Today (July 12, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 1 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. We have spent the last several months developing the storylines and graphics and Season 2 will run from today to December 6, 2024 with episodes appearing on a fortnightly basis.
Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …
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.
In Season 1, we focused on the dynamics of the immediate Smith Family – Elizabeth, Ryan, Kevin and Emma – with some interaction from their friends.
In Season 2, the focus is on the school kids and their interactions with their new economics teacher Ms Allday.
Professor Raul Noitawl returns with his relentless analysis on the morning finance TV show but the real world events start testing the patience of his most loyal viewers.
Episode 1 begins with economic strife hitting the community – recession and the news beams into the morning breakfast room at the Smith Family house.
A new character is introduced – Minako Ide – who is an exchange student from Kyoto and the niece of Mariko and Hiroshi Fujii, who are old friends of Elizabeth Smith.
She will spend the school year living with the Smiths and studying in the final year with Kevin and co.
Already, Daniel, whose father is facing fraud charges from Season 1, is keen on her – as he seems to be any girl who crosses his path.
Ryan is convinced the recession will not impact on him – “engineers don’t lose their jobs” – and this is essentially just parroting what Professor Noitawl has told the nation on TV.
He acknowledges that the government austerity has caused the recession but claims that it will be short because the private sector will expect that if the debt mountain falls with the deficit cuts then future taxes will be lower and so people will not have to save as much now.
Typical mainstream economics gobblegedook – which the Professor calls ‘Ricardian Equivalence’.
Please read my blog post – Pushing the fantasy barrow (February 25, 2010) – for more discussion on this point.
Ryan appears convinced but Elizabeth notes that everyone in the area at at her work are cutting spending rather than increasing it because they fear they might lose their jobs.
Kevin tells Ryan that the first principle of macroeconomics is: Spending equals income equals output which drives employment – which means the Professor’s claims about growth friendly austerity are nonsensical.
Ryan is imbued with the Professor’s confidence though.
Things are about to get very grim indeed.
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’.
Next episode – Episode 2 – will be available on July 24, 2024.
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2024 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.
