MMTed – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money

Artist Spotlight

Episode One image: "If the taxpayers fund the government spending and they get the money from businesses who get it from the taxpayers when they buy things, then were do the taxpayers get it from? — Episode One

The Centre of Full Employment and Equity’s MMTed project has recently launched a new manga comic book series entitled “The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money”. A collaboration between Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) pioneer and Economics Professor William Mitchell and Japanese manga artist and designer Mihana (@mihana07: https://twitter.com/mihana07), the series explains the fundamentals of MMT in a straightforward, nontechnical way through the experience of the middle-class Smith family. Professor Mitchell works on the scripts and website code and layout, while Mihana works on the graphics and layouts of cartoon. Mihana’s artistry here comes into its own. Their characters operate on the ground of everyday life with spell-binding animation and esprit. As they interact, they transform arcane economic questions into accessible issues relevant to all of us.

The first season of “The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money”, as well as a range of supplementary reading materials, are available here: http://www.mmted.org/smithfamily/.

To learn more about MMTed’s efforts to broaden access to tuition in Modern Monetary Theory and access additional educational resources, please visit their webpage: http://www.mmted.org/.

A special message from Mihana

“Hello to all beloved Just Money readers. My name is Mihana, and I am a Japanese manga artist.

The mainstream economics narratives, such as fiscal austerity, have impacted badly on the Japanese economy and the well-being of the citizens, and as a result, I have become passionate about employing my skills as a manga artist to tell stories about economics that reflect reality. This has led to my partnership with professor Mitchell to develop the Smith Family manga.

I am very passionate about the project.

As a Japanese manga artist, I strongly believe that manga has the power to change the world for the good. Stories change people. I will be very satisfied if our work leads to readers thinking more deeply about economics while at the same time having fun as they watch the unfolding dramas between the unique characters that we have developed.”