Macro N Cheese

This week’s episode is another chapter in our mission to educate ourselves about modern China. Yan Liang specializes in Modern Money Theory, international trade and finance, and economic development, with a special regional focus on China. She is also the wife of friend-of-the-podcast Eric Tymoigne.Steve and Yan discuss the truth and misconceptions about the ongoing competition between the US and China. It has created winners and losers, with the working class in both countries affected by globalization. Trade war is class war.The explanation for China’s growth is sometimes attributed to market reform and opening itself to trade, but Yan points to the role of the state in financing development, formulating industrial policies, and building infrastructure, both hard and soft. Policymakers are beginning to tighten the grip on private enterprise as they plan to grow China in a more sustainable way, unlike in the past, where extensive growth was a major driving force.US officials pay lip service to job creation while ceding power to private corporations. Steve compares the role of government:It seems like in China it's a little bit more egalitarian. The wealth gap is not as severe, and there is more universal opportunity at some level for leading a life without the precarity. Everything seems to be taken care of with a mindset of empowering and improving the lives of Chinese citizens.Market reform brought about widening inequality in China, between urban and rural, and between east and west. But public healthcare and pensions guarantee certain protections and the Ji Xinping administration’s “common prosperity” policies are further addressing inequality.There is a crackdown in the tech sector; they are trying to solve the so called three mountains on people's back: education, housing, and healthcare. So, this idea of common prosperity is really trying to elevate even more that egalitarianism that I think gradually eroded in China because of market reform and opening up.This interview looks at China’s use of capital controls, its shift to sustainability, and the role of Taiwan as a focal point for US economic interests and propaganda (and its strategic position in the semiconductor industry.) They talk about the meaning of human rights, which is seen by the Chinese as the right to a livelihood and freedom from poverty.Finally, Yan talks about the possibility of the Chinese accepting MMT and how it would affect the respective roles of central and regional governments.Yan Liang is Peter C. and Bonnie S. Kremer Chair, Professor of Economics and Chair of International Studies at Willamette University. She is also a Research Scholar at the Global Institute of Sustainable Prosperity. Yan specializes in Modern Money Theory, International Trade and Finance, Economic Development, with a special regional focus on China.@YanLian31677392 on Twitter

What do you know about modern China? Is it capitalist? Socialist? What do those terms mean in today’s global economies? According to Steve’s guest Vincent Huang, China considers itself “a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics.” In this episode, Vincent tells Steve how this socialist market economy plays out in Chinese society, and how it compares to the world we know in the US – and just about everywhere else. There’s a stark difference in the power wielded by corporations, for example. In China...The state is the representative, it's the agent that mediates the conflicts between the corporations and the working class. So that actually is quite important because for China's socialist market economy, the goal is to elevate the well-being of people. And the means could be marketization, could be liberalization, could be market-oriented reforms, but it doesn't have to be.American listeners may be surprised by the people’s faith in government. When comparing public versus private, whether in schools or housing construction, Chinese citizens tend to trust the public, because there’s no profit motive involved.Vincent, who got his PhD at University of Missouri - Kansas City, is an MMTer. He and Steve discuss the attitude towards deficits, the role of endogenous money, and China’s infrastructure policies. They talk about what it means for China to be the world’s manufacturer. Steve asks about the possibility of a job guarantee.In a sense, the obstacle for China to implement a job guarantee also depends on how successful its already established projects are in absorbing excess labor ... And frankly, if they do a good job already and there is no need for a job guarantee anymore, then that's perfectly fine.This episode looks at China’s treatment of ethnic minorities, its commitment to transitioning to green energy, and the agility with which the government shifts between regulation and leniency with private corporations. The latter appears to be based on social and economic outcomes. Vincent explains that the attitude toward the public good is tied to the relationship between individual rights and collective order.“In fact, your individual freedom can only be viable and real when a collective order is in place.”Vincent (Yijiang) Huang is a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and a Teaching Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Denver. He received his Ph.D. in Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. His research and teaching interests include Money & Banking, Green Job Guarantee, Political Economy of China, Comparative Economic Systems, and Trade Wars & Agreements.

