{"id":395764,"date":"2019-02-10T13:45:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T12:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-venezuela-myth-keeping-us-from-transforming-our-economy\/"},"modified":"2019-02-10T13:45:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T12:45:19","slug":"the-venezuela-myth-keeping-us-from-transforming-our-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-venezuela-myth-keeping-us-from-transforming-our-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Venezuela Myth Keeping Us From Transforming Our Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting significant media attention these days, after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/2019\/01\/24\/economy\/modern-monetary-theory-explained\">said in an interview<\/a> that it should \u201cbe a larger part of our conversation\u201d when it comes to funding the Green New Deal. According to MMT, the government can spend what it needs without worrying about deficits. MMT expert and Bernie Sanders advisor Prof. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H_il45h3Nmo&amp;t=1017s\">Stephanie Kelton says<\/a> the government actually creates money when it spends. The real limit on spending is not an artificially imposed debt ceiling but a lack of labor and materials to do the work, leading to generalized price inflation. Only when that real ceiling is hit does the money need to be taxed back, and then not to fund government spending but to shrink the money supply in an economy that has run out of resources to put the extra money to work.<\/p>\n<p>Predictably, critics have been quick to rebut, calling the trend to endorse MMT \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2019-01-21\/disturbing-rise-modern-monetary-theory-mmt\">disturbing<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2019-01-17\/modern-monetary-theory-would-sink-u-s-in-debt\">a joke that\u2019s not funny<\/a>.\u201d In a February 1st post on <em>The Daily Reckoning,<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/dailyreckoning.com\/the-next-great-monetary-experiment-part-ii\/\">Brian Maher darkly envisioned<\/a> Bernie Sanders getting elected in 2020 and implementing \u201cQuantitative Easing for the People\u201d based on MMT theories. <span id=\"more-13880\"><\/span>To debunk the notion that governments can just \u201cprint the money\u201d to solve their economic problems, he raise the specter of Venezuela, where \u201cmoney\u201d is everywhere but bare essentials are out of reach for many, the storefronts are empty, unemployment is at 33%, and inflation is predicted to hit 1,000,000% by the end of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2019\/02\/the-venezuela-myth-keeping-us-from-transforming-our-economy\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting significant media attention these days, after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview that it should \u201cbe a larger part of our conversation\u201d when it comes to funding the Green New Deal. According to MMT, the government can spend what it needs without worrying about deficits. MMT expert and Bernie [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-395764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}