“Modern Monetary Theory”

OK, after digesting 90% of what MMT is "selling" I can see how the austerity folks are the enemy and the MMT folks don't think deficit spending is bad in fact it's good.

My problem with this is that the swirl around the debt is causing side effects. Downgrades, for one, Fed meddling for another. I would prefer that outside organizations don't have control of my children's destiny and I have never believed spending more than I make is a good idea. I saved and bought for cash my homes, instead of 401k's and etc. market relative work savings plans I choose real estate, I put solar into the home in Hawaii, however that second home that appreciated from 220K to 340K (after the crash) had a tax on it HARPTA that I didn't know about when I bought the home, so I made zero on it, but the San Clemente home sold for a profit and I own the Zona home free and clear.

Having said all this amateur stuff, and seeing what you presented to me and reading further about it, I can understand, however the side effects out weigh the the theory, at least for me. Reality says that one day the debt will actually affect my kids, it may affect me too if they set back social security a few years, because I set up my retirement plan to go down when I reach 63, because that was when SS was to kick in for me.

I am a firm believer in reducing our military footprint to only bases in Korea and the middle east. I don't think we need a balanced budget amendment but I do think that we need to pass bills that are not funded by debt.

I support one subject at a time bills. I support public only elections. I support private unions but not public unions, the public unions can "hire" the politicians they know will bless them with payback.

Capitalism is still my econ model of choice, but there is a fine line with the regulatory stuff coming out of DC. Money changers have been around since the old testament, and they won't go away and every law that is meant to control them was passed by an agenda that would only benefit financially from the law, hence I'm in favor of financial oversight "lite"
MMT is a viable theory, it is driven by fiat money, it is clear to me that Obama is an MMT advocate, hence his "could care less about the debt" attitude, but that issue, for me doesn't define his political failure. If he truly lives MMT then he should tell us, his problem is he can't do anything unless it's "politically" risk free, that runs against capitalism, capitalism is all about risk. At our level, the everyday American we can't be risk free, every step we take is like the Indiana Jones movie where he's walking across the lettered stones with supports only under the correct steps, one wrong move and we fall into the abyss. The rich and the world leaders don't have that problem they are governed by MMT, the backdrop is that governments can print all the fiat currency they want, create all the debt they want and it's all good. And that is true, because the fiat printed money does create goods and services.

My issue there again is that 98% of the population in a free capitalist country can't do that, China and Russia are exempt, communism has nothing to do with freedom or capitalism. France, Italy, Spain etc. on end all fall into this quasi MMT mess because of the downstream entitlements they all passed after WWII. Now the workforce is retiring and the governments HAVE to print as much as they can, but because of inflation and reality of cost of living there is just not enough cold hard cash to hand out fast enough to all the folks, hence they get "restless" They are filled with "fear" What is "fear"? If there are solid "knowns" there is no fear, if there are "unknowns" there is fear. Fear is an emotion, it is not a fact, in fact each and every government can print enough fiat money to satisfy every debt owed, so there should be no fear that every citizen will get his/her fair share.

But that never works does it? The Dems are the MMT crowd, the Pubs are the old school capitalists, who's right, who's wrong? The regulation of capitalism destroys the system, capitalism only works on risk, if risk is regulated there is no capitalism. But the failures of capitalism have brought crys for more and more regulation, hence the purity of capitalism is destroyed, the generation of wealth is limited to the few that can get around the regulation and the masses have to be satisfied with the scraps.

Welcome to 2012.