Or, to put it another way, who’s this website run by?

My name is Adrian McMaster and I work mainly as an NDIS support coordinator here in Melbourne. I love helping people, but my work is a bit of a deviation from where my formal training might have taken me (and has, at times, taken me).

I have University degrees in Economics (B.Comm from Melbourne University), Law (B.Laws from UNE) and Psychology (Post-grad training at Melbourne University). I am registered as a psychologist although I do not practice that now – my work is more akin to social work or case management. I tend to specialise in what is known as psychosocial disability, which is the disability associated with mental health issues like schizophrenia.

In all my training, including completing a major in Economics from one of Australia’s pre-eminent Unis, we never explored how money actually comes to exist. For years, therefore, I laboured along with almost everyone else under the misguided belief that Commonwealth taxes actually pay for things. I thought the job of Federal treasurer was basically a busier version of the local cricket club’s treasurer, whose job it was to collect subs from the members (taxes from taxpayers) and buy the cricket gear (run the public service).  

My interest in where money comes from was piqued when the pandemic hit. Like a lot of people, I worried about the economic impact for my wife and I, our then teenage children and everyone around us. I read widely, and one day (in the Murdoch Press, of all places) I came across an article by Alan Kohler, perhaps Australia’s most respected financial journalist. I had known Alan a little bit back in the 2000’s when I did some writing for a magazine he owned called the Eureka Report.

The article itself is behind a paywall, but it led me to an interview Alan had held with an Australian Economist named Bill Mitchell. You can hear the interview from Bill’s blog here: https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=44603.

The interview was all about Modern Monetary Theory. I had literally never heard of it before then, but it immediately made sense. Pandemic notwithstanding, how could Australia’s Commonwealth Government, which creates dollars in the first place, possibly go broke? The answer is, as long as it does not take on debt in something other than Australian dollars, it can’t.

What a reassurance! Who would have thought a democratically-elected sovereign Government would come in so handy. The lucky country strikes again.

What’s more, the pandemic itself proved the truth of what Bill was saying, as our previously surplus-targeting Commonwealth Government was able to roll out a highly effective set of new payments that limited the impact of the pandemic and even lifted a lot of people OUT of poverty (sadly, only temporarily). The Government deficit ‘exploded,’ but the world did not end. (Indeed, the RBA basically announced it was creating a whole heap of new money to fund the new spending, but that is another story which you can read about here).

So, I spent a lot of time listening to and reading Bill’s thinking about the economy, which led me to the work of a lot of other MMT advocates, such as Warren Mosler, Stephanie Kelton, Randall Wray and our own Steven Hail.

MMT is correct. It describes how modern money actually works. That said, when people call MMT a ‘theory’ they mean this in the same way that gravity is a ‘theory.’ People did not invent MMT (and so Australia does not need to ‘try’ MMT). MMT is something that people observed was already happening. Here is how Warren Mosler describes ‘discovering’ how money works (yes, another interview by Alan Kohler!): https://www.intelligentinvestor.com.au/investment-news/the-money-story-told-by-a-father-of-mmt/148340.

Knowing that your Government cannot go broke is very liberating. It can also, of course, be infuriating, especially when you see how many opportunities we miss because we tell ourselves that we can’t afford it. So, this website, and what I hope will be some good conversations that come out of it, is my little way of trying to share the truth about how money works. In the specific context of the NDIS, it is my way of showing my fellow Australians that having a decent NDIS does not cost us anything.

Indeed, the NDIS makes us richer in every sense of the word.