MMT, Models, Multidisciplinarity
The attacks on MMT are taking a comical turn.
对现代货币理论的攻击正在发生滑稽的转变。
A recent one , courtesy of Noah Smith, takes aim at a paper I wrote in the 90s titled “Monopoly Money: The State as a Price Setter”.
最近由诺亚·史密斯 (Noah Smith) 提供的一篇文章针对的是我在 90 年代写的一篇论文，题为“垄断货币：国家作为价格制定者”。
It focused on a key MMT idea—that the currency-issuing monopolist (just like any other monopolist) is a price setter.
它关注现代货币理论的一个关键思想——货币发行垄断者（就像任何其他垄断者一样）是价格制定者。
The economics that I was taught didn’t even consider the implications.
我所学的经济学甚至没有考虑其影响。
So I wrote down a few equations to look at different scenarios of prices paid and real resources purchased by a currency-issuing government, given the level of aggregate tax liability and private saving desires.
因此，我写下了几个方程，以考虑货币发行政府在考虑总纳税义务和私人储蓄意愿水平的情况下支付的价格和购买的实际资源的不同情况。
The paper was followed by other empirical work from the MMT community.
这篇论文之后是 MMT 社区的其他实证工作。
So, while I initially started responding to Noah’s hysterical blog, I decided to say a few words about the implications of the paper instead, and provide a short reading list of other empirical work from MMTers on various topics.
因此，虽然我最初开始回应诺亚歇斯底里的博客，但我决定对这篇论文的含义说几句话，并提供 MMT 学者关于各种主题的其他实证研究的简短阅读清单。
Now, all models make simplifications and all models are flawed.
现在，所有模型都进行了简化，并且所有模型都有缺陷。
But they can be used to clarify an idea.
但它们可以用来澄清一个想法。
The important question is, did they attempt to analyze some real world stylized facts or some fictional story.
重要的问题是，他们是否试图分析一些现实世界的程式化事实或一些虚构的故事。
An example of the latter would be the mainstream model of a shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe, who makes production and consumption decisions on a deserted island.
后者的一个例子是遭遇海难的鲁宾逊漂流记的主流模型，他在荒岛上做出生产和消费决策。
I stuck with the real world.
我坚持现实世界。
The paper starts off with an example where the public sector (the currency monopolist) purchases one good (rather, a service) from the economy – that of firefighters – and asks “how many hours of firefighting labor can the public sector purchase, given prices, taxes, and saving desires”.
该论文首先举了一个例子，其中公共部门（货币垄断者）从经济中购买一种商品（更确切地说，一种服务）——消防员——并询问“在给定价格、税收和储蓄愿望的情况下，公共部门可以购买多少小时的消防劳动力”。
For this, Noah is accusing me of modeling an economy in which “ everyone in the entire economy dies ” (his emphasis).
为此，诺亚指责我建立了一个经济模型，其中“整个经济中的每个人都会死亡”（他强调）。
Heck, I can’t think of a more appropriate example!
哎呀，我想不出更合适的例子了！
The planet is burning, isn’t it?
地球正在燃烧，不是吗？
Has Noah forgotten his Econ 101 “guns and butter” tradeoff?
诺亚是否忘记了他的 Econ 101“大炮和黄油”权衡？
That’s where an economy can either produce butter (e.g., feed its people) or guns (e.g., wage endless wars), but so long as any combination of the two goods lies of the production possibilities frontier (PPF), the economy would be allocating its resources efficiently!
在这种情况下，一个经济体可以生产黄油（例如，养活人民）或枪支（例如，发动无休止的战争），但只要这两种商品的任何组合位于生产可能性边界（PPF）内，经济体就会有效地分配其资源！
Generations of students were initiated into economics with this model, the effect of which was to teach them an unexamined acceptance of morally reprehensible expenditures and investments as efficient market outcomes (in this case – on war, but you can substitute fossil fuel production, incarceration, or anything else into the PPF).
一代又一代的学生都是通过这个模型开始学习经济学的，其效果是教会他们未经审查地接受道德上应受谴责的支出和投资作为有效的市场结果（在这种情况下是战争，但你可以用化石燃料生产、监禁或其他任何东西代替 PPF）。
Maybe I should have stuck with orthodoxy and used guns, so that Noah’s dramatic conclusion that my model is an “employment of doom” makes a bit more sense.
