Talk:Modern Monetary Theory: Difference between revisions

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@Yamla: and others watching this page. This lede is making at least 3 statements and implications that are trying to paint an exaggerated negative picture of MMT. Instead of being valid criticisms, these statements make no sense, some are WP:BLUE false, and a few are contradicted by primary and secondary sources already cited in the exiting lede. These false and misleading statements take up a majority of the lede.

1. First, it is falsely implied that MMT supports a universal tax increase and is mostly dependent on readers simply agreeing that this would be so and is not based in sources. 4 nuclear bombs could also solve inflation but this is not put into the lede because well, as MMT also does not argue for this, similarly it does not argue for a universal tax increase as any sort of common approach. At least one MMTer supports a broad tax increase during rare instances of demand-pull inflation as Professor Andres Bernal explained two talk sections above after he was reverted.

this secondary source does not get the context of Randall Wray’s quote which is describing a particular situation in which taxes would be needed to slow demand.

— Professor Andre Bernal

Even relying entirely on the Wall Street journal secondary source, the definition of broad means “ample distance”, not “full distance”. Demand-pull inflation is also not the only possible form of inflation, in fact it is rare due to the fact we are rarely at full employement. Additionally, the source the lede currently lists at least 5 ways MMT details combating inflation, which states that inflation can be attenuated through any of the following.

cutting spending[…] wage and price controls, rationing, importing, targeting spending to sectors with excess capacity,
and encouraging more production would all help to attenuate inflation pressures.

— Professor Randall Wray

The above from Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems p 137]

As an aside, the poor quality of this exact Wikipedia article and layperson disinterest in understanding its source material has become a nationally televised butt-of-a-joke

2. Second, the lede falsely states that MMT does not care about expansionary negative consequences of interest rate payments, and falsely states that MMT proposes solving potential negative consequences of interest rate payments through federal budget deficits.

The second part of that is not sourced anywhere, and this whole implication is contradicted by the fact that MMT considers excessive interest rate payments to be inflationary and to be dealt with via a 0-interest rate policy, not through budget deficits.

From Warren Mosler Explains Why High Interest Rates Might Fan Inflation – Bloomberg

Another argument that some MMT adherents make is that the conventional path to fighting inflation (higher interest rates by the Federal Reserve) can actually be inflationary, because the coupon payments made by the government to Treasury holders constitute a form of government spending or fiscal expansion

Vox also explains the zero-interest rate policy as “key operational recommendation”.

I don’t see some of the key operational recommendations of MMT being adopted anytime soon. Committing to a zero interest rate policy permanently, for instance, would be a dramatic move by the Fed.

The founder of MMT (among other MMTers) explicitly advocates a zero interest-rate policy to deal with the inflationary worries about interest payments. Again, the founder of the school in Bloomberg.

I had a discussion with Paul Krugman a few years ago, and that’s when he and Stephanie Kelton were going at it with dueling editorials, remember that? And I said to him, I said ‘What’s wrong with the job guarantee? You know,’ and he says, ‘Well, if you deficit spend for the job guarantee, the deficit could get so large that, if we get inflation, the Fed won’t be able to use interest rates as a tool because the interest expense will be so high that that itself would cause inflation[…]And I [The founder of MMT] said, ‘And in any case, you know, I support, as, you know, a permanent zero rate, in which case it’s moot. You know, you could deficit spend for job guarantee without worrying about whether raising rates is going to do anything and not, because you’re not going to do it. You’re going to just leave him at zero.’

— Founder of MMT Warren Mosler

Notice the MMT founder response is not “and we should simply deficit spend to deal with interest rates”, the solution presented is a zero interest-rate policy. And as noted before the Vox article backs this up as a key MMT operational recommendation.

3. Also, third, the lede falsely states that fringe right-wing economist Murray Rothbard has commented on “MMT” practices before his death in 1995. This is comically false POV pushing as this own article establishes that MMT was not even a thing during 1995. The lede begs the question, which practices, and why is it considered proper to include the founder of a fringe, right-wing economic school as a final word on MMT, when he died before MMT was even a thing? Additionally, including Rothbard as half the lede of a subject in which he has no relationship to is WP:UNDUE.

