so accounts must be abstract. however a line of accounting is not so abstract that we cannot see what that means in human terms. According to the US bureau of debt they look after the debt accounting. And according to MMT, MMT is based in accounting and operational realities. The government is constrained by choice and must have values in the accounts before it spends. Transmogrifying that to say these values have no meaning to humans is distorting reality All this talk of a government not having to be constrained in how it spends is irrelevant and meaningless in the context of the operational framework described by MMT which is based in laws everybody agrees are not broken I'm not sure I'm understanding you exactly...so bear with me on this and tell me if I'm off or not and why/how/where/etc. okay so you're basically saying that the operational realities MMT describes is negated b/c congress puts restraints on itself and its accounting practices that are not necessary? MMT as I see it would agree with you! The whole point of MMT is to PROVE that these said congressional restraints ARE UNNECESSARY and we do that by discussing the actual operational realities. Once more people realize what is reality and what is unnecessary then HOPEFULLY we'll get some policy changes to reflect operational reality. I assumed operational realities meant things like the way the system operates. where the law helps to describe some of those realities. But you are saying operational