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我踏月光而来
2021-06-29

More than just printing money: this article about modern monetary theory is enough

随着全球货币政策在零利率陷阱中越陷越深，叠加新冠疫情带来的全球大放水，有关现代货币理论（MMT）的探讨近来愈加兴起，且在传播过程中引起了非常大的争议。在本文中，我们会尝试在保持逻辑严谨性的前提下，用比

More than just printing money: this article about modern monetary theory is enough

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OverviewContrary to popular belief, modern monetary theory, which is popular today, is not \"modern\", or not new at all. In fact,Modern monetary theory was born out of the post-Keynesian school, and thinks that it is the best in-depth interpretation and follower of Keynesian theory.However, the main ideas of modern monetary theory have been unpopular and even marginalized for nearly 60 years after Keynes, and it is not until recent years that they finally have a place in the discussion of international politics and economy. Of course, this change is also closely related to the current difficulties encountered by mainstream macroeconomics. After all, macroeconomics has not won the Nobel Prize for many years, and it needs to combine practice to find a new direction. But in any case, there are always endless criticisms of modern monetary theory from all walks of life, as the famous comment said:\"The correct parts of MMT aren't new and the new parts aren't correct.\" What they are right about Modern Monetary Theory is not new, and what is new is not right. \")If you summarize what the main points of modern monetary theory say in one sentence, it is actually very simple:For countries with their own currencies, their governments don't need to care about their own debts and expenditures, because they can always pay the interest on all debts by printing money directly by the government. So the only constraint on how much money the government prints is inflation. As long as the needs and purposes created by printing money can be met by existing labor and equipment, and inflation can be kept within a controllable range, then the government of this country can support all its purposes and expenditures by printing money directly.Seeing this, I think most people's first reaction is generally disapproval, and the Latin American crisis, Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, European debt crisis and other events immediately come to mind as counterexamples. Be calm, in fact, the core purpose of modern monetary theory is not to try to prove that the government can print money indefinitely without any consequences.In the next paragraph, we will sort out the important ideas and logical framework of modern monetary theory for everyone to discuss.II. Theoretical PerspectiveII.1 Tax-driven currencySince the disintegration of Brighton Woods system in 1970s and the decoupling of the US dollar from gold, there has been no clear conclusion about the core value of legal tender.Aiming at the core attributes and values of money, modern monetary theory has established a complete theoretical system based on its unique explanation.Why would anyone want to accept fiat currency from a government?People usually only accept this passively, but seldom think about it. When the government is building roads, building aircraft carriers, when the central bank is buying Treasury Bond, and in quantitative easing, do they really pay currency from a certain account? The answer is obviously no.So why can the government create money out of thin air like this?Hyman Minsky once said, \"Everyone can create money, but the question is whether it will be accepted.\" You can create a \"money\" denominated in dollars by writing \"10 yuan owe\" on a piece of paper, but the question is whether it can be done to get others to accept it-for example, whether someone will accept this IOU and sell you a pancake.MMT believes that the core reason why the government can do this lies in the fact that all of us pay taxes to the government.Note that in most cases, the government only accepts its own currency when collecting taxes. Therefore, in order to avoid the punishment of tax evasion (such as going to prison, etc.), the people of a country must try to obtain the government currency to pay taxes. The point here is that,Even if it is not easy to force people to use legal tender issued by them in private transactions, the government can still force people to use legal tender to pay taxes when collecting taxes.And this fact will naturally create a huge demand for the country's legal tender among the people. All in all,In order for the currency issued to be accepted, the government actually neither needs to store precious metals or foreign currencies, nor does it need redundant laws to guarantee it. It only needs to force people to use legal tender to fulfill their tax obligations.Therefore, we can draw the conclusion that \"taxes drive money\": if the ruler has the right to levy taxes, he can create demand for legal tender. Because it is very easy for the government to \"ensure that people use legal tender when paying the government\".A little derivation from the above discussion shows that, from the perspective of money issuers, the purpose of establishing the monetary system by the government is to allow resources to flow to the public sector, and the demand for money (paper printed by the government) created by taxation contributes to this.It can be said that the government set up tax not only to increase fiscal revenue, but also to encourage people to sell labor, resources and products in order to obtain their printed paper (money). Most people believe that the government collects taxes only to generate revenue to make up for fiscal expenditure. But from an MMT perspective, there is a very subtle difference in the purpose of taxation.As we all know, the government will not spend out of \"needed funds\", but the public's willingness to sell more labor, resources or products in order to obtain money may be exhausted (for similar views, please refer to another article before WeChat official account, which is not so terrible financial crisis). To be able to consistently transfer resources, governments can try to raise the prices paid (which, if failed, would trigger inflation), or increase taxes. But no matter what, we must remember,In MMT's understanding, the main purpose of increasing taxes is not to generate revenue, but to stimulate demand for money.In this way,MMT self-consistently gives a theoretical framework of government money, taxation and inflation.We can simply state that the government creates demand for its printed money through taxation, and the ability to levy taxes determines the ability of the government to transfer resources, which further determines the credit of the government's money, and the level of this credit determines the final demand of this money, thus directly affecting the nominal inflation of the money. If the public recognizes this kind of currency, inflation can be controlled, otherwise, it will enter a negative feedback spiral of rising inflation-further reduction of currency and government credit.This framework actually exists in realityThe credit of the U.S. dollar is built on the world's most leading comprehensive strength of the United States after World War II, on the price settlement mechanism of almost all commodities, on the existence of aircraft carriers, Tesla, Google and Coca-Cola, and even on the requirement that all global residents, regardless of nationality, must fill out the w8ben form to file tax returns to the U.S. government when investing in U.S. dollar assets. In response to COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government has printed unprecedented amounts of money in the past two years, which has caused some people who don't know the system to shout in panic that the credit of the US dollar will be lost and the US dollar will become waste paper.As everyone knows, the US dollar is waste paper, and it is the facts mentioned above that give waste paper credit. If these capabilities of the United States do not change, then the basic credit of the US dollar will not be destroyed.Those who hurriedly come to the conclusion that the US dollar will lose their credit simply because the United States has printed too much money are probably busy adjusting their expectations after the recent cycle.However, although the Federal Reserve's printing of money will not shake the credit of the US dollar, nor will it allow the arrival of great inflation and turn the US dollar into waste paper, the rise of China may shake these comparative advantages of the United States. From the highest perspective, the global plot in the next 5-10 years may be interpreted in this dimension. Let's consider this topic in other articles.By the way, unlike many people's perceptions, we can easily find that the monetary view under the MMT framework described above actually denies the hottest digital assets and the monetary functions of the Bitcoin (again, the government and taxes drive money). Space is limited, so we won't go into it. (Thinking of the pretension on the edge of Fermat's last theorem, we always know too much and have time to write down too little.)II.2 Basic Framework of Modern Monetary TheoryLet's elaborate on the analysis logic of MMT.First of all, we all know that in society, one party's financial assets always correspond to the other party's financial liabilities. thereuponWe can quite simply divide the world into three sectors: the domestic private sector, the domestic public sector and the \"other national sectors\" composed of foreign governments, companies and families.Then if we add up the assets and liabilities of each department, the following identity will always hold:Domestic private sector balance + domestic government sector balance + foreign sector balance = 0This is actually aAccounting identity, does not rely on any theoretical model. To give a possibly enlightening example, assuming that the foreign sector spends less than its income and has a budget surplus of 50 billion dollars, while the domestic government department spends less than its income and has a budget surplus of 20 billion dollars, then the above