**Have you seen the Rogue Scholar, Steve Grumbine’s new brown bag lunch show on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at noon EST? For interviews, commentary, and, of course, MMT, go to Real Progress in Action on YouTube.Newcomers to MMT tend to draw a blank when they are told that taxes drive the currency or taxes created the first unemployed person. After all, none of that seems to track with the way they personally experience taxes. Warren Mosler makes sense of it by starting with the money story, using the example of colonial currency. The British wanted workers on African coffee plantations, but people were not clamoring to be hired. So, they created a coin or scrip and levied a hut tax payable in the new currency.The public purpose behind what the British were doing was to grow coffee. They levied a tax. They put a tax liability on everyone's house. That caused lots of people to be looking for work or look for some way to earn scrip so they could pay the tax so their house wouldn't be burned down ... It's just a tax liability. Nobody has any yet. Those are called unemployed. And so, the hut tax created unemployment.Some of the scrip was used to pay taxes and the rest became the money supply in the local economy. The British did not collect taxes to accrue currency for payroll, just as the US did not need to collect taxes (or borrow dollars from China) in order to distribute COVID stimulus checks.By getting the sequence all wrong, mainstream economic models cannot arrive at correct solutions. It leads to hyperbolic predictions of the US becoming like Greece (Venezuela? Zimbabwe? The Weimar Republic?), appealing to the IMF on bended knee.This week’s Macro N Cheese is the recording of Warren Mosler’s January 5th presentation to members of the US Green Party, hosted by Real Progressives. The episode includes excerpts from the Q&A following his talk. He explains why a sovereign currency is a public monopoly, discusses the policy implications of the money sequence, debunks misconceptions about the Federal Reserve, and defines the “national debt.”The full two-hour session is available at Real Progress in Action on YouTube.Warren Mosler is an American economist and theorist, and one of the leading voices in the field of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Presently, Warren resides on St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, where he owns and operates Valance Co., Inc. He is the author of “The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy” and “Soft Currency Economics,” which are available on his website.moslereconomics.com@wbmosleron Twitter# MMT #inflation #Fed #debt #deficit #Treasury #China #trade #currency #money

Macro N Cheese devotes considerable attention to ecological economics and environmental justice. We’re always working to expand our understanding of both. Dr. Hail connects the dots between environmental sustainability and the broader public purpose. It’s a focus of his new podcast, “Modern Money Doughnut”.But that's done best of all in Kate's book, when she talks about the doughnut, when she talks about moving away from growthism, from pursuing the growth of GDP as though that is an end in itself, and towards identifying those things which ought to be true of a successful society that provides everybody with the best possible chance of living a secure and safe and rewarding, engaged, empowered life while living within those planetary boundaries.By expanding our scope, the problems appear more complex and vast but, paradoxically, everything starts to make more sense. The goal cannot be just to clean up the planet. If we want to sustain and prolong life on this planet, shouldn’t it be a life worth living, free of exploitation and inequality? Isn’t it kind of like trying to solve healthcare without addressing health?Steven Hail, along with others such as our recent guest Phil Lawn, has been working to bring MMT to ecological economists. At one point there was a danger of people seeing MMT as just a more efficient way of growing the economy faster.Steve Grumbine first heard the term “degrowth” from Steven Hail at the 2018 MMT conference in New York City. Hail says at the time he wasn’t necessarily talking about decreasing the GDP, but about living within our planetary boundaries.Or to put it another way, to a situation in the future where we are obeying Herman Daly's three principles of sustainability, not emitting waste like carbon dioxide more rapidly than the environment can safely absorb it, not using up renewables like fish in the sea faster than our environment can renew those resources. And not using non renewables like lithium that you're digging out from under the ground at a rate which is faster than you can develop renewable alternatives for them.When it comes to the need to reduce the GDP, Hail says he’s agnostic. Clearly, only a tiny minority benefit from its growth. Grumbine brings up the inadequacies of the GDP as a measure of those things or activities we value. Cleaning up an oil spill increases the GDP. Hail says “We don’t value a forest in GDP until we cut it down” and goes on to talk about the history of the GDP and our worship of it. They also discuss alternative measures like the Genuine Progress Indicator and the dashboard approach Jason Hickel spoke of in a recent Macro N Cheese episode.We saw a decrease in carbon emissions in 2020 (thanks, COVID!) but now we’re approaching