MMT v neoliberalism. Which wins?

We are heading into an economic crisis on a scale comparable to the aftermath of a World War. Supply chains are fracturing. Energy costs are rising. Shortages of fuel, food, and raw materials are already visible. And the economic framework that has governed the West for the last 45 years - neoliberalism - is not just incapable of managing what is coming. It is designed to make it worse.

This is not an accident. Neoliberalism deliberately keeps people unemployed. That is not a side effect - it is deliberate. Unemployment is how neoliberals control inflation, operating through the relationship between joblessness and interest rates. Neoliberalism, by design, chooses to manage an economy suboptimally.

In a crisis of the scale we are now entering, neoliberalism's response will be to further restrict government action and accept failure by design. Poverty will rise. Unemployment will rise. Real resources will go unused. And people will suffer, not because there is no alternative, but because the dominant ideology refuses to see one.

The alternative exists. It is modern monetary theory, or MMT, and what MMT tells us is this: money is not a constraint on government action if the real resources exist to achieve the goals we need to fulfil. A sovereign government that issues its own currency can always spend to the limit where full employment is reached.

The question is never "can we afford it?" The question is always "Do we have the real resources - the workers, the materials, the capacity - to achieve it?" If we have, an MMT approach says action should be taken, and the money to fund it will always be available, as will be the taxation to balance any inflationary consequences.

As a consequence, an MMT economy will, by trying to put all available resources to use, always deliver better outcomes for people than a neoliberal economy can in any situation and will most definitely do so now. That is a simple, straightforward statement of fact.

In a World War-level economic crisis, the question of which economic framework guides government policy best is not academic. It is about which system has the best chance of delivering an economy where people live free from fear.

In this video, I explain why neoliberalism will make the coming crisis worse, and what MMT offers instead, and why the choice between these two frameworks is the most consequential economic decision our society will make.