A Great Leap Forward

A Great Leap Forward: Heterodox Economic Policy for the 21st Century investigates economic policy from a heterodox and progressive perspective. Author Randall Wray uses relatively short chapters arranged around several macroeconomic policy themes to present an integrated survey of progressive policy on topics of interest today that are likely to remain topics of interest for many years.

• Rejects neoclassical orthodoxy as the appropriate tool for understanding 21st century economic and social life
• Considers subjects such as innovation and technological progress
• Explores public institutions, global trade, and financial regulation

Students and researchers worldwide working on subjects related to economic growth, Students and researchers worldwide working on all economic disciplines, and especially macroeconomics, heterodox economics, and the economics of innovation

INTRODUCTION: biography and work, framework of the book, what is the heterodox/MMT approach

Part A. THE TROUBLE WITH FINANCIALIZATION

Introduction

1. What Causes Financial Crises?
2. The rise of financialization and the ownership society
3. The dark recesses of the financial system: Why no one saw "it" coming
4. The global financial crisis explained
5. The role of lender fraud
6. The four developments that precipitated the crisis
7. Fraud as a business model
8. The Wall Street bail-out
9. Why We’re Screwed: it will happen again
10. Did we learn anything from the Crisis?
11. The end of money manager capitalism?

Part B. THE ROAD TO SOCIAL PROGRESS: Social Security, Healthcare, Insurance and Pensions

Introduction

Aging, Social Security, and Pensions

1. Demographics and infinite horizons
2. How to pay for Social Security: Truth and fictions
3. Social Security, Subway tokens, and Pizza coupons
4. Reforming pension fund strategies

Health Insurance vs Health Care

1. Health Care Diversions: the elephant in the room
2. Health Insurance diversions: We need less health insurance, not more
3. Health Insurance diversions: The financialization of health and everything else
4. Selling Death
5. The compulsive push for single-payer

PART C: POVERTY, INEQUALITY, AND JOBS FOR ALL

Introduction

Poverty and the trickle-down economy

1. One per-centers
2. Rising tide

Addressing inequality

1. Redistribution orPreredistribution?: Uncle Sam is not Robin Hood
2. Basic Income: how Big is big enough? Would the Basic IncomeGuarantee satisfy the unemployed?

A Job for all. Dignity, income and social production for shared prosperity

1. A plan for all the Detroits out there
2. How to Eliminate the Scourge of Unemployment: Jobs Now at a Living Wage
3. Workers will do nothing useful and the JG will not be manageable: A Response
4. A consensus strategy for a universal job guarantee program

Part D. THE ROAD TO INNOVATION, TECNOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND A GREEN ECONOMY

Introduction

Banking and finance

1. What do banks do and what should they do?
2. How rent extraction kills the real economy and innovation
3. Financing development and progress

Robotization.:Anot so scary tale

1. When Robots make Drones

A Green New Deal. Environmental sustainability and economic growth

1. What is technically possible is affordable
2. Setting the record straight on the Green New Deal and MMT

Part E. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS MATTER

Introduction

The role of government: MMT on debt and taxation

1. Creationism versus Redemptionism: how a money-issuer really lends and spends
2. What are taxes for?
3. Tax bads not goods
4. Mine’s bigger than yours: Thoughts on the right size of Government
5. Debt, shutdowns, and shock doctrine

Money and the Public Purpose

1. The MMT approach to Public Purpose
2. MMT and a government for the people
3. Occupy Wall Street, the right side of history

Global trade: misplaced fears and opportunities

1. MMT and external constraints
2. MMT and the twin deficits debate
3. Imbalances? What Imbalances? A dissenting view

Conclusion: a call for a bold and progressive political agenda