Some people actually think a shift to #MMT will bring about a great economic restructuring to the public's benefit, by freeing it from self-imposed austerity and better distributing wealth by maximising the government's role in economic development.

This is a delusion.

Western (and now many Eastern) economies are in a crisis of private debt, and neoclassical economic orthodoxy prevents this from even being recognised, let alone ameliorated, even though the symptoms are everywhere.X

COVID19 has accelerated the problem, forcing governments to confront it earlier than they'd like. They have needed to massively intervene through huge direct stimulus programmes which have greatly increased public sector deficits and debt. Its quickly put a lie to austerity.

Austerity has transformed into a discretionary policy clearly intended to punish workers.

The theoretical apparatus has failed, and become a hindrance.

But the goal of stimulus spending is to avoid a real economic crisis, to save the furniture and prevent agitation for change.

MMT couldn't have arrived at a better time. It gives governments a program for saving the economy and to stop worrying about government debt. But what incentive do they have to apply this in the public benefit? Everything they've done so far has been to avoid change, not make it.

Although MMT comes with a political agenda, a pseudo-democratising economic plan to build infrastructure and spread the common-wealth through a jobs guarantee, there has been no great democratic change in governments. They're still run by and for large private sector interests.

Instead, MMT will be cherry-picked to preserve as much of the current economic structure as possible, offloading its debts onto government and directing exta spending to the industries which already have the greatest hand in its operations.

The theoretical apparatus (ie mainstream economics) will change to suit existing economic interests. Like Keynes, it will be bastardised and twisted to fit the current toy models economist's use to make tautological predictions about the economy.

For governments, MMT will give them more freedom to subsidise and provide preferential tax treatment to their favourite industries, monetise the debt binges of the latest financial sector overextension, and bail out failing 'critical' corporations in fossil fuels and mining.

The Green New Deal is a utopia created to get the public on board. It will never be delivered, because the naive NGOs and think tank operatives selling it have conveniently ignored the need for a (probably revolutionary) political transformation before the economic one.