identity tells us that in the same period of time, the domestic private sector that we care about most must have a budget deficit of 500 +200 = 70 billion dollars.This may create a \"dilemma\". Among these three sectors, if one sector has a surplus, then at least one other sector has a deficit.In other words, no matter how hard we try, in the same time period, it is impossible to have a world harmony in which all the departments that we think are the ideal are surplus at the same time.So when we get here, there seems to be a vague idea in our minds-Since someone always wants to borrow money, let the government borrow it, and then everyone in the private sector of our country will have the most anticipated surplus and assets!If it were that simple, we would only need accounting, not MMT.At the beginning of the article, we said that MMT is a follower of Keynesian theory, because they believe in the following conclusions inherited from Keynesianism.1. From the perspective of the overall economy, the causal relationship of the private sector is that the overall expenditure determines the overall income (Keynesian paradox of saving)This conclusion is not intuitive, because as far as each of us is concerned, income always determines expenditure: for example, if you win a lottery of 5 million yuan, you can't add more meat to Lanzhou beef noodles at night.However, once we add up all the individuals, we will find that although individual families can explicitly decide to reduce their expenditures in order to save more money to cope with the expected crisis, if all families try to reduce their expenditures, total consumption and national income will decline. At this time, the company will be forced to reduce output, lay off employees, and reduce wages, which will lead to lower family income, which will cause family members to be forced to further reduce expenditure, and a cruel negative feedback loop begins.This is Keynes's \"paradox of saving\", that is, his most important lesson and explanation of the Great Depression-trying to save money by reducing total consumption will not only increase savings, but will reduce income.2. Social deficit spending determines the accumulation (savings) of financial wealth.Keynesians believe that only when a sector of the economy decides to spend more than it earns through deficits will the counterpart who lends it money accumulate net financial wealth in the form of debt of the deficit spender.That is, this decision on deficit spending is what creates net financial wealth. Unless one party is willing to do deficit spending, no matter how much others want to accumulate financial wealth, they can't do it.3. The government cannot accurately grasp the deficit (tax revenue), and there is an \"Automatic Stabilizers\" effectWe do not expand too much on the fact that the government can't accurately grasp the deficit (starting from the Chicago School and Laffer curve to a deep extent, if we like), but we will only talk about some more intuitive inferences.It needs to be acknowledged that the ability of the government has boundaries.Even the government can't accurately control the fiscal and tax revenue that seems to be completely determined by itself.The government can indeed decide to spend more or raise the tax rate, but when the government expenditure and tax rate change, other social variables, such as income, sales, wealth, etc., that is, the overall tax base of society, will change accordingly. And these variables are not in the control of the government.Therefore, whether there is a deficit, balance or surplus in the budget, it is not something that the government can decide independently.Combining the above identities and discussions, assume that we ignore the balance of foreign sectors for the time being. When the recession comes, the domestic private sector will start to cut spending and increase savings. This will increase the balance of the domestic private sector, which will directly lead to the decline of the balance of the domestic government sector in the identity. As a result, the government's budget deficit will increase spontaneously. This part of the growth is not controlled by the government, but it plays a role in stabilizing the fluctuation of the balance of various sectors of society in the face of the cycle. Past data also confirms this relationship-That is, tax revenue grew rapidly during economic prosperity and fell rapidly during economic depression, making the government's budget a powerful automatic stabilizer. This is the \"automatic stabilizer\" effect.Therefore,The best domestic policy is to pursue full employment and price stability, rather than pursue a sustainable deficit path for the government or a controllable overall debt ceiling. Because the latter is the result of automatic stabilizers in most cases, and cannot be decided independently by the government.4. Simple expansion of identityFor the convenience of expressing our views, we rewrite the important identities above and introduce S (private sector savings), C (private sector consumption expenditure), I (private sector investment), T (government sector tax revenue), G (government sector expenditure), IM (domestic imports), EX (domestic exports), so there areDomestic private sector balance + domestic government sector balance + foreign sector balance = 0S-C-I + T-G + IM-EX = 0At this point, we can basically draw the most important ideological conclusion of modern monetary theory:If you have the taxation and the ability to create your own currency described in II.1, then when you face an economic depression cycle or negative external shocks (similar to the subprime mortgage crisis or the new crown crisis), you can better weather the crisis through the regulation of your own government departments.When the crisis comes, II.2. 1 tells us that because the overall expenditure of the private sector determines the overall revenue, the most important thing is to ensure that the overall expenditure of the private sector does not decline, especially to avoid falling into the negative feedback loop of simultaneous decline in expenditure/revenue. II.2. 2 tells us that in order to avoid the panic caused by the sudden decline of social wealth, we need a sector of the economy to proactively provide deficit spending. So combine it,The only one that can undertake this deficit spending task is the government sector, which needs to transfer wealth to the private sector to repair the decline in overall spending.The identity of II.2. 4 further verifies that, in order to achieve this, the domestic private sector balance should be returned to the equilibrium level,Then we should minimize the balance of domestic government departments and foreign departments (the current account deficit from domestic perspective).But becauseExogenous uncertainty of exports(For example, if an economy as large as the United States tries to reduce imports, it may affect the income of other countries, thus affecting its own exports to other countries in the world),The best way to deal with it is to reduce the balance of domestic government departments.It is worth emphasizing here that under the mainstream macroeconomic view, the country should try its best to pursue current account surplus, while modern monetary theorists have conducted more in-depth theoretical discussions on foreign sector balances, and finally came to contradictory conclusions. That is to say, when the government can freely control the balance of its own government departments, the external current account surplus is not important, and this is actually the development path that the United States has actually taken since the 21st century.Finally, II.1 and II.2. 3 tell us that when the government expands the deficit to increase private sector spending, we don't need to consider whether the deficit is too large, because sovereign countries can issue currency indefinitely without affecting credit; There is no need to consider how the deficit will be reduced in the future, because when the crisis passes and the economy returns to the growth cycle, the automatic stabilizer will naturally reduce the country's deficit and return it to an equilibrium level.When we compare the above conclusions and ideas with the way the United States and western countries responded to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic this time, we can immediately understand why the mainstream western economies have now opened a new paradigm of modern monetary theory.Take the United States as an example. In this new crown crisis, the United States immediately ignored the constraints of all government deficit paths and debt ceilings, turned the money printing press to the limit, and launched multiple trillion-level government spending plans. Not only did it not set an upper limit on the size of the Fed's balance sheet, and allow the Fed to directly purchase high-yield corporate bonds to guarantee private sector deficit investments; The United States abandoned the past path of QE transmission through banks and directly cut interest rates to the lower limit of interest rates. At the same time, it carried out an unprecedented \"helicopter money\" behavior, directly transferring money to people's personal accounts.We don't care about flooding Jinshan, but we must use thunderous momentum to ensure that the overall expenditure of the private sector does not fall.It can be said that as far as the current situation is concerned, the paradigm of modern monetary theory has achieved very good practical results. Under such a severe impact as COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy has not only achieved a smooth transition, but is likely to resume growth in an extremely fast time (2021). It's no wonder that Yellen, the new U.S. Treasury Secretary, who was appointed in danger, will publicly state that the upper limit of government debt is not that important. As long as the government's annual fiscal revenue can cover Treasury Bond's interest, it is a sustainable path.It is expected that in the next 5-10 years, the paradigm of modern monetary theory will establish a firm position in the practice of western central banks.II.3 The boundary of government debt-the problem of fiscal sustainability pathThe sustainable path of inflation caused by excessive money printing and government debt should be the two most concentrated aspects of modern monetary theory questioned by \"traditional\" theory.First of all, it should be clear that we don't think that modern monetary theory has a very scientific and perfect explanation and response to these questions, but its answers to these questions also have certain merits.Let's first directly quote a very intuitive macroeconomic conclusion:When an economy's interest rate r is higher than its growth rate g, its debt ratio will keep increasing. (It can be intuitively understood that the newly earned money (g) of the economy every year cannot repay the interest (r), so the debt ratio can only keep rising), so if it is always in the situation of r > g, then the government will continue to increase The room for debt is relatively limited.