The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money

The Smith Family is a middle-class family in suburbia somewhere with both parents, Elizabeth and Ryan having graduated from university and working in professional jobs. Elizabeth works at a large multinational trading company and regularly interacts with colleagues abroad. Ryan is an engineer and his firm focuses on large civil projects under government contract.

Elizabeth studied anthropology as an undergraduate and was always interested in social issues even though she grew up in a wealthy family. She is keen to learn more about economics because she thinks it is important for solving the challenges of climate change.

She thinks of herself as progressive and encourages her two children, Kevin (aged 17 years) and Emma (aged 10 years) to think outside the box.

Kevin is nearing the end of his high school education and has become very interested in economics, an interest that he passes on to Elizabeth in their regular discussions, particularly about government policy. Emma, the young daughter, is interested in everything.

Elizabeth met Ryan at University where her friendship group also included Chris Edwards, who was always keen on her and now works as an analyst in the reserve management area of a large commercial bank. He had previously worked in the central bank on the operational desk.

40-year old Ryan is rigid in his thinking and has increasingly expressed very conservative views, particularly about the role of government and economic policy. Every morning, he religiously reads the daily newspaper while watching the Morning TV Show.

He considers himself to be a 'Can do' type. His favourite TV commentator is none other than Professor Raul Noitawl, who is a maintream economist who advocates cutting government spending and running fiscal surpluses.

There is tension in the family as a result of these diverging political and economic views. Chris's continued pursuit of his love for Elizabeth doesn't help either.

Kevin recently discovered Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), while surfing the Internet and he regularly challenges his father about his economic views based on knowledge he has gained about MMT.

Professor Noitawl is highly influential in government circles and has been constantly demanding the government cut spending and reduce the size of the public sector. As time passes, his predictions never turn out to be correct, but the level of Groupthink in the media and government is so high that facts never get in the way of a good story!

And Noitawl spins his narratives about government waste and the virtues of private profit relentlessly on his national morning TV slot.

The conservative government has convinced itself that Noitawl is correct and embarked on a massive austerity campaign, significantly cutting government spending to 'rein in the debt' (Noitawl's words) and the TV news reported that the economy had plunged into a deep recession as a result of the government's harsh spending cuts.

Initially, Ryan was his usual confident self, claiming that the family should not "worry about the recession ... engineers like me are always in demand". Noitawl was also ebullient, claiming that it was a "temporary blip" to "reduce the debt mountain". He would later accuse the unemployed of being lazy and choosing to be unemployed.

He also claimed that with the government cutting the fiscal deficit, households would spend more to fill the gap in spending because they no longer had to save as much to cover the inevitable tax hikes that he predicted would be needed to pay back the public debt.

The data didn't support his confidence and as the recession deepened, the private sector cut back their spending as would be expected if people are losing jobs and incomes. Elizabeth reported to her family that she was meeting people who had become unemployed and had to cut back their spending as a result. She told Ryan they were also cutting back just in case one of them lost their jobs.

Noitawl, like all mainstream economists, never lets some facts get in the way of a good story. He dismissed the data that showed that even though the government had significantly cut spending, the fiscal deficit was still rising. He invoked conspiracy theories about Left-wing staff in the statistical agencies fudging the data, an idea which Ryan bought into.

Kevin had been searching for explanations of what happens during a recession and has learned from family friend, Chris Edwards that spending cuts kill growth and reduce government tax revenue as more people lose their jobs.

Ryan was adamant and channelled Noitawl's claims that workers should just work for lower wages to reduce business costs and then unemployment would quickly evaporate. Even 10-year old Emma could see through that ruse.

The government, however, decided to cut spending even further as the fiscal deficit increased and as a result, the recession worsened and unemployment skyrocketed. Even professionals like Ryan have been laid off as sales collapse.

Ryan had to confront his family with the news and told Elizabeth that his boss had rejected his offer to work for less pay and called him stupid because "no matter how low the wages went, there would not be enough demand for the firm's services". In other words, cutting wages doesn't help when there is no demand in the economy as a result of major government spending cuts. Ryan started to have doubts about Noitawl's logic.

There are ructions in the media, when prominent TV journalist Robert Autumn and mate of Professor Noitawl is sick and his understudy 28-year old Mary Winter, takes the main Noitawl interview in his absence. Mary Winter pursued journalism at university with an economics major, hoping to help bring about change in society to address inequality and the challenges of climate change.