也许我应该坚持正统观念并使用枪支，这样诺亚关于我的模型是“厄运就业”的戏剧性结论就更有意义了。
I chose firefighters.
我选择了消防员。
I thought they were saviors, not mercenaries.
我以为他们是救世主，而不是雇佣兵。
Next, Noah wants you to believe that my 1-good model is “people [who] are effectively doing slave labor for the government,” because of some quotes in the paper on taxation in colonial Africa.
接下来，诺亚希望你相信我的第一好模型是“实际上为政府做奴隶劳动的人”，因为论文中引用了关于非洲殖民地税收的一些内容。
(This argument is so inane that it doesn’t merit a reply, so here is some background for the MMT-curious with links.)
（这个论点太空洞了，不值得回复，所以这里有一些背景知识，供对 MMT 好奇的人提供链接。）
My paper does start with quotes from prominent scholars about how taxes were used in colonial Africa to create demand for the colonizers’ currencies (which also gave rise to cash crops and wage labor).
我的论文确实以著名学者的引述开头，讲述了非洲殖民地如何利用税收来创造对殖民者货币的需求（这也催生了经济作物和雇佣劳动力）。
The point was to show an example of the coercive nature of taxation.
重点是展示税收的强制性质的一个例子。
Is there one person who disagrees with the statement that taxes are coercive?
是否有人不同意税收具有强制性这一说法？
Taxes are compulsory.
税收是强制性的。
They are non-reciprocal.
它们是非互惠的。
And this is true for democratic societies or authoritarian ones.
对于民主社会或独裁社会来说都是如此。
When I first heard Warren Mosler’s argument that people used a given currency because their taxes were denominated in it, I thought it was the most implausible idea.
当我第一次听到沃伦·莫斯勒（Warren Mosler）的论点，即人们使用某种货币是因为他们的税收以该货币计价时，我认为这是最难以置信的想法。
But then I started digging.
但后来我开始挖掘。
My undergraduate professor Mat Forstater sent me direct historical evidence of how taxes could and had been used to require people to use an otherwise-useless-to-them currency—the case of colonial Africa.
我的本科教授马特·福斯塔特（Mat Forstater）向我发送了直接的历史证据，说明税收如何能够并且已经被用来要求人们使用一种对他们来说毫无用处的货币——非洲殖民地的例子。
I passed these examples on to Charles Goodhart who, lo and behold, cited them in his seminal paper The Two Concepts of Money .
我把这些例子传给了查尔斯·古德哈特，你瞧，他在他的开创性论文《金钱的两个概念》中引用了这些例子。
(Lucky for him, Noah hasn’t discovered his paper yet.)
（诺亚很幸运，他还没有发现他的论文。）
And thus began the MMT research project on the history of money.
由此开始了现代货币理论关于货币史的研究项目。
There are of course many “democratic examples” of the tax-driven nature of currencies.
当然，有许多关于货币税收驱动性质的“民主例子”。
Take the example of the Argentinean provinces, which in the depths of the 2001 crisis launched their own currencies (e.g., patacones).
以阿根廷各省为例，它们在 2001 年危机最严重的时候推出了自己的货币（例如帕塔康尼）。
They did this by requiring citizens to pay local taxes and utility bills in the new currency and then by paying state employees and contractors in the new currency.
他们通过要求公民以新货币支付地方税和公用事业账单，然后以新货币向国家雇员和承包商支付工资来做到这一点。
I was in Argentina at that time and can vouch that people didn’t like it, but storefronts were plastered with signs “We Accept Patacones”.
当时我在阿根廷，可以保证人们不喜欢它，但店面却贴满了“我们接受 Patacones”的标语。
Then I found an argument put forth by Ben Franklin – a well-known advocate of paper money – that it is the future repayment of taxes that gave it value.
然后我发现了著名的纸币倡导者本·富兰克林提出的一个论点，即未来的税款偿还赋予了纸币价值。
In other words, taxes were used not to ‘fund’ the states (indeed the colonies could not collect taxes before they had spent the paper currency first), but to maintain the currency’s value by removing some of it from circulation.
换句话说，税收不是用来“资助”国家（事实上，殖民地在使用纸币之前无法征税），而是通过将部分纸币从流通中移除来维持纸币的价值。
In a subsequent paper on the relationship between power and money , I argue that political sovereignty is never fully complete without monetary sovereignty, and that the right to issue and control a nation’s currency was a critical victory for former colonies in their battle for economic independence.
