This helped me understand something I've been circling around for months. The household budget metaphor as a deliberate ideological choice — not just a simplification — is the missing piece I kept bumping into without being able to name.

I'm not an economist. I'm a retired debate coach who got frustrated enough to try building a policy framework from scratch. What I kept finding was that fixing the tax structure and fixing healthcare were actually the same problem — job lock means labor markets don't work the way Smith assumed they did, and a tax code full of loopholes large corporations can use but small businesses can't isn't competition, it's mercantilism with better PR.

I don't know enough MMT to know where my framework fits in that conversation, but I'd be curious whether you think the structural pieces matter independently of the monetary question, or whether you see them as downstream of it. The framework is at burnedatbothends.org if you want to take a look.