My Stuff

https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0

Coming Soon:

The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





Total Pageviews

Saturday, March 28, 2020

THE EFFECTS OF THE VIRUS


Some of you may recall that ten months ago, on May 3, 2019, I had a go at telling you what I had learned of Modern Monetary Theory from a book by L. Randall Wray.  I was rather taken by what I had read, although quite unfit to form a reliable judgment of the book.  The theory goes very much against the grain of establishment Economics, and I have seen Paul Krugman refer dismissively to it from time to time.

Yesterday, as I was listening to the reports of the unanimous Senate vote and almost unanimous House vote for a 2.2 trillion dollar stimulus, emergency, bail out, or whatever bill, it occurred to me that one of the unanticipated side effects of COVID-19 has been to make MMT mainstream. 

3 comments:

veronique said...

Bill Mitchell (an Australian co-author and co-worker of Wray's) would agree. See his blog posts of the last week @ Bill Mitchell - Modern Monetary Theory.

Stephen Darling

Jerry Brown said...

Well I doubt it will be mainstream. But anyone who really thinks about how the Federal Government can just spend 2.2 trillion dollars by a vote by Congress and then compares that to what MMT says is going to note how similar it is. It is certainly good evidence that MMT is not some kind of wacko idea.

But then I already think MMT is the closest to the truth of how our money system operates. So I am biased that direction for sure.

J. Fleming said...

You might also refer to the work of Prof. Stephanie Kelton regarding MMT.

https://stephaniekelton.com