I think of it more as shifting than expanding. We do have to be careful not to overwhelm our productive capacity, but we certainly have room to extract demand from top earners to compensate for gains made farther down the ladder. MMT recognizes the limitations of spending and the benefits of taxing properly. When it says the government can spend without limit it isn’t advocating for doing so. It is just saying that this is one of the fundamentals of our monetary system that can be built upon to knock down many myths.

We have had a resource based economy since ’71. The money is always available for whatever government wishes to purchase, but the price will always be set by the scarcity of resources. I have said that we may have to enable free college for a couple of years before achieving single payer healthcare so we can be sure we have the human resources in place for the added demand. We will have plenty of people available when we shut down the insurance industry, but they won’t have the skillset to be productive in healthcare.

MMT is a much better way to organize the distribution of resources in a capitalist system because it recognizes the source of money and that we are not restrained monetarily in achieving social goals. By building a society around some basic guarantees, regardless of their cost, we can set the bar for capitalism without hardship. Employers will benefit greatly from not being responsible for basic necessities of life for the entire population regardless of the economic conditions. We have placed too much focus on employment and it has cost us. I don’t think one should be able to simply not work and have all of their needs covered, which is why the job guarantee is superior to a universal basic income.