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Massive Deficit Spending Greenlights Waste, Fraud, Profiteering and Dysfunction

Massive Deficit Spending Greenlights Waste, Fraud, Profiteering and Dysfunction

America’s problem isn’t a lack of deficit spending/consumption. America’s problems are profoundly structural.

The nice thing about free to me money from any source is the recipients don’t have to change anything. Free money is the ultimate free-pass from consequence and adaptation: instead of having to make difficult trade-offs or suffer the consequences of profligacy, the recipients of free money are saved: they can continue on their merry way, ignoring the monumental dysfunction of their lifestyle.

This explains the appeal of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which holds that deficit spending is the “solution” to all our problems because governments can’t go broke–they can always emit whatever currency they need via printing or borrowing.

The problem with government deficit spending is it’s free money to the recipients: there are no feedback mechanisms to enforce any consequences for spending that’s wasteful, fraudulent or inefficient/ineffective.

Deficit spending simply enables the wasteful, corrupt, rewarding-insiders profiteering state-cartel kleptocracy to continue gorging on public spending.So what desperately needed efficiencies and improvements are imposed on the higher education cartel by handing the cartel another trillion dollars of public spending? None.

What desperately needed efficiencies and improvements are imposed on the healthcare cartel by handing the cartel trillions of dollars in publicly funded “Medicare for all”? None.

What desperately needed efficiencies and improvements are imposed on the national defense cartel by handing the cartel additional trillions of public spending? None.

What kind of sense does it make to encourage wasteful consumption on a finite planet with limited resources? The entire rationale of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is that the productive capacity of the economy isn’t being maxed out because we’re not consuming enough.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Modern Monetary Theory and Strong Towns

Last year I read Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. I found it compelling and included it in an article I wrote about Puerto Rico (“The Spooky Nature of Debt“), mentioned it in a podcast and included it in the list of books I published in December. Apparently, this was a signal to many of you that I am, or at the very least might be, interested in a strain of economic thinking called Modern Monetary Theory.

“If you discover a magic pill that is said to solve some complex and ancient problem human societies continually struggle with, you might want to pause before taking it.”

The reality is that I’m a deep skeptic of the theory. In fact, I think we should all be reflexively skeptical of any theory that purports to remove burdensome economic constraints and make our lives instantly easier if only society can find the required cultural enlightenment. If you discover a magic pill that is said to solve some complex and ancient problem human societies continually struggle with, you might want to pause before taking it.

My skepticism aside, my goal here is not to convince the passionate supporters of endless federal money printing that this is a bad idea – you’ve got your thing and you really believe it and I don’t want to quarrel over it in this piece – but to point out to you, and especially those sympathetic to the ends if not the means of what you advocate for, that Modern Monetary Theory is not going to solve the problems we are trying to address at Strong Towns.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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