the global peak again – about seven times as high as in 1950. Hail says we’ve been talking about carbon emissions for 30 years and at this point it’s not enough to get them to fall, we need to get them down to zero.We're not cutting them at all at the moment. And the message of lots of people, the Mark Diesendorfs of this world, even the Kate Raworths of this world, is that we have the technology so that we could do this. Can we do it within capitalism? Jason Hickel would say no. I think probably Bill Mitchell would say no.Hail is known to be optimistic. His message of hope is that we have the science and resources to live within biophysical boundaries while meeting the needs of the people. How will we make that happen? He admits he may soon find himself in the streets with Extinction Rebellion.Steven Hail is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Torrens University, having previously been a Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of Economics for Sustainable Prosperity. Find the Modern Money Doughnut podcast and Dr. Hail’s other work at Modern Money Lab.@StevenHailAus on Twitter#biophysical #ecological #MMT #Kelton #Raworth #Mazzacuto #Hickel #environment #IPCC

We call this episode “Duality” because it covers what Bill Mitchell describes as separate realities experienced by the elites and the masses. We do not occupy the same universe. The results of this duality are reflected in the manufactured divisions within the working class itself and in the unequal economic power relations between countries. There is a conflict between the public’s need for services and capital’s need for profit and privatization.The point is, we live in 2 worlds – and the disparities are extreme.Bill lays out some of the ways our lives are organized around serving capital. Most of us understand how the education system serves to condition us to passively obey authority, but even our leisure time has been transformed. Bill refers to the book, Labor and Monopoly Capital, by Harry Braverman:What Braverman spoke about was more than a spatial spread of capital and capitalism of the type you’ve just been talking about, but also more and more activities that we typically never thought were part of our working lives, our productive lives. In the past, we would go to work for 8 hours a day ... and then we'd come home and have leisure. We would have non-work time. We'd go and play sports or we'd go dancing or whatever. But increasingly, those non-work activities have become surplus producing profit-making activities. So, you can't go to the football match in Australia now without being completely confronted with surplus creating processes, sport has become a corporate machine. Music has become a corporate machine. And so, more and more of our lives become subsumed within this process of surplus production and profit realization.The pressure of mass solidarity and citizens’ uprisings – from events like the Paris Commune of 1871 and the labor movement of the first half of the 20thcentury – forced certain concessions by the ruling class. The neoliberal era brought a retrenchment, a rollback of many of those gains. Now, instead of paying a living wage...The financial engineers could trap us in increasing debt, which allowed us to maintain our consumption, which allowed the participants in this other reality to realize profits through surplus value creation. And that's my worldview. And that's how I see the struggle of MMT. It's a transverse between the first reality and the elite reality, and it threatens the propositions because the elite reality reinforces itself and secures itself by miseducation. And it controls media. It pumps out lies … and it keeps us under control in a state of ignorance.Bill’s commitment to teaching Modern Monetary Theory stems from his belief that, for the first time in economic history, MMT directly challenges the miseducation program used by the elites to suppress us. His free course, MMT Ed (URL below), is available to all. We urge you to register.Professor Bill Mitchell holds the Chair in Economics and is the Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), an official research centre at the University of Newcastle. He is also a Visiting Professor at Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and is on the management board of CofFEE-Europe, a sister centre located at that university. He is co-author of the MMT textbook, Macroeconomics.Enroll, support and donate to MMTed at mmted.org@billy_blog on Twitterhttp://www.billmitchell.org/“Macroeconomics” ordering information on bilbo.economicoutlook.net/#MMT #capital #capitalism #scarcity #austerity #labor #neoliberalism #taxpayer #Australia

