The dunk here is not on MMT, it’s that the head of Biden’s council of economic advisors opposes MMT but can’t even try to muster a reason why. The woman interviewing him in the video is Stephanie Kelton, author of the Deficit Myth and the main proponent of MMT. She describes (as shouldn’t be shocking based on the name of her book) that deficit spending is actually a necessary good to keep the economy functioning, and in that way fits within the left as a counterpoint to criticism of progressive policies like universal healthcare or free college or reparations etc. as “unaffordable.”

But your instinct is right, MMT isn’t necessarily collaborative with leftist ideas since it isn’t concerned with class or redistributive policies. It’s basically just a way to explain why we can print so much money and see barely any inflation despite classical economics constantly warning about that exact scenario.

It’s mostly that he clearly doesn’t understand how this works even though he’s in charge of the policy. Conceptually, mmt works because the government can just keep issuing as much currency as it wants. So, as long as the spending is done in its own currency there isn’t a problem. However, the whole thing is built on trust in the system and if people stop losing faith in the value of the currency then the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

what relationship if any it has with prior left/communist ideas

I have heard others say - but haven’t looked into it myself yet - that Stalin implemented in part of sort of proto-MMT and that was a contributor to the USSR’s breakneck growth. That is until Khrushchev got all panicky about Soviet debt levels (even though he shouldn’t have) and focused on trying to lower debt.

One area in which MMT intersects with socialism is more that MMT really explains well how money works. And until a socialist country eliminates the money form - and we’re a long ways off from that - theories of money will be useful.

Steve Grumbine is an MMT guy who has a good podcast, “Macro and Cheese”. I don’t want to put words in Steve’s mouth and say he’s a Marxist, but he talks about Marx all the time, has clearly read some of his works, and frequently has Marxian economists / thinkers like Michael Hudson and C Derek Varn on.

And does anybody know where to start if I wanted to dive in? (even if it’s just to argue with an annoying friend at Goldman?)

In my opinion, MMT is a solid baseline to understanding the mechanics of money creation and circulation, but some of the deeper conclusions arrived at by MMT economists can get a little wackier because it emerges out of post-Keynesian, not Marxian, econ.

The primary thing to understand is that MMT isn’t fundamentally a policy or policies, but rather is an explanation of the underlying mechanisms of currency. So in that sense, it’s applicable to a socialist economy that still has currency because, it explains how currency is functioning in the political economy.

In that sense it’s not that different than state ownership of the means of production. The state can own that and it’s still not socialism if the ruling class is an aristocracy or oligarchy or despot instead of the working class. It’s just a tool. That’s why the best retort to liberals poo-pooing MMT is to point out that the state already accepts MMT every time it passes a military budget.

seems like being utterly incompetent is a prerequisite for being in Biden admin