The debate around modern monetary theory (“MMT”) is picking up steam – with its partisans pushing the model further into the public sphere than one might expect, and the old guard of establishment economics, together with some more interesting critical voices, pushing back.

The questions at stake can make the average person’s head spin: can a government with sovereign control over its currency create money at will to meet social needs, or would this create out of control inflationary spirals? Does tax income precede government spending, or does spending create the money that’s then taxed back to tweak the distribution of incomes and rein in inflation?

To most Americans, this is all probably a bit opaque and abstract – the inner workings of our money supply and its deep connections to the banking sector are, after all, as Bill Greider memorably put it, “the secrets of the temple.” But when we look at the core issue, we find that more Americans than not agree with the basic political judgement that MMT tries to justify theoretically – namely, that deficits shouldn’t matter if social needs are not being met.

At the Democracy Collaborative, a poll we commissioned with YouGov shows this preference clearly. 50% of respondents thought “the government should worry more about basic social needs like healthcare and housing, even if it means more deficit spending” compared to just 32% who felt that “the government needs to relieve our tax burden by cutting the deficit, even if it means scaling back basic social programs for healthcare and housing.” So while most Americans probably don’t have an opinion on the intricacies of heterodox monetary theory, by a significant margin, more of them agree with MMT’s political conclusions about spending.