Even if for some reason all of this could be weaseled away through hitjob cherrypicking, how could anyone consider this an informative or source-accurate description of MMT? A disinterest in dealing with this source material I consider to be malicious, it is also not valuable to simply chase actually knowledgeable people like the professor and Alexandria Ocasio Ortez advisor away on his talk page with big warning notices just because someone who advocated removing the criticism section of the capitalism article (Avatar317) wants to WP:OWN this article.

To address these issues with the English Wikipedia MMT lede which this talk page is supposedly supposed to address, I propose the following:

  • Accurate reflection of sources: Alter the lede to incorporate the full range of tools MMT suggests for managing inflation, as outlined by the existing Wray source in the lede, taking into consideration Professor Andres Bernal’s criticisms on this talk page of Avatar and Ollie’s approach here. While I don’t think someone being a professor automatically makes them more appropriate for altering Wikipedia, I simply trust Bernal’s guidance more than Avatar317, who has a side-obsession with trying to remove the criticism section from the capitalism article.
  • Correction of misrepresented positions: Remove unsourced or inaccurate claims about MMT’s stance on interest payments and deficits. Replace them with sourced explanations of MMT’s actual attitude toward interest rates, including the zero-interest rate policy it promotes as the appropriate solution to issues with interest payments. And as highlighted by the Bloomberg secondary source and also the Vox secondary source.
  • Removal of the undue weight of Rothbard in lede: Exclude the undue focus on a hypothetical critique from the lede due to the historical and contextual inappropriateness of making half the lede about… Rothbard…. He is a long dead, far-right-winger presented as some sort of valuable commentator and he was not even alive during the founding or development of MMT.

So far none of this has been done for years. In fact, the patrollers seem to currently prefer to guard the public from the article than engage with the above to keep the article unnecessarily confusing and negative, which has been reiterated by multiple different people, reflecting a systemic issue with Wikipedia.

108.44.242.138 (talk) 10:09, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree on Rothbard, and since it’s been a couple of months since this post I’m going to remove that line WP:BOLDly.
1. MMT wasn’t even a thing that Rothbard could have commented on in 1995 – the quote in the lede section is based on Carney’s comparison of Rothsbard’s thinking vs. MMT and does not reflect any statement that Rothsbard actually made. To write in the lede “…with Murray Rothbard stating that MMT practices are equivalent to “counterfeiting”…” is grossly misleading and I’m amazed it hasn’t been removed already. At best you could call it WP:SYNTHESIS on the basis Rothsbard probably would have said something similar if he was alive today – but he’s not, and Synth isn’t allowed here anyway. He never said it, but the wording is such that a reader could reasonably think this was something Rothbard actually said.
2. The assertion would be wrong anyway because where counterfeiting creates money to enrich private individuals (and dilutes the currency, being inflationary), the entire schtick of MMT’s money-printing proposal is that it’s used to fund infrastructure and suchlike, which increases the wealth of the nation and GDP, improve production, etc and would therefore not be inflationary. Obviously economists argue each way whether that is true or not – but to compare it to counterfeiting is objectively false. Whilst we don’t want WP:Original Research here, we also don’t have to include statements that are obviously false “just because someone said it out loud”. Assessing sources for reliability and factfulness is a key component of WP editing.
3. Even if Rothsbard were alive and were to state that, it would be WP:UNDUE to put it in the lede. There would need to be exceptional circumstances for the opinions of a fringe, anarcho-capitalist Holocaust-denier to be DUE in the lede of an economics article. There are lots of reasons to criticise MMT and we could more properly include comments from Krugman or other respected, mainstream economists. Critiquing a heterodox theory with other fringe theories is hardly useful to a reader. It’s more useful to demonstrate why it is rejected by mainstream economists.
As you say, we need to be very careful because many institutions have been getting obsessed with using “MMT” as a catch-all snarl word to refer to any sort of policy that promotes debt or deficit spending as an okay or neutral thing. So without conducting OR ourselves, we do need to be careful to try and include legitimate criticism (or mark clearly where someone has criticised “MMT” but are actually talking about something else or asserting something untrue about MMT). Hemmers (talk) 12:09, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I dont see any reason for outlining criticism of MMT both in the introduction and in a separate chapter if it is not the neolibs propaganda 178.149.121.75 (talk) 01:44, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of the lead section is to summarize and duplicate content from the rest of the article, see MOS:LEAD. MrOllie (talk) 01:54, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As above. The current modern world runs on MMT. Hence the name, modern monetary theory. This has never been more evident than during the 2020 crisis. 1covfefe (talk) 03:20, 7 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s peppered with falsehoods, and misrepresentations which are antithetical to MMT. A group of economically inclined Wikipedians really need to get together – work through a BASIC understanding of MMT such as given in this video by Randell Wray (one of the founders of the perspective), then read through the article and actually fix it.

