faster than what we're seeing today.

Ask the Greeks or Italians how happy they are not being able to conduct monetary policy.

@joelving @pluralistic @jlepawsky
today they do so willingly?

no they are part of the capitalist class, because of the money printer, the capitalists and scammers and cronies flock to it. they spend resources to capture politics, because that money can be restored afterwards by using the printer to benefit them and to protect the banksters privqte printers as well.

habing no money printers anymore still allows taxes though