Stony Brook Professor Visits AP Microeconomics Class

Huntington High School’s AP Macroeconomics class played host to a guest lecturer from Stony Brook University late last week. Professor Stephanie Kelton is an internationally acclaimed economist and proponent of “Modern Monetary Theory” that offers a counter narrative to the role and importance of government debt in the national economy.

Professor Kelton is a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook and the author of numerous academic publications, a contributor to the New York Times and U.S. News & World Report and the author of the book “The Deficit Myth.”

Dr. Kelton is widely regarded as an expert in an emerging perspective around the “frustration and anxiety that exists over our nation’s fiscal affairs, particularly with the size of the federal deficit.”

Huntington students were presented with a lecture on the ability of the federal government to create money and the impact of pandemic spending and stimulus checks during the COVID shutdown. Central to the thesis is the inadequacy of the “household myth” derived from the “flawed idea that we should look at [the government’s] budget through the same lens we use to manage our own family budgets.”

Students were intrigued by their visitor and listened intently to everything she said. “Honestly, I wish we had more time with her,” senior Laurel Bonn said. “She has an impressive set of accolades and it was interesting to see the different career opportunities available to economics majors.”