What’s the best way to unpack this?
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Original Question
What’s the best way to unpack and identify the flaws in this response?
James Neal - let me guess, you are a fan of MMT? Wouldn't surprise me. It is trash for many reasons, here are five. Regarding the debt ceiling, this is a constant game and always has been. It is more swamp theatre and to believe otherwise is foolish. While the spending bill is also theatre, it sets us further down the path of insolvency. We must raise the debt ceiling because there is no choice, but there is a choice not to apply $22,000+ to the debt of every single American taxpayer under one pork bill. The only reason why we can print our own money is because the world uses the dollar. Once we are replaced and no longer the "bread basket currency of the world" our problems skyrocket and spending our way out won't be an option.
1. MMT has a flawed model of inflation that overestimates the importance of economic slack.
2. It overestimates the revenue that can be earned from money creation.
3. It overestimates the potency of fiscal policy while underestimating the effectiveness of monetary policy.
4. It overestimates the ability of fiscal authorities to control inflation.
5. It contains too few safeguards against the risks of excessive public debt.
https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/5-problems-mmt
Comments on Question
I don't see any fallacies at all here, just a series of statements and claims, unsupported by evidence.
My guess is that you [James] posted this on the wrong site. Perhaps an MMT forum would give better results.
Hey Everyone,
Apologies, let me be a bit clearer I'm not looking to examine the logic behind the bulleted MMT list, I'm in the process of educating myself on it enough to further that part of the discussion with the guy that posted it.
I'm more concerned with responding to
let me guess, you are a fan of MMT? Wouldn't surprise me. It is trash for many reasons, here are five. Regarding the debt ceiling, this is a constant game and always has been. It is more swamp theatre and to believe otherwise is foolish. While the spending bill is also theatre, it sets us further down the path of insolvency. We must raise the debt ceiling because there is no choice, but there is a choice not to apply $22,000+ to the debt of every single American taxpayer under one pork bill. The only reason why we can print our own money is because the world uses the dollar. Once we are replaced and no longer the "bread basket currency of the world" our problems skyrocket and spending our way out won't be an option.
It seems to me that "let me guess, you are a fan of MMT? Wouldn't surprise me," is an ad hominem as it is directed towards me in an attempt to impugn my character and position.
I also feel that "Once we are replaced and no longer the "bread basket currency of the world" our problems skyrocket and spending our way out won't be an option," is a slippery slope.
The whole statement comes off more as an appeal to emotion full of FUD.
Thanks for any additional feedback.
I don't know how much our members know about MMT - I'm certainly no expert on it. However, I don't see fallacies here - it would be a case of asking for evidence for those points (1-5), and then either accepting or refuting that evidence.
Answers
2I see no fallacies because I see no argument. These are just a series of claims. As for the flaws, this would require domain-specific knowledge on the topic (which I don't have).
There are so many assertions that are so poorly phrased that it would take a book to state them clearly and then drill down to discard flawed premises and identify the decent premises. Something the MMT guru Krugman has never done. Your cite to Mercatus shows me that it does not grasp the fundamentals of the issue. If one desires to understand why MMT is not correct, one of the best books is by von Mises in 1912, "The Theory of Money and Credit." Although a hundred years before MMT became a household word, von Mises showed MMT is a flawed theory and would lead to financial collapse. Since then, history in several countries, the most recent of which is Venezuela, has born out his analysis.
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Just a bunch of assertions, but not really any logical fallacies. Wrong forum, I guess.