MMT QUICK-START PRIMER
The mechanics of modern fiat money show us we can PAY OURSELVES to undertake and accomplish anything we, as a democracy together, deem beneficial to our collective well-being. All that’s necessary—in addition to reaching consensus on the doing of it—are the real resources (labor, technology, expertise, land, materials, energy, etc.) required for the task. If they are available, money to marshal these resources into action can be issued BY FIAT—without increasing taxes and without “borrowing” dollars that must be repaid with future taxes. Furthermore, the mechanics show us that issuing fiat money in this way, for these purposes, is no more inflationary than issuing fiat money to operate the profit-making ventures of Private Enterprise.
So, the question is: Why are we so hesitant to embrace this reality and use it to our collective advantage? Why do we continually hold back on initiatives to solve real problems we face together, as a collective society, because we can’t answer the question: How are you going pay for it?
A large part of the reason is that, while the international advent of modern fiat money has been operational since (1971), we continue, habitually, to operate with an understanding of money established and ingrained in our thinking centuries ago. A new group of economists and social-political advocates, loosely organized under the trinomen “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT), is working hard to change that. This Substack—Paying For It—is my contribution to this effort.
The structure of the Substack is simple and straight-forward: Five VIDEO-DIAGRAMS (see below) offer a “Quick-Start Primer” for visualizing and grasping the basic fiat money mechanics and operations. The HOME PAGE then links to short essays, each of which deals with one or another aspect of the question: How can understanding and embracing modern fiat money transform our collective well-being?