The financial solution has been right in front of us the whole time
Apr 9·8 min read
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"Balance the economy, not the budget"
We've wasted a century looking at government as if it were a family or a business. It isn't. As the monopolist controlling American currency, the government doesn't ever have to worry about running out of money. It can always fund social security and Medicare, and many other programs besides. Instead of fiscal deficits, we should be looking at the deficits in society, because we can do everything to alleviate them with our currency power and expanded deficits. This is the essence of the powerfully shocking The Deficit Myth, economist Stephanie Kelton's book on Modern Monetary Theory.
Written without a mathematical formula or spreadsheets to bamboozle the reader, this most readable book lays out how America came to this point, and how very much more it could do for itself if it would just open its eyes to it.
Kelton is a proponent of Modern Monetarist Theory, MMT. She learned from Warren Mosler, who pieced it together over a lifetime of observations. She has been researching and speaking about it for decades, with little evidence of success.
America does not need its taxes
Kelton says America does not use and does not need taxes to fund its operations. Taxes simply create demand for the sovereign currency. All Americans need dollars to pay taxes at all levels. Without that necessity, no one would care for American money. Taxes do allow governments to provision themselves without the use of force, she says. But if the government manufactures the currency, it doesn't need the tax money to operate day to day. It just creates dollars as it goes. That's how it works today, and taking things to the next level would create wealth and comfort for all.
It's surpluses that suck money out of the economy
Here's the part that requires rewiring brains: Fiscal surpluses suck money out of the economy. If surpluses persist for too long, eventually the economy will hit a wall, she says. Less money circulating means slower business, and added debt for non-government entities, which they can't pay off. In six major recessions, each was preceded by a period of balanced budgets.
Deficits spread the wealth
If surpluses take money out of taxpayers' hands, fiscal deficits spread the wealth outside the government to the private sector and to other countries. (Instead, current wisdom says government sending crowds out other investment.) Deficits naturally drive interest rates to zero, she says. While not an MMT economist, I learned this the hard way (is there any other) in the 2008 financial crisis. When the Fed pumped a then incredible seven trillion dollars into the economy by magically creating new dollars it handed out to banks, I reasonably figured this would dilute the currency and cause it to fall. Interest rates should therefore rise dramatically, because US money would be worth so much less. You can't suddenly print seven trillion additional dollars without it affecting the currency, I believed.
The dollar monopoly screams for deficits
History shows the dollar has gone only one way — up, and interest rates have gone only one way — down. This is Alice in Wonderland, unfathomable and upside down. But it's the way things really work, not the way things are taught. Our lying eyes are all that keep us from the safety, security and prosperity that the world's most powerful currency provides in the form of expandable deficits.
The long road to here
It didn't always work this way. History demonstrates how constrained the country was under the gold standard, when money could only be issued if there was gold stored somewhere to back it. It made growth minimal, and recessions frequent. (It's why kings of olde had to borrow from international financiers to fund their wars.) American banks used to issue their own dollars, and when they failed, the money disappeared. FDR broke away from the gold standard and Nixon killed it, freeing the Fed, which was only invented in 1913, to manipulate the dollar and interest rates as needed. The Fed was given the monopoly.
The Fed has since learned it can inflate its own balance sheet without damaging the economy, which seems to have never occurred to anyone before. Or they would have used it instead of struggling with outdated tools in every recession. Monetarists claimed to be able to manage the economy and deficits by throttling or increasing the money supply. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan thought unfettered capitalism would allow him to sit on the sidelines and watch the economy grow controllably forever. This creeping evolution of fiscality also incorporates monopoly power over the currency, but pathetically, no government has taken advantage of that power except in crisis.
Trade deficits rock
It's not just the budget deficit, Kelton says. The trade deficit is only a negative factor if the government's fiscal deficit is smaller than the trade deficit. Otherwise it is harmless. The business of the trade deficit shrinking the economy is a leftover from the gold standard constraints. The trade deficit not only loudly proclaims the wealth of the USA, but provides US dollars to exporting partners, raising their standard of living as well as America's. Focusing on reducing the trade deficit is not only a waste of time, it is harmful, as tariffs hurt American exporters, importers, producers and consumers alike. It is tariffs that shrink economies, not trade deficits.
How spending works
All federal spending is done the same way — the Fed credits the appropriate bank accounts. Gold is not shipped, nor are hundred dollar bills. It's all done on a keyboard at the New York Federal Reserve. Nobody waits for taxes to be paid first. It's the same in most countries that have their own currencies. So Japan and the UK operate the same way, and could use their currencies to boost everyone if they chose to.