Stephen Williams and Philip Lawn join Steve to discuss the forthcoming book, Sustainability and the New Economics: Synthesising Ecological Economics and Modern Monetary Theory, which Williams co-edited. The book brings together sustainability, ecological economics, and MMT.As you learn more and more about this thing called sustainability, you realize that it's really the economic system that is at the heart of the problem. It's the economic system you have to change. So when you start studying what we usually call heterodox economics, you soon start to learn about something called ecological economics, which Phil is an expert in. And then you start to hear about this other thing called Modern Monetary Theory. And it turns out these two things are completely complementary, and you need both of them.The volume is a collection of work by 15 authors or so, all with expertise in different areas, including the relationship between climate change and health impacts, planetary boundaries, sustainable development goals, and law. The book contains chapters by friends of this podcast -- Professor Steve Keen, who looks at the way mainstream economics has perverted the IPCC process, Steven Hail who wrote the chapter on MMT, and Phil Lawn, whose work ties the whole thing together by connecting ecological economics and MMT. In fact, according to Williams, he was the inspiration for the entire project. There is no other book with a focus on this connection.They explain the extent of the current mess, the post WWII Anthropocene, and examine how we got here, including the birth of neoliberalism, the fossil fuel industry, the publication of the “Limits to Growth” report, (which Steve Keen has talked about in a previous episode of this podcast), and more. Once they’ve laid out the past and the present, they look to the future: where do we go from here?How do we design a safe and prosperous future? That essentially means what new economic system could we bring in to replace the current failed economic system? Hey, there's nothing more dangerous than a bad idea. And mainstream economics is a terrible idea.**For a full transcript and “extras” page of this and every episode, go to realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/**Stephen Williams, from Australia, has a long background in newspaper journalism and a short background in law. His lifelong obsession is the issue of designing societies for maximum well-being and sustainability. This has led him to the study of heterodox economics as an essential suite of tools. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming collected volume, Sustainability and the New Economics: Synthesising Ecological Economics and Modern Monetary Theory(Springer International, 2022).Based in Adelaide, Philip Lawn is an evidence-based economist and Adjunct Professor at Torrens University, Philip is also research fellow with the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and a member of the Wakefield Futures Group (South Australia). He is the author and editor of eight books on sustainable development, climate change, and the steady-state economy, and has 55 journal articles and more than 40 book chapters to his name. Philip makes speaking appearances at public events/debates and is regularly invited to deliver keynote and plenary presentations at academic conferences.#IPCC #MMT #ecological #climate #economics #sustainability #Anthropocene #GISP #Kelton #StevenHail #SteveKeen

Stuart Medina is a founder and current president of Red MMT Spain. He joins Steve this week to talk about conditions in Spain after two years of the pandemic, more than two decades as a member of the eurozone, and nearly half a century since the death of General Franco, dictator from 1939 to 1975, when Spain became a parliamentary monarchy.In the 1960s and 70s Spain had a fairly successful state-led industrialization policy. Franco’s death coincides with the ideological victory of neoliberalism. The elites turned to deregulation (“let the market decide”) and shut down all the public banks.When asked to summarize the situation in Spain today, Medina brings up the astounding unemployment figure of 15%, which doesn’t begin to reflect the reality. In 2011 it was as high as 27%, a rate which the US hasn’t seen since the Great Depression.But we are suffering those unemployment rates currently, as we speak. And when you look at the details, when you look at the youth unemployment rate there, we're talking of close to 40% unemployment. It's a tragedy because it's just such a waste of potential, of human dignity, I think, is the right word. It's just lives that are cut short. In some cases, people not being able to develop a career, a project, a life, getting married, having children, buying homes. It's a tragedy that is basically what is going on.Greece’s treatment at the hands of the notorious “Troika” is well known, as are the results of the harmful fiscal choices they were forced to make. Stuart tells us how Spain, too, was virtually blackmailed in 2011, pressured by the European Central Bank, Germany, and the Obama administration to amend the Spanish constitution and adopt impossible austerity measures.Stuart provides a thoughtful critique of the EU and discusses the kind of flexibility required to put a population back to work. He and Steve talk about Mosler’s assertion that imports are a net benefit and exports are a net loss, and how an export-led growth model has affected other economies.It can be difficult for a foreign audience to understand why countries like Spain and Italy joined the EU. Stuart suggests the European Union can be considered a surrogate imperial project to replace the old one.There's also the fact that the elites of Italy and Spain somehow needed or wanted some tool to control the restless trade unions, the industrial unrest of the 1970s and early 1980s. And let's face it, these elites are not doing badly.Those in the section of the ruling class with an export-led growth model are doing extremely well. They are, of course, interested in keeping their access to the European markets, among other benefits.They're interested in repressing wage growth. They're interested in fiscal rectitude because it helps to discipline the workforce and either consciously or unconsciously, they know it's in their best interest to enter into the arrangements of the European Union. The European Union is a neoliberal project. It is the project of the European elites, and they control the media. And they have convinced most of the population, I would say, (to be) in agreement that the European Union has been good for Spain.