You know the drill: someone proposes something utterly commonsense, that has been done all over the world (say, universal healthcare) and the next thing you know, someone's shown up to shout "Who will pay for it?!"
Or, more toxically, a discussion of immigration or refugees or asylum seekers ends up being derailed by the state's inability to pay for basic services for the people in the country today -- how can we afford immigrants?
Or, worst of all, someone tells you that they voted for a shambling pile of human garbage because he's promised to "fix the debt" and to do less would be immoral, burdening the generations to come (see also: the fucking Democrats buying into this).
Governments aren't households, and governments borrowing money in a currency that they themselves issue isn't the same thing as you getting a bank loan. For more than a century, there has been a group of economists who've pointed this out: called "chartalists," then "neo-chartalists" and now, "modern monetary theorists" and they know exactly how to fund universal healthcare.
Modern Monetary Theory is the key to the economic prescriptions of Bernie Sanders and it underpins the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's an idea that is having something of a moment!
This week's Planet Money podcast does an excellent job of describing MMT in terms that are literally designed to be understood by an eight-year-old (so I was able to follow along, too!).
Once you've given that a listen, try The Nation's potted history of MMT and the groundswell of support for it. Read the rest
