Ep 379 - The Real Cost of War with L. Randall Wray

** This Tuesday, May 12, come to Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering where we listen to and discuss this episode. Bring your questions and insights. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/rn_HAqgaSRGdj8W2UX9aKw Did you think we had abandoned MMT? Well, after a few weeks of tackling some rather prickly topics, we’re back to strictly non-controversial macroeconomics. Heh heh. Just kidding. Don’t get too comfortable.Our old friend Randy Wray is back, bringing his somewhat optimistic belief that a sound reality-based agenda might possibly succeed in the upcoming Congressional elections. But more on that later. First, he and Steve need to dissect Trump’s latest imperialist venture against Iran and expose the bipartisan lie that there are just enough of your tax dollars to pay for war; when it comes to affording social programs, the cupboard is bare.Claims of scarcity are pure ideology. MMT has taught us that the federal government faces no dollar constraints. The real cost of war is measured in diverted labor, wasted resources, destroyed infrastructure, and the steady cannibalization of society’s productive capacity. Not to mention human lives, disabled veterans, and a chain reaction leading to starvation in the Global South.Back to Randy’s guarded optimism, which Steve does not share. Rather than smooth over their differences, they lean into them.Randy believes an anti-neoliberal program could win congressional seats. It would require candidates to break out of the fiscal austerity frame. Steve counters by referring to the Gilens and Page study – showing policy has near-zero correlation with popular will – and a class-lens analysis of manufactured consent. He sees a theatrical oligarchy, not a reformable political system. Since both parties serve capital, there is no electoral path. No possibility of reallocating resources from bombers to bread.The conversation represents an unresolved, essential tension inside the MMT-Marxist synthesis: is monetary sovereignty a tool for working-class liberation blocked only by bad ideas, or is the entire political theater designed to ensure those ideas are never acted upon?L. Randall Wray is a Senior Scholar and Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Emeritus Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his most recent book on the topic is Understanding Modern Money Theory: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Elgar, 2025).Find his work at https://www.levyinstitute.org/people/lrandall-wray/