[For academic readers about this conclusion, you can take a closer look at James Galbraith's classic model:△ d =-s + d * [(r-g)/(1 + g)]Where d is the initial ratio of debt to GDP, s is the ratio of fiscal surplus to GDP after subtracting net interest expense, r is the real interest rate, and g is the real growth rate of GDP]And we can intuitively see that when r < g, the ratio of debt to GDP is also negative, that is, the debt is gradually decreasing healthily.So how to achieve that? A situation that can naturally be controlled by the government is to keep the interest rate r as small as possible, so that g is more likely to be greater than r. Therefore, in the nearly ten years after the financial crisis, we have seen a significant decline in benchmark interest rates in all countries in the world. After the COVID-19 crisis interrupted the process of rate hike in the United States, we once again saw that the benchmark interest rates of all developed countries were lowered to a position basically equal to 0. The European Union, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and other countries have further opened up their attempts to negative interest rates. This has to be said to be a result of the practice of modern monetary theory paradigm.So what if r has been reduced to such a low position, and the actual growth rate g still cannot be greater than r? Dear friends, this is the most cutting-edge academic problem that modern monetary theory is still discussing. As far as we know, the current MMT theory cannot give a clear answer.It must be noted here that despite the constraints of liquidity traps,But r is controlled by the government, and there is no absolute lower limit.For example, when it feels that 0 is not low enough, the Federal Reserve can completely announce that it will lower the benchmark interest rate to-10% overnight. When we consider the situation of stimulating all instant consumption with this absolutely madness, we return to the fundamental difference between modern monetary theory and traditional macroeconomics, that is, the source of government credit-government organization and tax-driven money, the biggest cornerstone of modern monetary theory. It can be said that what we need to face at this time is no longer an economic problem in essence, but a sociological problem. Specifically, countries such as the United States and the US dollar, which are supported by political, technological and military infrastructure, may not encounter any difficulties. However, in some small countries, because people or other economies in the world lose their trust in their currency and government, they will face the danger of losing the effectiveness of regime rule and legal tender at the same time. But in any case, in the theoretical framework of MMT, there is a solution to the problem of the government's fiscal sustainability path, but its consequences and constraints may need to be further improved and supported by the auxiliary perspective of sociology. (A theoretical framework similar to behavioral economics needs to be supported by the introduction of psychological theories.)II.4 The Boundary of Government Debt-InflationFinally, let's explore the biggest intuitive question that everyone has about modern monetary theory:The problem of inflation.As Friedman famously said: \"Inflation is a monetary phenomenon whenever and wherever\", so modern monetary theory proposes to lift government spending and debt ceiling to print money on a large scale if necessary, and at the same time, how to ensure that the country does not enter a vicious spiral of self-reinforcement of inflation?In fact, Modern Monetary Theory is very descriptive in answering questions related to inflation. It can even be said that Modern Monetary Theory itself is only a description of the operation of sovereign currency.As mentioned above, it has a good theoretical and ideological framework to explain how sovereign countries and their currencies work, but it does not have enough scientific and quantitative means to draw insurmountable boundaries for this operation mode.The discussion of inflation in modern monetary theory can be roughly divided intoBoth directions.The first direction avoids directly answering the inflation question, but denies the current mainstream macro framework, believing that the relationship between inflation and employment revealed by the Phelps curve can be completely avoided through government intervention.The founder of this direction is the famous economist A. Lerner and his\"Functional Finance Theory\"。 In his theory, Lerner emphasized that when the government formulates the budget, it should start from its function to the economy, instead of adding the restriction of fiscal balance. This is in line with the abandonment of the fiscal sustainable path by modern monetary theory discussed in the previous section. Therefore, subsequent modern monetary theory researchers put forward\"Employment Security/Ultimate Employer\" Model。Considering that this is a brand-new framework, we will not expand in depth here but intuitively describe the main logic of this model.From the above,According to the framework of modern monetary theory, we know that the government can issue its own currency indefinitely, so why not let the government act as the ultimate employer and promise to provide jobs for all qualified and willing citizens of the country?In this way, the unemployment rate will be directly reduced to 0, and a well-off society will be directly realized.In this theoretical framework,All the unemployed people in the country will be employed by the government as the final employer, and a minimum wage equivalent to employment security will be provided.Then the private sector can select the best labor force from this group of government-employed people for employment by providing salaries higher than employment security.Imagine that if our government implements this framework now, then all the unemployed people in the country can go to the local government to get a job with a salary of 2,000 yuan/month paid by the government. The specific work can be local agricultural picking according to local conditions, or it can be unified deployment of infrastructure projects led by government expenditures, or simply become a takeaway rider, and the government will distribute this part of employment security salary through platform companies like Meituan.It looks like,Within such a theoretical framework, inflation does become less relevant.During the economic boom, employers in the private sector can hire workers from employment plans by providing them with higher wages than the employment guarantee salary (2,000 yuan/month). For example, Meituan can provide 3,000 yuan/month salary to increase efficiency. High riders are hired in their own companies. During the economic recession, the private sector can dismiss workers and let them return to the government's final employer plan to get an employment guarantee salary of at least 2,000 yuan/month. In this way, job security salaries will reduce inflationary pressures in economic prosperity and deflationary pressures in economic recession.Therefore, the framework of modern monetary theory finally found an \"anchor\" of sovereign currency by setting up government guaranteed salary. Under this complete MMT framework, the marginal value of a sovereign currency is equal to the amount of labor it can employ. The government has achieved full employment through the program, and it can control inflation perfectly by adjusting the marginal labor value by adjusting the employment security salary.But the problems with this utopia theory are also obvious-even if we put aside the problems faced by MMT when government spending is too large, such as exchange rate and inflation discussed in II.3, we still need to pay attention to an important fact. This framework ignores the subjective initiative and employment incentives of all individuals.For example, if the job provided by the government requires 12 hours of hard work, then if an individual thinks that the wage of only 2,000 yuan for these 12 hours of labor is too small, he will automatically withdraw from the employment security scheme. This will directly cause the real unemployment rate to rise again.Another example is that Meituan's employment security riders don't need to do too much. They can receive a salary of 2,000 yuan/month by sending 3 orders a day. Meituan riders may be willing to choose to lie down to join the employment security plan, thus distorting the overall efficiency and demand of society.In addition, this employment security/ultimate employer plan is actually a typical \"big government\" framework. In order to be implemented effectively, the government needs to have highly monopolized rights and resources. In view of this situation, Piketty conducted an in-depth discussion in his new book Capital and Ideology. He pointed out the apocalyptic ideological dilemma faced by the framework of big government after the disintegration of the Soviet Union through the changes of the views of the left and the right in modern society.Therefore, this employment security/ultimate employer model may only exist in the paper ideal country of some modern monetary theory scholars for a long time.Since it is impossible to completely jump out of the framework of mainstream monetarism theory in practice in the short term, modern monetary theory scholars also follow the mainstream frameworkThe second directionExplained the inflation problem as best as possible.In our opinion,The academic significance of this part of the explanation is somewhat lackluster, because the theoretical framework of MMT has never put forward a clear method to calculate the expenditure ceiling of sovereign governments.Therefore, in this direction, the arguments of MMT supporters are mainlyFocus on practical experience。 