Right now the article gives the impression it’s a long standing philosophy from 1905, rather than a product of studying the history of how money’s actually been used – an endevour that started in the early 1990s:

https://gimms.org.uk/fact-sheets/origins-of-mmt/

While MMT has some significant elements of complementarity with the work of leading twentieth-century economists such as John Maynard Keynes and Abba Lerner, we would stress that MMT should not be seen as development of them, but rather as a school of thought in its own right.

Likewise the Lede gives the impression it’s something about printing money whenever a government needs it… which is absolutely not what MMT is saying. For starters that only applies to currencies that are sovereign currencies (eg. not pegged to another economy/currency), and it’s not actually recommending that so much as saying it doesn’t necessarily cause inflation.

Anyways, this is a ridiculously poor quality article as is. As stated above. Perhaps the worst article on Wikipedia as far as accurately representing the topic it’s supposed to be about. A total embarrassment. 117.102.139.201 (talk) 12:12, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements to the article can of course be made, but they need to be based on independent, reliable sources. There’s not much we can do with self published youtube videos or selfpub pages put up by the groups like the Gower Initiative who were set up to ‘challenge the economic orthodoxy’. Wikipedia has to reflect the position of mainstream academia. MrOllie (talk) 13:28, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m new to editing Wikipedia so go easy on me in terms of procedure. If there is a better way to go about this, please let me know.

In my opinion, the current introduction section, does not accurately reflect the research from MMT academics. While some sources are suitable, their position has been reflected in a poor manner that I would consist not neutral and bordering on original research. Some other sources are unreliable as, althought they are published academic papers, they are critiques of MMT that do not fully comprehend its position.

I have drafted a revision which I believe better represents the academic work and change in mainstream position. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_monetary_theory&diff=prev&oldid=1297610453

I’m keeping the most up to date text here since I can’t see that Wikipedia keeps proposed drafts anywhere:

“Modern Monetary Theory or Modern Money Theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes the lifecycle of a currency within a fiat, floating exchange rate system. It builts upon an understanding of Chartalism, where money is a creation of the State.

MMT states that the government is the monopoly issuer of the currency and therefore must spend currency into existence before any tax revenue could be collected. This means that taxes cannot fund public spending, as the government cannot collect money back in taxes until after it is already in circulation. In this currency system, the government is never constrained in its ability to pay, rather the limits are the real resources available for purchase in the currency.

This framework for understanding the lifecycle of money, reverses a linchpin assumption at the base of most mainstream macroeconomic economics and has wide-ranging economic theory and policy implications.

According to MMT, for any other entity within the economy to have any financial assets, the government must have an opposite liability. Therefore, government debt corresponds to the net financial assets of the economy. This means that the size of the debt is not a concern to the issuer of the currency but is still a useful metric for understanding the overall health of markets within an economy. MMT economists often refer to government as the “scorekeeper” that cannot have or not have money in the same way that a referee in sports does not have a stockpile of points to award participants. It does not matter to the governing body of a sport what the score is, just that games are fair and competitive.

MMT argues that the primary risk of additional government spending once the economy reaches full employment is demand-pull inflation. Following the concepts of MMT, if the government deemed that additional spending was a priority, then taxes are used to reduce the spending capacity of the private sector, thereby reducing competition for scarce real resources and so reducing or eliminating any inflationary pressure.