**Don’t forget to check out the transcript and “extras” page accompanying every episode of Macro N Cheese. Find them at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast**Stuart Medina is an economist and a founding member of Red MMT Spain, of which he is currently the president. He is an advisor to Parliamentarians of the Progressive political movement Elkarrekin Podemos in the Basque Country. He has developed his professional career in the biotechnology sector where he has held management positions such as controller and director of business development. He also founded the consulting firm Metas Biotech and the biopharmaceutical company ProRetina Therapeutics. He is the author of two books on modern currency theory: El Leviatán Desencadenado and La Moneda del Pueblo.@SMiltim on Twitter@RedMMT

This week’s episode is the audio portion of a presentation by our friend Professor Fadhel Kaboub when he spoke with the Hanon Project's Yousra Magouri in September about the causes and effects of inflation during the pandemic. It’s a beautiful illustration that you don’t need an education in MMT to make sense of the economy. With Fadhel’s characteristic cogency, complex subjects are made accessible without sacrificing depth.He opens with basic definitions of inflation and how it is measured. He describes the two main types – demand pull and supply push -- then contrasts the mainstream and MMT explanations of inflation and the connection of our current circumstances to the pandemic.For the last several decades since the 70s, the mainstream economist will tell you too much government spending will cause inflation, right? Whether it's government subsidies or government contracts, you're just flooding the system with cash, giving people dollars to go out and shop and increase demand way beyond the capacity of the economy to keep up with it.Needless to say, different explanations of the causes lead to very different prescriptions for the solutions, as evidenced by political opposition to further pandemic relief measures and spending on social programs and infrastructure.Fadhel maintains the risk of inflation is triggered by the lack of productive capacity, including the supply chain disruptions during the pandemic. These problems exist on a global scale.The second source of inflation, which is the most important, I think, and most neglected by the economics profession is what I call the abusive market power and price setting behavior of key players in the economy. Think of big pharma, think of the energy companies, think of companies that have high degrees of market concentration that allows them actually to set prices simply because they can, because there isn't enough competition, because consumers don't have a choice...…Now, that type of inflation is not going to go away by spending less on the unemployed, on the pandemic, on education or infrastructure. It's got nothing to do with it.The episode goes into creative solutions for the global South, the danger of deflation, the limits of quantitative easing, the effect of climate change on the economy, and much more.Full transcripts of this and every episode of Macro N Cheese can be found at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcastDr. Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics & Social Science Consortium, 2006, University of Missouri - Kansas City; M.A. in Economics, May 2001, University of Missouri - Kansas City; B.S. in Economics, June 1999, with Distinction. Emphasis: Money & Banking.@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

The Blockchain Socialist wants to dispel the notion that blockchain technology can only serve a right-wing libertarian agenda. In this week’s episode, he tells Steve the left loses out when new trends or innovations are introduced into the economy. Blockchain is a neutral tool on which we can build different types of organizations and institutions. He speaks of the risks taken when groups use Google Docs for organizing their information. Google’s removal of access to Palestinian activists should be seen as a threat to the left.The Blockchain Socialist – let's call him TBS – created his blog and podcast to provide a space for learning about blockchain and digital currency free of right=wing propaganda. He talks with Steve about a wide range of uses in both the near and distant future. For countries under economic sanctions, cryptocurrency can make it possible to engage in international financial activity. For the myriad groups on the left who seem unable to unite because of, often, some pretty obscure differences, TBS sees other benefits......using this shared economic platform to do that -- to keep track of political goals and to move forward on them. Then in some utopian socialist future in which the workers finally own the means of production, we can collectively decide to or decide not to use blockchain as an important decentralized institution for keeping track of other things that we may want to do.TBS