Users vs Monopolists
Countries that are users don't have that power. The most notable mess that creates can be seen in Europe, where euro nations cannot print their own money. Ironically, the euro itself is a solid candidate for enlarging fiscal deficits for the good of all, but the European Central Bank is totally unwilling, so the power goes unused, and all the countries suffer the austerity of trying to keep their deficits within 3% of GDP. With the coronavirus pandemic, they are desperate to spread some wealth, but they can't. And America is afraid to do more than send a small check to everyone — one time only.
Democrats blow the chance to change the world
Finally in 2015, Kelton was invited to be the chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee. She was invited, almost of course, by Bernie Sanders, one of the few who gets it. Deficit spending has the power to change government completely, and by extension, the lives of all its citizens. And all at no additional cost. It is, or should be, the privilege of being American. But Democrats are as hard a sell as Republicans.
Kelton knew she would have a hard time on the Senate Budget Committee, and she was right. Getting this message through the skulls of senators who were elected on budget slashing and deficit reduction platforms is no small task. Kelton and Mosler demonstrated the near impossibility with a Congressman.
She and Mosler called in a favor and met for an hour with a member of Congress. He squirmed uncomfortably at the facts they presented, until 45 minutes in, when the light suddenly came on. He got it. But he said he could never say it himself. He couldn't be the voice of reason, the man with the solution, who stood out from the consensus (even if the consensus was clearly taking the country in the wrong direction). He would rather fit in and live the lie. Is there anything else voters need to know about their political parties?
Balance the economy, not the budget
Kelton says: balance the economy, not the budget. The fiscal deficit is not nearly as critical as the welfare deficit, the healthcare deficit, the education deficit, the infrastructure deficit…. Medicare for all would not bankrupt the country, it would free up trillions to be spent on other things, saving many individuals from personal bankruptcy and others from death. It would boost the economy.
There is risk in spending more freely. The biggest risk is inflation. The economy must be monitored to ensure the spending doesn't exceed the country's capacity to produce. That would create an inflationary spiral, cheapening the currency and causing interest rates to rise.
Of Automatic Stabilizers
So leaving the spending part in the hands of the politicians is not viable. Kelton calls for an automated response, like unemployment insurance, which expands in hard times and contracts in good times, without interference from Capitol Hill. She prescribes a guaranteed federal job. Anyone who wants a job could work for the government at a livable wage, with benefits. This allows them to keep looking for other work while gainfully employed, a huge advantage. It lets the government build out infrastructure, community works, hospitals — anything that needs people power. And it keeps everyone employed. Because one of the more idiotic aspects of they way things run now is the NEED for unemployed people.
The stupid NEED for unemployment
The Fed maintains there is a natural level of unemployment which varies with inflation. In order to maintain proper inflation, the Fed wants to see a certain percentage unemployed. So America has never had real full employment, because it thinks that is bad. Some Americans need to suffer if the country is to prosper, is their modus operandum. Kelton says an "automatic stabilizer" of a guaranteed federal job will do far more for the economy and keep it going right, producing at full capacity.
Wherefore UBI?
I was surprised she didn't go farther and discuss a universal basic income, which has not only shown to stimulate business and lower poverty, but is also profitable to the government because all the entitlement programs would go away, with all of their applications, interviews, investigations, denials, prosecutions, appeals and bureaucracies. Maybe next book.
Blowing the advantage of being American
The USA will stay mired in the doom and gloom of the current recession only because its leaders want to, not because it has to. There should be some advantage to being an American, and not have to suffer to the same extent as countries that don't have powerful currencies. Expanding the budget deficit costs nothing and grows the economy positively. For all the decades of crying that deficits hamstring our children, no one is suffering from the record of deficits of World War II or Vietnam or the Reagan ballooning. The truth is federal deficits are not only good, they are important tools, and yet, we fight to avoid them.
Golden opportunity
I can't imagine a more exquisitely timed book. Just when the coronavirus pandemic has destroyed much of the economy, as unemployment soars, millions are behind on rent or mortgages, the government is fumbling around with squirts of help here and there, and mostly for giant corporations (again). Now is clearly the time for MMT to shine. A universal basic income will clearly not only not hurt the economy, it will demonstrably rev it up. A guaranteed federal job would do the same for working age Americans. Not using this no-cost advantage is criminal.
The Deficit Myth is about the most hopeful book you can read right now. The more people who understand this, the sooner America can regain its world-beating stature.
David Wineberg
(The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton, June 2020)
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