MMT is opposed to the mainstream understanding of macroeconomic theory and has been criticized heavily by many mainstream economists. MMT is also strongly opposed by members of the Austrian school of economics. However, there have been several mainstream economists, pundits, and finance executives stating that the insights of MMT provide value for understanding how the economy works.” MwikiNpedia (talk) 12:19, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No feedback yet. I’ll incorporate this into the page this week and see if that elicits some more engagement 🙂 MwikiNpedia (talk) 20:05, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The lead section is supposed to be a short summary, that is quite long. MrOllie (talk) 20:12, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That’s fair but the length is not beyond what we can find on many articles. Comparing against some of the links in this draft: 391 Word vs Macroeconomics 313 vs Fiat Money 375 vs Full Employment 394
Do you have any suggestions on edits? I’m thinking of cutting “This framework for understanding the lifecycle of money, reverses a linchpin assumption at the base of most mainstream macroeconomic economics and has wide-ranging economic theory and policy implications.”
Not sure we also need the mainstream critiques in the introduction but I left it there with some edits from the existing page. MwikiNpedia (talk) 06:30, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please also see WP:NOR and WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY. Also, see WP:BACKWARDS – in Wikipedia you don’t just say what you think is correct and add that to artilces; the proper way to write articles is to read sources and then summarize them. —Avatar317(talk) 22:56, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia:LEADFOLLOWSBODY point is fair. The body of the article does need work but this draft of the intro does support the points that are made in the rest of the article.
However, the suggested edit is worked backwards from sources and is not original research. I appreciate that I can’t put the citations in here as they would be in the real page. MwikiNpedia (talk) 06:36, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Continuing the conversation here on request of @Avatar317
Comparing a potential revision:
“MMT argues that the primary risk of additional government spending once the economy reaches full employment is demand-pull inflation.[1] MMT economists further argue that, if the government deemed that additional spending was a priority, then taxes are used to reduce the spending capacity of the private sector, thereby reducing competition for scarce real resources and so reducing or eliminating any inflationary pressure.[2][1]“
Versus the current:
“MMT argues that the primary risk once the economy reaches full employment is demand-pull inflation, which acts as the only constraint on spending. MMT also argues that inflation can be controlled by increasing taxes on everyone, to reduce the spending capacity of the private sector.[1][2][verification needed][3]“
The problem with the current version, is that it doesn’t give the proper context for the risk of inflation. An equilibrium of spending at any level of employment is not believed to be inflationary. Demand pull inflation comes when attempting to spend beyond the real resources, so it is additional spending beyond full employment that is the risk.
The different versions are talking about different points. The new revision is continuing from the first point to talk about how to create room for additional spending. Whereas the current version is talking about how to tackle existing or predicted inflation. The current version should definitely state demand-pull inflation specifically.
The citations between them are identical except [verification needed][3] which aren’t sources. MwikiNpedia (talk) 05:47, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Potential revision for “Principles” section:
“MMT’s main tenets are that a government that issues its own fiat money:
  1. Can pay for goods, services, and financial assets without a need to first collect money in the form of taxes or debt issuance in advance of such purchases Creates money with any and all government spending
  2. Effectively destroys money via taxation
  3. Cannot be forced to default on debt denominated in its own currency
  4. Is limited politically in its money creation and purchases only by demand-pull inflation, which accelerates once the real resources (labour, capital and natural resources) of the economy are utilized at full employment
  5. Should strengthen automatic stabilisers to control demand-pull inflation, rather than relying upon discretionary tax changes
  6. Issues bonds as a monetary policy device, rather than as a funding device Has the option to issue bonds, at a price it decides, as a savings option for the private sector, but is not required to as a funding device
  7. Uses taxation to provide the fiscal space to spend without causing inflation and also to give a value to drive demand for the currency. Taxation is often said in MMT not to fund the spending of a currency-issuing government, but without it no real spending is possible.
The first four MMT tenets do not conflict with mainstream economics understanding of how money creation and inflation works. However, MMT economists disagree with mainstream economics about the fifth tenet sixth principle: the impact of government deficits on interest rates.”
New changes are in bold. The removed current wording has a strikethrough.
I’ve updated the language within the section to use principles throughout to have consistency with the title of the section. Having said that, I wonder if it would be better to rename the section to “tenants” instead. MwikiNpedia (talk) 06:24, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Avatar317@MrOllie new draft for Principles above if you’d like to review/comment. MwikiNpedia (talk) 06:26, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Again, your problem is that you should start by editing the BODY of this article WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY. Nowhere in the body was “double-entry bookkeeping” mentioned yet you added it to the lead. Find a source on MMT, read it and summarize some element of it that we don’t yet have in the article. —Avatar317(talk) 23:47, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The principles aren’t in the Introduction. Are the principles not part of the body? If not, where does the Body start and finish? MwikiNpedia (talk) 20:39, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The “lead” is the first part of the article above the table of contents. (Please see WP:MOSLEAD). The body in this case starts with the “Principles” section. You should be adding your changes to the Principles section so as to better clarify MMT’s principles, and then that section should have a summary paragraph in the lead.
Separately, the lead is supposed to summarize the article: So we should have statements summarizing each section of the article in the lead. —Avatar317(talk) 21:56, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok so there shouldn’t be any issue with drafting a revision for the principles like I have above and asked if you have feedback on? Talk:Modern monetary theory#c-MwikiNpedia-20250714062400-MwikiNpedia-20250627121900 MwikiNpedia (talk) 12:52, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but you should do that by finding sources that state the principles, so that we can know that we are accurately paraphrasing them. —Avatar317(talk) 22:38, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t see that citations work well in the Talk page. I planned to use a lot from the existing source 16 Do Taxes and Bonds Finance Government Spending by Stephanie Bell (will update the source to use a non-paywall version https://www.levyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/wp244.pdf). Some quotes:
“In Section 5, the complexities of reserve accounting are caremlly considered, and newly-created money is revealed as the source of all government finance.”
“It must also be recognized that when currency or reserves return to the State, the liabilities of the State are reduced and high-powered money is destroyed.
“Similarly, bonds need not be issued in order to allow the government to spend in excess of current taxation. … In the absence of bond sales, deficit spending would result in a net increase in aggregate bank reserves. Bonds, then, are used to coordinate deficit spending, draining what would otherwise become excess reserves. They provide the private sector with an interest-earning alternative to non-interest-bearing government currency and allow the government to spend in excess of taxation while maintaining positive overnight lending rates.”
“taxes can be viewed as a means of creating a demand for the government’s money, HPM.” MwikiNpedia (talk) 06:31, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference Wray2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference MMT_Beginners_Guide was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference WSJ_2021-11-21 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Wikipedia:Vandalism has a specific definition here, and it is not that you think an edit is bad or that you personally disagree (even strongly). The addition was well-cited with sources that directly make the connection between the described events and MMT. Kindly discuss on the merits here on the talk page rather than throwing around insults in edit summaries. MrOllie (talk) 20:39, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first reference of the page is a “multiref”. Let’s break down what it contains: 