She is articulate but is constantly put down by Robert when she expresses her opinion. She does all the research for the morning finance show and notices that Robert often changes the text on the auto-cue at the last minute to alter the meaning of the story to suit his own prejudices.

She thinks Professor Noitawl is full of 'hot air' and seizes the moment to make the Professor's life uncomfortable exposing his incoherent economic logic in the face of real world data. Mary is sacked by the TV Network as a result, but soon found a job on a rival progressive media network, Elizabeth's favourite.

Ryan is finding it impossible to get a job as the recession deepens and falls into a pattern of heavy drinking and on-line gambling. After he loses the family savings that were intended to be allocated to pay for Kevin's school trip to Tokyo later in the year, Elizabeth kicks him out. She has had enough.

While all this drama is unfolding, the school kids organise a march to protest about climate change and later the Smith's (minus Ryan) join a massive citizens' blockade at the local coal port as part of a major climate action initiative.

Ryan is a climate change denier and is dismissive of their actions. With the semblance of peace returning to Elizabeth's home with Ryan gone, she welcomes her best friend Mariko from Kyoto, and they take Kevin and his school friend Brian to a Writers' Festival and an interesting book launch.

During the Q&A session with the author, hosted by Mary Winter, Kevin and Brian ask several questions and they learn some MMT essentials. They learn that taxes do not fund government spending, as the popular narrative goes, but, instead generate the fiscal space to allow the government to spend without introducing inflationary pressures.

They learn that when there is mass unemployment, the government can spend more and produce higher employment without having to outbid existing users of resources. Meanwhile, Ryan's descent into heavy drinking and depression continues at his brother's apartment. His brother is a right-winger who loves fast cars.

As Season 2 came to an end, we find Ryan heavily remorseful and starting to see that his views are not consistent with the evidence around him. He trips over and realises the footpath is a wreck because the infrastructure spending has been starved by the government's austerity. He also realises there is a lot of work to be done to add to the community well-being and then wonders why there is so much unemployment.

When he gets back to his brother's apartment, where he has been couch surfing after being kicked out of the Smith Family home, he watches Professor Noitawl telling the viewers that the unemployed don't really want to work.

He realises then that this is a lie. He knows from his personal experience that he offered to work for lower wages (just as Noitawl had advised) and the boss laughed in his face and said "with no orders even if he worked free he wouldn't want me because there was nothing to do".

He concludes that Noitawl's views can't be trusted and starts to think that maybe all that MMT stuff that Elizabeth and Kevin were on about, which he relentlessly opposed, could be right after all. His brother, Aaron, who is into nefarious property development schemes, fast cars and even faster relationships with women, thinks Ryan is on the path to becoming a Communist!

As we near the end of Season 2, there is an upcoming national election in the wind and Mary Winter MCs a debate between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister sticks to the party line - "we had to cut that debt mountain to get a good debt-free future".

Mary Winter points out that the plan has failed - the fiscal deficit is rising, the public debt levels are rising and there is rising unemployment that is causing dreadful hardship in the society.

The Opposition Leader accuses the government of wrecking the economy "with obsessions about debt and deficits" and announces that, if elected, they will stop issuing debt altogether, given that the government issues its own currency and can simply instruct the central bank "to credit bank accounts on its behalf". Pure MMT.

The Prime Minister is outraged and channels Professor Noitawl by saying that there is a terrible "fiscal black hole" and that "bond markets will stop funding the government if they don't reduce the debt", to which the Opposition leader counters by saying "Why does the government have to borrow the currency it alone issues". QED really.

The Opposition leader also tells the audience that they will introduce policies to facilitate a "large scale transformation of the economy away from carbon use and a Job Guarantee".

Aaron, who is watching the debate on TV, says the Opposition is intent on introducing a "Green new scam and made up jobs painting rocks". Ryan is not impressed and thinks that "a minimum wage job would be be better than what he has now" - nothing!

As the season ends, we find the Prime Minister on national TV with an emergency statement.

Elizabeth and Kevin are watching intently and when the PM says he contacted the IMF to discuss "how long the government could run these deficits without running out of money" they screamed out "The IMF! Delusional". The PM then told the nation "I have asked the IMF to extend a loan to us to help us get through this very troubling period. The IMF supports our austerity plan."

At that point, Elizabeth and Kevin realise the government has "gone mad" and even 10-year Emma understands that the underlying logic of a currency-issuing government approaching the IMF to borrow its own currency "sounds stupid".

And now you are up to date with the main developments in Seasons 1 and 2.

Please go onto to enjoy Season 3.