In this innovative and very practical book, L. Randall Wray argues that
full employment and price stability are not the incompatible goals that
current economic theory and policy assume. Indeed, he advances a policy
that would generate true, full employment while simultaneously ensuring
an even greater degree of price stability than has been achieved in the
1990s.
Wray's clearly written argument incorporates incisive historical
analysis, modern monetary theory, and an examination of policy
alternatives that rises above the doctrinal debates among monetarists,
supply-siders and Keynesians over natural or non-inflationary rates of
unemployment. Understanding Modern Money proclaims that a labor buffer
stock program would guarantee full employment and increase labor
productivity and economic growth, while reducing inflationary pressures.
Wray's analysis shows that, contrary to popular belief, the dangers of a
government budget deficit are largely imaginary. He outlines a program
in which the government acts as employer of last resort, thereby
providing employment and training to the otherwise unemployed, and
stabilizing the wage scale which acts as a brake on inflation. This
permits greater price stability without requiring conventional methods
such as wage and price controls or countercyclical monetary policy.
This ground-breaking book offers important new ways of thinking for
policymakers, students, and general readers interested in economics,
employment policies, and monetary theory.
