Film recommendation: Finding the Money
I've had a busy couple of months since my last piece, What's the relationship between public spending and taxpayers?, and it will likely be another few weeks until I post again.
In the meantime, I wanted to make a quick plug for a new film called Finding the Money which has recently been made available on a few streaming services including Apple TV, as well as theaters. I had the pleasure of watching it at a screening in Fort Worth in February, which Stephanie Kelton (who features prominently in the film) attended in person for a live Q & A.
The film covers the rise of Modern Monetary Theory from the perspective of its creators and proponents, while including interviews with some of its critics and detractors. No feature-length film can cover an entire subject perfectly or in great depth, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the film. It covers an ambitious amount of ground, balancing breadth and detail, while remaining highly engaging and digestible.
All theories deserve scrutiny, including new ones. The great majority of criticism I've read of MMT, including by prominent mainstream economists, betrays a surprising lack of understanding of what it is. For example, Paul Krugman wrote a column last year that first dismissed MMT out of hand, and then suggested that instead, Abba Lerner's "functional finance" framework from the 40s and 50s deserves a second look—apparently unaware that Abba Lerner's functional finance is a core part of MMT. Larry Summers, publicly expressing displeasure last year at a largely positive NYT piece about a prominent MMT economist, asked readers to avoid MMT's snake oil and to listen instead to respectable heterodox economists like Jamie Galbraith—apparently unaware that Jamie Galbraith is extremely friendly towards MMT. (Galbraith spoke at a seminar I attended in person in 2022 on Minsky, Godley, and MMT, and his praise appears on the back cover of Kelton's The Deficit Myth, calling it "Eye-opening and persuasive".) I won't bore you with more examples, but this is fairly representative. Scrutiny, criticism, and debate are an essential part of the process of honing and validating ideas to be fit for use in public policy—but it really does help to first understand what you're criticizing! This film is a good starting point for people who don't want to wade through books, articles, and recorded lectures on YouTube, and want to get the entertaining 90 minute version instead.
The film has apparently been a big hit already, making it to number one in documentaries on Apple TV over the weekend. Hope you enjoy it!