Experts from a world that no longer exists

idea-focused criticism (rather than people-focused) can hone decision-making, but we still need that psychological safety to get the best outcomes. these things can both be true at the same time, and we can both succeed and fail at fostering either or both and not get the best outcome.

just as we might criticize an overly safety-oriented decision-making process, criticism-oriented decision-making processes tend to degenerate into contests of aggression, which tend to produce inferior outcomes. dogmatism in any direction doesn't help.

While this is roughly aligned with some of MMTs talking points, I don't think you can reduce MMT to just this. At a minimum these talking points have some other implications like:

1) Our current congress is capable of reigning in spending

- I strongly disagree that there is any political will power to do this regardless of inflation. The last time we ran a budget surplus was 2001. Interest payments + treasury spending + social security / medicare pay as you gos are currently 111% of all tax receipts. So even if we want to reduce spending it's not really clear how you do that without putting SS/ medicare payments on hold because the Federal government is running a deficit EVEN IF YOU ELIMINATE 100% OF DISCRETIONARY SPENDING FROM THE BUDGET. And that still implies that if you wanted to have just a decrease in the deficit you would have to spend less on defense which is never going to happen. Yeah you could cut veterans spending, transportation or education (probably not in reality) but it wouldn't matter, they are a margin of error of the deficit.

https://fiscal.treasury.gov/files/reports-statements/mts/mts...

https://twitter.com/lukegromen/status/1359529371875356672

2) That the timeframes of tax policy decisions exist on the same time scale as would be necessary to use tax policy decisions to regulate inflation.

- This is the core fallacy of MMT, even much more so than point 1. Maybe congress can figure out how to reduce spending, maybe if for no other reason than spite by a congress controlled by a different party then the president. But the idea that there is any feasible way to fine tune taxation to manage inflation on a fast enough timescale to be useful is beyond the pale. We get maybe one meaningful tax plan per president and even that is a battle every single time. so we are talking about maybe on average a meaningful change to tax policy every 6 years.

Yet how fast did inflation just jump? We went from a CPI of nothing to 5+ in a few months. Who is this magical bureaucrat who just jumps in and fine tunes the taxes to account for this? It simply does not exist and will not exist any time soon without a major political revolution in America.

But the problem is the policy is justified based on the idea that micromanaging velocity and money supply is possible but any time I've heard an MMTer questioned on this point, they openly admit that this part would need to be worked out when the times comes.

Anyway, no obligation to agree with me. But as I said, be sure you know what you're talking about if it's your own money on the line.

Which seems a bit convenient for the wealthy. I think it was intentional, to align the interests of pensioners with the wealthy.

It seems to me that pensions are one thing governments can do a good job at, because companies may fail but the government is much less likely to be unable to pay retirement benefits. They may need to renegotiate the benefits but they won’t go to zero. And if companies fail the government provides a pension of last resort anyway.

Either way, we have set up a system where those with assets are slightly in the majority (65% home ownership, probably similar number with 401ks or stocks [1] 56%) and so will continue to vote themselves benefits at the expense of those who haven’t already acquired assets.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

To me, this is a big thing that survivorship bias overlooks, to the detriment of us all. Taking Edison's "1000 failures to invent a lightbulb" can often be more instructive than the end result, even if you're not interested in inventing lightbulbs.

> The advice to be wary of experts reminds me of the advice to avoid criticism while brainstorming, the idea in common being that criticism and negativity supposedly stifles creativity.

I think the admonition to avoid criticism during brainstorming is so that any idea, no matter how infeasible, may be put forth. As I've understood it, this period of "unfettered criticism" should be markedly short, and while ideas will be recorded for future reference (and perhaps modification), they can safely be winnowed under the harsh criticism of reality after the brainstorming session.

That said, it has been common sense for quite some time that having a "box to think in" can help foster creative solutions to escaping the box.