A Permanent Wartime Economy?

Progressives view all aspects of human life as a struggle against forces of oppression. Earlier this week on BBC, Professor Mariana Mazzucato suggested governments across the West should simply print money not only to help Ukraine, but also to finance other "wars" against climate change, inequality, and more. Should national treasuries essentially adopt a permanent wartime footing and print far more money, as Mazzucato and Warren Mosler recommend? Hint: Jeff and Bob say "No."

00:00 Introduction
00:27 Printing Money and War
04:53 Modern Monetary Theory
19:21 A Permanent Wartime Economy
23:51 The Future of Fiscal Policy

[DuderScooter]

The more sympathy a government gets from its people, the more power & responsibility they’ll assume over our lives and livelihoods. Our sympathy for government’s ambitions needs to be treated as rare and as precious as gold is in our own possessions.

[tuckerdixon]

If we can just create money, why am I taxed at all?

[jorgeborlandelli]

Argentinean economists have suggested this to Argentinean politicians since the 1950s. The difference is that in Argentina, the politicians took the advice to heart.

[anonymousAJ]

"This notion that a business has to earn revenues or borrow money in order to spend is a complete myth. They can just issue stock"

MMT by any other name

[BrotherCreamy]

Oh look at that smirk when she says “climate change”. These people give me the creeps.

[DolphLongedgreens]

Mariana Mazzucato was one of the first to publish on the topic of "climate lockdowns".

[mbfg]

I think there should be more emphasis, when talking about money and government, on the differences of money value based on a fixed standard and not on quantity of money versus goods and services. A fixed value versus a floating value is much more difficult to game without obvious illegal government theft. Even possibly more important, a fixed value of money would render a much simpler economic discussion and very little possibility for government to create many complex ways to use legalized theft.

[RightTailAngst]

As far as Mosler goes. He is so smart he has figured out the most effective way yet to convince the masses. Once you have him dead in sight he plays this too cool for school thing where he gets super technical and granular and than pulls back. My dad is an artist man you can grow out of it

[TheCruxy]

Debunking?
I though the Mises Institute preferred good ole Rothbardian de-bamboozling

[yotamgilad]

I Loved Bob's adjusted-for-inflation take: 100 million = 5 bullets

[RightTailAngst]

The 2 faces I wanted to see on bank run Friday. Barry Sternlicht is throwing his purse at cnbc as we speak

[Liberty-rnwy]

To understand this better, let's say government printed free chits for Uber rides. Now let's say the median Uber ride costs $20. Does anyone believe that if the government just kept printing these chits for "free" rides, that it would mean free rides for all? Of course not. What would happen is that the market for Uber free rides would dry up. Drivers would not provide them. And/or demand would far exceed supply. Credit is access to real resources. Government cannot make that cheaper. It can make it scarce. A lot of people think that if government prints money (chits) it means everyone gets more rides. People talk of "cheap money" or "easy credit" or free credit. Even Austrians do this. MMT and Keynesianism are basically the belief that the government can provide free rides by just printing these "chits." Even books like Tom Woods' Meltdown take this view, that for instance housing "boomed" because government was providing "free credit." (what really happened was investors fled to the "real" (as Mises put it) as the US dollar lost value.

[ManwithAx]

By the "just print more money" reasoning why not just bypass money and 3D print resources?

[seansingh]

I'm 44 years old. Is there anyone here who has been around much longer than me, who can answer the question: are these wacky ideas something new in "proper" countries like the anglosphere and Western Europe? Or are they are recent phenomenon?

[Liberty-rnwy]

She makes the typical mistake of confusing money with credit (access to real resources). If she were right and governments could just create resources like that out of thin air, then there would be no poor countries.

[wlxlhmk]

All worldwide must join and fully resist the wartime economy!✊

[Liberty-rnwy]

I don't understand it when Austrians say booms and busts are caused by government action. That is basically what Bob is saying here. That to me is a Keynesian argument. If that were true, then countries like Japan after 1989 could have just created more booms. Every poor country could. The USSR would still be with us. Fortunately that is not true and government action does not cause booms. Money printing does not cause booms. What causes booms is good ideas (per Mises), innovation, savings, and a solid currency. At about the 12 minute mark in the video, Bob says Fed action of low interest rates caused an "unsustainable boom." First off, the Fed does not set interest rates in the market. It is very, very hard to get capital even when interest rates are zero. If people could get 'free" credit, why do startups have to give up equity to gain funding? Why wouldn't they all just go to this source of "free money" and fund themselves that way? You really need to read people who were in the market (John Tamny) to understand how this works. There are no free sources of credit! Also, the credit market is global, so even if the Fed had this magical power to "create booms" as some Austrians think, credit outside the US would negate that (for example, even if the Fed set the interest rate to 30%, there would be credit coming from outside "the system."

[PHYTEthePOWAH]

Excellent. MMT is a bomb waiting to go off

[pretorious]

That "professor" has zero clue what she's talking about.