Last week, Thomas Fazi and I had a response to a recent British attack on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) published in The Tribune magazine (June 5, 2019) – For MMT. The article we were responding to – Against MMT – written by a former Labour Party advisor. In – Part 1 – we considered how the MMT critique was not really about MMT at all. We provided a more accurate summary of what MMT is and what it is not. In this second Part we consider the way the former advisor’s article misrepresented MMT authors on issues such as taxes, inflation and democracy. Not that this three-part series is not just a point-by-point response to the attack on MMT noted above. In part, that article was not really about MMT but some concoction the author created to make his argument easier to sustain.

Last week, Thomas Fazi and I had a response to a recent British attack on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) published in The Tribune magazine (June 5, 2019) – For MMT. The article we were responding to – Against MMT – written by a former British Labour Party advisor, was not really about MMT at all, as you will see. Instead, it appeared to be an attempt to defend the Labour Party’s Fiscal Credibility Rule, that has been criticised for being a neoliberal concoction. Whenever, progressives use neoliberal frames, language or concepts, it turns out badly for them. In effect, there were two quite separate topics that needed to be discussed: (a) the misrepresentation of MMT; and (b) the issues pertaining to British Labour Party policy proposals. And, the Tribune only allowed 3,000 words, which made it difficult to cover the two topics in any depth. In this three-part series, you can read a longer version of our reply to the ‘Against MMT’ article, and, criticisms from the elements on the Left, generally, who think it is a smart tactic to talk like neoliberals and express fear of global capital markets. I split the parts up into more or less (but not quite) three equal chunks and will publish the remaining parts over the rest of this week.