{"id":43979,"date":"2019-01-11T08:44:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T08:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=43979"},"modified":"2019-01-11T08:44:50","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T08:44:50","slug":"scotland-needs-modern-monetary-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/01\/11\/scotland-needs-modern-monetary-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland needs modern monetary theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another day, and another good modern monetary theory article, this time from Robin McAlpine\u00a0at Common Weal in Scotland, with whom I work on occasion. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonspace.scot\/articles\/13713\/robin-mcalpine-why-debate-about-mmt-indy-movement-exactly-what-we-need-right-now\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">As he said yesterday:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What I think is useful .... is not to think of MMT as a new programme of action or a different philosophy or an ideology.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, what MMT really does is describe what we already do but describe it more accurately. The reason I find it so interesting is that this different perspective helps think more effectively about fiscal and monetary policy.<\/p>\n<p>The real heart of MMT for me is explaining that national finances simply aren't like household finances. Debt is a problem for households, but then households don't control the money system.<\/p>\n<p>As we know, governments can simply create money if they want to, something households can't.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Robin is also right that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The problem\u00a0comes not from the theory itself but from how some advocates have explained it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I happen to\u00a0agree with that too. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/11\/09\/modern-monetary-theorists-need-to-take-a-long-and-hard-look-at-how-they-are-campaigning-if-their-case-is-to-be-won\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">My version of a solution to that problem is here<\/a>. Robin's is well worth reading.<\/p>\n<p>Scotland needs to be a country that embraces modern monetary theory from the outset when it becomes an independent country, as I suspect it will be. Robin will be one of those making sure that happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another day, and another good modern monetary theory article, this time from Robin McAlpine\u00a0at Common Weal in Scotland, with whom I work on occasion. As<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2019\/01\/11\/scotland-needs-modern-monetary-theory\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-monetary-theory","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}