Your assertion here that few are taught MMT (modern monetary theory) speaks very poorly for it’s acceptance. It’s complexity is it’s undoing. Do you think that anyone on the Fed embraces/uses/conceptualizes/acts based on MMT?
Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Dick Cheney (deficits don’t matter?), every financial investor dealing with securities? It is only the political/legislative function of our system that isn’t already on board unless they are addressing a need for massive bailouts of their donors when they allow those who do understand to direct the show. This will continue as long as we believe we can send carnival barkers and religious zealots to Washington to manage the most complex economy on earth.
The beauty of MMT is that it is no longer a theory. It is how our financial system has worked since 1971. The failing of policy makers to understand and adapt legislation to it is the current cause of much of our pain, and it’s needless. Please note the deer in the headlights look Greenspan gets from Paul Ryan in response to his explanation of how a sovereign currency relates to Social Security in the future. He rightly directs the conversation away from the “budget” (government side) and toward the management of a healthy economy that produces sufficient demand (private sector).
If MMT cannot be explained and embraced then it will never make it to policy and will survive on in theory only.
I don’t expect the average John Q Voter to understand. It is only the ones writing legislation that need to be knowledgeable so they can properly deal with reality instead of managing to a system that no longer exists. There are a few politicians that “get it”, even if they aren’t shouting it from the rooftops in public. There are others who understand but oppose any adoption because it gives too much power to the “other side”. These are the ones who pitch their disdain for deficits as their “shtick” and aren’t going to give up their claim to fame for a little thing like our economic future.
However if you could find a way to monetize an example of it, much like what Soros did with the English Pound people might find a way to embrace it without understanding it.
That’s exactly what both Bernie Sanders (his campaign’s economic adviser was one of MMT’s leading proponents) and Jill Stein were hoping to do. It was very instrumental in the general consensus backing of Hillary by Wall St, which is quite happy with the status quo and the general populace’s ignorance of the fact that the “debt” is just another term for “wealth”.
