I suspect there’s a greater game afoot. AOC argues fiscal policy from a premise of abundance, i.e., she invokes Modern Monetary Theory to explain why the government can print money to pay (some of) its bills.

A balanced national budget is the product of a scarcity mentality, the belief that when the government buys something, there is less of it available to the public. But what happens when the government prints a dollar to download an iTune? Is there really any need to collect a dollar in taxes? There are still just as many iTunes in Apple’s bottomless well of downloads, so what’s the harm?

MMT can be complicated, but at heart it’s very simple. It says that the national budget is “balanced” when tax collections equal the marginal cost of what is bought by and as a consequence of government spending (i.e., taking into account the economic multiplier of government spending and taxation). A scarcity mentality assumes that the marginal cost is higher than the average price of things, so that government spending will cause inflation unless taxes compensate for the demand created by the government. Thus, to someone with a scarcity mindset, the budget must be balanced in nominal terms, but to someone with an abundance mindset — someone who believes that marginal costs are less than average prices — government spending can and should exceed taxes collected.

Much of the progressive fiscal agenda depends on MMT, which is to say, much of that agenda depends on the fact of abundance and the mindset of abundance. Accordingly, every opportunity to raise people’s consciousness to the idea of a scarcity mindset is a blow struck for MMT and the progressive fiscal policy.

As a conservative, I have my views on what the government should be spending its money to buy, but facts are facts. Either technology and globalization (a consequence of technology) have lowered the marginal cost of things meaningfully, or they haven’t. And either MMT rightly captures the significance of a change from scarcity to abundance, or it doesn’t. Neither of these are political questions, although political attitudes and interests may affect where we put the burden of persuasion and how heavy we make it.

This isn’t the place to argue MMT. My point only is that AOC is always arguing MMT, even when she isn’t, that overcoming the “scarcity mindset” is central to progressive fiscal policy, and that occasionally, the term may seem out of place. It may well be that iTunes are abundant, but good teachers are scarce. Still, I am not surprised to hear AOC surface the concept as often as she can, with the effect of prompting a discussion somewhere of what it means and the extent to which it is obsolescing and obstructing.

The scarcity mindset may or may not account for any particular refusal to spend, but it certainly does account for some. Why else do we need trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending if not the belief that someone will have to go without something in order for us to do it? That is the scarcity mindset at work, and, because the infrastructure (broadly defined to include capital spending to adjust to climate change) is approaching crisis levels, removing that mindset as an obstacle is becoming critically important. AOC is just beating the drum.

FWIW, I am not a fan of AOC. Whereas she is a plus-sum economist, she appears to be a zero-sum politician. She is living proof that big money can be overcome in the era of disintermediated politics. In an age of abundance, money doesn’t talk, but, sadly, neither does bullshit walk. Getting money out of politics is fighting the last war. MMT is not enough; we also need a modern approach to politics. We need a smarter electorate than we needed when we trusted our ward heelers. Money matters less when talk is cheap.