Hoover Institution fellow Shelby Steele discusses the many opportunities available to everyone in America.

The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index showed that China entered expansion territory in March, indicating a notable improvement in the country's manufacturing sector. Economists said the rise showed policies to bolster growth have begun to pay off, and the world's second-largest economy is likely to achieve steady expansion this year. The PMI, released on Monday, recovered for the second consecutive month and stood at 50.8 in March, versus 49.9 in February.

In a recent Economic Synopses essay, we discussed how large changes in economic policy uncertainty (EPU) can affect key macroeconomic indicators like GDP and inflation. In that analysis, we considered only shocks that were large enough to push EPU above the recent historical highs. Thus, changes in the EPU do not necessarily have proportional changes on the economy.

If we focus solely on MMT’s [Modern Monetary Theory’s] essential claims about money, distinct from any associated policy proposals, it is neither new nor modern. It simply justifies funding government expenditures by issuing fiat money, which, of course, all economists have long been aware is possible. MMT then attempts to downplay the potential inflationary impact of such financing with manipulations of the government and central-bank balance sheets. But it merely puts the standard analysis into different boxes.