[[Heterodox economics|heterodox]]<ref name= "Heterodox">{{multiref2 |{{cite journal |last1=Chohan |first1=Usman W. |title= Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): A General Introduction |journal=CASS Working Papers on Economics & National Affairs |date=6 April 2020 <!-- requires url, but for the fans: |access-date=27 July 2020 --> |ssrn-access =free |publisher=Social Science Research Network |ssrn= 3569416 |id=EC017UC (2020)}} |{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |first1=Sebastian |title=Modern monetary theory: Cautionary tales from Latin America. |journal=Cato Journal |date=2019 |volume=39 |issue=3 |page=529 |doi= 10.36009/CJ.39.3.3 |s2cid=195792372 <!-- requires url, but for the fans: |access-date=27 July 2020 --> | doi-access= free}} |{{cite news |last1=Kosaka |first1=Norihiko |title=The Heterodox Modern Monetary Theory and Its Challenges for Japan |url= https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00499/the-heterodox-modern-monetary-theory-and-its-challenges-for-japan.html |access-date=27 July 2020 |work= Nippon |date=6 August 2019}} |{{cite news |last1=Krugman |first1=Paul |title=How Much Does Heterodoxy Help Progressives? (Wonkish)|format=Opinion |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/how-much-does-heterodoxy-help-progressives-wonkish.html |access-date=27 July 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=12 February 2019|author1-link= Paul Krugman}} |{{cite web |last1=Raposo |first1=Ines Goncalves |title=On Modern Monetary Theory |date=11 June 2019 |url=https://www.bruegel.org/2019/02/on-modern-monetary-theory/ |publisher=Bruegel |access-date=27 July 2020}} }}</ref>

