One hears this kind of thing from modern monetary theory (MMT) advocates whenever their economic theories are attacked: “We say not spending constrained,” they grumble, “We don’t mean ‘now spend’.” However, what politicians hear is that they can have anything they really want because they can just print the money for it. “It’s a fact,” an MMTer might say. “Sovereign governments with their own currencies can never go bankrupt. They can always print more money.”
This myopic gibberish is what I affectionately call “the MMT-and-bailey fallacy,” which I named for its similarity to the motte-and-bailey fallacy. In this case, the “motte” is the idea that sovereign governments can’t go bankrupt. It’s technically true. The United States government can always print more dollars. The “bailey” is the
2023-06-27