>"The MMT claim, as far as any normal economist understands it, is that the government can print money indefinitely to pay for whatever it wants, because of a somewhat counterintuitive claim about the government being able to insist that people pay taxes in the currency it designates."
MMT doesn't claim anything like that. MMT says that a government that have its own floating currency its not financially constrained (the key word here is financially). They also claim that the size of the public debt (but not the deficit!) of such a government it's irrelevant.
Governments (that spend its own floating currency) can't spend indefinitely in a period of time because they are constrained by the real capacity of economy of the country. If they spend beyond that capacity inflation happens. This is cannon in MMT, it's not a complicated idea, it's even in the most superficial introduction to MMT and it's beyond me why somebody, acting in good faith, would keep changing, what the MMT economists are saying.
Your hyperinflation comments have been answered elsewhere in this thread.
MMT doesn't claim anything like that. MMT says that a government that have its own floating currency its not financially constrained (the key word here is financially). They also claim that the size of the public debt (but not the deficit!) of such a government it's irrelevant.
Governments (that spend its own floating currency) can't spend indefinitely in a period of time because they are constrained by the real capacity of economy of the country. If they spend beyond that capacity inflation happens. This is cannon in MMT, it's not a complicated idea, it's even in the most superficial introduction to MMT and it's beyond me why somebody, acting in good faith, would keep changing, what the MMT economists are saying.
Your hyperinflation comments have been answered elsewhere in this thread.