Photographer: Michal Jarmoluk
“A government economist emailed a chastisement recently,” wrote Neil Macdonald for CBC News on March 19, 2019.
Macdonald continued, “In the most polite language possible, he characterized columnists — me — who worry about endless accumulation of government debt as uneducated, and in need of an introduction to basic economics. (Economists can be a sensitive bunch; they disagree profoundly with one another, but some of them go into epileptic snark if someone without a PhD ventures an opinion they don’t like).
In any case, he advised: “As the issuer of currency, the Government of Canada can never run out of money and can fund every single social requirement it faces, including free education. It is impossible for there to be a limit on the capacity of a sovereign government to pay debts denominated in its own currency.”
Well. Good to know.
Helpfully, the fellow appended a primer on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which posits that the government, not individuals or corporations, owns the national currency, and can print unlimited amounts of it without harmful consequence, as long as it taxes enough of it back to keep spending in check and restrain inflation.”
Read the full article here.
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