Noting that in the past 40 years or so, the world's mainstream economies have basically been in an environment extremely lacking in inflation. Even after printing money on a large scale, they still have no signs of rising inflation. Therefore, they believe that considering unknown factors such as oversupply in modern society and changes in production factors,It is very difficult for a sovereign government to raise the deficit and print money to trigger inflation.The hyperinflation that has occurred in history, firstly, is not large in number, and secondly, it mostly occurs in developing countries such as Zimbabwe and Brazil whose own economic systems are too fragile, and in most cases it often occurs when the country has suffered unusual domestic and foreign geopolitical shocks, soIt's not universal.Although this explanation is vague and a bit almost cheating, it is unfair to blame modern monetary theorists on this basis.After all, mainstream monetarist scholars don't explain the effect of quantitative easing and how it is transmitted to the real economy well.For example, why did the huge amount of money issued by central banks around the world in response to the 2008 financial crisis never lead to an increase in inflation in these countries? In view of this problem, the mainstream academic circles have never found a convincing theoretical framework to give an answer. On this point, the most confused people should be Abe and Haruhiko Kuroda. The Bank of Japan's money printing level has already far broken the upper limit of fiscal deficit considered by traditional monetarism, even to the point of nationalizing the entire Japanese business community, but people still can't find any clues of rising inflation in Japan.From this point of view,This COVID-19 crisis may be a touchstone of modern monetary theory, because at least as of the second quarter, in the unprecedented wave of the world's largest water release, we finally saw a little sign of inflation. But for now, with this little sign, the mainstream expectation of the Fed and the market is still that theseInflation is'transitory ', after the epidemic is over and the margins of monetary policy are normalized, it will fade on its own.If the story really progresses like this, then in the spirit of science and practicality, the shackles and criticism of inflation on modern monetary theory may really be ineffective. After all, at present, the government directly gives a generous employment guarantee salary by throwing money by helicopter without asking people to find jobs. This degree of water release has actually far exceeded the previous imagination of modern monetary theorists on paper. If inflation is not visible under such circumstances, then traditional monetarists can indeed burn Friedman's theory of quantity of money to embrace the new macro era.III. SummaryThis paper combs the paradigm of modern monetary theory as much as possible, which is the most popular macro-monetary theory in the world at present, expounds the theoretical basis and important framework of modern monetary theory as popularly as possible, and discusses its limitations.The conclusions of Modern Monetary Theory are shocking to those who have only been exposed to the traditional view of money. It challenges the orthodox views on government finance and budget deficits, the trade-off between employment and inflation established by the Phillips curve, and the behavior of striving for current account surpluses.However, it is essentially an orthodox continuation of Keynesianism, and its understanding of how the Ministry of Finance and the central bank of a sovereign country should coordinate their operations and their respective powers, responsibilities and obligations significantly goes beyond the limitations of classical monetarism.","source":"lsy1624936809849","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>More than just printing money: this article about modern monetary theory is enough</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nMore than just printing money: this article about modern monetary theory is enough\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n动物精神Animal...2021-06-29 11:23\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nAs global monetary policy falls deeper and deeper into the zero interest rate trap, coupled with the global release of water brought about by COVID-19 pandemic, relevantThe discussion of modern monetary theory (MMT) has been increasingly rising recently, and it has caused great controversy in the process of spreading.In this paper,We will try to explore the basic framework, ideological purpose and practicality of modern monetary theory in a relatively easy-to-understand way while maintaining logical rigor.I. OverviewContrary to popular belief, modern monetary theory, which is popular today, is not \"modern\", or not new at all. In fact,Modern monetary theory was born out of the post-Keynesian school, and thinks that it is the best in-depth interpretation and follower of Keynesian theory.However, the main ideas of modern monetary theory have been unpopular and even marginalized for nearly 60 years after Keynes, and it is not until recent years that they finally have a place in the discussion of international politics and economy. Of course, this change is also closely related to the current difficulties encountered by mainstream macroeconomics. After all, macroeconomics has not won the Nobel Prize for many years, and it needs to combine practice to find a new direction. But in any case, there are always endless criticisms of modern monetary theory from all walks of life, as the famous comment said:\"The correct parts of MMT aren't new and the new parts aren't correct.\" What they are right about Modern Monetary Theory is not new, and what is new is not right. \")If you summarize what the main points of modern monetary theory say in one sentence, it is actually very simple:For countries with their own currencies, their governments don't need to care about their own debts and expenditures, because they can always pay the interest on all debts by printing money directly by the government. So the only constraint on how much money the government prints is inflation. As long as the needs and purposes created by printing money can be met by existing labor and equipment, and inflation can be kept within a controllable range, then the government of this country can support all its purposes and expenditures by printing money directly.Seeing this, I think most people's first reaction is generally disapproval, and the Latin American crisis, Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, European debt crisis and other events immediately come to mind as counterexamples. Be calm, in fact, the core purpose of modern monetary theory is not to try to prove that the government can print money indefinitely without any consequences.In the next paragraph, we will sort out the important ideas and logical framework of modern monetary theory for everyone to discuss.II. Theoretical PerspectiveII.1 Tax-driven currencySince the disintegration of Brighton Woods system in 1970s and the decoupling of the US dollar from gold, there has been no clear conclusion about the core value of legal tender.Aiming at the core attributes and values of money, modern monetary theory has established a complete theoretical system based on its unique explanation.Why would anyone want to accept fiat currency from a government?People usually only accept this passively, but seldom think about it. When the government is building roads, building aircraft carriers, when the central bank is buying Treasury Bond, and in quantitative easing, do they really pay currency from a certain account? The answer is obviously no.So why can the government create money out of thin air like this?Hyman Minsky once said, \"Everyone can create money, but the question is whether it will be accepted.