Agreed 100% w/ Steve and Jim that trying to educate politicians & academics on MMT is a waste of time. It has to start w/ laypeople (i.e. family, friends, & people w/in certain communities both online and offline) & eventually media personalities. #MMT #Awakening
Sorry about the website issues we're having this morning! We're fixing it as quick as we can, but in the meantime if you want to access the transcript for this episode you can check it out here: https://macroncheese.captivate.fm/episode/ep-336-jim-byrne-mmt101
If Jim is reading this, I will say that I learned about MMT years ago through someone I know in Scotland. I’m sure it isn’t any one Jim knows as the person is just a regular person, not a blogger or academic. He’s someone not too dissimilar from Steve in terms of his background, someone who worked in capitalism in his native England and became disgusted by it and so he fled to Scotland.
I read the SNP propaganda newspaper on occasion, ‘The National’ or whatever they call it, and MMT isn’t exactly a foreign topic over there. Unfortunately, in reference to the part in the show about Scotland being one step away from revolution, there is a lot of economic London from the SNPpers which fights for space with the MMT narratives. There are those who love the EU and want to be in the Eurozone. Ick, I don’t even know where to begin with that group! Then there are those who want to peg to or use the Pound Sterling if Scotland ever achieves independence. We all know how that goes, but it isn’t like MMT is completely shut out of the conversation and, as I said earlier, there are ‘regular people’ up there who know about MMT so hopefully Jim doesn’t get too discouraged about things.
Steve, I know we talked about Ro Khanna prior to the Levy Institute conference. I didn’t realize you were going to be down there and meet with Khanna. He’s obviously a fraudulent progressive. Him begging for support from Elon Musk pretty much proves that and shows how easily it is a neoliberal Democrat can pretend to be progressive. I’m glad we got that anecdote from you about that. It pretty much proves what we already knew. I have no idea why he was invited to the Levy Institute’s conference anyway, but I suppose the Institute is a diverse set of economic academics.
On that note, as someone who has been in/worked in academia my entire adult life, trying to convince non-MMT economics professors that MMT is correct is a waste of time. I’ve worked in and with faculty in several academic disciplines and have never met a group of dogmatic professors as those in economics. As Jamie Galbraith (I hope his commentary at the Levy Institute conference was better than Khanna’s) has put it, it really is a religion with economics departments. Even the unfailing fawning over one’s graduate school mentors in economics is really quite embarrassing and something I don’t see in other disciplines, at least not to the same degree. Even some of our favorite MMT professors are victims of this strange beatification process.
These economics professors are not willing to ‘rubbish’ their previous career work, and the reputation of their mentors, to accept something even if it is obvious it is the empirical approach to things. The likes of Galbraith might, but then he doesn’t even work in an economics department at the University of Texas. Sadly, a lot of progressive commentators aren’t all that different. If they started out with ‘tax the rich to fund XYZ’ narratives, they’ll always keep those because they don’t want to contradict themselves. Then there are the likes of Khanna who use the ‘tax the rich’ narratives because they know it’ll never happen and they don’t have to explain further why they never achieved the progressive ideas they championed. Then they can parade around being ‘compassionate neoliberals’, kind of like Shrub’s ‘compassionate conservative’ line.
I’m just ranting and raving at this point, but keep up the good work. There are people open to MMT, and sometimes they show up in unexpected places. We can’t afford (ha!) to get too pessimistic about things, even if we are realists about what will happen.
Occasionally a political or media figure will have a 'road to Damascus' transformation. They publicly proclaim their new position and recount how they arrived at it. Are there any notable examples of academics having done so?
That's a good question, Virginia. Mark Blyth is supposedly less antagonistic towards MMT than he was around the time he wrote 'Austerity', but maybe Steve has reasons to refute that. Although I did read his book, and it is worth reading even if it isn't the last word on the subject, I can't say I seek out Blyth's commentary on a regular basis.
Excellent discussion! This addresses everyone who has said, "Okay, so taxes don't finance US Government spending. How does that make MY life better?"
