Short video today because where I really want you to go is over to the Mises Institute’s channel and check out these two:
Anti-MMT Panel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP7rSIuBtCU
One big panel including six excellent short talks covering a variety of serious issues with the MMT framework.
- Jonathan Newman introduces his ground-breaking research into ancient clay tablets that MMTers claim were the money. Turns out the tablets were rarely traded and usually describe movement of goods in terms of weights of silver!
- Joshua Mawhorter breaks down MMT’s use of ancient historical references (full of holes) to make a space for MMT in the ancient world. He notes that the MMT story for the origin of money did not happen in the U.S., and also notes the contradiction that the path toward sovereign issuer status requires policy directly opposite MMT recommendations.
- Joe Salerno talks about MMT and the spending illusion. Basically, MMT screws up the order of operations when they think about issuance of money and determination of prices. Also, a reference to W. H. Hutt’s book Keynesianism-Retrospect and Prospect, available here.
- Per Bylund talks about MMT’s willful ignorance of the role of the entrepreneur. A good talk, with a very funny joke (“One-and-a-half Austrians”) tucked in there, contrary to what you might expect from Bylund.
- Patrick Newman gives a historical retrospective of the development of GDP statistics. Turns out, Kuznets, who was integral to that process, was skeptical that government spending should be included… but the Keynesians won out.
- Finally, Lucas Engelhardt talks about the job guarantee and idle resources. Referring to Hutt again, he shows that several types of idleness won’t be addressed by an MMT job guarantee and the expected results of such a guarantee are by no means… guaranteed to be good.
Menger vs. MMT on the Origins of Money
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGW1lN1u-M
- A great discussion between Jonathan Newman and Bob Murphy, going in depth and expanding upon Newman’s recent diversion into archaeology and what he discovered about the ancient clay tablets MMTers say were money. Turns out, they never bothered to read the tablets or the papers of the archaeologists who discovered and studied them!
My video summary available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Thumbnail image from Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cuneiform_Writing_on_Clay_Tablet_-_36394195382.jpg
And intro music by Egor Gandukhin, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/sounddelicious-44481665/