MMT’s claim to redistribution is purely based on influencing the distribution of income. This incorrectly conflates the effect of policies with their mechanism and effectively mixes burdens.
Tax Foundation 12, an American think tank based in Washington, DC, collects data and publishes research studies on U.S. tax policies at both the federal and state levels, “Frequently Asked Questions about the Tax Foundation’s Fiscal Incidence Study,” Tax Foundation, Accessed via Google Cache, https://taxfoundation.org/frequently-asked-questions-about-tax-foundations-fiscal-incidence-study/
Much of what we identify as fiscal redistribution in our study cannot in fact be spent by households. Instead, the phrase “fiscal redistribution” is simply used to represent an inequality between a household’s tax burden and the amount government spent on them in return. It is important to be cautious when interpreting the figures from our study as representing pure redistribution of income. Our study only measures the more limited phenomenon of a household being supplied with more government spending than it pays in taxes. It does not measure actual changes in the distribution of income due to government fiscal policy.