在随后关于权力与货币关系的论文中，我认为，没有货币主权，政治主权永远不会完全完整，而发行和控制国家货币的权利是前殖民地争取经济独立的关键胜利。
In the US, we fought a war (in part) to acquire the right to issue currency and in response to the Currency Acts of 1751 and 1764.
在美国，我们（部分）打了一场战争，以获取发行货币的权利，并响应 1751 年和 1764 年的《货币法》。
No taxation without representation.
无代表不纳税。
So yes, currencies are ‘acceptable’ because of the tax requirement, no matter if the state is a democratic one or not.
所以，是的，由于税收要求，货币是“可接受的”，无论国家是否民主。
And if we are serious about democratizing money (given that it’s born out of this tax relationship), we must also ensure that it is employed to serve the public good and eliminate the very unemployment it creates.
如果我们认真对待货币民主化（鉴于它源于这种税收关系），我们还必须确保它被用来服务公共利益并消除它造成的失业。
Furthermore ‘democratizing money’ cannot be done without ‘democratizing labor, ’ as I argued recently at Christine Desan’s Harvard conference on “Money as a Democratic Medium.”
此外，正如我最近在克里斯汀·德桑 (Christine Desan) 哈佛大学举办的“金钱作为民主媒介”会议上所指出的那样，如果没有“劳动民主化”，就不可能实现“金钱民主化”。
While Colonial Africa was among the first examples we found, research on the origins of money confirmed and reconfirmed the taxes-drive-money mechanism.
虽然非洲殖民地是我们发现的第一批例子之一，但对货币起源的研究证实并再次证实了税收驱动货币机制。
We dug deeper and wrote a ton on the history of (and the history of thought on) money (these papers, books, dissertations by Charles Goodhart , Mat Forstater , Randy Wray , John Henry , Eric Tymoigne , Alla Semenova , myself are a small selection).
我们深入挖掘并撰写了大量关于货币的历史（以及思想史）的文章（查尔斯·古德哈特（Charles Goodhart）、马特·福斯塔特（Mat Forstater）、兰迪·雷（Randy Wray）、约翰·亨利（John Henry）、埃里克·蒂莫因（Eric Tymoigne）、阿拉·塞梅诺娃（Alla Semenova）和我本人的论文、书籍和论文只是一小部分）。
Innes, Knapp, and Keynes offered important insights, but modern economists were of no use—after all they relied on fictitious barter/neutral money models ( Farley Grubb was a rare exception).
英尼斯、纳普和凯恩斯提供了重要的见解，但现代经济学家毫无用处——毕竟他们依赖于虚构的易货/中性货币模型（法利·格鲁布是一个罕见的例外）。
We searched the other disciplines and found more evidence that money did not emerge spontaneously from markets (or barter), but from the powers of the state (very broadly defined) to impose nonreciprocal obligations on its subjects.
我们搜索了其他学科，发现更多证据表明货币并不是从市场（或易货贸易）自发产生的，而是来自国家（定义非常广泛）对其臣民强加非互惠义务的权力。
We found the work of historians, anthropologists, sociologists who provided evidence for and corroborated some of our arguments ( Philip Grierson , Viviana Zelizer , Michael Hudson , Christine Desan , David Graber , and others).
我们找到了历史学家、人类学家、社会学家的著作，他们为我们的一些论点提供了证据并证实了它们（Philip Grierson、Viviana Zelizer、Michael Hudson、Christine Desan、David Graber 等）。
We learned from their work and that of others, though I’m certainly not suggesting they endorse or agree with (everything in) MMT.
我们从他们和其他人的工作中学习，尽管我当然不是建议他们认可或同意现代货币理论（的所有内容）。
Colleagues from law, political studies, humanities, finance, etc., joined us – and the MMT project became truly multidisciplinary.
来自法律、政治研究、人文、金融等学科的同事加入了我们，MMT 项目成为真正的跨学科项目。
Fellow MMT travellers – too many to list here – converged at the first two MMT conferences and Chris Desan’s workshop .