\" You can create a \"money\" denominated in dollars by writing \"10 yuan owe\" on a piece of paper, but the question is whether it can be done to get others to accept it-for example, whether someone will accept this IOU and sell you a pancake.MMT believes that the core reason why the government can do this lies in the fact that all of us pay taxes to the government.Note that in most cases, the government only accepts its own currency when collecting taxes. Therefore, in order to avoid the punishment of tax evasion (such as going to prison, etc.), the people of a country must try to obtain the government currency to pay taxes. The point here is that,Even if it is not easy to force people to use legal tender issued by them in private transactions, the government can still force people to use legal tender to pay taxes when collecting taxes.And this fact will naturally create a huge demand for the country's legal tender among the people. All in all,In order for the currency issued to be accepted, the government actually neither needs to store precious metals or foreign currencies, nor does it need redundant laws to guarantee it. It only needs to force people to use legal tender to fulfill their tax obligations.Therefore, we can draw the conclusion that \"taxes drive money\": if the ruler has the right to levy taxes, he can create demand for legal tender. Because it is very easy for the government to \"ensure that people use legal tender when paying the government\".A little derivation from the above discussion shows that, from the perspective of money issuers, the purpose of establishing the monetary system by the government is to allow resources to flow to the public sector, and the demand for money (paper printed by the government) created by taxation contributes to this.It can be said that the government set up tax not only to increase fiscal revenue, but also to encourage people to sell labor, resources and products in order to obtain their printed paper (money). Most people believe that the government collects taxes only to generate revenue to make up for fiscal expenditure. But from an MMT perspective, there is a very subtle difference in the purpose of taxation.As we all know, the government will not spend out of \"needed funds\", but the public's willingness to sell more labor, resources or products in order to obtain money may be exhausted (for similar views, please refer to another article before WeChat official account, which is not so terrible financial crisis). To be able to consistently transfer resources, governments can try to raise the prices paid (which, if failed, would trigger inflation), or increase taxes. But no matter what, we must remember,In MMT's understanding, the main purpose of increasing taxes is not to generate revenue, but to stimulate demand for money.In this way,MMT self-consistently gives a theoretical framework of government money, taxation and inflation.We can simply state that the government creates demand for its printed money through taxation, and the ability to levy taxes determines the ability of the government to transfer resources, which further determines the credit of the government's money, and the level of this credit determines the final demand of this money, thus directly affecting the nominal inflation of the money. If the public recognizes this kind of currency, inflation can be controlled, otherwise, it will enter a negative feedback spiral of rising inflation-further reduction of currency and government credit.This framework actually exists in realityThe credit of the U.S. dollar is built on the world's most leading comprehensive strength of the United States after World War II, on the price settlement mechanism of almost all commodities, on the existence of aircraft carriers, Tesla, Google and Coca-Cola, and even on the requirement that all global residents, regardless of nationality, must fill out the w8ben form to file tax returns to the U.S. government when investing in U.S. dollar assets. In response to COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government has printed unprecedented amounts of money in the past two years, which has caused some people who don't know the system to shout in panic that the credit of the US dollar will be lost and the US dollar will become waste paper.As everyone knows, the US dollar is waste paper, and it is the facts mentioned above that give waste paper credit. If these capabilities of the United States do not change, then the basic credit of the US dollar will not be destroyed.Those who hurriedly come to the conclusion that the US dollar will lose their credit simply because the United States has printed too much money are probably busy adjusting their expectations after the recent cycle.However, although the Federal Reserve's printing of money will not shake the credit of the US dollar, nor will it allow the arrival of great inflation and turn the US dollar into waste paper, the rise of China may shake these comparative advantages of the United States. From the highest perspective, the global plot in the next 5-10 years may be interpreted in this dimension. Let's consider this topic in other articles.By the way, unlike many people's perceptions, we can easily find that the monetary view under the MMT framework described above actually denies the hottest digital assets and the monetary functions of the Bitcoin (again, the government and taxes drive money). Space is limited, so we won't go into it. (Thinking of the pretension on the edge of Fermat's last theorem, we always know too much and have time to write down too little.)II.2 Basic Framework of Modern Monetary TheoryLet's elaborate on the analysis logic of MMT.First of all, we all know that in society, one party's financial assets always correspond to the other party's financial liabilities. thereuponWe can quite simply divide the world into three sectors: the domestic private sector, the domestic public sector and the \"other national sectors\" composed of foreign governments, companies and families.Then if we add up the assets and liabilities of each department, the following identity will always hold:Domestic private sector balance + domestic government sector balance + foreign sector balance = 0This is actually aAccounting identity, does not rely on any theoretical model. To give a possibly enlightening example, assuming that the foreign sector spends less than its income and has a budget surplus of 50 billion dollars, while the domestic government department spends less than its income and has a budget surplus of 20 billion dollars, then the above identity tells us that in the same period of time, the domestic private sector that we care about most must have a budget deficit of 500 +200 = 70 billion dollars.This may create a \"dilemma\". Among these three sectors, if one sector has a surplus, then at least one other sector has a deficit.In other words, no matter how hard we try, in the same time period, it is impossible to have a world harmony in which all the departments that we think are the ideal are surplus at the same time.So when we get here, there seems to be a vague idea in our minds-Since someone always wants to borrow money, let the government borrow it, and then everyone in the private sector of our country will have the most anticipated surplus and assets!If it were that simple, we would only need accounting, not MMT.At the beginning of the article, we said that MMT is a follower of Keynesian theory, because they believe in the following conclusions inherited from Keynesianism.1. From the perspective of the overall economy, the causal relationship of the private sector is that the overall expenditure determines the overall income (Keynesian paradox of saving)This conclusion is not intuitive, because as far as each of us is concerned, income always determines expenditure: for example, if you win a lottery of 5 million yuan, you can't add more meat to Lanzhou beef noodles at night.However, once we add up all the individuals, we will find that although individual families can explicitly decide to reduce their expenditures in order to save more money to cope with the expected crisis, if all families try to reduce their expenditures, total consumption and national income will decline. At this time, the company will be forced to reduce output, lay off employees, and reduce wages, which will lead to lower family income, which will cause family members to be forced to further reduce expenditure, and a cruel negative feedback loop begins.This is Keynes's \"paradox of saving\", that is, his most important lesson and explanation of the Great Depression-trying to save money by reducing total consumption will not only increase savings, but will reduce income.2. Social deficit spending determines the accumulation (savings) of financial wealth.Keynesians believe that only when a sector of the economy decides to spend more than it earns through deficits will the counterpart who lends it money accumulate net financial wealth in the form of debt of the deficit spender.That is, this decision on deficit spending is what creates net financial wealth. Unless one party is willing to do deficit spending, no matter how much others want to accumulate financial wealth, they can't do it.3. The government cannot accurately grasp the deficit (tax revenue), and there is an \"Automatic Stabilizers\" effectWe do not expand too much on the fact that the government can't accurately grasp the deficit (starting from the Chicago School and Laffer curve to a deep extent, if we like), but we will only talk about some more intuitive inferences.It needs to be acknowledged that the ability of the government has boundaries.Even the government can't accurately control the fiscal and tax revenue that seems to be completely determined by itself.The government can indeed decide to spend more or raise the tax rate, but when the government expenditure and tax rate change, other social variables, such as income, sales, wealth, etc., that is, the overall tax base of society, will change accordingly. And these variables are not in the control of the government.Therefore, whether there is a deficit, balance or surplus in the budget, it is not something that the government can decide independently.Combining the above identities and discussions, assume that we ignore the balance of foreign sectors for the time being. When the recession comes, the domestic private sector will start to cut spending and increase savings. This will increase the balance of the domestic private sector, which will directly lead to the decline of the balance of the domestic government sector in the identity. As a result, the government's budget deficit will increase spontaneously. This part of the growth is not controlled by the government, but it plays a role in stabilizing the fluctuation of the balance of various sectors of society in the face of the cycle. Past data also confirms this relationship-That is, tax revenue grew rapidly during economic prosperity and fell rapidly during economic depression, making the government's budget a powerful automatic stabilizer. This is the \"automatic stabilizer\" effect.Therefore,The best domestic policy is to pursue full employment and price stability, rather than pursue a sustainable deficit path for the government or a controllable overall debt ceiling. Because the latter is the result of automatic stabilizers in most cases, and cannot be decided independently by the government.4. Simple expansion of identityFor the convenience of expressing our views, we rewrite the important identities above and introduce S (private sector savings), C (private sector consumption expenditure), I (private sector investment), T (government sector tax revenue), G (government sector expenditure), IM (domestic imports), EX (domestic exports), so there areDomestic private sector balance + domestic government sector balance + foreign sector balance = 0S-C-I + T-G + IM-EX = 0At this point, we can basically draw the most important ideological conclusion of modern monetary theory:If you have the taxation and the ability to create your own currency described in II.1, then when you face an economic depression cycle or negative external shocks (similar to the subprime mortgage crisis or the new crown crisis), you can better weather the crisis through the regulation of your own government departments.When the crisis comes, II.2. 