Starting with the first reference it contains: 

[[Heterodox economics|heterodox]]<ref name= "Heterodox">{{multiref2 |{{cite journal |last1=Chohan |first1=Usman W. |title= Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): A General Introduction |journal=CASS Working Papers on Economics & National Affairs |date=6 April 2020 <!-- requires url, but for the fans: |access-date=27 July 2020 --> |ssrn-access =free |publisher=Social Science Research Network |ssrn= 3569416 |id=EC017UC (2020)}}

“Chohan, Usman W” from the CASS aka the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies “an independent research think tank founded by the Pakistan Air Force with specializations in the domains of aerospace, emerging technologies, security, and foresight.” – that’s not an appropriate reference for an article on Modern Monetary Theory, as it’s clearly a political organisation, focused on National Security for Pakistan. It would be dubious to assume they’re giving a clear an accurate academic viewpoint. This is not appropriate for Wikivoice. 

{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |first1=Sebastian |title=Modern monetary theory: Cautionary tales from Latin America. |journal=Cato Journal |date=2019 |volume=39 |issue=3 |page=529 |doi= 10.36009/CJ.39.3.3 |s2cid=195792372 <!-- requires url, but for the fans: |access-date=27 July 2020 --> | doi-access= free}}

This one is from The Cato Institute, a political think tank, whilst I don’t have a problem with the author, the paper isn’t published outside of the Cato Institute, and the Cato Institute’s journal can’t be said to have an appropriate level of peer review for this field as they’re a libertarian political institute, giving a libertarian perspective. This is not appropriate for Wikivoice. 

{{cite news |last1=Kosaka |first1=Norihiko |title=The Heterodox Modern Monetary Theory and Its Challenges for Japan |url= https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00499/the-heterodox-modern-monetary-theory-and-its-challenges-for-japan.html |access-date=27 July 2020 |work= Nippon |date=6 August 2019}}

This is the first semi-reasonable reference. Norihiko Kosaka is a freelance economics writer giving their opinion for nippon.com a public interest NGO for Japan. Looking at their website, we do find some nationalist sentiments for Japan (and perhaps that’s to be expected):

“In recent years, major nations around the world have steadily enhanced their messaging capabilities on the global stage. Japan, however, has seen its international presence wane. The Nippon Communications Foundation was launched to counter this trend. By sharing information on Japan’s politics, economy, society, and culture on our multilingual website, Nippon.com, we aim to boost understanding of the country and to extend its influence worldwide.”

However, the source is just a transcription of an interview with Norihiko Kosaka, giving his personal opinion in relation to the Economy of Japan which has been in a state of deflation for 25 years or more (known as the Lost Decades). More to the point, he doesn’t actually use the term ‘heterodox’ himself when describing MMT (it appears in the title given to the article, and the summary written for the interview, he however, doesn’t use that description). Obviously opinion pieces are not appropriate for Wikivoice anyways. 

{{cite news |last1=Krugman |first1=Paul |title=How Much Does Heterodoxy Help Progressives? (Wonkish)|format=Opinion |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/how-much-does-heterodoxy-help-progressives-wonkish.html |access-date=27 July 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=12 February 2019|author1-link= Paul Krugman}}

Another opinion piece, this time from Paul Krugman. It’s worth noting a series of opinions isn’t the same as an academic consensus. Opinion pieces are widely understood on Wikipedia as not appropriate for Wikivoice.