MMT 旅行者——太多了，无法在此一一列举——聚集在前两次 MMT 会议和 Chris Desan 的研讨会上。
Others, called on their own disciplines to reclaim the study of money , e.g., read Rebecca Spang’s recent appeal to historians.
其他人则呼吁自己的学科重新夺回对货币的研究，例如，阅读丽贝卡·斯潘最近对历史学家的呼吁。
To sum up, taxes drive money, in virtually all economic/historical contexts, whether Noah gets it or not.
总而言之，在几乎所有的经济/历史背景下，无论诺亚是否明白，税收都会带来金钱。
And even a highschooler would understand that modeling this stylized fact is not endorsing a genocidal regime.
即使是高中生也会明白，对这种程式化的事实进行建模并不意味着支持种族灭绝政权。
So here is a very short summary of some of the implications of the paper he is criticizing, followed by a short list of other MMT empirical work on a variety of topics.
因此，这里是他所批评的论文的一些含义的非常简短的总结，后面是关于各种主题的其他现代货币理论实证研究的简短列表。
(Not a single firefighter was harmed in this exercise or enslaved to work for the state.)
（没有一名消防员在这次演习中受伤，也没有一名消防员被奴役为国家工作。）
The upshot is that, there is an inverse relationship between the price the government pays for goods and services and the quantity of real goods and services it receives, for a given level of taxation and net saving desires.
结果是，在给定的税收和净储蓄愿望水平下，政府为商品和服务支付的价格与其收到的实际商品和服务的数量之间存在反比关系。
Constraining the budget creates unemployment and under-provisions the government.
限制预算会造成失业并导致政府拨款不足。
If instead, the government allowed its budget to float, if could design a countercyclical policy (such as the Job Guarantee) that would be a superior price anchor and automatic stabilizer, which I modeled in a subsequent paper .
相反，如果政府允许其预算浮动，如果可以设计一项反周期政策（例如就业保障），这将是一个优越的价格锚和自动稳定器，我在随后的论文中对此进行了建模。
So unlike basic neoclassical PPF models that pass objectionable tradeoffs as efficient, the Job Guarantee explicitly rejects the use of unemployment for economic stabilization purposes.
因此，与将令人反感的权衡视为有效的基本新古典 PPF 模型不同，就业保障明确拒绝利用失业来稳定经济。
Later, Warren Mosler and Damiano Silipo published another empirical analysis on this precise question (the price setting power of government and its policy prerogative to adopt a fixed price/floating quantity rule) in the Journal of Policy Modeling.
随后，沃伦·莫斯勒（Warren Mosler）和达米亚诺·西利波（Damiano Silipo）在《政策模型杂志》（Journal of Policy Modeling）上发表了关于这个精确问题（政府的价格制定权及其采用固定价格/浮动数量规则的政策特权）的另一篇实证分析。
They showed how the Job Guarantee (they call it a transitional job offer) can be used to enhance the ECB’s single mandate for price stability and why it was superior to other alternatives.
他们展示了如何利用就业保障（他们称之为过渡性就业机会）来增强欧洲央行对价格稳定的单一使命，以及为什么它优于其他替代方案。
The implication from these two models is that government policy and prices paid by government are the ultimate source of the price level.
这两个模型的含义是，政府政策和政府支付的价格是价格水平的最终来源。
Far from the Economics of Doom, MMT points to superior policies for full employment and price stability.
现代货币理论与末日经济学截然不同，它指出了实现充分就业和价格稳定的优越政策。
Here is a very brief reading list of other empirical MMT work—a sample of the wide variety of methods and topics to which it has been applied.
以下是其他实证 MMT 著作的非常简短的阅读清单——它所应用的各种方法和主题的样本。
This scratches the surface of the empirical and analytical work of MMT.
这触及了现代货币理论的实证和分析工作的表面。
Also the list is confined to the UMKC MMT crowd.
该名单也仅限于 UMKC MMT 人群。
You should look up the voluminous work of Bill Mitchell (his blog , research center , and book publications) and that of fellow travellers, who have their own research programs (e.g., Bond Economics ).
您应该查阅比尔·米切尔（Bill Mitchell）的大量著作（他的博客、研究中心和书籍出版物）以及其他旅行者的著作，他们有自己的研究项目（例如债券经济学）。
Unemployment, Inequality, Social Security, Poverty, Housing, Financial Instability
失业、不平等、社会保障、贫困、住房、金融不稳定