lays out the difference between smart contracts and legal contracts and goes over their potential uses. He also explains the concept of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and how it could change the banking system, for better or worse. He and Steve discuss imposing expiration dates on cryptocurrency to encourage spending and disallow hoarding.It is hard for MMTers to understand why libertarians would want to impose artificial scarcity on cryptocurrency, as if Bitcoin were digital gold.It's really heavily based on this commodity theory of money, and especially the libertarian view that the best type of money can be abstracted away because it's backed by a commodity which has objective value -- as if gold is really objectively valuable. So I think part of the issue is that a lot of these first cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, were designed intentionally with this hard money view in mind. They encoded hard money into Bitcoin. It does not have to be hard money.Ultimately both the right and left have objections to the way the government handles money. Whether you think it is spending too much or too little, the whole process is undemocratic. Bitcoin is not the solution, but there is a lot more to digital currency than Bitcoin, not all of it a rightwing tool. This episode provides just a taste – we recommend following the Blockchain Socialist for a real education.The Blockchain Socialist is a blogger and podcaster whose work can be found on his website, theblockchainsocialist.com.Support his work at patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist.@TBSocialist on Twitter

It's one thing to understand the US government will not protect us from certain types of abuse by corporations. We see it in the weakness of labor laws as well as environmental and consumer protection regulations. We know the government has no problem sending poor and working-class men and women into harm's way to protect corporate interests overseas. But how much farther will the state go to protect the interests of global capitalism?Ray McGinnis doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he’s here to remind us of the questions that need to be asked. The title of his book says it all: Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored.It took a year for George Bush to decide on forming a commission to investigate 9/11. He appointed Henry Kissinger as chair. This was ironic (and outrageous), given Kissinger’s connection to that other 9/11 -- the September 11, 1973, coup in Chile to overthrow the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Henry Kissinger was responsible for atrocities as far back as the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and was known for keeping secrets from Congress and the people.A group of women from the 9/11 Family Steering Committee visited Kissinger to voice their concerns. As Kissinger served them coffee, one woman got straight to the point:“Dr. Kissinger, we just want to make sure you don't have any conflicts of interest. You don't have any business clients by the name of Bin Laden.” At that point, Doctor Kissinger pours the coffee all over the table, partway falls off the couch, blames it on a fake eye, and resigns the next day.It was clear from the start that Congress had no will for this investigation. McGinnis reminds us that up to $80 million was spent investigating the Clintons in the ‘90s; the 9/11 Commission was given $3 million. Chairman Thomas Kean was on the board of a corporation with interests in building a pipeline across Afghanistan. George W. Bush had begun his presidency with plans for regime change in Iraq. The outline of the eventual Commission report was written before any evidence was examined.For 20 years, thousands of the 9/11 families have been pressing for an investigation into Saudi complicity in the attacks but have been stonewalled by the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. In April of 2020, Attorney General Barr and a representative of the NSA appeared before a judge to argue against releasing documents regarding a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, claiming it would harm American state secrets and national security.The families are scratching their heads: how is our lawsuit to find out if there was Saudi Arabian complicity in the attacks on September 11th possibly going to harm American national security and state secrets? What state secrets would those be?What secrets indeed? It’s been 20 years since the events of 9/11. For those of us fortunate enough not to have lost a friend or family member, some of our questions may have faded. Ray McGinnis brings the inconsistencies back into focus and adds some new ones.Ray McGinnis was educated in political science, religious studies, and history, and graduated with a B.A. from the University of Toronto. He also earned a Diploma in Christian Education from the Centre for Christian Studies. He was an educator with the United Church of Canada, working at their national office for 9 years. He subsequently worked at the Naramata Centre in rural British Columbia. From 1999 to 2020 he taught writing workshops. He is the author of Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Appreciating and Writing Sacred Poetry. McGinnis is interested in the stories we tell, the ones we ignore, and how this shapes our worldview.https://unansweredquestions.ca/@RayMcGinnis7 on Twitter