You should care. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is the new economic theory used as justification for the massive spending you are seeing in Washington and ignoring soaring deficits.
What is it? It is the theory that government spending creates new money and this new money stimulates the economy.
This is opposed to the “old” theory that government spending is redistributing money it collected from taxes and from borrowing. The new theory is that the government is actually creating new money when it spends.
MMT says that less than full employment is evidence the government is overly restricting spending and that it should spend as much as needed to get to full employment.
When we get to full employment the remedy to slow the economy down and prevent excessive inflation by raising taxes. Whether spending exceeds tax revenues is not so important, economic growth leading to full employment is what counts.
In other words, the government should spend, spend, spend until everyone has a job and then raise taxes. If this sounds reasonable to you, you must be a Democrat, though there are Democrats who don’t buy this. However, to keep from being sent to political Siberia by party leaders, they vote for it anyway as witnessed by 100% yea votes from that side of the aisle.
Of course, at at the moment, this is all touted as necessary to get the economy back on track after nearly killing it with government-mandated shutdowns over fear of COVID.
Well, as I just posted, 60-70% of the $1.9 trillion relief bill has nothing to do with COVID. It just makes for good cover.
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