5.2 Lesson-2: Economy of Human Development

An important area of economics is monetary theory, or the study of money. It enables economists to examine the nature of money and its role in society. The technical literature on the topic mainly focuses on traditional economic measures like employment, inflation, etc. as an economic theory. They, however, occasionally fall short of appropriately addressing the main objective of economics, namely, people. The study of chartalism, functional finance, and the role of money as a medium of exchange led to the development of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a subset of monetary theory. It is defined by the belief that money is a public good and should be administered accordingly. Although MMT has been around for years, it has only lately begun to acquire traction in the mainstream economic conversation as a viable strategy for overhauling our failing economic system. This effort, when seen as a whole, aims to provide an answer to the question, “How can the economy change into a structure that optimizes for human growth instead of one that focuses on exploitation of people and nature?”