5. They continue to act as if government issued currency is scarce. As are result we have currency issuing governments pursuing ‘balanced budget’ policies or worse still, striving to run a surplus (i.e, a policy that removes money form the non-government sector).

4. When a politician utters the ‘how are we going to pay for it’ mantra I’ve yet to see an orthodox economist hold up their hand and say, ‘stop right there, it doesn’t actually work like that…’.

3. [Granted they haven't 'got' the idea that its value is assigned to it because you have to pay your taxes in it, but you get my point.] And yet, the actual government policies that stem from their collective advice completely betray that understanding.

2. Even Harvard's standard mainstream textbook openly teaches this underlying reality: "Money that has no intrinsic value is called fiat money because it is established as money by government decree, or fiat.” Macroeconomics by Gregory Mankiw

1. There is a paradox at the heart of orthodox economics: if asked (and this may surprise you), most orthodox economists will tell you that ‘yes they agree that currency issuing governments are indeed different from households, in as much as they don’t need to earn or borrow before they can spend’.

3. Stabilisers are good - and automatic stabilisers are even better. Automatic stabilisers for the economy? Yes, that sounds like a good idea to me. In this week’s article I intend to examine what that phrase means and what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has to offer

2. Who doesn’t like stabilisers? I suspect everyone who hears the word remembers either the first time they rode a bike with the stabilisers on it or, if they have a child, they remember their child’s first go on a bike.

1. New on MMT101: Automatic Stabilisers for the Economy: What Are They and What Does MMT Bring to the Party Unemployment payments or the Job Guarantee: which one does the best job of stabilising the economy?

8. constraint on government spending is inflation." The Deficit Myth (p. 9) – Stephanie Kelton "MMT emphasizes the difference between a sovereign currency issuer and a sovereign currency user." The ‘Kansas City’ Approach to Modern Money Theory – L. Randall Wray, 2020

7. Second, what is its core message? On that point, I’m always happy to hear from Stephanie Kelton and L. Randall Wray, "MMT demonstrates that the federal government is not dependent on revenue from taxes or borrowing to finance its spending and that the most important

6. The focus is on the use of money to provide the state with resources. MMT thereby describes how money is created and how it is removed from circulation." Modern Money Theory: A Simple Guide to the Monetary System p. 150 – Dirk Ehnts

5. There is no single definition, however, for our purposes, I will defer to economist Dirk Ehnts for a description of its core area of study. "MMT is a theoretical lens through which we view the monetary system from the perspective of the state.

4. These introductory notes give you some history of the development of MMT and a bit of context that explains why MMT focuses on these particular topics (i.e. the ones I listed below). First, it would be useful to answer the question, what is MMT?

3. I will point to articles I've previously written about whatever I happen to be addressing. The main areas of study that MMT concerns itself with are listed below, but before we get to that, there are a few other things (five of them) I think are important to mention.