Ep43: Andrea Grainger: The dark reality of climate change, and surviving a mainstream college degree.

Welcome to episode 43 of Activist #MMT. Today I talk with third year MMT activist, Andrea Granger, who is an economics major and environmental activist based in the UK. Andrea and I first talk about the dark reality of climate change and how she and other millennials like her suffer from what she calls "eco grief" because of what is becoming increasingly likely. She discovered MMT in 2017 and said it first appealed to her because she wanted it to be true. After diving into its twenty-five years of academic literature, she’s now convinced that it is. Andrea is currently pursuing a degree in politics philosophy, and economics at Open University. She describes how she deals with learning what is obviously wrong, primarily because it is what is necessary in order to get a job. Her experience inspired me to give my own reflection on how late UMKC professor Fred Lee’s 2006 book, the History of Heterodox Economics, had a great influence on me and this podcast. We also talk about how Andrea spent eight months living in a plot of land in order to block the expansion of Heathrow airport. This protest has been going on for eight years and involves literal tree houses and skinny tunnels in order to prevent invasion by tractors and otherwise; and bike powered showers, meditation, and obtaining not too old food from local restaurants. We talk about how society currently reward selfishness, greed, and destruction, and how a MMT is only one element on the facet of the gemstone that is the truth, and without knowing the truth, it is not possible to know that there even is a problem, let alone determine and then execute its solution. Finally, you can see Andrea's 2018 article about sustainable prosperity at the Gower initiative website. [A link to which can be found in the show notes.] Before we get started a correction: Near the end of my story about Fred Lee’s book, I say that my podcast, this podcast, "is substantially dedicated to documenting the intellectual history of MMT." I meant to say community history. The intellectual history is the academic concepts, the community history is about the context in which those concepts exist, and the people who promote and develop them. Now. Onto our conversation. #LearnMMT 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 large set of resources containing many expert sources and layperson tutorials. 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. Please become a monthly patron of Activist #MMT We shouldn't have to beg, but we do have to beg. So it's not *that* we beg, but *who* we beg. I am choosing to beg you, my listeners, to financially support this show. For even a dollar a month, you'll get exclusive patron-only content and updates, highlighted by around four-days access to every episode, before they're released to the public. However, you'll also get super-early access to several episodes, weeks, and sometimes even months in advance. To be clear, however, all episodes of Activist #MMT are free, for all, forever. Patrons only get the opportunity to hear them before the public. Take a listen. If you like what you hear, please consider becoming a monthly patron of Activist #MMT. You can start here: https://www.patreon.com/activistmmt. ✌️, ❤️, and #MMT 🦉