1 tells us that because the overall expenditure of the private sector determines the overall revenue, the most important thing is to ensure that the overall expenditure of the private sector does not decline, especially to avoid falling into the negative feedback loop of simultaneous decline in expenditure/revenue. II.2. 2 tells us that in order to avoid the panic caused by the sudden decline of social wealth, we need a sector of the economy to proactively provide deficit spending. So combine it,The only one that can undertake this deficit spending task is the government sector, which needs to transfer wealth to the private sector to repair the decline in overall spending.The identity of II.2. 4 further verifies that, in order to achieve this, the domestic private sector balance should be returned to the equilibrium level,Then we should minimize the balance of domestic government departments and foreign departments (the current account deficit from domestic perspective).But becauseExogenous uncertainty of exports(For example, if an economy as large as the United States tries to reduce imports, it may affect the income of other countries, thus affecting its own exports to other countries in the world),The best way to deal with it is to reduce the balance of domestic government departments.It is worth emphasizing here that under the mainstream macroeconomic view, the country should try its best to pursue current account surplus, while modern monetary theorists have conducted more in-depth theoretical discussions on foreign sector balances, and finally came to contradictory conclusions. That is to say, when the government can freely control the balance of its own government departments, the external current account surplus is not important, and this is actually the development path that the United States has actually taken since the 21st century.Finally, II.1 and II.2. 3 tell us that when the government expands the deficit to increase private sector spending, we don't need to consider whether the deficit is too large, because sovereign countries can issue currency indefinitely without affecting credit; There is no need to consider how the deficit will be reduced in the future, because when the crisis passes and the economy returns to the growth cycle, the automatic stabilizer will naturally reduce the country's deficit and return it to an equilibrium level.When we compare the above conclusions and ideas with the way the United States and western countries responded to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic this time, we can immediately understand why the mainstream western economies have now opened a new paradigm of modern monetary theory.Take the United States as an example. In this new crown crisis, the United States immediately ignored the constraints of all government deficit paths and debt ceilings, turned the money printing press to the limit, and launched multiple trillion-level government spending plans. Not only did it not set an upper limit on the size of the Fed's balance sheet, and allow the Fed to directly purchase high-yield corporate bonds to guarantee private sector deficit investments; The United States abandoned the past path of QE transmission through banks and directly cut interest rates to the lower limit of interest rates. At the same time, it carried out an unprecedented \"helicopter money\" behavior, directly transferring money to people's personal accounts.We don't care about flooding Jinshan, but we must use thunderous momentum to ensure that the overall expenditure of the private sector does not fall.It can be said that as far as the current situation is concerned, the paradigm of modern monetary theory has achieved very good practical results. Under such a severe impact as COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. economy has not only achieved a smooth transition, but is likely to resume growth in an extremely fast time (2021). It's no wonder that Yellen, the new U.S. Treasury Secretary, who was appointed in danger, will publicly state that the upper limit of government debt is not that important. As long as the government's annual fiscal revenue can cover Treasury Bond's interest, it is a sustainable path.It is expected that in the next 5-10 years, the paradigm of modern monetary theory will establish a firm position in the practice of western central banks.II.3 The boundary of government debt-the problem of fiscal sustainability pathThe sustainable path of inflation caused by excessive money printing and government debt should be the two most concentrated aspects of modern monetary theory questioned by \"traditional\" theory.First of all, it should be clear that we don't think that modern monetary theory has a very scientific and perfect explanation and response to these questions, but its answers to these questions also have certain merits.Let's first directly quote a very intuitive macroeconomic conclusion:When an economy's interest rate r is higher than its growth rate g, its debt ratio will keep increasing. (It can be intuitively understood that the newly earned money (g) of the economy every year cannot repay the interest (r), so the debt ratio can only keep rising), so if it is always in the situation of r > g, then the government will continue to increase The room for debt is relatively limited.[For academic readers about this conclusion, you can take a closer look at James Galbraith's classic model:△ d =-s + d * [(r-g)/(1 + g)]Where d is the initial ratio of debt to GDP, s is the ratio of fiscal surplus to GDP after subtracting net interest expense, r is the real interest rate, and g is the real growth rate of GDP]And we can intuitively see that when r < g, the ratio of debt to GDP is also negative, that is, the debt is gradually decreasing healthily.So how to achieve that? A situation that can naturally be controlled by the government is to keep the interest rate r as small as possible, so that g is more likely to be greater than r. Therefore, in the nearly ten years after the financial crisis, we have seen a significant decline in benchmark interest rates in all countries in the world. After the COVID-19 crisis interrupted the process of rate hike in the United States, we once again saw that the benchmark interest rates of all developed countries were lowered to a position basically equal to 0. The European Union, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and other countries have further opened up their attempts to negative interest rates. This has to be said to be a result of the practice of modern monetary theory paradigm.So what if r has been reduced to such a low position, and the actual growth rate g still cannot be greater than r? Dear friends, this is the most cutting-edge academic problem that modern monetary theory is still discussing. As far as we know, the current MMT theory cannot give a clear answer.It must be noted here that despite the constraints of liquidity traps,But r is controlled by the government, and there is no absolute lower limit.For example, when it feels that 0 is not low enough, the Federal Reserve can completely announce that it will lower the benchmark interest rate to-10% overnight. When we consider the situation of stimulating all instant consumption with this absolutely madness, we return to the fundamental difference between modern monetary theory and traditional macroeconomics, that is, the source of government credit-government organization and tax-driven money, the biggest cornerstone of modern monetary theory. It can be said that what we need to face at this time is no longer an economic problem in essence, but a sociological problem. Specifically, countries such as the United States and the US dollar, which are supported by political, technological and military infrastructure, may not encounter any difficulties. However, in some small countries, because people or other economies in the world lose their trust in their currency and government, they will face the danger of losing the effectiveness of regime rule and legal tender at the same time. But in any case, in the theoretical framework of MMT, there is a solution to the problem of the government's fiscal sustainability path, but its consequences and constraints may need to be further improved and supported by the auxiliary perspective of sociology. (A theoretical framework similar to behavioral economics needs to be supported by the introduction of psychological theories.)II.4 The Boundary of Government Debt-InflationFinally, let's explore the biggest intuitive question that everyone has about modern monetary theory:The problem of inflation.As Friedman famously said: \"Inflation is a monetary phenomenon whenever and wherever\", so modern monetary theory proposes to lift government spending and debt ceiling to print money on a large scale if necessary, and at the same time, how to ensure that the country does not enter a vicious spiral of self-reinforcement of inflation?In fact, Modern Monetary Theory is very descriptive in answering questions related to inflation. It can even be said that Modern Monetary Theory itself is only a description of the operation of sovereign currency.As mentioned above, it has a good theoretical and ideological framework to explain how sovereign countries and their currencies work, but it does not have enough scientific and quantitative means to draw insurmountable boundaries for this operation mode.The discussion of inflation in modern monetary theory can be roughly divided intoBoth directions.The first direction avoids directly answering the inflation question, but denies the current mainstream macro framework, believing that the relationship between inflation and employment revealed by the Phelps curve can be completely avoided through government intervention.The founder of this direction is the famous economist A. Lerner and his\"Functional Finance Theory\"。 