Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Top Economic Adviser to Bernie Sanders Calls for Massive Money Printing



Stephanie Kelton is a professor of public policy and economics at SUNY Stony Brook who served as chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and was an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. She carries the banner for wacko Modern Monetary Theory where she holds the view that the solution to everything is
to just have the government print money.

She writes in a new op-ed at The Los Angeles Times:
Whoa, cowboy! Are you telling me that the government can just make money appear out of nowhere, like magic? Absolutely. Congress has special powers: It’s the patent-holder on the U.S. dollar. No one else is legally allowed to create it. This means that Congress can always afford the pony because it can always create the money to pay for it.
She is big on doing this:
 [Hillary] Clinton scoffed at the price tag and warned voters to Just Say Neigh. But Americans still like Sanders’ ideas: 63% support free tuition and 66% support Medicare for all. To make these policies work, all we have to do is produce enough hospitals, doctors, nurses, universities and teachers. [RW note: By "produce," she means have the government print up money to provides these giveaways.]
But won't this cause major price inflation? She has a wacky solution for that also. After printing the money to spend on giveaways, this is her solution to prevent accelerating price inflation:
  If the government tries to buy too much of something, it will drive up prices as the economy struggles to keep up with the demand. Inflation can spiral out of control. There are plenty of ways for the government to get a handle on inflation, though. For example, it can take money out of the economy through taxation.
Got that? Kelton would like to distort the economy by printing money and sending it to government selected education and healthcare organizations. So much for free markets. Then, because she wants to limit the price inflation that such a program would occur, on top of the money flow distortions suffered by taxpayers via the program, she wants to increases taxes.

What needs to be said other than this is positively insane.

-RW

4 comments:

  1. --- Tuesday, October 3, 2017
    Top Economic Adviser to Bernie Sanders Calls for Massive Money Printing ---

    Why wouldn't she?

    "... And while the frog and the scorpion were being swallowed by the waters, the scorpion responded 'because it's what I do.'"

    It's what they do.

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  2. "No one else is legally allowed to create it." Don't banks create dollars from thin air every time they underwrite a loan?

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  3. "We don't have to raise taxes to increase government spending: we can just print the money... then raise taxes."

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    Replies
    1. First destroy their savings, then take their earnings so they can't save. End result, more people dependent on government.

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