Sean Archer says it really blows his mind how little he understands about what money is. It doesn’t blow my mind. I had long suspected it, and had my suspicions confirmed by his rapturous take on “The Deficit Myth” by the lovely Stephanie Kelton. I would refer people to the review of the book by Aaron Brown, an American financial writer, who gave it a three star rating. As Brown notes, rather than people using the government’s money because the government makes it, really people use money because a complicated society can’t do without it. If the government abuses its power to create money, the people themselves are likely to abandon the government-created money and find some alternative. In Zimbabwe, hyperinflation destroyed the national currency and for a while everything in Zimbabwe was transacted in American dollars. Kelton would no doubt reject such a comparisons, but she doesn’t anywhere in her book discuss it, and show how it differs from what she is advocating. In the book, Kelton is a strong defender of the Pay Guarantee, which Sean never mentions. This is actually a promising policy, especially for young people, and you don’t have to believe in MMT to believe in it. Sean only seems to have taken from the book the things that would comfort the deficit-crazy Trudeau government in power. If he ignores the Pay Guarantee, it is because the Liberals, at least in Ontario, have been big promoters of Universal Basic Income, but have completely ignored the Pay Guarantee. I’m not so sad that the Book Panel didn’t follow my recommendation and talk about the final volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher. The pages on the breakup of Yugoslavia were ill-informed and drenched with Serbophobia, and it is hard to forgive a biographer who would write such a long book without ever mentioning inflation targeting (first proposed in 1989 in a government paper, while Thatcher was still in office). Just the same, the discussion of monetary policy was better in Moore’s book than it seems to have been in Kelton’s.

Sorry, in the previous comment, where I wrote Pay Guarantee, I should have written Job Guarantee. Would you believe, I was just testing you?

Sorry, in the previous comment, where I wrote Pay Guarantee, I should have written Job Guarantee. Would you believe, I was just testing you?

Sorry, in the previous comment, where I wrote Pay Guarantee, I should have written Job Guarantee. Would you believe, I was just testing you?