In his theory, Lerner emphasized that when the government formulates the budget, it should start from its function to the economy, instead of adding the restriction of fiscal balance. This is in line with the abandonment of the fiscal sustainable path by modern monetary theory discussed in the previous section. Therefore, subsequent modern monetary theory researchers put forward\"Employment Security/Ultimate Employer\" Model。Considering that this is a brand-new framework, we will not expand in depth here but intuitively describe the main logic of this model.From the above,According to the framework of modern monetary theory, we know that the government can issue its own currency indefinitely, so why not let the government act as the ultimate employer and promise to provide jobs for all qualified and willing citizens of the country?In this way, the unemployment rate will be directly reduced to 0, and a well-off society will be directly realized.In this theoretical framework,All the unemployed people in the country will be employed by the government as the final employer, and a minimum wage equivalent to employment security will be provided.Then the private sector can select the best labor force from this group of government-employed people for employment by providing salaries higher than employment security.Imagine that if our government implements this framework now, then all the unemployed people in the country can go to the local government to get a job with a salary of 2,000 yuan/month paid by the government. The specific work can be local agricultural picking according to local conditions, or it can be unified deployment of infrastructure projects led by government expenditures, or simply become a takeaway rider, and the government will distribute this part of employment security salary through platform companies like Meituan.It looks like,Within such a theoretical framework, inflation does become less relevant.During the economic boom, employers in the private sector can hire workers from employment plans by providing them with higher wages than the employment guarantee salary (2,000 yuan/month). For example, Meituan can provide 3,000 yuan/month salary to increase efficiency. High riders are hired in their own companies. During the economic recession, the private sector can dismiss workers and let them return to the government's final employer plan to get an employment guarantee salary of at least 2,000 yuan/month. In this way, job security salaries will reduce inflationary pressures in economic prosperity and deflationary pressures in economic recession.Therefore, the framework of modern monetary theory finally found an \"anchor\" of sovereign currency by setting up government guaranteed salary. Under this complete MMT framework, the marginal value of a sovereign currency is equal to the amount of labor it can employ. The government has achieved full employment through the program, and it can control inflation perfectly by adjusting the marginal labor value by adjusting the employment security salary.But the problems with this utopia theory are also obvious-even if we put aside the problems faced by MMT when government spending is too large, such as exchange rate and inflation discussed in II.3, we still need to pay attention to an important fact. This framework ignores the subjective initiative and employment incentives of all individuals.For example, if the job provided by the government requires 12 hours of hard work, then if an individual thinks that the wage of only 2,000 yuan for these 12 hours of labor is too small, he will automatically withdraw from the employment security scheme. This will directly cause the real unemployment rate to rise again.Another example is that Meituan's employment security riders don't need to do too much. They can receive a salary of 2,000 yuan/month by sending 3 orders a day. Meituan riders may be willing to choose to lie down to join the employment security plan, thus distorting the overall efficiency and demand of society.In addition, this employment security/ultimate employer plan is actually a typical \"big government\" framework. In order to be implemented effectively, the government needs to have highly monopolized rights and resources. In view of this situation, Piketty conducted an in-depth discussion in his new book Capital and Ideology. He pointed out the apocalyptic ideological dilemma faced by the framework of big government after the disintegration of the Soviet Union through the changes of the views of the left and the right in modern society.Therefore, this employment security/ultimate employer model may only exist in the paper ideal country of some modern monetary theory scholars for a long time.Since it is impossible to completely jump out of the framework of mainstream monetarism theory in practice in the short term, modern monetary theory scholars also follow the mainstream frameworkThe second directionExplained the inflation problem as best as possible.In our opinion,The academic significance of this part of the explanation is somewhat lackluster, because the theoretical framework of MMT has never put forward a clear method to calculate the expenditure ceiling of sovereign governments.Therefore, in this direction, the arguments of MMT supporters are mainlyFocus on practical experience。 Noting that in the past 40 years or so, the world's mainstream economies have basically been in an environment extremely lacking in inflation. Even after printing money on a large scale, they still have no signs of rising inflation. Therefore, they believe that considering unknown factors such as oversupply in modern society and changes in production factors,It is very difficult for a sovereign government to raise the deficit and print money to trigger inflation.The hyperinflation that has occurred in history, firstly, is not large in number, and secondly, it mostly occurs in developing countries such as Zimbabwe and Brazil whose own economic systems are too fragile, and in most cases it often occurs when the country has suffered unusual domestic and foreign geopolitical shocks, soIt's not universal.Although this explanation is vague and a bit almost cheating, it is unfair to blame modern monetary theorists on this basis.After all, mainstream monetarist scholars don't explain the effect of quantitative easing and how it is transmitted to the real economy well.For example, why did the huge amount of money issued by central banks around the world in response to the 2008 financial crisis never lead to an increase in inflation in these countries? In view of this problem, the mainstream academic circles have never found a convincing theoretical framework to give an answer. On this point, the most confused people should be Abe and Haruhiko Kuroda. The Bank of Japan's money printing level has already far broken the upper limit of fiscal deficit considered by traditional monetarism, even to the point of nationalizing the entire Japanese business community, but people still can't find any clues of rising inflation in Japan.From this point of view,This COVID-19 crisis may be a touchstone of modern monetary theory, because at least as of the second quarter, in the unprecedented wave of the world's largest water release, we finally saw a little sign of inflation. But for now, with this little sign, the mainstream expectation of the Fed and the market is still that theseInflation is'transitory ', after the epidemic is over and the margins of monetary policy are normalized, it will fade on its own.If the story really progresses like this, then in the spirit of science and practicality, the shackles and criticism of inflation on modern monetary theory may really be ineffective. After all, at present, the government directly gives a generous employment guarantee salary by throwing money by helicopter without asking people to find jobs. This degree of water release has actually far exceeded the previous imagination of modern monetary theorists on paper. If inflation is not visible under such circumstances, then traditional monetarists can indeed burn Friedman's theory of quantity of money to embrace the new macro era.III. SummaryThis paper combs the paradigm of modern monetary theory as much as possible, which is the most popular macro-monetary theory in the world at present, expounds the theoretical basis and important framework of modern monetary theory as popularly as possible, and discusses its limitations.The conclusions of Modern Monetary Theory are shocking to those who have only been exposed to the traditional view of money. It challenges the orthodox views on government finance and budget deficits, the trade-off between employment and inflation established by the Phillips curve, and the behavior of striving for current account surpluses.However, it is essentially an orthodox continuation of Keynesianism, and its understanding of how the Ministry of Finance and the central bank of a sovereign country should coordinate their operations and their respective powers, responsibilities and obligations significantly goes beyond the limitations of classical monetarism.\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n source：<a href=\"https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/7xkjnL08zcFJcRhUMIn7zw\">动物精神Animal...</a>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3cfac405d9968bb68cea6d74e9f4c711","relate_stocks":{},"source_url":"https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/7xkjnL08zcFJcRhUMIn7zw","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1172774847","content_text":"随着全球货币政策在零利率陷阱中越陷越深，叠加新冠疫情带来的全球大放水，有关现代货币理论（MMT）的探讨近来愈加兴起，且在传播过程中引起了非常大的争议。