Macro N Cheese

Recently our friend Bill Black introduced us to June Carbone. He suggested she could tell us how the job guarantee fits into cutting edge research on the family. June holds the Robina Chair in Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School and writes about the intersection of family, the economy, and politics.  In this episode, June takes Steve through the evolution of...

What can we say about the job guarantee that hasn’t already been said?  Quite a bit, actually, as you’ll see in this and upcoming episodes. This week Fadhel Kaboub is talking to a mellower Steve, fresh from the hospital and still on the mend from Covid19. Fadhel begins with the reality that capitalism is a brutal system that constantly leaves people behind. It’s driven by technological change...

Steve Grumbine has been in the hospital with Covid-19 complicated by pneumonia. We’re encouraged by his progress and expect to have him back in the saddle soon. Since he was unable to record a new interview this week, we’re reviving a 2017 conversation he had with Patricia Pino from the UK. Our listeners know her as co-host of the MMT Podcast, but this was recorded several months before that proje...

Happy New Year!  Welcome to our first episode of 2021.    Among ourselves, we on the Macro N Cheese team often debate (argue) whether it’s possible to achieve our economic and political goals under the present system. We’re as susceptible to discouragement and despair as anyone else. This is why we love a guest like Emma Caterine whose optimism is rooted in experience and realism.&n...

Happy 100th! To our supporters, both old and new,Thank you for making this podcast a success exceeding our expectations.   For the story of Macro N Cheese and our 100th episode, please check out the “Extras” section on the episode web page.  realprogressives.org/podcast_episode/episode-100-flying-with-sara-nelson   *   *   *   *   *    Sara Ne...

Are you listening to Macro N Cheese on our website? If not, you’re missing the transcript and extra content that accompany each episode.    This week we welcome Professor Steve Keen for his third visit to the podcast. He talks to us about the need for a debt jubilee, rising from the insanity of orthodox economics and the very real consequences attached to that paradigm.    Ther...

This week, Randy Wray joins us for his fifth Macro N Cheese episode. As always, he brings loads of useful insights and factual information, both historical and of the moment.    While cable news and Democratic social media are jubilant with the ouster of Donald Trump, we know it’s a hollow victory. There’s nothing to celebrate. Randy and Steve look at the sobering facts. We stand on the...

You don’t have to be a Marxist to know the vital importance of labor. Workers hold the key to social change. They keep us fed, clothed, and provided for; they’re the only force with actual leverage over the ruling class. No wonder unions are such a threat.    Joe Burns isn’t just a labor lawyer and negotiator, he’s a student of labor history. He joins us to talk about the past, present,...

When Steve Mnuchin announced a clawback of the CARES Act, the liberal media wasted no time before launching condemnations. Among our friends in the MMT community, wiser heads prevailed. Make no mistake, nobody denies Mnuchin is the Grinch who stole Christmas. But like a magic eye picture, if you change your focus slightly, a different image will form. This week, our friend, Robert Hockett, joins u...

Not all of our listeners are anti-capitalist but it’s safe to say that most of us object to the accumulation of massive wealth solely by virtue of inactive, unproductive ownership. Sitting on idle property is a particularly egregious way of accruing riches, often to the detriment of surrounding communities that are forced to tolerate eyesores in their midst for decades on end. Depreciation has bee...

At Real Progressives, we get daily messages from people who are still recovering from Bernie’s trouncing in the primaries. They remain distraught, disillusioned, and discouraged - convinced that he was robbed.    Last week Rohan Grey explained Rashida Tlaib and AOC’s Public Banking Act. This week we asked him to take off his MMT hat and talk to our wounded volunteers. To help them put th...

On October 31st, Rohan Grey posted a 31-part Twitter thread about Rashida Tlaib’s and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s new Public Banking Act, which he helped craft. We immediately reached out and arranged for Steve to interview him, ending up with not one, but two episodes of Macro N Cheese. This week he answers our questions about the Public Banking Act. Next week he and Steve will venture into the sw...

Esha Krishnaswamy, host of the historic.ly podcast, joins Steve to talk about the frustrating political miasma of centrism. Centrism. So vapid and insubstantial, how does one grab ahold? It’s a wispy dandelion head (aptly named the capitulum) - one slight *poof* and it’s gone. But we’re not fooled. As soon as the left gets behind a popular policy or candidate, the center reveals itself to be a mig...

This second part of Steve’s conversation with Warren Mosler was to be about the government response to the pandemic, but first Warren talks about disagreements with some in the MMT community. We here at Macro N Cheese believe in healthy debate and want to bring a range of viewpoints to our listeners.    The federal job guarantee is one area in which Warren disagrees with certain prominen...

Talking to Warren Mosler reminds us just how far MMT has come since the days he traveled from conference to conference, peddling his intellectual wares. Well, they no longer laugh at Mosler Economics, AKA Modern Monetary Theory. It’s a well-known part of MMT history that Stephanie Kelton, fresh out of grad school, set out to disprove his assertions, point by point, and ended up making MMT her life...