"The Keynesian Revolution. Dating from the 1930s. It was extremely controversial until the 1960s. Then: orthodoxy until the 2020s."

While the gold standard was abandoned to enable our recovery from the depression and to allow us to ramp up our war effort it has remained in economic theory taught in academia and most public policies as a result. Once the writing was on the wall for America as an "exporting" nation in the '60s and '70s it was more than obvious that we could no longer defend our gold reserves.

America, as the creator of the currency of international trade by treaty, moving to a fiat (resource based) economy forced the rest of the world to follow suit. However, the capitalists weren't willing to so easily accept the federal government as the provider of funding for the "general welfare" it is constitutionally mandated to be and they moved to full "cold war mode" with every ounce of effort they could muster to propagandize against the change.

Politicians who might even hint at the reality of federal finances and the benefits that reality could provide found themselves labeled as "socialists" and bombarded with demands to show how their programs would be "paid for". Such demands are, as Dr. Kelton so skillfully shows, shortsighted, at best, and purposefully deceptive, at worst.

The preservation of the failed and outdated gold standard, at least in how policy and budgeting are arrived at, is critical to the capitalist donor class retaining power in its constant struggle against the working class. Without the artificial constraints the gold standard applies to federal spending, and in any logical view of that process, the democratically elected representatives of the people become the deciding force in the economy and there is no need for the people to suffer beyond the lack of political will of those representatives.

America, and much of the modern world, face severe challenges that will not be addressed sufficiently while the oligarchy forces it to remain in search of shiny coins to fund meeting them, The decision makers lurking in the shadows of our government have shown no interest in sacrificing anything for the common welfare, or even our survival as a species, so we can no longer accept their worldview as our roadmap going forward.

We can accept the simple reality of our "true" government funding functions and their impact on our economy or we can accept our demise as inevitable while we provide the creature comfort of those wishing to deceive us. They have their exit plan for the end of civilization as we know it well prepared.

Do you?

Or are you willing to remain convinced that there are as yet unproven disasters awaiting for any simply trying to mitigate their earth destroying ideology so we shouldn't even try? The evidence is in on our false fear of boogie man type issues of inflation and "big gubmint".

Fear or hope? Those are the choices left to us at this point. I think it is well past time for some hope being interjected into our economy and society and MMT shows us how we can "pay for" it.