…and finally: 

{{cite web |last1=Raposo |first1=Ines Goncalves |title=On Modern Monetary Theory |date=11 June 2019 |url=https://www.bruegel.org/2019/02/on-modern-monetary-theory/ |publisher=Bruegel |access-date=27 July 2020}} }}</ref>

Inês Goncalves Raposo, a blogger, and thus Not appropriate for Wikivoice in terms of lead paragraphs.

So what we have here, is a Pakistani National Security Think Tank, a Libertarian political Think Tank, and a series of opinion pieces all thrown in a large and confusing multi-ref in a kitchen-sink attempt at justifying Original Research/Opinion. For this reason, I’m removing the this multiref, as well as the word “heterodox” (which it’s trying to justify) from the first line of the page. (as it’s WP:OR). A series of opinions and political think tanks, doesn’t make an academic consensus, and shouldn’t be using Wikivoice. RecardedByzantian (talk) 03:15, 25 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As per WP:NEWSOPED and WP:RSOPINION – opinion pieces should not be used as statements of fact. They might be reliable sources FOR FACTS if the author is so qualified. However, there’s no unit of measurement or objective measure for whether a model is considered “heterodox” at any one time or not. If MMT were a physical object, with objective measurements that would be different (for instance, the first description of MMT as a theory probably has a date of inception attached, that date about the first appearance of MMT is a fact about MMT). Whether it’s “heterodox” (according to the opinions of the world) is relativistic and subjective, it’s not an absolute one can measure or “know” in totality at any one time. If Krugman or another qualified economist says:

“In 2017, private insurance paid about a third of America’s medical bills — $1.2 trillion, or 6 percent of GDP.”

We could quote that as a fact, using the Krugman Op-ed (because he’s qualified to make that determination of the American economic statistics, as an objective statement). This doesn’t mean every subjective opinion he gives about his field is a black and white fact. Wikipedia editors are expected to know the difference between statements of fact and subjective opinions. WP:NEWSOPED and WP:RSOPINION are clear on the issue of when an Op-Ed can be used as a source, and for what they can be used. They can only be used for statements of fact, not to pass off subjective opinion as fact. RecardedByzantian (talk) 06:11, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Doing due diligence as an editor I looked for alternative sources that can be used to call Modern Monetary Theory heterodox. Using google, and scholar.google.com I found a blog from Phil Armstrong (a PhD in Economics from the Southampton Solent University, UK), that states:

The paper also addresses MMT’s intellectual origins in financial practice rather than heterodox theory and analyses sociological factors shaping its contentious reception within economics.

Which states it has “intellectual origins in financial practice rather than heterodox theory”. I found this PDF an essay by the same author uploaded to a word press account, however it also doesn’t describe MMT as a heterodox theory.
I also found this abstract by L. Randall Wray, in which he says:

This chapter traces the origins and development of MMT, showing that it synthesises several traditions from heterodox economics, including chartalism, endogenous money, financial instability, the sectoral balance approach, and policy to promote full employment.

However synthesizing traditions from certain schools of thought (which themselves have been subjectively described as heterodox, Keynesianism included) isn’t the same as describing MMT as being a heterodox theory in any objective sense. Wikipedia’s page for Heterodox economics makes it clear that it is NOT an objective description saying (amongst other things) “There is no absolute definition of what constitutes heterodox economic thought…” so it’s highly unlikely we’ll find an objective, qualified, academic source, describing MMT this way. Saying something is part of heterodox economics, is by our own Wikipedia page’s qualification, not an objective statement. RecardedByzantian (talk) 07:00, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the last paragraph of the Policy Implications section, it states that under MMT should not place taxes solely on billionaires, since consumption is done in majority by average Americans. In light of the semi-recent Moody’s analysis that the top 10% of earners account for nearly 50% of consumption, I think it would be prudent to change or scrap this paragraph altogether, as it seems to be in conflict with reality. Algaeninja (talk) 14:25, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:NOR. —Avatar317(talk) 00:44, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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