MyBrainHurts

Well get a load of Mr Moneybags over here.

It's a major plot point. Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator, has been put into almost everything in place of water ("water, like from the toiler?") And consequently kills the crops.

Most reporting I've read suggest that he lost the election and kept in power regardless. So, if you're a fan of democracy...

(No, I'm not saying the US is in any way justified in attacking Venezuela etc, just answering the question.)

The best thing Putin has done is to bring the verb defenstrate back.

Tankus has blogged about Krugman’s evolution.

So nothing from Krugman himself? Seems reasonable...

You’re still trying to put words in my mouth,

Lol, yes by quoting you and adding the exact context.

I strongly recommend, just give a quick look at any of the dozens well rounded critiques of MMT. Some may be a little obtuse if you don't have an econ background but feel free to reach out and i'll explain as best I can!

Cheers.

Krugman has come around on it over the last few years actually, through discussions with noted MMT proponents Rohan Grey and Nathan Tankus

Can you share anything to this end? I've looked and found a couple of interviews with Tankus but nothing that at a glance would seem to change Krugman's assertion that MMT is essentially Calvinball. (I'd rather not read through all their chats.)

But we’re now very far from the original point, and you seem to be pointing to an exceptional circumstance to try to prove a generality

Pal, you were the one to bring up Covid/CERB as your first defense of printing money!

It’s literally how we dealt with the first phase of the Covid pandemic. Was keeping millions of Canadians from being evicted a bad idea?

But at the end of the day, whether the program happened in a pandemic or not, the core issue remains. Governments have deficits to cover spending, e.g., on public servant salaries. According to MMT, this isn't an issue because you just print money to pay your debts and then tax money out of the system to prevent inflation. Which, groovy but that spending was there for a reason! Like, okay, keep the salaries but then what, just tax everyone else more? You've just created austerity with more steps.

I will get back to this when I've got some time at a computer! (It's tricky tracking back to the original and then getting to your bit on phone.)

I get the misunderstanding now! I figured it was something similar to this, which is why I asked whom you would tax and what you would do with the taxes.

So, a handful of things. First, this is a theory that is pretty much rejected by almost every mainstream economist (it's rare you see both the Chicago school of economics and Paul Krugman on the same side but here we are.) You might take a quick google at Modern Monetary Theory critiques.

But, ignoring that, if you dive into the theory a bit, you'll see it doesn't work as you've outlined. Looking back to your original point "Dollars are not scarce items; the government can issue currency essentially at will. Taxes aren’t there to fund services. They exist to reduce inequality."

In the MMT, taxes both fund services (say, the CERB) as well as help stabilize inflation. So, in your CERB example, sure, government prints a bunch of money which would cause inflation and then, you're now saying the government should just tax it back to get to a neutral rate. Which, fine, tax the CERB back. But then what was the point of issuing it in the first place? If the answer is "well we just tax the rich" then what's the point of printing a bunch of currency instead of just using the tax proceeds from the rich?

To quote Kelton:

That means the government then has to start slowing it’s rate of spending, or you can open up the drain and let some of those dollars out of the economy. And that’s what we do when we collect taxes.

So, to stop the inflation caused by government spending on CERB, we just tax the money back and hold onto it (instead of using it on services, otherwise you're back to the same inflationary pressures.) In essence, you've just changed all the programs from help to those who needed it, to a predatory loan.

Progressive stronghold makes even less sense

Really? NYC? On almost every metric it leans heavily Left. It has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, declared itself an asylum city, had Attorney Generals essentially running on a campaign of "I will indict trump", has some of the strongest LGBTQ+2S protections in the country, has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, has ambitious climate goals...

Even their "Republican" mayors run on platforms that would never fly in the republican party. When Bloomberg ran, he campaigned on free busses, raising taxes on the rich, community grocery stores etc.

But, when we're talking Zohran, we are talking, generally, economic progressive issues, i.e., raising taxes on the wealthy, free busses, community grocery stores (like republican Mike Bloomberg!) rent control etc. (Personally, I think these are generally workable, though I don't think Zohran actually has the authority to do a lot of what he's promised but that's a whole different issue)

I dunno. The argument on the progressive Left has, for years, been that if the Democrats would only field a truly progressive candidate, people would come out of the woodwork to support them and the Dems would coast to victory. And in Zohran, we pretty much got a perfect avatar of the progressive Left. And in some senses, the progressive Left was correct, folks did come out of the woodwork to support him with landmark turnout! But, almost half of the people in one of the most progressive cities in the nation came out to say No.

but acting more republican doesn’t change the numbers.

Maybe not in blood red states but in the states that the Democrats could conceivably win (the midwest, Georgia etc) the margins are thin. And if our kind of ideal progressive candidate can only squeak through in one of the most progressive places in the country, it is very hard to imagine we could pick up anywhere where we need to.

Maybe progressive stronghold would've been less controversial.

But the basic concept, even in a very progressive place, the clear, almost dream progressive candidate barely cracked 50% and a record number came out to oppose him.

I cannot fathom how this looks like a winning recipe for the Democrats in say, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin etc.

And what in that equation would change were we to try a similarly progressive candidate nationally? Except for the fact that most of the country is less progressive than New York...

The progressive candidate that we've been craving barely cracked 50% in one of the more progressive places in the country.

This doesn't bode well for say, a very progressive Presidential candidate.

Lumping in former democrats as current ones seems more than a little silly.