#LearnMMT – is “Modern Monetary Theory” – ironic since its neither modern nor a theory. Local experts include @redgenkosi @BuddyWells1
Here’s my basic understanding:
MMT is a lens through which to understand the supply of money in the economy. 1/ https://twitter.com/mfullard2/status/1252852121512185857

Since 1971 when the US dropped the gold standard, there's no restriction on a State with its own currency putting money into the economy where there is enough demand for the goods that it funds, and the supply side resources and capacity to deliver those goods.

So the State isn’t a household & doesn’t need to balance it books; it should do that because its savings are the economies losses. The counterfactual to austerity is the ridiculous situation where we have massive unmet need and there are the local resources to satisfy the need,

but the government decides we can’t do anything because we haven’t the money? Austerity is thus a political and judgmental choice to punish the poor for being poor. Our Reserve bank misreads its mandate, and our Treasury wrongly thinks it must borrow to spend.

The State isn’t funded by taxation, rather taxes are a mechanism for the State to cap inequality and to withdraw funds from economy, where it overheating (almost never happens in practice). I

Inflation also isn’t a risk, unless the demand is greater than the supply, which isn’t a South African problem, since we have mothballed capacity and massive unemployment. Inflation, in practice in SA, is caused by monopolists increasing their process not by excessive demand.