So I re-read the thread and my contributions here and would make a few points:
1) I think I added a good deal to the conversation and spent some considerable time explaining the issues and the economics (or at least my understanding of it) from a mainstream point of view.
2) My <sigh> post should be read in context. Specifically I was talking about how mainstream economists avoid MMT conversations as they often end up bogged down in semantics and tend to go around in circles and become very frustrating. So they end up letting out a weary sigh and move on. My sigh was to echo this and I think that is clear in context.
3) The following morning, in the spirit of moving on and trying again, I spent some considerable effort (effort I can ill afford FWIW) explaining my views on MMT and on Keynesian economics. To which I received a reply that seemed unnecessarily antagonistic and, frankly, more than somewhat rude. At which point I gave up.
In none of this was it my intention to be condescending or patronising or to do anything else other than to explain my views on the subject, which again I stress are broadly in line with 98% of mainstream economists.
It remains my view that anyone wanting to understand MMT should start from a position of understanding more about ISLM and New Keynesianism and how this relates to neoliberal and conservative economic ideology. I do think there is some scope for MMT on the political side for reframing the debate, although this was largely tried with the Sanders campaign with little success.
Beyond that I don't think I have much to add to this debate and certainly don't want another go around the NK / MMT loop. But I did think re-reading my posts and clarifying my views was worthwhile given my name had come up again.
The sigh did come across as patronising but I was not really aware of the debates in academia between Keynesians and MMT, which do indeed seem about semantics and assumptions. Having read a bit more those battles are more obvious. But I still don’t understand the big picture behind them. As you say Keynesianism and MMT are very similar. If the two share similar principles, why get bogged down in battles over minutiae?
Warren Mosler, a bond trader and non-academic often regarded as the father of MMT, wrote a paper in 1996 to get his ideas, ideas that were recognised in the financial word, accepted by academia. His ideas were however rejected by academia, despite the fact that Mosler had made a great deal of money from understanding how the money markets work in the real world.
Mosler was puzzled by the rejection because he did not think MMT would be controversial to academic thought. Much of the rejection of MMT by academia was based on presumptions that you have outlined, objections such as MMT rejecting monetary policy and the role of interest rates. But MMT does not reject monetary policy, it specifically says that every tool available should be used to balance the economy. Likewise MMT doesn’t reject using interest rates as a lever. Yes, it sees interest rates as regressive as they transfer wealth from borrowers to lenders, but they don’t reject them altogether.
The appeal of MMT to a non-academic like me, is manyfold. First of all it speaks to me in words I can understand, it doesn’t speak in academic language and mathematic equations. It makes sense in the real world that I happen to live in.
Second, (and perhaps pertinent to the ‘battles’) MMT’s message is much more moral than academic. It points to the possibility of a economic system that can provide a great deal more for a great deal more people, instead of feeding the already rich who happen to “belong’.
Thinkers of the past have all started from a moral perspective. Samuel Pufendorf writing in 1672 noted the moral question about the distribution of wealth being equal among men or allocated disproportionately for political means. More recently Adam Smith (who I have just started re-reading) noted that economic advances have sociological consequences that are not always of a beneficial tendency and that the social tendency of men has to be considered alongside his tendency towards greed and selfishness.
It seems to me that philosophers of yore like Hobbs, Pufendorf and Locke, all started off by considering the state of man and the state of nature from which is derived the role of government. We seem to have lost that basis of social enquiry in favour of academic theorising based on mathematical modelling. MMT seems to get back to more of a question about what government is for, a question that in a time of massive social need due to existential threats like Pandemics and Climate Change and a government response to such threats that is still predicated on an economic lie designed to distribute wealth according political allegiance rather than economic need, is surely a question of some importance.