Agreed 100% w/ Steve and Jim that trying to educate politicians & academics on MMT is a waste of time. It has to start w/ laypeople (i.e. family, friends, & people w/in certain communities both online and offline) & eventually media personalities. #MMT #Awakening
Sorry about the website issues we're having this morning! We're fixing it as quick as we can, but in the meantime if you want to access the transcript for this episode you can check it out here: https://macroncheese.captivate.fm/episode/ep-336-jim-byrne-mmt101
If Jim is reading this, I will say that I learned about MMT years ago through someone I know in Scotland. I’m sure it isn’t any one Jim knows as the person is just a regular person, not a blogger or academic. He’s someone not too dissimilar from Steve in terms of his background, someone who worked in capitalism in his native England and became disgusted by it and so he fled to Scotland.
I read the SNP propaganda newspaper on occasion, ‘The National’ or whatever they call it, and MMT isn’t exactly a foreign topic over there. Unfortunately, in reference to the part in the show about Scotland being one step away from revolution, there is a lot of economic London from the SNPpers which fights for space with the MMT narratives. There are those who love the EU and want to be in the Eurozone. Ick, I don’t even know where to begin with that group! Then there are those who want to peg to or use the Pound Sterling if Scotland ever achieves independence. We all know how that goes, but it isn’t like MMT is completely shut out of the conversation and, as I said earlier, there are ‘regular people’ up there who know about MMT so hopefully Jim doesn’t get too discouraged about things.
Steve, I know we talked about Ro Khanna prior to the Levy Institute conference. I didn’t realize you were going to be down there and meet with Khanna. He’s obviously a fraudulent progressive. Him begging for support from Elon Musk pretty much proves that and shows how easily it is a neoliberal Democrat can pretend to be progressive. I’m glad we got that anecdote from you about that. It pretty much proves what we already knew. I have no idea why he was invited to the Levy Institute’s conference anyway, but I suppose the Institute is a diverse set of economic academics.
On that note, as someone who has been in/worked in academia my entire adult life, trying to convince non-MMT economics professors that MMT is correct is a waste of time. I’ve worked in and with faculty in several academic disciplines and have never met a group of dogmatic professors as those in economics. As Jamie Galbraith (I hope his commentary at the Levy Institute conference was better than Khanna’s) has put it, it really is a religion with economics departments. Even the unfailing fawning over one’s graduate school mentors in economics is really quite embarrassing and something I don’t see in other disciplines, at least not to the same degree. Even some of our favorite MMT professors are victims of this strange beatification process.
These economics professors are not willing to ‘rubbish’ their previous career work, and the reputation of their mentors, to accept something even if it is obvious it is the empirical approach to things. The likes of Galbraith might, but then he doesn’t even work in an economics department at the University of Texas. Sadly, a lot of progressive commentators aren’t all that different. If they started out with ‘tax the rich to fund XYZ’ narratives, they’ll always keep those because they don’t want to contradict themselves. Then there are the likes of Khanna who use the ‘tax the rich’ narratives because they know it’ll never happen and they don’t have to explain further why they never achieved the progressive ideas they championed. Then they can parade around being ‘compassionate neoliberals’, kind of like Shrub’s ‘compassionate conservative’ line.
I’m just ranting and raving at this point, but keep up the good work. There are people open to MMT, and sometimes they show up in unexpected places. We can’t afford (ha!) to get too pessimistic about things, even if we are realists about what will happen.
Occasionally a political or media figure will have a 'road to Damascus' transformation. They publicly proclaim their new position and recount how they arrived at it. Are there any notable examples of academics having done so?
That's a good question, Virginia. Mark Blyth is supposedly less antagonistic towards MMT than he was around the time he wrote 'Austerity', but maybe Steve has reasons to refute that. Although I did read his book, and it is worth reading even if it isn't the last word on the subject, I can't say I seek out Blyth's commentary on a regular basis.
He is extremely antagonistic and I interviewed him 3 different times. Had him in private zooms with MMT voices.
I suspect this conversation reflects the inner dialogue many MMTers are having