31
May
2011
Mosler in the House
BTW I realize I may have an advantage in monitoring incoming comments, so I point interested parties back to the MMT post, because Warren Mosler showed up and defended his honor against some of us in the comments.
I just looked over his comments. He didn’t really add anything to the discussion.
To be honest, he more or less said “it is what it is, so we might as well keep that train going”. Maybe it’s just me…
I think I like Warren Mosler, mostly because he is earnest (unlike some other large, wooly commentators). I think he has some real insight about ‘operative reality’ and descriptive theory. Where MMT goes wrong is in prescriptive theory aka policy. It’s the classic *is* *ought* distinction. Austrian theory regards the optimal solution while Modern Monetary Theory regards the one we’ve got today.
It’s been said before, though perhaps not so boldly. Is this a terrible way to frame the clash?
No, From the prescriptive point of view MMTers regard MMT as the optimal solution, not the one we’ve got today.