All of what MMT says about deficits and the mechanics of money creation is wonderful, good and accurate. I applaud their research and their conclusions…but their analysis, as well as that of Keen, Hudson, Brown, Graeber, still needs to up their game to the level of paradigm concept. Why? Because a paradigm is an ENTIRE pattern CHANGE….not just a reform that while it may conceptually align with the new paradigm concept…doesn’t change the ENTIRE pattern. Why does a new paradigm concept change an entire pattern/system, body of knowledge? Because it locates the operant problem and finds the specific way(s) to express the solution to it temporally. Thus all of the attending outnesses/anomalies that have plagued the old pattern go “poof”. That’s what occurred with the Copernican cosmological paradigm change. And paradoxically and amazingly to those addicted to reductionistic complexity ONLY (the onlyness is the problem not the method itself) it was a single concept that made the change that resolved all the problems. And it’s important to point out that the final piece of the puzzle that made all of the anomalies of Ptolemaic cosmology go to the dust bin of history was the discovery of the elliptical nature of planetary orbits. In other words that temporal universe discovey/application was key. And that is why the 50% Discount/Rebate policy at the point of retail sale…is the analogous discovery…because the policy is both the expression of the new paradigm concept itself (Direct and Reciprocal Monetary Gifting) and the most efficaciously beneficial, most strategically powerful and universally participated in point in the entire economic/productive process.

And by the way I agree that productive capability does make a difference (even though inflation would not be a problem with a few regulations and reasonable rules for participation in the new paradigm program), but in the time between when the new paradigm was recognized and politically affirmed the help of government spending directed toward increasing domestic production (which is a wise economic and energy/ecological decision with or without the new paradigm) could easily be accomplished. And in the mean time if we had to continue importing from China etc. So what?