Because the rich don’t spend very much of what they earn. If your model tells you to use demand management to control inflation you have to go for the big consumer taxes like eg VAT

This is a public forum, I am defending my ideas.

This isn’t about “nuance”. It’s about the essentials. MMT, especially in Murphy’s hands, mystifies those essentials.

(Governments aren’t “keepers of money”. It’s this sort of delusion that MMT - or possibly Murphy’s version of it - helps foster.)

He’s not done that. He doesn’t describe how the economy works. Being generous he describes a bit of how one part of the economy works and then insists that this description of government financing then magically explains everything else. It doesn’t.

I think what Murphy does is misleading, unfortunately - most obviously in his wildly inaccurate attacks on my own work, but more generally in the glosses he provides on political economy, where he uses MMT as a kind of crutch.

Because policy is also about politics, and the politics of MMT don’t lead anywhere useful (not for the left, at least).

I don’t usually bother with it but if you’re going to get shirty about qualifications, it’s Dr Meadway. Happy to talk to Steve - I read and critiqued a lot of his work for that phd, back in the day. His more recent work on underpriced risk is useful.

This makes him a proponent of MMT.

…Please see Macrodose episodes stretching back to 2022, for example. When Zack proposed “eco-populism” as the basis for his campaign I thought it was the sort of political-theoretical breakthrough the English left needed. So of course I joined to support him and the Greens, like 160,000+ others.

I’ve opposed MMT for years, viewing it as a dead end for progressive movements - especially in the UK. We need analyses that work for our conditions and policies appropriate for them. Meanwhile I’ve also spent years talking about the real impact of the environmental crises…

It invariably points to a bundle of policies that are unlikely to work for countries that aren’t the US. (The idea of an economic analysis that *doesn’t* provide you with policies is a little peculiar.)

Ed Poole speaks to James Meadway YouTube video by Amplify with Ed Poole

Excellent conversation between @edpoole1975.bsky.social and @meadwaj.bsky.social , now the @greenparty.org.uk candidate for Bromley North, Tower Hamlets.

essential listening if you want to understand the policy/ideology of MMT and aligned ideas

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NByr...

Home - Rethinking Economics A global network of students and organisers fighting for a new way of teaching and practising economics to helps us deal with the real-world challenges we all face today like climate collapse and ineq...

(This is the organisation I am a trustee of - they do excellent work on economics curriculum reform: rethinkeconomics.org)

I don’t want to get into credentialsm - not least because a conventional economics education is a problematic thing - but Murphy was a professor of practice in international political economy at City Uni. I don’t think he holds a formal qualification in the subject.

It’s a bad description and it suggests bad policy conclusions.

I spoke to James Meadway, the Green Party candidate for Bromley North, Tower Hamlets about the upcoming local elections, Modern Monetary theory, the new think tank; Verdant, and fighting local austerity! @meadwaj.bsky.social
youtu.be/NByr1Wd54rU?...

Thanks for having me on - and I really hope things work out for you

“We’re under no illusions about what it is we’re trying to challenge.”

Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla joins @meadwaj.bsky.social to unpack South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ - and what it reveals about the myth of a “rules-based international order.”

📺️ 👇

open.spotify.com/episode/2pvT...

The green transition isn’t a “win-win.” Some will lose - and it should be the fossil fuel companies.

@meadwaj.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social discuss the high point of Green New Deal organising, and what comes next.

Listen now 🎧

@alameda.institute

open.spotify.com/episode/10n4...

Was great to chat with @meadwaj.bsky.social @macrodosepod.bsky.social about the energy transition, resource extraction, capitalism, global north-south inequality & Left strategy amid the polycrisis that accelerates daily. In collab with @alameda.institute. Listen podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Absolutely remarkable statement from Pope Leo today.
One for the history books
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

The confusion confirmed - “it’s not a policy regime”… except for recommending the complete overhaul of macroeconomic policy. But still it’s just a “framework”, apparently.

Ok then so stop pretending they don’t. And try to think about the relationship between bond markets and the market for foreign exchange.

You think bond markets simply don’t exist?

“How things are”…?

Sorry, is MMT a policy prescription, or a description of how “things are”? Could you sort that out, at least?

The New Age of Extraction w/ Thea Riofrancos Podcast Episode · Macrodose · 9 April · 46min

Essential listening from the Macrodose team with @meadwaj.bsky.social

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

How do we bridge the distance from where we are to where we need to be if we're to survive the biophysical tipping points that are coming? This has (some of) the answers.

The old frameworks are breaking down. So where next for Political Economy in a world of disorder?

Join Macrodose x @alameda.institute on May 12th for a live recording of After Order.

w/ Juliano Fiori, @chakrabortty.bsky.social, Clara Mattei & @meadwaj.bsky.social

Tickets👇
bit.ly/4mkobb9

Thanks Manda! Glad you found it useful

It doesn’t apply in the modern world because the mundane bits of it that are true (and no economist would reject) doesn’t explain most of the world we live in.