在本文中，我们会尝试在保持逻辑严谨性的前提下，用比较通俗易懂的方式来探究现代货币理论的基础框架、思想宗旨与实用性。\nI. 概述\n同大众的看法相反，当下为人所乐道的现代货币理论并不“现代”，或者说根本不新。事实上，现代货币理论脱胎于后凯恩斯学派，并认为自己才是凯恩斯理论最好的深入诠释与追随者。然而，现代货币理论的主要思想在凯恩斯之后的近60年时间中一直不受待见，甚至被边缘化，直到近些年才终于在国际政治与经济的讨论中有了一席之地。当然，这种转变也与目前主流宏观经济学遇到的困境息息相关，毕竟宏观经济学已经很多年没有拿到过诺奖了，需要结合实践去寻找新的方向。但无论如何，各界对现代货币理论的批评声始终不绝于耳，正如那句著名的评论所说：“The correct parts of MMT aren’t new and the new parts aren’t correct。”（有关现代货币理论，他们正确的地方并不新，而新的地方并不正确。”）\n如果用一句话来概括现代货币理论最主要的观点说了什么，那其实非常简单：\n对于拥有自己货币的国家来说，其政府无需在乎自己的负债与支出，因为他们永远可以通过政府直接印钱的方式来支付所有负债的利息。于是，对政府印多少钱的唯一束缚只有通胀。只要印钱创造出来的需求与目的可以被现有的劳动力与设备满足，使通胀保持在一个可控的范围，那么这个国家的政府便可以通过直接印钱来支撑自己的所有目的与支出。\n看到这里，我想大多数人的第一反应大抵都是不以为然，而拉美危机，魏玛德国，津巴布韦，欧债危机等等事件作为反例便立刻涌上心头。稍安勿躁，其实现代货币理论的核心宗旨并不是在尝试证明政府可以无限地印钱支出而不必承担任何后果。在下一段中，我们会梳理现代货币理论的重要观点与逻辑框架，供大家探讨。\nII. 理论观点\nII.1 税收驱动货币\n自二十世纪70年代布莱顿森林体系解体，美元与黄金脱钩以来，有关法定货币核心价值的探究便始终没有一个明确的结论。而针对货币的核心属性与价值，现代货币理论以其独到的解释为基础建立了一整套理论体系。\n为什么会有人愿意接受政府的法定货币？人们通常对此只是被动接受，而甚少思考。当政府在修路，在造航母，当央行在购买国债，在量化宽松的时候，他们是否真的从某个账户对外支付货币呢？答案显然是否定的。\n那么政府为什么可以这样凭空创造货币？\n海曼.明斯基曾说过，“每个人都可以创造货币，但问题在于其是否会被接纳。”你可以通过在一张纸条上写“欠款10元”来创造一种以元来计价的“货币”，但问题在于能否做到让其他人接受它 —— 例如，是否有人愿意接受这一张欠条，并且卖给你一个煎饼。\nMMT认为，政府能够做到这一点的核心原因在于我们所有人都要向政府纳税。注意到，绝大多数情况下，政府征税时都只接受自己印发的货币，所以，一国民众为了免受逃税的惩罚（如进监狱等），就必须设法获得该政府货币以支付税款。此处的重点在于，即便无法轻易地强制民众在私下交易时使用其发行的法定货币，政府依然可以在征税时迫使人们使用法定货币来支付税收。而这个事实将天然地在民众中创造出一个对该国法定货币的巨量需求。总而言之，为使所发行的货币被接受，政府其实既不需要储存贵金属或者外币，也不需要多余的法律来保证。它只需要强制民众用法定货币来履行纳税义务即可。\n于是我们可以得出“税收驱动货币”的结论：如果统治者有征税的权利，便能够创造对法定货币的需求。因为对政府而言，“确保人们在付钱给政府时使用法定货币”，这点是很容易做到的。\n在上述讨论的基础上稍作衍生就会发现，以货币发行者的角度来看，政府建立货币体系的目的在于让资源向公共部门流动，而税收创造的货币（政府印出来的纸张）需求则促成了这一点。可以说，政府设立税收并不单是为了增加财政收入，也是为了促使人们为获得其印刷出来的纸张（货币）而出卖劳动力，资源和产品。大多数人认为，政府征税仅是为了创收以弥补财政支出。但从MMT的角度来看，税收的目的则有非常微妙的区别。\n众所周知，政府并不会花光“所需资金”，但公众为了获得货币而出卖更多劳动力、资源或产品的意愿却可能耗尽（类似观点可以参考公众号之前的另外一篇文章，并没有那么可怕的金融危机）。为了能够持续转移资源，政府可以尝试提高支付的价格（如果失败，则会引发通胀），或者增加税收。但不管怎样，我们必须记住，在MMT的理解中，增加税收的主要目的不是创收，而是为了刺激货币需求。\n这样一来，MMT自洽地给出了一个政府货币、税收与通胀的理论框架。我们可以简单表述为，政府通过税收为自己印刷的货币创造需求，而征税的能力决定了政府资源转移的能力，也就进一步决定了该政府货币的信用，而这一信用的高低决定了这种货币的最终需求，从而直接影响着该货币的名义通胀。民众认可这种货币，通胀便可控，反之便会进入通胀上升——货币与政府信用进一步降低的负反馈螺旋。\n这个框架在现实中是实际存在的，美元的信用构建在二战后美国全球最领先的综合实力上，构建在几乎所有大宗商品的价格结算机制上，也构建在航空母舰、特斯拉、Google与可口可乐的存在上，甚至构建在要求全球所有居民，无论国籍，进行美元资产投资必须填写w8ben表格来向美国政府报税的能力上。为了应对新冠疫情，美国政府在近两年内印刷出了前所未有的钱，这让一些不了解这个体系的人甚感恐慌地喊着美元的信用会丢失，美元会变成废纸。殊不知美元本就是废纸，是上面所说的这些事实让废纸拥有了信用。如果美国的这些能力没有发生变化，那么美元的基础信用是不会被毁灭的。那些单纯地因为美国印了太多钱，便慌忙下结论喊着美元将要丢失自己信用的人，最近这一个周期过去，恐怕已经在忙着调整预期了。\n不过，虽然美联储印钱不会动摇美元的信用，也不会让大通胀到来并让美元成为废纸，但是中国的崛起却有可能动摇上述这些美国的相对优势。从最高的视角看，未来5-10年的全球大剧情也许就会在这个维度上演绎了，这个话题让我们考虑在其他文章中展开来讲吧。\n顺便提一句，可能与许多人的认知不同，我们很容易就会发现，上面叙述的MMT框架下的货币观点其实是否认现在最火热的数字资产与比特币的货币职能的（再次强调，政府与税收驱动货币）。篇幅有限，我们也不展开讲了。（想起费马大定理那个页面边缘的装逼，我们总是懂的太多，而有时间写下来的太少。）\nII.2 现代货币理论的基础框架\n让我们详细的阐述一下MMT的分析逻辑。\n首先我们都清楚，在社会中，一方的金融资产总会对应到另外一方的金融负债。于是我们可以把世界非常简单地划分为三个部门：本国私营部门，本国公共部门以及由外国政府、公司与家庭构成的“其他国家部门”。\n那么如果我们把各个部门的资产与负债加总，下面这条恒等式便会始终成立：\n本国私营部门结余 + 本国政府部门结余 + 国外部门结余 = 0\n这实际上是一个会计恒等式，不依赖于任何理论模型。举一个可能比较有启发的例子，假设国外部门支出小于收入，有500亿美元的预算盈余，同时本国政府部门支出小于收入，有200亿美元的财政预算盈余，那么上述恒等式告诉我们，在同一时间段内，我们最在乎的本国私营部门必须拥有500+200=700亿美元的预算赤字。\n这可能就造成了一个“困境”，在这三个部门中，如果一个部门出现盈余，那么至少有另外一个部门出现赤字。换句话说，无论我们怎么努力，在同一个时间段中，都不可能同时出现我们脑海中认为最理想的所有部门都盈余的天下大同的情况。\n所以到这里的时候，我们的脑海中似乎隐隐约约有一个想法呼之欲出——既然总有人要借钱，那么就TMD让政府借啊，然后我们作为本国私营部门的每个人就会有最期待的盈余和资产了啊！\n如果事情这么简单，我们就只需要会计，而不需要MMT了。\n在文章的起初，我们便说了MMT是凯恩斯理论的追随者，原因便是，他们相信下面这些由凯恩斯主义延续下来的结论。\n1.  从整体经济层面来看，私人部门的因果关系是，整体支出决定整体收入（凯恩斯节约悖论）\n这个结论不太直观，因为就我们每个个体而言，总是收入决定支出的：例如你中了500万的彩票，咋的晚上吃兰州牛肉面还不得多加份肉啊。\n然而，一旦我们把全部的个体加总就会发现，虽然个体家庭可以明确地决定减少支出，以便储蓄更多的钱来应对预期中的危机，但如果所有的家庭都试图去减少支出，总消费和国民收入将会下降。这时，公司将被迫减少产出，裁退员工，降低工资，从而导致家庭收入的降低，这将导致家庭成员被迫进一步减少支出，一个残酷的负反馈循环便开始了。\n这便是凯恩斯的“节约悖论”，即他对于大萧条最重要的教训及解释——试图通过降低总消费的方式存钱，不仅不会增加储蓄，反而会减少收入。\n2.  社会赤字开支决定金融财富的累积（储蓄）。\n凯恩斯主义者认为，只有当经济体中某个部门决定通过赤字的方式让支出多于收入时，借钱给他的对手方才会以赤字开支者负债的形式累积起金融财富净额。即赤字开支的这个决定才是创造出金融财富净额的原因。除非有一方愿意进行赤字支出，否则，无论其他人多么想累积金融财富，他们都无法做到这一点。\n3.  政府无法精确掌握赤字（税收收入），存在“自动稳定器”(Automatic Stabilizers)效应\n我们不过多展开政府无法精确掌握赤字这点（愿意的话，可以从芝加哥学派和Laffer curve出发展开到很深的程度），我们只谈一些比较直觉的推论。\n需要承认，政府的能力是有边界的。即便是对看似完全由自己决定的财政税收收入，政府也无法精确掌控。政府确实可以决定支出更多，也可以决定提高税率，但当政府支出与税率改变之后，其他的社会变量，例如收入，销售，财富等等，也就是社会的整体税基都会对应改变。而这些变量并不在政府的掌控之中。因此，财政预算无论出现赤字、均衡还是盈余，都并非政府可以自主决定的。\n结合上面的恒等式与探讨，假设我们暂时不考虑国外部门的结余，当衰退来临时，本国私营部门便会开始削减支出、增加储蓄。这会让本国私营部门结余上升，从而直接导致恒等式中的本国政府部门结余下降。如此一来，政府的财政预算赤字就会自发地增加。这部分增长并不由政府掌控，但却起到了平抑社会各部门结余在面对周期时所产生的波动的作用。过往的数据也确认了这一关系——即税收收入在经济繁荣时期迅速增长，在经济萧条时期迅速下跌，使得政府的财政预算变成了一个强大的自动稳定器。这便是“自动稳定器”效应。\n因此，最佳的国内政策是追求充分就业和物价稳定，而不是追求政府可持续赤字路径或者可控的整体债务上限。因为后者大多数情况下是自动稳定器的结果，并不是政府可以自主决定的。\n4.  恒等式的简单展开\n为了表述观点方便，我们将上面重要的恒等式进行改写，引入S（私人部门储蓄），C（私人部门消费支出），I（私人部门投资），T（政府部门税收），G（政府部门支出），IM（本国进口），EX（本国出口），于是有\n本国私营部门结余 + 本国政府部门结余 + 国外部门结余 = 0\nS – C – I + T – G + IM – EX = 0\n到这里，我们便基本可以得出现代货币理论最为重要的思想结论了：\n如果你拥有II.1中描述的税收与创造自己货币的能力，那么当你面对一个经济萧条周期或者负外部冲击时（类似次贷危机或者新冠危机），你可以通过本国政府部门的调控来更好地度过危机。\n当危机到来时，II.2.1告诉我们因为私人部门的整体支出决定整体收入，所以最重要的事情是保证私人部门的整体支出不下降，尤其是避免陷入支出/收入同时下降的负反馈循环。II.2.2则告诉我们，为了避免社会财富骤降引起的恐慌，我们需要经济体的某个部门来主动提供赤字支出。那么结合起来，唯一的可能承担这一赤字支出任务的便是政府部门，它需要将财富转移给私人部门，以此来修复整体支出的下降幅度。\nII.2.4的恒等式进一步验证了，为了做到这些，让本国私营部门结余回到应有的均衡水平，那么我们应当让本国政府部门结余与国外部门结余（以本国角度来看便是经常账户赤字）尽量减少。\n但因为出口的外生不确定性（例如美国这样庞大的经济体如果尝试减少进口，那么可能会影响到其他国家的收入，从而影响到自己对于世界其他国家的出口），最好的应对办法便是减少本国政府部门结余了。在这里值得强调一下，主流宏观经济学观点下，国家应当尽量追求经常账户盈余，而现代货币理论学者对国外部门结余进行了更多深入的理论探讨，最后得出了相悖的结论。也就是在政府可以自由掌控本国政府部门结余的情况下，对外的经常账户盈余并不重要，而这其实也正是21世纪以来，美国实际走过来的发展路径。\n最后，II.1与II.2.3告诉我们，在政府扩大赤字以提升私人部门支出这个过程时，我们无需考虑赤字是否过大，因为主权国家在不影响信用的情况下可以无限发行货币；也无需考虑未来赤字会如何缩减，因为当危机过去，经济恢复到增长周期的时候，自动稳定器自然会让国家的赤字缩小回归至均衡水平。\n当我们把上述的结论和思路与美国及西方国家本次应对新冠疫情冲击的方式进行对比，便能立刻明白为什么说现在西方主流经济体开启了现代货币理论的新范式。\n以美国为例，在本次新冠危机中，美国第一时间忽略了所有政府赤字路径和债务上限的束缚，把印钞机开到极限，发起了多个万亿级别的政府支出计划，不仅不为美联储资产负债表规模设置上限，并且允许美联储直接下场购买企业高收益债券，为私营部门赤字投资进行担保；美国摒弃了过往QE通过银行传导的路径，直接降息至利率下限，同时史无前例地执行“直升机撒钱”行为，直接打款至民众的个人账户。不在乎水漫金山，但一定要以雷霆之势确保私人部门的整体支出不下降。\n可以说，就目前的情况来看，现代货币理论的范式还是取得了非常良好的实践效果的。在新冠疫情这样剧烈的冲击下，美国经济不但实现了平稳的过渡，并且很可能在极快的时间内（2021年）恢复增长。这也难怪临危受命的美国新任财政部长耶伦会公开表明，政府债务的上限并没有那么重要，只要确保政府每年的财政收入可以覆盖国债的利息便是可持续路径了。预计在未来5-10年的时间内，现代货币理论的范式将在西方国家央行的实践中确立一个牢固的地位。\nII.3 政府负债的边界 – 财政可持续路径问题\n过度印钱引发的通胀与政府负债的可持续路径应该是“传统”理论对现代货币理论质疑最集中的两个方面。\n首先要明确的是，我们并不认为现代货币理论对这些质疑有非常科学完美的解释和回应，但是它对这些问题的回答也存在着一定的可取之处。\n我们先直接引用一个非常符合直觉的宏观经济学结论：\n当经济体的利率r高于其增长率g，它的负债率便会一直增长。（可以直觉地理解为，经济体每年新赚到的钱(g)无法偿还利息(r)，所以负债率只能一直上升），所以如果始终处于r > g的情况下，那么政府继续新增负债的空间就比较有限了。\n【对于学术一点的读者有关这个结论可以详细看一下James Galbraith的经典模型：\n△d = -s + d * [ (r -g) / (1 + g) ]\n其中d是负债对GDP的初始比率，s是减去净利息支出后的财政盈余对GDP的比率，r是实际利率，g是GDP的实际增长率】\n而我们可以很直观地看到当r < g时，负债对GDP的比率也是负值，也就是负债在健康地逐渐减少。\n那么如何实现呢？一个能让政府很自然的掌控的情形便是让利率r尽量地小，这样g不就更容易大于r了嘛。因此，在金融危机后的近十年时间中，我们看到了全球所有国家的基准利率显著地下降。在新冠危机打断了美国加息进程之后，我们又一次看到了所有发达国家的基准利率降低到了基本等于0的降无可降的位置。而欧盟，日本，瑞典，瑞士等国家则更进一步打开了对负利率的尝试。这不得不说是现代货币理论范式获得实践的一个结果。\n那么如果r已经降低到了这么低的位置，实际增长率g还是无法大于r怎么办呢？朋友们，这便是目前现代货币理论尚在探讨的最前沿的学术问题了，就我们所知，目前的MMT理论无法给出一个明确的答案。\n这里必须要说明的是，尽管有流动性陷阱的约束，但是r是由政府来掌控的，并不存在一个绝对的下限。比如当觉得0都不够低的时候，美联储是完全可以宣布把基准利率一夜之间降到-10%的。当考虑以这种绝对疯狂的姿态来刺激所有即时消费的情形时，我们便反而回到了现代货币理论同传统宏观经济学的根本区别上，即政府信用的来源——政府组织与税收驱动货币这个现代货币理论最大的基石。可以说，这时我们需要面对的本质上不再是经济学问题，而是社会学意义上的问题。具体而言，美国与美元这样有政治，科技与军事基础支撑的国家可能并不会出现什么困难，但在某些小国家，因民众或者世界其他经济体丧失对该国货币与政府的信任，他们将面临同时失去政权统治与法定货币效力的危险。但无论如何，在MMT的理论框架中，政府的财政可持续路径问题是有解决方式的，但其带来的后果与约束可能需要社会学的辅助视角来进一步完善与支撑。（类似行为经济学的理论框架需要引入心理学的理论来支撑。）\nII.4 政府负债的边界 – 通胀问题\n最后让我们来探讨一下所有人在直觉上对于现代货币理论的最大质疑：通货膨胀问题。\n如弗里德曼那句著名的话一样：“通货膨胀无论何时何地都是一种货币现象”，那么现代货币理论在提出必要情况下解除政府支出和债务上限大规模印钱的同时，又是如何确保国家不进入通货膨胀自我强化的恶性螺旋的呢？\n事实上，在回答与通胀有关的问题方面，现代货币理论是非常描述性的，甚至可以说，现代货币理论本身便仅仅是对于主权货币运行方式的描述。如上文所述，它有很好的理论与思想框架来解释主权国家及其货币如何运作，但是却没有足够科学与量化的手段来为这种运作方式划下不可逾越的边界。\n现代货币理论中对于通货膨胀问题的探讨大概分为两个方向。\n第一个方向避免了直接回答通胀问题，而是否定了现行的主流宏观框架，认为菲尔普斯曲线揭示的通胀与就业的关系完全可以通过政府的干预来避免。\n这个方向的奠基人便是著名的经济学家勒纳(A.Lerner)及其提出的“功能财政理论”。勒纳在其理论中强调了政府在制定财政预算时，应从其对经济的功能来着手，而不应该加入财政收支平衡的限制。这与上一小节中探讨的现代货币理论对于财政可持续路径的摒弃简直是天作之和，也因此，后续的现代货币理论研究者在勒纳的基础上提出了“就业保障/最终雇主”模式。\n考虑到这是一个崭新的框架，所以在这里我们不深入展开而是从直观上描述一下这种模式的主要逻辑。\n从上文中，根据现代货币理论的框架，我们知道了政府是可以无限发行本国货币的，那么为什么不让政府作为最终雇主并承诺为本国全部符合资格且有工作意愿的公民提供工作机会呢？这样失业率便会直接降低为0，小康社会也就直接实现了。\n在这个理论框架中，全国所有的失业人口会被政府作为最终雇主雇佣，并且提供等同于就业保障的最低薪资。而后私营部门可以通过提供高于就业保障的薪资来从这部分政府雇佣的人群中择优筛选劳动力进行雇佣。\n想象一下，如果现在我国政府执行这个框架，那么全国所有失业人口都可以去本地政府领取到一份工作，薪资为政府支付的2000元/月。具体工作可以是因地制宜的本地农业采摘，也可以由政府支出主导的基建项目统一调配，或者干脆成为外卖骑手，由政府把这部分就业保障薪资透过像美团这样的平台公司来发放。\n看起来，在这样的理论框架下，通胀确实变得不那么相关了。在经济繁荣期，私营部门的雇主可以通过为工人提供比就业保障薪资（2000元/月）更高的工资来从就业计划中雇佣工人，例如美团可以提供3000元/月的薪资来把效率高的骑手雇佣到自己公司内。而在经济衰退期，私人部门可以辞退工人，让他们返回政府的最终雇主计划以获取至少2000元/月的就业保障薪资。这样一来，就业保障薪资将在经济繁荣时降低通货膨胀的压力，并在经济衰退时降低通货紧缩的压力。\n于是，现代货币理论框架通过设立政府保障薪资终于得以找到一个主权货币的“锚”。在这套完整的MMT框架下，主权货币的边际价值便等于其可以雇佣的劳动力数量。政府通过计划实现了充分就业，并且可以通过调整就业保障薪资来调整边际劳动力价值来完美控制通胀。\n但是这套理想国理论的问题也显而易见——即便抛开汇率与通胀这类在II.3中讨论过的MMT在政府开支过大时所面临的问题不谈，我们依然需要注意的一个重要事实是，这套框架忽略了所有个体的主观能动性与就业的激励问题。\n比如政府提供的工作需要进行12小时的艰苦劳动，那么如果一个个体认为这12小时的劳动仅仅获得2000元的工资太少了，那么他便会自动从就业保障计划中退出。这将直接造成实际失业率重新上升。\n又比如美团的就业保障骑手不需要做太多事情，一天送3单就可以领取2000元/月的工资，那么本来在市场竞争环境下需要一天送30单才可以领取5000元/月工资的美团骑手可能便愿意选择躺平以加入就业保障计划，从而使社会的整体效率与需求被扭曲。\n另外这套就业保障/最终雇主计划其实是一种典型的“大政府”的框架。为了有效得到执行，政府需要拥有高度垄断的权利与资源。针对这种情形，Piketty在其新书Capital and Ideology中进行了深入的探讨，他通过对于近代社会左派与右派主张观点的变迁指出了大政府的框架在苏联解体后面临的末日般的意识形态困境。也因此，这套就业保障/最终雇主模式恐怕很长一段时间只能存在于部分现代货币理论学者的纸面理想国中了。\n既然短期无法在实践中彻底跳出主流货币主义理论的框架，现代货币理论学者们也在主流框架中沿着第二个方向尽可能地解释了通胀问题。\n在我们看来，这部分解释的学术意义多少有些乏善可陈，因为MMT的理论框架中始终没有提出一个明确的方法去计算出主权政府的可支出上限。因此在这个方向上，MMT支持者们的论据主要集中在实践经验上。注意到在过往的大概40年时间里，全球主流经济体基本上都处于极度缺乏通胀的环境中，甚至在大规模印钱后，依然没有看到通胀上升的迹象，所以他们认为，考虑到现代社会供给过于充分，生产要素变革等未知因素，主权政府提升赤字印钱是非常难以引发通胀的。而历史上出现过的恶性通胀，一是数量并不多，二是多发生在津巴布韦、巴西等自身经济体系过于脆弱的发展中国家，而且多数情况下往往发生于该国受到了不寻常的国内外地缘或政治冲击的时候，因此并不具有普遍性。\n尽管这种解释模糊而有点近乎耍赖，但如果基于这点而对现代货币理论学者们进行指责也有失公平，毕竟主流货币主义学者们对于量化宽松的效果以及其如何传导到实体经济的解释也并不出色。例如，为什么全球各国央行为了应对2008年金融危机而发行的天量货币始终没有导致这些国家的通胀上升？针对这一问题，主流学界始终没有找到令人信服的理论框架来给出回答。关于这一点，想来最困惑的人应当是安倍与黑田东彦，日本央行的印钱水平早已远远打破传统货币主义认为的财政赤字上限，甚至到了即将把整个日本企业界国有化的程度，但是人们却依然找不到日本通胀上升的蛛丝马迹。\n从这点来看，本次新冠危机可能是现代货币理论的一个试金石，因为起码截止二季度，在史无前例的全球最大放水浪潮中，我们终于看到了一点点通货膨胀起来了的迹象。但是目前，就是这一点点迹象，美联储与市场的主流预期依然是，这些通胀是“暂时性”的，在疫情结束，货币政策边际正常化后便会自行褪去。\n如果故事真的如此进展，那么本着科学实用的精神，通货膨胀对于现代货币理论的桎梏与批判可能真的无效了，毕竟政府目前在不要求人们就业的情况通过直升机撒钱的方式直接就给出了一个丰厚的就业保障薪资，这种放水程度其实已经远超现代货币理论学家们之前纸面上的想象。倘若在如此情况下都看不到通胀，那么传统货币主义学家们确实可以烧掉弗里德曼的货币数量论来拥抱宏观的新时代了。\nIII．小结\n本文尽可能地梳理了现代货币理论范式这一目前全球探讨与实践最为火热的宏观货币理论，尽可能通俗地阐述了现代货币理论的理论基础与重要框架，并对其局限性进行了探讨。\n现代货币理论的结论使那些只接触过传统货币观点的人感到震惊。它挑战了关于政府财政和财政预算赤字的正统观点，挑战了菲利普斯曲线确立的就业与通胀的权衡关系，也挑战了争取经常账户盈余的行为。\n但它本质上却是凯恩斯主义的正统延续，其对于一个主权国家财政部与中央银行该当如何协调运作与各自权责义务的理解显著超脱了经典货币主义的局限。","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2481,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":1,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}