Thread by @scottsantens

The heart of MMT is about spending before taxing instead of taxing before spending. It's not the concept of a job guarantee, but for some reason MMT has attracted a ton of people that see MMT as the way of "putting people to work" instead of the way of focusing on resources vs $.

The question, "Can we resource it?" instead of "Can we pay for it?" is the correct one to ask of any policy, and that question centers around efficiency. We should always focus on doing the most of what we want in the best way possible, where best includes efficiency + quality.

Because MMT focuses on resources, best utilizing it should center on evidence-based policymaking, where we only do something if we know it works, and we should not do stuff that doesn't work, or doesn't work as well as the provision of cash.

MMT should embrace cash benchmarking.

This then leads to the question of FJG and UBI. An experiment should compare the two to a control group. Does it work better to pay someone $30k to do something? Or does it work better to pay $30k to do anything? Can these also be combined where there's a UBI floor + FJG on top?

Based on all the UBI evidence and how it reduces crime, improves health and educational outcomes, and increases productivity, plus more, I think MMT needs UBI operating as an income floor, to more efficiently utilize resources and free people from doing unnecessary work.

With that floor operating to increase resource utilization efficiencies, it would mean a greater ability to do other things too, most especially universal healthcare, but also a national investment in jobs intended to accomplish specific things we agree as important to get done.

From what I can tell, MMT is full of people who believe others are inherently lazy and that given the opportunity and agency to pursue the work people themselves feel most important, the work MMT advocates feel important won't get done. It feels like a lack of trust in people.

It also seems like many MMT advocates believe that people won't buy what they should buy if given the agency to self-determine their purchases, and many seem to also believe nothing should be purchased anyway, which is weird because MMT is all about money not service provision.

The thing is though that money works pretty well, but not perfectly, as a rough approximation of resources, and it works based on the billions of transactions going on in a decentralized way all the time.

This process itself would be improved by UBI.

scottsantens.com/unconditional-…

Anyhow, there's a lot of other things I want to say about UBI and MMT, but I'm still writing that very long article.

In the meantime, I just want to get people thinking that UBI may just require MMT logic in order to pass in a fully universal way, and it is something to explore.

Also, America definitely has enough Space Bucks to end poverty in an unconditional way in recognition of our human rights to what we need to live, that cannot be withheld from us on any condition, especially when we have enough basic resources for all.

scottsantens.com/do-we-have-eno…