Neochartalists Arguing For Tax Cuts Again

There’s a recent article by Randall Wray and Edward Lane for Levy Institute titled Why President Biden Should Eliminate Corporate Taxes To Build Back Better. I mean it’s ridiculous!

Neochartalism (“MMT”) is a trojan horse for reducing tax rates on the super-rich. They tend to argue erroneously  that since output can be expanded by a rise in government expenditure without raising tax rates, it implies that tax rates ought not be raised. Warren Mosler has a proposal to remove most taxes.

To be sure, Wray proposes an alternative without realising that both taxes on profits and alternatives can be done.

Neochartalism is a mix of old and new, with the new part significantly wrong. So it becomes Post-Keynesians in a difficult position as agreeing with many criticisms may sound like helping neoliberals. But with such extreme proposals, Post-Keynesians ought to criticise “MMT” more, simply to distinguish themselves.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Note: If not opted-in, comments in moderation can be previewed only for a short while.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.