Today, our new Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – begins. There will be weekly episodes designed to bring the principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to people in an accessible way, while at the same time having a bit of fun. Season 1 starts today …
The Smith Family are a middle-class family living in a city somewhere in the world. The second-generation parents are university educated and have professional occupations. Their two kids attend the local public school.
Follow them weekly through Season 1 as they traverse their daily lives and confront the reality of human frailty and the limits of their knowledge.
I have developed this series with a Japanese friend and manga artist over the last 12 months.
We started talking about this when I was working in Kyoto in 2022.
Over the following months, other commitments permitting, we started working on the idea in terms of overall narrative, scripts and drawings.
Our aim was to create a manga that would be a bit of fun but, at the same time, would provide a sound educational base for learning MMT and understanding why mainstream macroeconomic thinking is an unsound basis for designing and implementing policy.
We created a host of characters whom you will learn about – none of which, of course, are modelled on anyone we know (-:.
We have developed a plethora of everyday situations that these characters find themselves in, where they grapple with the complexities of macroeconomics and life.
We have tried hard not to make it a ‘see stupid, MMT is right’ type exercise.
That has been our main challenge and as an experiment in different ways of providing educational materials we will see how that turns out.
We have also created the series in both the English and Japanese languages to bring the work to a larger audience than would be usual if we confined it to one language.
You access the different languages via the navigation bar at the top of the landing page.
We also take a lead from the standard film industry disclaimers (Source):
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
(-: As if!
If you think you resemble any of the characters then either continue spreading MMT knowledge or get our textbook and get up to speed, depending on which character you might identify with.
If you have any feedback we will appreciate it, other than ‘this sucks’.
MMTed is working on a range of educational materials to help provide people with MMT insights.
We have very little funding and I cross subsidise it with research funds I accumulate through the – Centre of Full Employment and Equity.
If you have a spare million let me know!
And I want to thank my friend Mihana for her exceptional drawing skills and help in getting this up and running.
Now it is over to you …
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2023 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.
