Democracies With Sovereign Currencies Can Dance
The mainstream attack on MMT is nothing less than an attempt to disguise the glaringly obvious error at the center of the mainstream view of economic thinking.
主流对现代货币理论的攻击无非是试图掩盖主流经济思想观点中明显的错误。
Mainstream economics is a nihilistic theory devoid of moral anchor.
主流经济学是一种缺乏道德基础的虚无主义理论。
Mainstream economics ceased to explore the operation of the real economy decades ago and has become an intellectual exercise that assumes the organization of modern society is justified simply because that is how it is.
几十年前，主流经济学就不再探索实体经济的运作，而是成为一种智力活动，它假设现代社会的组织是合理的，因为它就是这样的。
While some mainstream economists may want to tinker around the edges to make the system more fair few really want to call into question the organizing realities.
尽管一些主流经济学家可能希望在一些边缘进行修补，以使体系更加公平，但很少有人真正愿意对组织现实提出质疑。
The biggest reality they do not wish to face is that money is a symbolic creation rather than an actual productive resource.
他们不愿意面对的最大现实是，金钱只是一种象征性的创造，而不是一种实际的生产资源。
Mainstream economics abandoned any attempt to justify the payments to capital owners when they surrendered the field to Post-Keynesians at the end of the Cambridge controversies.
当主流经济学在剑桥争议结束时将领域拱手让给后凯恩斯主义者时，他们放弃了任何证明向资本所有者支付的合理性的尝试。
Capital is not paid due to its productivity.
资本不因其生产力而得到支付。
Capital is paid as a residual that is left over after production occurs.
资本作为生产发生后剩余的剩余部分支付。
Capital is simply another form of rent.
资本只是租金的另一种形式。
With the abandonment of any attempt to justify the role capital plays in the production process mainstream economists ventured further and further into the intellectual woods.
主流经济学家放弃了任何证明资本在生产过程中的作用合理性的尝试，越来越深入地探索知识领域。
They began to abandon any semblance of justifying the payments to capital.
他们开始放弃任何证明资本支付合理性的假象。
The distinctions between capital as machinery and capital as money blurred and the mainstream literature simply stopped caring about the topic.
作为机器的资本和作为货币的资本之间的区别变得模糊，主流文献根本不再关心这个话题。
Money is capital, and control of money gives the lords of finance a right to call upon the income stream of society, why would anybody question that?
金钱就是资本，对金钱的控制让金融霸主有权调动社会的收入流，为什么有人会质疑这一点呢？
Machinery and money capital are the same thing in the writings of most mainstream economists.
在大多数主流经济学家的著作中，机械和货币资本是同一回事。
This line of thinking places the banking industry, not the engineering community, as the source of economic progress.
这种思路将银行业而不是工程界视为经济进步的源泉。
The ability of the bank to make a loan is how the house is built.
银行贷款的能力决定了房子的建造方式。
The ability of the bank to finance the creation of a new business is the origin of the value of that business.
银行为创建新业务提供资金的能力是该业务价值的根源。
Or so the mainstream vision presumes.
至少主流观点是这么认为的。
The ability to fund the action is the power of capital.
为行动提供资金的能力就是资本的力量。
Capital, in this mainstream vision, is the power to fund the activities of the people who wish to take action.
在这一主流愿景中，资本是资助那些希望采取行动的人们的活动的力量。
The mainstream has spent decades building up a theory based upon the assumption that funding of activities is the justifying reason for capital to be paid its income.
主流花了几十年的时间建立了一种基于以下假设的理论：活动资金是资本支付其收入的正当理由。
The reasoning of the mainstream is simple: finance risks its wealth in order to pay people to take economic actions and that risk is the reason finance should be paid.
主流的推理很简单：金融冒着其财富的风险，以便支付人们采取经济行动的费用，而风险正是金融应该支付的原因。
Finance funds those actions through the selfless acts of savings done by the titans of finance and that savings is costly in terms of sacrificed personal consumption.
金融通过金融巨头无私的储蓄行为为这些行动提供资金，而储蓄的代价是牺牲个人消费。
The payment is clearly justified, within this perspective, because each act of financing risks the loss of that sacrifice.
从这个角度来看，这种支付显然是合理的，因为每项融资行为都面临着失去这种牺牲的风险。
MMT calls into question this fundamental justification of the power of the financial elites.
现代货币理论对金融精英权力的这一基本理由提出了质疑。
By showing that money is a creation of the state and banks it threatens the very myth that underpins the massive stream of income diverted to the overlords of finance.
通过表明货币是国家和银行的创造，它威胁到了支撑大量收入流向金融霸主的神话。
MMT shows that government creates money through the act of spending and destroys it through taxation.
现代货币理论表明，政府通过支出行为创造货币，并通过税收消灭货币。
MMT forces economists to admit that banks do not fund lending through savings.
现代货币理论迫使经济学家承认银行并不通过储蓄为贷款提供资金。
Instead MMT shows that savings is the result of borrowing and that the lords of finance literally create the money they lend with the wave if a hand.
相反，现代货币理论表明，储蓄是借贷的结果，而金融巨头实际上是通过挥手创造了他们借出的货币。
If the money is simply created by whim, it is much harder to justify the incredible payments these financiers obtain.
如果这些钱只是一时兴起创造的，那么就很难证明这些金融家获得的令人难以置信的付款是合理的。
Mainstream theorists do not attack these fundamental points of MMT, they pretend that their actual issue is with the outcomes of uncontrolled government spending.
主流理论家并没有攻击现代货币理论的这些基本观点，他们假装他们的实际问题在于政府支出失控的结果。
Of course MMT would never justify such an inflationary policy.
当然，现代货币理论永远不会为这种通货膨胀政策辩护。
Instead MMT demystifies the true source of power in finance and this is what is feared.
相反，现代货币理论揭开了金融权力真正来源的神秘面纱，而这正是人们所担心的。
MMT points out that money is a creation of society and currently we have given a monopoly on that creation to the financial elites who have used that monopoly to extend their personal power.
现代货币理论指出，货币是社会的创造物，目前我们已将这种创造物的垄断权交给了金融精英，他们利用这种垄断来扩大个人权力。
They have used that monopoly to build mansions and private jets while letting millions go without educations and healthcare.
他们利用这种垄断地位建造豪宅和私人飞机，同时让数百万人失去教育和医疗保健。
They have used that monopoly to empower themselves as economic overlords while indebting their fellow citizens without justification.
他们利用这种垄断地位来增强自己的经济霸主地位，同时却毫无道理地让自己的同胞负债累累。
MMT has the gall to point out that society is only at the mercy of these titans for as long as we choose to be.
现代货币理论厚颜无耻地指出，只要我们愿意，社会就会受这些巨头的摆布。
Mainstream economists are afraid because MMT practitioners have pointed out that the emperor has no clothes.
主流经济学家感到害怕，因为现代货币理论的实践者指出皇帝没有穿衣服。
For as long as nobody was hearing what MMT was saying the emperor could dance, but now the emperor’s aides are afraid the citizens might be listening.
只要没有人听到现代货币理论所说的内容，皇帝就可以跳舞，但现在皇帝的助手们担心公民可能会听到。
[This post was posted as anonymous as the author is a grad student who fears his professors.]
[这篇文章是匿名发布的，因为作者是一名害怕教授的研究生。]