8-30-2020: This episode has been fully reproduced. Same content, better quality.

Today I talk with Sam Levey (Twitter/@samhlevey) of Deficit Owls (Twitter/@DeficitOwls). In part two of our two part interview, Sam and I discuss his new paper entitled "Modern Money and the War Treasury." Instead of a general conversation, we go into the weeds, using the paper as an excuse to learn some basics. That's what reading his paper revealed to me: although I understood the overall thrust, I am missing a lot of fundamental concepts.

Welcome to the premiere episode of @ActivistMMT. Today I talk with Sam Levey (Twitter/@samhlevey) of Deficit Owls (Twitter/@DeficitOwls). Sam and I talk about the state of activism, his successes and difficulties as an MMT activist, and the growing pains of a burgeoning and disruptive community. Sam also gives some advice regarding pursuing a formal education in economics through an MMT-lens.

These two episodes are what inspired me to create this podcast.

You can find DeficitOwls on YouTube.

Sam's 2019 paper: "Modern Money and the War Treasury":

• PDF
• Twitter thread elaborating on the paper:
• Interview discussing the paper in general, with MMT Podcast, episodes thirty two and thirty three.

For an overview of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) with many reliable sources to learn more, here is a good place to start:

• On the web: My layperson intro with many expert sources listed at the bottom.
• On Twitter: My massive pinned tweet with expert sources and layperson tutorials.
• On Facebook: Follow this podcast :) The pinned post contains the above web-article. Also, the pinned post on Modern Monetary for Real Progressives contains a wealth of information.

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The one section of my interview with Sam Levey of Deficit Owls (the soon to be released premiere episode of Activist #MMT) that has nothing to do with Modern Monetary Theory. Before becoming an MMT-er, Sam's education and career was audio engineering. Specifically, he mixed live theater performances, something called "active mixing" or "line by line mixing." In order to avoid strange sounding problems (such as phase cancellation, which is when multiple microphones pick up the same sound at slightly different times), the mic of the person *about* to speak needed to turned up, and those *not* going to speak to be turned down. For every line of the entire show.

Starting at the 40 minute mark in his May 2019 "Train the Trainers" lecture hosted by Gower Initiative.

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVLaH3c3UcY

Starting at the 7 minute mark in his May 2019 "Train the Trainers" lecture hosted by Gower Initiative.

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVLaH3c3UcY